Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You wrote her a note.”

There was a slightly incredulous edge to the statement that almost made it sound like a question but the deeply unimpressed look Octavia was giving him indicated otherwise.

“I wrote her a letter,” Bellamy corrected refusing to meet his sister’s judgmental look in the rearview mirror.

“You are such a dweeb,” Octavia groaned, failing to acknowledge his distinction that a letter, was in fact, significantly less depressing and lame than a note.

This time Bellamy did shoot his gaze up to the rearview mirror to look at Octavia, “Really? Dweeb? What are you- a 90s sit-com bully?” he asked with what he hoped was an eyebrow raise conveying his superiority.

“You are an 18 year old of legal voting age who wrote his crush a love note,” Octavia reminded him, “Dweeb is the perfect word for your socially inept ass.”

Bellamy shot her a quick middle finger over his shoulder and looked to the passenger’s seat where Miller was riding, in hopes of finding some male solidarity.

“She isn’t wrong,” he said, not looking up from the game of WordStreak on his phone. He and Jasper were in the midst of a passive aggressive competition through the medium of phone games that was nominally about who had the better vocabulary, but Bellamy was pretty sure was actually a proxy for Monty’s attention.

Miller and Monty’s relationship was still in its fledgling stages but early indicators were that it might be something serious and that was enough to send Jasper into an overcompensating frenzy.

“You are my least favorite friend,” he grumbled.

“Do you have a section at the bottom where you ask her if she will go out with you so she can circle yes or no?” Octavia interrupted, having obviously not finished mocking his attempt at a grand romantic gesture. “Did you spray it with your cologne?”

“If he was going for authenticity he would’ve just rubbed an old book on it or something,” Miller contributed, totally nonplussed by the betrayed look his best friend was giving him.

“This is going to be humiliating,” Octavia moaned, dropping dramatically back into her seat, “I’m regretting all of the energy I put into trying to convince you to make a move.”

“This is a move,” Bellamy said, shifting self-consciously as if he could actually feel the weight of the letter shoved in the back pocket of his jeans.

“If this wasn’t potentially the last opportunity I’ll have to seduce the perfect specimen of man that is Lincoln Wood, I wouldn’t have come to this inevitable train wreck.”

Bellamy winced at his sister’s explicit reference but repressed the urge to say anything about it. She was 16 and in control of her own sexuality even if it still freaked him out on a brotherly level. He didn’t love that she was actively pursuing someone in his grade, especially the school’s star wide receiver, but by all accounts Lincoln was a good dude. He heard he volunteered at the local animal shelter in a completely genuine way and not as some sort of ploy to seem sensitive, so he couldn’t be that bad.

“He’s not actually going to give it to her,” Miller said, finally pocketing his phone as they pulled into Harper’s neighborhood.

Bellamy opened his mouth to protest but was instantly cut off by Octavia.

“Of course he isn’t,” she said with the all-knowing tone of a sibling putting an interloper in their place, “I’m just thinking about the tragic way he’s going to mope around all night while not giving her the note.”

Bellamy forgot for a second that they were making fun of him and allowed himself a moment of fondness for these two humans who cared enough about him to compete over who knew the most about his pathetic love life.

“He’ll talk about how ‘over the whole high school party scene’ he is and wrinkle his nose a lot, you know the way he does,” Octavia continued, scrunching her nose up in what was a pretty good approximation of his own dismissive sniff.

“He’s probably going to try and engage someone in a completely inappropriate party conversation about rape laws in Uganda or something like that and then walk around sighing all night when they ignore him because they don’t pleasure watch PBS-News Hour like he does.”

Bellamy startled out of his fond contemplation when he realized the tides had turned and they had ganged up against him, as was often the inevitable conclusion of his outings with both of them.

“I revised it again this morning, it’s actually ready this time.”

“I told you she was going to move across the country for college so this was pretty much your last chance to have some sort of resolution to your frankly ridiculous crush on Clarke Griffin. I, at no point, suggested you revise that manifesto of yours and deliver it to her at a graduation party,” Octavia said, “I just want that on the record.”

“This letter of his has been 4 years in the writing so I guess it makes sense he pulls it out at the culminating event of our high school experience,” Miller allowed, “It’s a very snake eating it’s own tail, completing the circle kinda ending, if you want him to have some sort of resolution.”

“He’s not going to give it to her though,” Octavia reminded him, “I was hoping the plan was drink so much his brain to mouth filter is obliterated and he can finally tell her he is stupid in love with her and put an end to this.”

Miller shrugged and Bellamy glared at both of them in alternating order, hoping that eventually one of them would have the good grace to look apologetic. That was clearly an exercise in futility since Miller just turned his attention back to his phone to see if Monty had texted about his own arrival at the party and Octavia was still watching him with the same unimpressed look from earlier.

“I’m going to give it to her.”

Octavia finally softened and gave his shoulder a supportive squeeze over the back of his seat, “I hope you do.”

Freshman Year

Bellamy was the first person at Ark Regional High School to set eyes on Clarke Griffin and he had been half in love with her since pretty much that exact moment.

It was a shame that everyone, Clarke included, was under the impression that they were sworn nemeses for about that long as well.

It was the first day of freshman year and he had ended up in the office straight away over a scheduling conflict. Bellamy could be brash and opinionated but his mother had impressed upon him the importance of respecting adults in school since, as she repeatedly told him, teaching was an incredibly difficult and important job, and he felt very out of place sitting in the row of chairs reserved for ‘the bad kids’ before the bell had even rung for first period.

“Here you are Mr. Blake,” Principal Embry said, emerging from his office with the freshly printed schedule that no longer had him taking 3 periods of calculus in the afternoon his first day of high school.

Another student tailed the principal out of the office, a schedule of her own clutched in her left hand.

That had been point number one in the letter he had sat down to write immediately upon entering his first period english class under the ruse of taking notes on his syllabus.

We are both left handed.

The letter had come a long way from it’s humble listicle beginnings he was grateful to say.

She was short and blonde and Bellamy remembered his second thought being that she looked like summertime. For a 14 year old boy who had just left behind the first glorious summer break that he had been allowed to stay at home alone, that was more than enough to cement the beginning of a tiny crush.

She wasn’t the kind of girl that had sparked an attraction in the still fairly recent years of his sexual awakening. Bellamy had, up until this point, been pretty strictly attracted to Oedipal-confirming slim brunettes. Not only was she blonde and blue eyed, she had the build of someone who was doomed for a life of kitchen step stools and rain-wet pant cuffs.

It was immediately evident though, that this was a different beast from the aimless longing he had for lanky Roma in the 5th grade, or early bloomer Echo in the 7th. Despite being a self avowed pragmatist who had seen his mother used up and neglected by men his whole life, Bellamy had a touch too much romance in his genes and could’t help but to think that this meeting felt oddly like fate.

She shifted her backpack as it started to slip off one shoulder and Bellamy could see that it was a brand new high end L.L. Bean with her initials (C.A.G) stitched across the back pocket that made his own scuffed Target brand pack look like even more garbage than he had already assumed it to be. More importantly though, he caught sight of the button pinned, almost primly, next to those pristinely stitched initials.

‘If you cut off my reproductive choice, can I cut off yours?’

Bellamy would have snorted at the implication if he hadn’t been so utterly thrown for a loop by this new girl. One of Aurora Blake’s three jobs was at the front desk of the local Planned Parenthood on the weekends, and it was rare for Bellamy to come into contact with someone his own age with as fully developed ideas about reproductive rights as he had.

“Bellamy you’re in Ms. Hewitt’s first period English, could you show Ms. Griffin to class?” Principal Embry suggested, startling him from what was likely a dumbfounded stare.

Bellamy assumed he managed some sort of agreeable shrug since the principal considered the matter closed enough to turn back into his office.

He was now the sole option for this new girl’s attention and she turned to him with a smile. Her’s was the kind of smile that seemed to say she was plotting something and that if you played your cards right you could come along for the ride. He was screwed.

“Ms. Griffin sounds like she has a lot of thoughts on, like, antebellum decor and gluten so you should probably just call me Clarke.”

A knockout of a blonde who was socially conscious, well read (if the Vonnegut in the side pocket of her backpack was something more than just pretension), and used the word antebellum in her introduction? Amend screwed to completely and utterly fucked.

Bellamy Blake was in love with Clarke from the second he met her but he was also, as Octavia would accuse him 4 years later, a socially inept dweeb, and so he immediately torpedoed any chance he had with his literal dream girl.

“So what exactly brings a girl in Vineyard Vines and Sperry’s to this home of inferior public education?”

He almost bit through his own tongue trying to keep the spiteful tide from flowing out into the world as he gruffly motioned her to follow him, but apparently he had been temporarily possessed by a complete and utter asshole.

His post-mortem of the conversation with Miller that evening lead him to the conclusion that he must have just been scared by how much he instantly liked her and just decided to fuck it up from the start before she had the opportunity to hurt him. Miller said it was because he was a dick.

Clarke’s friendly smile faltered briefly and she cast him a wary look after glancing briefly down at her pastel polo and khakis but she quickly recovered.

“My mom has some sort of political aspirations if the consultants hanging around the house are any indication and I think think she’s been informed this makes her more relatable to her base,” Clarke replied honestly, “I guess I should probably thank them. I was so sick of that private school.”

The immediate honesty was refreshing and very different from what he was used to from his peers who seemed to be on the defensive the second they perceived the smallest slight against them, but it still wasn’t enough to keep him from being an unrepentant prick apparently.

“That sounds like a politician. Doing things for appearances sake rather than actually working to enact any sort of change.”

Clarke snorted in a show of amused agreement but he could see her smile slip just a little further.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine here anyway Princess,” he sneered while his brain sat back in horrified witness to his own assholery, “The privileged kids always do.”

It seemed to be the nickname that finally did it for her and Clarke’s friendly demeanor disappeared entirely, blue eyes flashing anger.

“Jesus,” she swore, “I hope everyone at this school isn’t as big of a self-righteous prick as you are.”

“I’m sorry, am I not meeting your exacting standards already? I’m sure I can stitch a little whale on all of my clothes if that would make a difference.”

“You don’t know anything about me!” Clarke snapped, looking simultaneously confused and furious.

“Meet one Princess you’ve pretty much met them all,” he taunted, at this point just getting swept up in the argument on principle. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had almost this exact fight before, given the slight chip on his shoulder stemming from growing up in a fairly wealthy area of Northern Virginia with a mother who was always barely making ends meet. This time, however, it was completely unprovoked.

Fortunately they made it to the 9th grade wing and she only had time to turn and say, “God, you are just the worst,” before pushing into their classroom.

Bellamy stood for a few more seconds outside the door, beating his head lightly against the wall next to it.

Things really didn’t get any better when the stupid fucking alphabet put Bellamy and Clarke next to each other and he had to spend the rest of class feeling the energy of her pointed avoidance radiating off of her.

Things went from bad to worse when it became clear that Clarke, for all of her friendly and open first impressions, could hold a grudge like she was training for an Olympic medal in spite.

What began as the cold shoulder evolved into a loud and contentious relationship in which the two of them bickered and sniped at each other at every possible opportunity. They were both deeply opinionated people and even though their thinking was frequently aligned they could always find some way to make it into an argument and their face-offs became a thing of legend in the high school even as lowly freshmen.

Complicating things even more was the fact that this bitter and argumentative side of Clarke only made her more appealing to him. She was just as pretty as she had been at first glance, whip smart, and openly kind; but she was also fractious and sarcastic and he was so gone for her he might as well consign himself to a life of bachelorhood since she kept a pretty firm hold on her opinion that he was never anything more than ‘the worst’.

Bellamy pulled the lever to free Octavia from the backseat of his shitty two-door sedan and she spilled out onto the street into the crushingly humid summer night while Miller slammed the passenger’s door on the other side. Bellamy took one resentful second to consider how out of place his second hand Civic looked street side in The Preserves, a community of mini-mansions and actual mansions, where nothing cost less than an even million, before shaking himself out of it.

His bitter hostility towards the wealthy and privileged was something he was trying desperately to get over. For whatever comforts they had lacked he and Octavia had always had each other and it felt disloyal of him to want anything more. For the most part the rich kids had always lived up to his very low expectations but there had been a few marked exceptions that made him want to be better. The fact that his prejudices had been the start of his trouble with Clarke might have played a role as well.

Harper was a cool enough chick and she had actually gone out of her way to personally invite him which was a little unusual since he was more a coffeehouse and read kind of 18 year old than a socialize and party sort. Graduation made everyone a little nostalgic and he supposed Harper must have had a memory of their aquarium trip in the 5th grade or some other inane shit they had experienced a decade ago and decided he deserved the invitation.

He had more or less blown her off saying that he would ‘think about it’ but then of course had made the mistake of mentioning it to Octavia. His sister had pulled out every favor owed and every item of blackmail ever compiled to get him to go and bring her along. She was finishing up her sophomore year and she was convinced that 16 was a damn good age for her first party. Bellamy obviously objected, she could drink when she was 21 and not a second earlier, but she had ultimately won out by playing the ‘better around you then when your off at college’ card. It had also helped her case to bring up that this was a crucial and potentially terminal opportunity for him to make a move on ‘Clarke Griffin who you’ve been painfully hate-flirting with since forever’.

Monty was going, so Miller was a natural co-pilot and they found themselves in the richest neighborhood in the city ready to enter the party of the year.

Harper actually answered the door with a harried look on her face as she quickly ushered them inside. The party was already raging and Bellamy was shocked it was as inconspicuous as it was from the sidewalk since at least half of their 300 person senior class was packed inside. It was probably only a matter of time before it spilled out into the lawn, but for now everything seemed contained in the expansive first floor of the house.

“Fuck me, right?” Harper said, likely seeing their overwhelmed faces as they slid past her to enter.

“That is not even remotely what that vase is for Sterling!” she shouted, winding away through the crowd before they could even consider a reply.

Bellamy was immediately uncomfortable in the press of bodies. Alcohol was slopping out of cups, the mid-Atlantic humidity getting in every time the door opened, and sweat from the packed crowd gave the party a damp, sticky feel.

Miller had pretty severe resting bitch face but to those who knew him it was obvious his usual scowl had deepened and he shared Bellamy’s distaste for the atmosphere.

Octavia took one look at the pair of them and rolled her eyes exaggeratedly.

“Yeah, that’s about what I expected. I love you both but, peace.”

Bellamy almost followed but between her ability to sneak through the crowd with her smaller frame, and remembering that he was trying to give her some freedom in preparation for his impending move to college, he resisted the urge.

“I’m going to need to be drunk for this,” Miller asserted and began to blaze a trail to the keg.

Nearly a half hour passed and the pair were camped out on a sofa in the rather ostentatious, and increasingly destroyed, living room, having not moved since getting their first drink.

“I think its supposed to be at reunions that you have to wonder who the hell these people are and did they really go to school with you.”

Miller rolled his head towards Bellamy and gave him a knowing look over the top of his solo cup.

“Considering you spent the entirety of high school scowling into space, buried in a book, or half way up Clarke Griffin’s ass I’m not at all surprised that’s your takeaway tonight.”

Bellamy held up his middle fingers as he drained the rest of his beer, figuring that he had already used the wounded puppy approach with Miller once tonight without much effect.

“Where is your leading lady anyway?” he asked. Neither really bothered to search the crowd since Clarke was the kind of girl that stood out and if she was there already they would know. She tended to make an entrance without ever really trying.

“She’ll be here,” Bellamy responded, pretty pleased with the controlled tone he pulled off despite the fact that he was beginning to worry about exactly the same thing.

“I don’t know man, I mean with everything that went down I might bail too. Being a spectacle over something like that is the fucking worst.”

Bellamy just shrugged and pushed himself off the sofa to refill his cup a few yards away. It was always baffling to him how the rich kids could throw a party with quite so many kegs given their very illegal ages, but it seemed like there was one for each room of the house.

Miller had a very valid point and self-preservation said that he should prepare himself for the possibility that his plans might be foiled tonight through no fault of his own. Clarke had every reason to stay miles away from this group of people and the gossip that he had been hearing all night in which she featured prominently.

The problem was, if those rumors were true, the back of her blonde head as she walked away from their graduation ceremony earlier in the day, was the last he was going to see of her before she headed to the west coast and likely out of his life permanently.

Bellamy was strongly of the opinion that there should be something more to their story than that. He had it laid out in his letter with annotated and explicit details that he thought she was pretty much the most amazing girl he’d ever met, and he just refused to believe that he might not get the chance to make sure she knew.

Bellamy flopped back onto the couch pouring some of the beer from his own cup to refill Miller’s.

“She’ll show.”

Sophomore Year

“You do know this is capture the flag right?”

Bellamy blinked at Sterling across the huddle from him, unable to formulate a response to his clearly idiotic question.

“For gym class,” Sterling added, looking around the small circle for support from their classmates. The majority of their eyes were downcast as if the patchy grass of the school lawn was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world and the rest were captivated by their cuticles or a distant cloud. Sterling was popular in the natural sort of way that came from being conventionally attractive and born into old money wealth. He had every conceivable privilege and managed to not be a total shit about it which only made him better liked. No one wanted to alienate themselves from the rising star of the school’s lacrosse team but no one really wanted to run afoul of Bellamy when he was mid-war rally either.

“I know,” Bellamy said slowly, honestly a little disappointed that one of the key players in his master plan to sophomore year capture the flag domination clearly wasn’t seeing the big picture. He figured Sterling would have that competitive jock mentality going for him and he was obviously going to have to tweak a few things now that he had revealed himself as a slacker.

Sterling shrugged, “Whatever, man. You do you I guess.”

Bellamy finished his rousing call to arms as if the short interruption hadn’t occurred and was satisfied to see that even Sterling looked pretty inspired by the end and the group broke apart to take their positions around the field.

Bellamy wasn’t a social outcast by any means, he wasn’t overtly weird or smelly, and in fact he was growing into his looks in a way that seemed to be pleasing to the majority of individuals sexually oriented his direction. He had Miller and he didn’t think there was anyone in school who would label him a loser but he did have a bit of a reputation for being kind of an asshole who was a little too into mythology and ponderous historical texts to ever pull off popularity. He more or less hovered on the periphery of the high school social hierarchy and was completely content in that status but he couldn’t lie and say it didn’t feel good to get to use some of his extensive knowledge of historical battle formations to curry favor with his peers.

Bellamy lined up along the center plane of the field across from Fox, a willowy brunette from his AP Calc class. Fox smiled shyly and looked up at him from beneath her lashes, pretty much exactly the way he hoped she would based on the way her cheeks heated up every time they were paired up in math.

“Hey Bell,” she said softly.

Bellamy gave her his most charming smile, feeling just a little bit bad since it really wasn’t in his personality to lead girls on and he had absolutely no interest in Fox. She wasn’t the kind of girl who was going to be content making out in the supply closet with the shitty busted lock and that was about all he had to offer. It was especially uncomfortable given the girl he was ideally winning over with his battlefield prowess was a couple yards away looking completely disgusted with the entire display. All’s fair in love and war though, and he was a general leading his team to gym class victory.

“If you want to run off to the janitor’s closet real quick I can just grab your flag and we can finish this early,” Clarke called.

Bellamy was caught off guard for a second when the gym teacher blew her whistle to signal the start of the game. How the fuck did Clarke know about the closet? He was torn between a hopeful surge that it almost sounded like jealousy in her voice and mortification over the fact that he was clearly not as covert about his burgeoning playboy rep as he had thought.

Clarke took advantage of his distraction and sprinted past him, making a beeline towards their flag hung from the goalpost.

Bellamy made a flailing but belated swipe for one of the flags on her belt but she easily juked past him with a triumphant yelp.

He had clearly made a fatal mistake in underestimating his opponent, which, really, he should have known Clarke was a tactical mastermind herself.

He had a few inches on Clarke and was definitely faster but she had left him unbalanced in his dive for her belt and had a more than sufficient lead. Bellamy looked helplessly around for a teammate to cover for his blunder and saw that they were pretty much all pretending to participate just enough to avoid being shouted at by the teacher. 15-16 was apparently the age at which everyone became too cool to be really invested in anything anymore. Except for Clarke apparently.

Bellamy turned on a little extra speed and benefitted mightily by the fact that Clarke had to pause for a few ineffective jumps at the flag before finally snagging it off the goal post. Thank god she hadn’t hit the same growth spurt he’d been blessed with over the summer. Clarke attempted the same feint that had worked on the way down the field to try and get past him again but this time Bellamy was prepared and she just crashed into him sending both of them to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Bellamy’s gym class dominance was again ruined by the stupid all encompassing crush he had on Clarke when all he could think about for the first 10 seconds was the fact that she was pressed up against him and that it was pretty much the best thing ever.

Clarke seemed equally stunned for a second, though that was probably because she’d gotten the wind knocked out of her by his elbow when they fell he thought bitterly. They were frozen in an awkward, stare off that was quickly broken by the gym teacher shouting across the field that ‘this wasn’t supposed to be a tackle game you two!’

Clarke began to scramble away, doing her best to keep the flags around her waist away from his reach while also holding his teams captured pennant out in front of her.

Bellamy took advantage of his height and weight advantage and threw himself after her, snagging her around the waist and preventing further forward progress towards her side and victory.

Clarke squirmed a little further along, using her legs to kick out and try and dislodge his hold.

“We aren’t tackling,” she shouted to the teacher who seemed to already be over the whole situation and willing to let them do whatever lead to the least resistance, “we fell!”

“Give me the flag Princess,” he growled, trying to claw his way up her body to the flag she was still holding out of reach. He was almost caught up enough in the competition to forget exactly who it was he was rolling around the high school football field with.

“Never!”

There was laughter in her voice and her eyes were lit up in a way that he didn’t get to see directed his way very often. He and Clarke were in most of the honors and advanced placement classes together and they saw plenty of each other their first two years of high school, but for the most part that was spent in much less enjoyable competition. While their arguments made Bellamy feel alive and he mostly wanted to make out with her face he was pretty sure Clarke just found him infuriating. It was really nice to have her seeming to enjoy their rivalry for once.

Clarke made another flopping lunge toward freedom but Bellamy was able to stretch out and grab her extended wrist. He saw her elbow jerking back to try and loosen his grip before pain exploded in his mouth. Warm liquid was dripping off his chin and Bellamy’s arm shot back to cup his heavily bleeding lip, clipping Clarke strongly across the face on the way as she had sat up to examine his injury. Clarke immediately brought her own hands up to cover her left eye and they sat staring at each other in mute horror. Clarke over the amount of blood pouring from Bellamy’s mouth and Bellamy over the fact that he had literally just punched a girl in the face. Not just any girl either but the one he was more or less in love with.

“There’s a lot of blood coming out of your face,” Clarke finally managed and Bellamy raised his eyebrows in an expression that hopefully said ‘no shit’ since he was incapable of speaking through the mouthful of said blood that was collecting the longer they sat there.

A hesitant smile tugged at the corner of Clarke’s mouth, that same smile he had fallen for her first day of school, and she nudged the forgotten pennate laying on the ground between them Bellamy’s direction with the toe of her sneaker as they were overrun by classmates eager to gawk at their injuries and a flustered gym teacher who now had an afternoon full of paperwork ahead of her.

Bellamy returned to school the next day with 11 stitches in his lip and Clarke was sporting a black eye and a butterfly bandage on her brow.

“Brave Princess,” Bellamy drawled as he passed her desk that morning.

For the first time Clarke didn’t scowl murderously over the nickname and instead smiled up at him.

“I look like a badass,” she asserted cheerfully.

“Sorry that you have to walk around looking like you have a malnourished caterpillar crawling up your face,” she added, gesturing on her own lip where Bellamy’s neat role of stitches lay.

“You have permanently scarred my otherwise flawless face,” Bellamy replied without any real heat.

“Guess you won’t ever be able to forget me after this.”

Bellamy hoped the look he shot her before the teacher shooed him to his own seat looked like the reprimanding glare he intended, and not the pitiful expression it probably was that said that was never going to be an issue in the first place.

Bellamy flicked aimlessly through the home screens of his phone waiting for an app to suddenly appeal to him. Miller had met up with Monty and the pair were facing off against Jasper and Harper at the beer pong table leaving Bellamy parked on the couch still, but now alone.

He had tried instigating a debate with known fascist limp dick Cage Wallace, but unfortunately he was also known lightweight Cage Wallace and he had just belched in his face and wandered away.

Octavia had stopped by twice to reassure him that she had not yet been roofied nor had she picked any physical fights with his classmates as she was like to do. He tried explaining that kickboxing wasn’t a hobby she should practice outside of the gym but so far she hadn’t seemed very inclined to take his advice. She pointedly avoided bringing up Clarke’s continued absence from the party or the letter that she had been ridiculing him for so brutally a couple hours earlier, but Bellamy could feel her sympathy and it made him feel even more pathetic.

So he was sitting on the couch by himself, wondering if now that he had graduated and he wouldn’t see these people every day to be mocked, it would be okay to pull up his Kindle app and just start reading at a party.

John Murphy slumped next to him just as he was deciding that he could probably get away with 5 minute intervals of reading without getting caught. Murphy wasn’t remotely what he would call a friend but he had been enough of a constant presence in Bellamy’s life that he was definitely something.

Murphy appeared to be deeply stoned for which Bellamy was grateful. Sober Murphy was a prick but stoned Murphy was actually an okay, if a bit paranoid, guy who could have some really deep philosophical conversations.

“Remember that time someone paid you ten dollars to eat that stick of deodorant?”

Bellamy passed Murphy the bowl of pretzels from the coffee table.

“That was you Murphy, and you ate it for a dollar, not ten.”

Murphy narrowed his eyes and stared at him intently for a full thirty seconds before humming knowingly and walking away with the pretzels hugged to his chest.

Bellamy returned to contemplating his phone when a quiet fell over the room. It wasn’t like noise completely ceased, since that was fucking impossible at a party with upwards of 200 people, but it did seem as though someone had taken a remote and turned the volume down about ten notches.

Replacing the shouted conversation and boisterous laughter was hissing whispers and snatches of ‘I can’t believe she came’ and ‘I feel so bad for her’ and ‘poor Clarke’.

Clarke Griffin stood at the door, clearly aware that the attention of everyone nearby was on her, and looking defiant in the face of it.

Clarke was a girl with the kind of natural good looks that didn’t need much enhancement so Bellamy was used to seeing her with minimal makeup, her curly hair twisted into a side braid, wearing casual jeans and henleys. Tonight though, Clarke looked like she was coming to battle with clothes and makeup as her armor. She had done something to tame her curls and the blue sundress she was wearing showed off a mind-numbing amount of cleavage. Bellamy was pretty turned on by every iteration of Clarke Griffin but he was counting himself lucky that his libido hadn’t had to deal with this shit on a daily basis at school.

She was quickly swarmed by a few of the popular girls at school with whom Clarke fit in just by virtue of her family connections. Her mom had ended up pulling off that congressional run which meant that she was a sought after social acquaintance. Griffin had more name recognition even than Tristan’s dad who had almost won Top Chef a few seasons ago.

Harper, Mel, and Roma shuttled Clarke to the kitchen and quickly out of Bellamy’s view. He knew that Clarke referred to the girls as her ‘faux-friends’ when she was hanging out with Monty during photography class, and he would put money on the fact that the girls were more interested in getting first-hand gossip than they were comforting their supposed friend.

Bellamy knew that Clarke was very close with Senator Jaha’s son outside of school, but Wells had stayed at prep school when Clarke had made the jump to the public sector, and he couldn’t help but think she seemed a little lonely. He might not have many friends but at least the ones (one) he had were genuine.

He had thought for a minute that he and Clarke might actually be friends or at least on the path to becoming so. Even if his long term plans were more along the lines of eloping, frequent sex, and intellectual pillow talk while watching his queue of Netflix documentaries, he had decided that he could content himself with being able to call Clarke a friend if that was being offered. But that had been before Finn Collins.

Junior Year

“Blake, Griffin, Murphy.”

Bellamy felt Clarke’s foot connect with the back of his desk but couldn’t tell if she was celebrating or punishing him for being assigned to the same group for the first English project of the year.

They still found things to argue over on at least a bi-weekly basis but it felt like there was a lighter edge to the fights since their brush up the year before. Bellamy did end up with a pretty obvious scar over his lip and Clarke would forever be immortalized in the 2013 yearbook with a black eye. There were moments now when he thought Clarke looked almost playful and he could see that mischievous smile hovering just off stage when they squared off. Of course given his crush persisted completely unchecked, honestly just getting worse by the day, her warming to him could have been entirely in his imagination.

“We should pick a time to meet up and work on this,” Clarke said, corralling him and Murphy after class, all business when it came to the matter of her grades.

Murphy made a farting noise and a jerking off gesture that seemed pretty incompatible with each other and just walked away.

“Looks like Murphy already has everything under control then,” Bellamy snarked, scowling at the boy’s retreating back. He had been partnered with John Murphy before and knew the drill.

Clarke smothered a genuine smile and grabbed one of his hands.

Bellamy stood in a stunned paralysis trying to puzzle out how he had within in the span of a few seconds gotten Clarke Griffin to not only smile at him but now apparently hold his hand.

“I can’t really do week nights because of field hockey but maybe this weekend?” she said, using a purple pen to write her phone number on the back of his hand, “just text me and let me know what time you can come over.”

Bellamy was quick to transfer the number into his actual phone which wouldn’t be going under the faucet anytime he used the bathroom, but didn’t make any move to remove the number before he had to. Miller threw an empty water bottle at his head when he heard who’s number it was and Octavia, just starting her freshman year and already more popular than her older brother, gave him a high five every time she saw him for the remainder of the week.

They ended up meeting up at her house Saturday evening after he got off work at the local library restocking shelves.

Clarke’s house was just as intensely huge and intimidating as he expected, so in a way he was almost prepared for the level of wealth he was walking into. Jake Griffin was working diligently on the New York Times crossword in the kitchen which Bellamy thought was slightly eccentric given the 7-odd living rooms he imagined were in the house that were probably comfier.

He was a large man from whom his daughter clearly got her light coloring and greeted Bellamy with a firm handshake, laughter in his eyes even as he was clearly appraising this boy who had come home with his daughter. He and Clarke shared some easy banter and Bellamy felt the closeness of their relationship in just those five minutes.

They set up in what was probably considered the library if the immense bookshelves lining each wall was any indication. Even if Bellamy hadn’t been interested in Clarke from the get, seeing the goddamn library would have left him more than a little turned on. Especially when Clarke curled into a depression in one of the couch cushions that looked perfectly conformed to her body, proving that this was a room in which she spent a large portion of her time.

“I was thinking we could do some sort of like…. reimagining of a Greek myth,” she was saying and that was pretty much the only thing she could have said short of ‘I love you’ or ‘let’s bang’ that would have snapped him out of dazed contemplation of the sheer number of books in the room. “Maybe the story of Narcissus or Echo or something?”

Clarke burst out laughing at the look on his face so it must have been about as ridiculous as it felt. He couldn’t decide if it was better if she was interested in mythology herself, or if she had just been paying close enough attention and was trying to make him happy. It turned out to be a combination of the two, which was better than anything he could have asked for.

“I’ve been in history and english with you for three years straight, I know you’re kind of ridiculous about this shit. I was 85% sure you were going to punch someone during our class discussion of Edith Hamilton last year.”

Bellamy grumbled a half-hearted denial that he wasn’t ‘rediculous’ per se.

“Honestly, your history nerd persona is probably the least offensive part of you,” Clarke assured him.

“I would have thought the best part was my handsomely symmetrical face,” he offered, preening exaggeratedly.

“It might have been until some bitch left you with that scar. Now you’re just as common and asymmetrical as the rest of us,” she teased, reaching out to tap the scar above his lip with a rolled up copy of their project rubric.

“You are my most favorite nemesis.”

They were sitting in her library, her hair was soft and loose around her shoulders and she had on jeans and a tank top. She was teasing him and leaning in close and he had to say something and figured that was much safer than ‘I love everything about you’.

“Is that what you think we are?” Clarke asked, tilting her head to the side in a quizzical gesture reminiscent of the Miller’s puppy. He couldn’t have read the look in her eyes if his life depended on it in that moment.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what most of your friends call us,” he said vaguely. He chose to leave out the fact that his one friend called her ‘wifey’ or ‘bae’ in completely un-Miller fashion just to make him miserable. “You did write ‘Bellamy Blake is a tampon’ on my locker freshman year.”

Clarke snorted and held her hand up for a high five that he gave her despite the fact that it was pretty obviously at his expense.

“What do you think we are?” he asked, mouth suddenly dry, a nervous energy buzzing through him.

Clarke just shrugged and flattened out the rubric so they could begin working on their project but it was enough of a non-answer that Bellamy resolved to try and fix things between them. If that afternoon was enough of an indication, Clarke was obviously willing to reconsider her feelings on him and if they could be friends instead of rivals he was going to do everything he could to make that happen. Even if he might want more, being with Clarke at all was better than having her think he thought she was anything less than perfect.

The afternoon went better than he could have imagined, short of having them pause to make out half way through. They still snarked at each other but it was good humored and they were joking about their similarities rather than trying to find inane things to fight about.

As soon as he got home Bellamy had texted Miller ‘I think Clarke and I are going to be friends now’.

Miller had responded with the dragon, jack-o-lantern, and seashell emojis. He was strongly of the opinion that smart phones were to be used to avoid conversations not be complicit in them so he made it a policy to respond only in incoherent memes and emojis. He thought that the seashell was probably a bad sign especially since Miller was pretty firmly on the disapproving side of his hopeless crush on Clarke. ‘Do something about it or get over it,’ was his standard advice.

Bellamy was set on slipping into the seat next to her in first period History the next morning but now that Octavia was a freshman and their mother was dropping them off on her way to work he was running late more often than ever before.

He slipped into class just before the bell, unable to even drop his backpack off at his locker much less have his pick of seats.

The teacher launched into their warm up, allowing the class to continue getting settled and chatting softly, when he saw an unfamiliar mop of long hair next to Clarke’s blonde braid 2 rows ahead. The new boy was leaning in close and whispering something to Clarke that left her smothering a laugh.

Bellamy’s ire was immediately raised and it only spiked when the interloper tucked his hair behind his ear and revealed himself to be Finn Collins. Collins had gone to elementary and middle school in the district before going away with his parents on some sort of humanitarian mission for the past two years. Bellamy had only known him well enough to find him a little too smooth but was well aware of the fact that he was popular with girls. He had even had to deal with Octavia fawning over him during the single year they overlapped in middle school.

Finn had disappeared for two years but apparently his charm had only gotten stronger in his time away.

Bellamy was left to watch hopelessly as their History teacher asked Clarke to give their new classmate a tour of the building and Finn and his stupid fucking hair took the opening to immediately make a move on the pretty new blonde who had come to school in his absence.

He sincerely wanted to be mature about the situation but when Finn and Clarke were established as a couple by the week’s end, that grumpy, broody part of Bellamy’s personality won out.

Rather than transitioning into a friendship, they just doubled down on their previous competition. Clarke had seemed a little surprised, hurt even, if he was being optimistic, the first time he had fallen back to picking a fight with her during their socrative seminar in English but fell back into her role quickly with little more than a small sigh.

Bellamy was working very hard to avoid eye contact with Miller who was staring at him intently from across the room. He was pretty sure Miller didn’t actually have any telepathic abilities but he was also getting ‘so what about that letter loser?’ loud and clear.

They had been in many of the same classes for the past four years but Bellamy still didn’t think that in this particular moment ‘that asshole you fight about Hemingway with in English’ was the person she wanted to see. He wasn’t sure that the clique of girls surrounding her were her first choice either but it seemed much more appropriate than him.

Bellamy hadn’t gone to prom, half because he didn’t want to be Monty and Miller’s pathetic third wheel, and half because it was too goddamn expensive anyway, but he had definitely heard the story a thousand times over by now.

He heard all about the gorgeous brunette who had shown up about an hour into the night and effectively torpedoed Ark’s cutest couple two years running. The hot chick who had demanded to know who the fuck Clarke was and what she was doing with her boyfriend of 7 years.

By all accounts, even those of her pettiest detractors, Clarke had handled the actual confrontation remarkably well. There hadn’t been any tears or screaming dramatics like he was sure his classmates would have preferred. Clarke had just gone cold, she had shed her corsage and turned and walked away.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t surviving as well in the aftermath. It had only been a week since the dance and Finn was being painted as the stud who managed to bang two solid 10s at the same time whereas Clarke was the other woman. Everyone seemed to be split on whether she was a bitch who knew about Raven and didn’t care, or if she was a naive bimbo who got played, but somehow people had decided both of those were worse than her actual two-timing boyfriend.

The entire situation made Bellamy’s blood boil about ten times over. There was no doubt in his mind that Clarke had no idea of Finn’s duplicity but he knew it was because she wanted to see the best in people not because she was too stupid to realize she was getting played. It was baffling that people should see Clarke’s presence at the party as a scandal rather than that of the actual cheater himself.

Bellamy was still working a full time job trying to avoid Miller’s judgmental stare when Clarke emerged from the kitchen. With the whispered gossip still very obviously circulating he could see her eyes scanning the room almost desperately for a friendly or at least neutral face.

He made eye contact with her bright blue eyes and Bellamy was suddenly very aware that meant he had just been busted staring. He quickly averted his gaze while trying his best to remember what the fuck he usually did with his hands. He had nearly decided to just sit on them and be done with it when he noticed Clarke weaving her way towards him.

Before he could even start to hypothesize what that meant Clarke was headed off by Lexa, a fellow senior and all around terrifying human being. Clarke and Lexa had both been on the student government so they were obviously acquaintances. Clarke had won treasurer easily due to her popularity and Lexa straight up intimidated the entire student body into electing her president.

Bellamy took the opportunity to retreat to the kitchen for a glass of water and to hopefully find his sense of chill. He stood at the sink and stared out over Harper’s enormous pool in which two anatomically accurate blow up dolls floated lazy laps around the teenagers flailing around the water in various states of undress.

“Hey chickenshit,” Miller greeted, punching him on the shoulder with a little more force than usual. Monty followed close behind and reached out to pat the spot lightly as an apology for his forceful other half.

“I’m working up to it,” Bellamy said before Miller could nag him further.

Monty gave Bellamy a disappointed look but he couldn’t tell if it was with him or for him. Monty stood next to him at the window and rested his head on his shoulder right after, so he was pretty sure it was on his behalf. Monty was a sensitive guy, another reason Bellamy was so pleased he and Miller had found their way to each other.

“Can I be honest for a minute?” Miller asked, a grimace on his face like the sincerity pained him. Miller was a total softie but his public persona was anything but.

Monty nodded encouragingly from Bellamy’s shoulder and Bellamy gestured for him to continue. He had already gotten the ridicule from his best friend and his sister. Some real talk might end up being more helpful.

“I think Clarke is awesome,” he began, “but I know that you’re awesome. You’re my person Blake and I can’t watch you throw another four years away when she becomes ‘the one that got away’ or the ‘what if’. You need a resolution one way or the other so you can either make it work with her or hopefully move on and find someone you don’t have to suffer through this unrequited bullshit with.”

Bellamy quickly chugged the second half of his water to make a manly show of hiding the fact that his eyes were welling a little behind the cup. He could blame it on the fact that he became highly sentimental when he drank but a Nathan Miller emotional gut punch was a pretty good reason too. Monty looked highly pleased by the exchange and tipped his head the other direction so it was resting on his boyfriend’s shoulder instead.

“That’s some emotionally manipulative horseshit.”

“Whatever works,” Miller shot and shoved him back towards the living room.

Bellamy walked towards the couch he had recently vacated before making a rapid redirection for the front door upon seeing Lexa and Clarke engaged in an intense make out session in the exact stop he had recently been sitting. Lexa had a hand fisted in Clarke’s blonde hair and appeared to be making an attempt to lick down to her toes through her mouth.

He couldn’t really settle on any one particular emotion as he pushed out into the muggy summer night and made his way straight to his car. He couldn’t actually leave since having a mom who was never around meant that the Blake’s place was designated post-party crashing grounds for a few of their friends who he had promised to drive. He could however, have his breakdown in the privacy of his own shitty sedan.

He was crushed at yet another opportunity squandered but a more depressing portion of him was just resigned to the fact that of course, this is what he should have expected. A section 8-living, Goodwill-wearing kid like him didn’t have any business with local political royalty. He scrubbed a hand across his face and looked out across the perfectly manicured lawns and installed water features stretching ahead of him in the falling dusk.

As he sat there Bellamy could feel an inexplicable anger at Clarke growing to overwhelm the bleak self-deprecation he had been wallowing in. He had been so sure that there was something between them, how could she not see it?

He didn’t have much hope that it had been a head over heels, at first sight sort of devastation for her like it had been for him. But, God, over the past four years it had really felt like there was something big brewing between the two of them. It just felt so fucking insignificant for this to be the way it ended. With a second of accidental eye contact across the room at a shitty party and then an hour of him hiding in his car intermittently crying and punching his steering wheel.

He pushed off the seat as far as he could in the tiny compact car so he could reach into his back pocket. Maybe if he reread the letter he would realize what a fucking idiot he had been and he would see that he had been inflating four years worth of meaningless interactions into something that truly just never existed.

At first he thought it was because he couldn't really get his hand around well enough to get into the pocket but he became frantic after realizing that the letter was no longer safely folded away in his pants. In the era of social media and online bullying there wasn’t a chance in the world that something that sappy and embarrassing wasn’t going to end up plastered across the internet within the hour. He might resent Clarke for running to the arms of the class bitch but he was still puppy dog sick in love with her and knew that after the hell she had gone through the past year the last thing she needed was to be embarrassed online over some desperate stalker note.

He groaned and forced himself out of his car and back up the front drive to the party.

Senior Year

Bellamy had been called over the intercom to report to the media center just over a month before graduation. He pawed through his shaggy black curls, trying to get them into some semblance of an actual hairstyle before pushing into the library.

Ark Regional High School’s yearbook committee had decided to try some unconventional senior superlatives in an attempt at inclusivity or some shit that pretty much no one except the PTA and committee members  themselves cared about when it came to a stupid yearbook. Bellamy had won ‘Most Likely to Start a Revolution’ along with one Clarke Griffin and they had to report to the library to get their picture taken by Monty for the superlative spread.

Clarke was already waiting, feet propped up on one of the small circular tables that seem to populate every school library in existence as she paged through a book off the ‘new arrivals’ table.

Bellamy felt his heart constrict a little at just the sight of her chewing on the end of her long blonde braid. His ‘fake it till you make it’ technique to hating Clarke that he had tried to adopt the year before after she hooked up with Finn had backfired on him spectacularly as he was more infatuated with her than ever.

Octavia told him it was because he liked girls that didn’t put up with his shit and Miller told him it was because he had a kink for being yelled at, but the fact remained that as he spent 2 years trying his best to instigate and provoke he just fell further for her every time she rose to the bait.

“I’m sorry did someone misinform you that you had won ‘Class of 2016’s Best Filipino Kurt Cobain Impersonator’?” Clarke drawled, plucking at the baggy flannel shirt he had thrown on over his least ratty Incubus shirt when he approached.

“Given the racial composition of his school it would be pretty fucking racist if they gave that title to someone else. It’s weird they chose to pair me up with the winner of ‘Most Likely to end up on The Real Republican Housewives of Arlington’ though.”

Clarke snorted and tossed the book back onto the table. That was probably where a good majority of his troubles in the quest to force himself into hating Clarke came from. Sure she would get worked up and shout at him when he took a swipe at her but ever since that first day it would be accompanied by a mischievous smile or an amused laugh that made him think that maybe this was less trench warfare and more friendly banter. That maybe she was into their interactions in a more similar way to him than he imagined.

“Monty’s still getting pictures of Mr. and Mrs. ‘Most Likely to Stop Traffic Rescuing a Family of Ducks’ over there so we just have have to chill for a while,” she said, gesturing over to where Lincoln and Maya Vie were snuggling a couple of taxidermy water fowl in likely the most adorably awkward photo shoot of all time.

Bellamy slouched into the chair across from Clarke, expecting her to pick up the book once more as a pretense to ignore the raging asshole who had been picking on her incessantly for their entire high school existence but instead she just studied him from across the table with her calculating blue eyes.

“I hear Maryland accidentally admitted you,” she finally said but beyond the smirk he could see what looked like actual fondness.

Bellamy couldn’t help but let out the goofy smile that took over his face every time someone mentioned his impending college. He had worked damn hard for his scholarship into the University of Maryland’s history program. It was a good school within a metro ride of his sister that had plenty of connections in the district for internships. With Miller also at Maryland and Monty and Jasper locked in at Hopkins and Georgetown respectively, their little group was set up in damn near ideal conditions for what was supposed to be the best four years of their lives.

“Fear the turtle,” Bellamy confirmed.

“That’s great Bell, congrats.”

Bellamy nearly choked on his tongue over the use of the nickname that had previously only come out of the mouths of female family members, but instead managed to offer her similar congratulations on her acceptance to Princeton or wherever the hell ivy league she was headed as if he didn’t know exactly what school and major she was destined for.

“Princeton’s for fascists,” she replied with a scowl, “I’m supposed to be going to Stanford.”

“Supposed to be?”

Clarke pulled her feet from the table and sat up straight in the chair. She paused for nearly a full minute, staring intently at her cuticles before responding.

“I haven’t exactly confirmed my enrollment yet.”

Bellamy mirrored her more formal position and waited patiently for her to continue. The tense line of her back and the thought that had clearly occurred before her initial response told him this was not something she had told many people.

“Stanford Pre-med had always been the plan as per my mom,” she finally admitted. “Ever since my dad died though, the thought of being in a hospital makes my skin crawl.”

Bellamy knocked his knee against hers under the table. It seemed like a safer option than grabbing for her hand. He knew Clarke was the girl who didn’t want to be coddled or treated differently because of her loss but that didn’t mean that talking about her recently deceased parent wasn’t devoid of emotional land mines.

He had heard about the car accident that had killed Jake Griffin at the end of their junior year, everyone had. He had liked Jake in the brief time he had met him and had seen how close he had been with his daughter and Bellamy’s heart ached to comfort her. The best he had been able to manage however was a stupid note shoved between the slats of her locker because apparently he was some pathetic character from the Notebook come to life.

Clarke looked up with a grateful smile.

“I was just supposed to be a doctor because that’s how my mom started out and I was smart enough so it made sense. But a thousand years of school, missing every single one of my soccer games, and less than a dozen dinners at home since I started school and she still wasn’t able to save my dad so honestly what’s the fucking point? Science is interesting enough but I hate the technical shit and that’s on top of the fact that I reflexively burst into tears at the sight of an ambulance.”

“What do you want to do?” Bellamy asked, wondering sadly if he was the first person in a long while who had actually asked her that instead of just forcing their expectations on her.

“I applied to a few art schools,” she mumbled as though she expected him to start laughing at the idea that someone might want to be a starving artist instead of a doctor.

Bellamy saw Monty packing up some props and hugging Maya and Lincoln goodbye and knew that the intimate bubble around him and Clarke was about to be popped.

“Look Clarke, I know I’ve been a dick to you but if you’ve been paying attention I hope you’ve noticed that I think you’re pretty fucking amazing.” His heart was thudding wildly in his chest because this level of honesty was just…. unwise, to say the least. “You are more than capable of deciding what is going to make you happy and you deserve to be happy.”

“Guys! I found fencing swords!” Monty enthused, brandishing said swords in their face. Clarke was a little slack jawed and Bellamy was sure that he was blushing about as deeply as someone of his skin tone was capable but Monty seemed completely unaware.

He and Clarke had finished up the shoot and the rest of the year without speaking much. Bellamy wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with the fact that he had barfed up the fact that he thought she was amazing or if she was just embarrassed she had let herself be so vulnerable, but they hadn’t even really kept up with their usual verbal sparring.

The only reference either made to their conversation was the short message Bellamy found from her in his yearbook after it had made the rounds around his english class on the last day of school.

‘So do you, you know. Deserve to be happy I mean. -Clarke’

Ordinarily Clarke would have been overjoyed to close out her senior year making out with a really hot chick. Especially after all of the shit she had been through lately. There was something a little forced though about the way Lexa’s tongue had made its way into her mouth within seconds of taking a seat on the couch and she had a nagging memory in the back of her head about GW-bound Lexa applying for internships on the hill over the summer though.

Clarke pushed her away lightly and attempted to put as much space between them on the couch as possible, wiping her mouth and straightening her dress to hopefully silently signal to the other girl that their hookup had been officially terminated.

“I really hope this is the first and last time I ever have to say this after someone kisses me but- is this about my mom?”

Lexa didn’t even bother to look ashamed and just shrugged cooly. “I’d be an idiot not to give it a shot having you in my class and all.”

“Yeah, no thanks,” Clarke said with an uncomfortable smile as Lexa got up and sauntered away “Good luck with the internship or whatever.” She didn’t know why she felt the need to be polite or to try and make Lexa feel less weird about it when it was clear the other girl felt anything but. It must be something about Lexa’s personality that brought that out in others.

Clarke let her head fall back on the sofa. She had been feeling really empowered after spending the first half of the evening at Raven’s and clearing everything up with Finn’s other girlfriend. She had left wishing that she had met Raven first since she was clearly the cooler of the two, but also really hopeful about the friendship they could build moving forward. It was pretty much a best case scenario so she felt like it only made sense to go kick ass at the stupid party her classmates were throwing as well.

She had made the fatal error of forgetting the large number of gossip obsessed assholes she had gone to high school with though, and was regretting her choice already. Sucking face with the first girl who approached her was probably only going to make things worse too.

The only thing that saved it from being a complete clusterfuck was the fact that Finn apparently had the good sense not to show his face.

She knew why she had started dating Finn. She had gone two years at Ark and was somehow still left feeling like the new girl. Everyone wanted to be her friend but that seemed a lot more because she was wearing the right backpack and she had a recognizable last name than it was because they wanted to get to know her. As much as she had hated private school, at least she had Wells who cared about what was actually coming out of her mouth instead of just waiting for his turn to talk.

Finn had come to school and everyone already knew him from back in middle school and he had wanted her. He had started pursuing her immediately and single-mindedly and she suddenly felt like someone was interested in her as a person instead of just collecting her for their clique.

Finn was handsome and charming in a way that was obvious but not slimy. His idealism bordered on naivety but it was nice to talk to a guy her age that thought about something other than fantasy football and what size her tits were exactly. He was also a very welcome distraction from motherfucking Bellamy Blake.

Bellamy Blake had been the first person she met at Ark and it just fucking figured he would turn out to be the most confusing, infuriating, perfect boy in school.

She had spent a few years puzzling through her sexuality in middle school but if there was anything in the world that confirmed her bi-sexuality it was her visceral response to Bellamy’s freckles. She had seen the freckled boy waiting outside the office with a pair of cheap swap meet glasses on and she had developed an instant crush. He had grown into his lanky body and now he wore contacts to school instead of his glasses, but he still had those freckles and the same toothy smile when he allowed himself to be happy, so needless to say the attraction had never faded.

She had been so disappointed when he opened his mouth and revealed himself to be an arrogant self-righteous prick with an enormous chip on his shoulder, but a little piece of her had also been relieved because that initial pulse of whatever it was had felt a little too scary for a 14 year old.

Unfortunately within the week he had gone on to lecture their Biology teacher on how problematic it was to teach genetics and omit Rosalind Franklin during a discussion of Watson and Crick. Guys fighting the patriarchy were sort of her type.

She spent the rest of high school being depressingly infatuated with a guy who took every opportunity he could to remind her that she was a spoiled princess and the opposite of everything he valued. She of course, came back at him with equal fire because that’s just who she was, even if a little piece of her withered every time they devolved to a screaming match.

It should have been a turn off. She shouldn’t be attracted to someone who spent so much time and energy trying to belittle her, but there was something about him that always drew her back. He made her want to work harder, and be better. He challenged her in a way that no one else seemed willing or able to.

There was also the fact that she could tell deep down what a really good person he was. That all of his bluster came from the fact that he was the poor kid in a rich kid’s school and he had needed that surly attitude to make it as far as he had. He was smart and well read like only a kid without cable seemed to be around here. He was passionate about social causes in a manner that seemed like more than just lip service.

She saw the way he cared for anyone who entered his orbit like a teenaged mother hen. When his sister had showed up their junior year Clarke had been ruined over his affectionate big brother persona, and pretty near her breaking point when it came to smothering her idiotic crush.

There had been a moment when she thought things might be about to change. While he very clearly resented her there had always been a sort of charge between them and when he had come to her house one weekend for a group project she was pretty sure she had seen him check her out on several occasions. He had left with a sort of one armed hug that she was pretty sure was trademarked by some puritanical religion, but given that up until then, the only physical contact they had, had resulted in stitches and a black eye, it had felt like a turning point.

Clearly she had hugely misinterpreted his signals though, because the week following he seemed to despise her more than ever. It had obviously been a mistake to bring him to her house since it had only reminded him what a spoiled little rich kid she was.

So that was why she had started dating Finn. He had been a carefree, watered down version of Bellamy. With his long hair and his armchair activism, Finn had seemed like the white-washed, made for TV version, and if the genuine article hated her guts she would have to take what she could get.

Clarke managed to be happy with Finn and tried to just enjoy the banter with Bellamy and do her best to just try and endear herself to him as a friend. The fact was though, that she never stopped being half in love with Bellamy, and it should have been a red flag to her that Finn had never sensed it.

Even after Raven walked into Prom and blew up her facade of a perfect relationship Clarke didn’t really and truly hate Finn. She hadn’t exactly been faithful to him in the strictest sense of the word either. Sure she hadn’t cheated, but it almost felt like her emotional affair that had been going on long before he even came to town was probably worse. She was hurt and embarrassed but she didn’t think he was a bad person. Having gone to meet Raven though she could honestly say that she had worked her way to hatred.

Raven was awesome and she did love Finn very deeply. They had known each other since they were kids and had been dating for a few years before he left with his parents. They had never officially broken things off so when he returned they had just picked things back up as though he had never left. Unfortunately, when he came back he had also picked Clarke up. Seeing the pain inflicted on someone as cool as Raven confirmed that Finn was actually a grade A asshole.

Clarke chugged the drink she had carried in and left on the table when Lexa had jumped her. She shifted uncomfortably and adjusted the tight blue dress. She looked hot as hell and she knew it but her ass was about 2 sizes to big for this sort of bandage style, and her boobs a size more than that even and she was frankly miserable.

Bellamy had taken one look at her and bolted, half of the class was still talking about her behind her back, and she was pretty sure she had heard every urban dictionary version of whore that existed in the past 20 minutes. She was uncomfortable and lonely and surrounded by people that somehow, despite having gone to school with her for four straight years, still didn’t care about her as more than the congresswoman’s kid.

Clarke grabbed for her wristlet to leave only to find it had gotten shoved between the sofa cushions during Lexa’s impassioned assault. She dug between the cushions which were disturbingly crumb-free and grabbed both her pouch and a few dog-eared sheets of looseleaf. She was going to toss the paper on the table and leave but realized just before, that her name was written in cramped print across the front of the folded pages.

Clarke looked around curiously to see if she could find someone who had intentionally planted this there for her to find but saw no one looking at her with more than passing attention. Apparently since she had spent the past 10 minutes or so staring at the ceiling lost in her own thoughts she had become boring once more.

She unfolded the pages and began to read, pausing every few sentences at first to check if anyone was watching, before becoming so transfixed by the contents she could only stare at the letter.

It was a letter, that was obvious. It was addressed to her and began to enumerate all of the things the author loved about her. It wasn’t just a list of features like her boobs and her hips that they thought were great, though they did have a damn near poetic line about her eyes, but it was a list of character traits, of observations of her as a human being. The letter concluded by saying that while they would love nothing more than to have a chance to be with her, they just want her to know that they noticed her and that they think she is amazing.

Clarke knew that a few tears had slipped out and she wiped them away absently as she reread the letter a second and third time. She had been sitting here thinking that somehow she had gone through all of high school without anyone bothering to get to know her and here was someone who had apparently done not only that, but apparently loved everything they learned. It wasn’t all just flattery but somehow they managed to reassure her about pretty much all of her insecurities and made her feel more special than she had in a very long time. It was the kind of unconditional affection she had gotten from her dad and that she was sorely missing now, but with an added layer of romance that made her heart stutter in her chest.

There was an underlying theme that the author seemed to think there was something fated with them, and while everything about that should have felt creepy, the sheer lack of pretension and honesty of the words gave the exact opposite impression.

This was the sort of relationship she wanted and goddamnit she deserved. She shouldn’t be Lexa’s step up to the career she wanted, or Finn’s arm candy that helped him assuage his commitment-phobia. It was a grand romantic gesture in the most understated way and exactly the sort of thing she would want. The only problem was, that for all of their attention to detail and sincerity, the letter was notably unsigned.

She was turning her attention to the handwriting, trying to figure out if it was familiar to her when Finn made his very late entrance to the party.

Clarke saw him right away since the people around the door immediately broke out into excited chatter about the drama they might be lucky enough to witness. She saw him searching the crowd and got quickly to her feet, shoving the letter into her wristlet, hoping to disappear into the mess of people before he saw her.

Damn her for having the most recognizable hair in their graduating class though as he saw her almost right after she stood up.

“Clarke.”

He said her name like he was in some sort of pain and she was the only one who could save him. It sounded so sincere and he had those big brown eyes and fuck it if he wasn’t tearing up.

“Clarke, please wait. I need to talk to you.”

Clarke mentally cursed everyone at the party again as they seemed to form a wall in front of her, preventing her escape. There was nothing better than some embarrassing personal drama on someone else’s behalf to liven up a party apparently.

“You need to leave me alone,” she said, trying to convey how serious she was, pleading with her tone that he let this go before they made a scene.

Finn though, was the kind of person who didn’t mind a scene, thrived on the attention a little even, so he took the opening the crowd gave him and crossed the room to grab her arm.

“I am so sorry Clarke.”

Clarke tasted blood as she bit the inside of her mouth trying not to scream. The entire house seemed to have gone silent and there was a press of bodies surrounding her and her ex-boyfriend trapping them in a tiny circle of space. She was claustrophobic, her dress was cutting off circulation at both ends, and the only thing she wanted to do in the world was get out of this house and home so she could read the letter again and be reminded that she wasn’t just some zoo exhibition of a high school relationship gone wrong, or some spoiled little rich kid who was no more worthy than the designers she wore.

“Raven was my girlfriend before I left and I guess she didn’t understand that we were over, I never meant to hurt you,” Finn was explaining.

“You’ve been with Raven the past two years too,” Clarke said darkly, she couldn’t believe he was trying to twist this. Apparently he thought he had a better case with her if she thought she was being cheated on with Raven rather than the reality of the situation which was that she was the other woman.

“I never told her we were exclusive, she misunderstood,” Finn insisted and Clarke immediately regretting engaging. She wondered if she did just stand there and scream if everyone would assume she was crazy and would just leave her alone.

“Raven deserves better, I deserve better,” she said and yanked her arm free of his grip. Who the fuck was he to think he could touch her anymore.

“Clarke I love you,” he pleaded as she started to push her way out of the circle surrounding the sofa.

Clarke let out a sharp bark of laughter at that and instinctively touched her pouch in which the letter from someone who might honestly be able to say that was kept.

“Finn, you love an idea of me,” she called over her shoulder, “The only person you actually love is you, and that’s something we do not have in common, so you can actually go fuck yourself.”

Clarke wasn’t even sure if her parting shot had made any sense but there was enough whooping and cheering that it seemed like it had landed pretty effectively. The only thing she knew for sure is that she wanted to get the hell out of this house.

Unfortunately the fact that she had just loudly advertised her single status meant that she was suddenly faced with a constant stream of roadblocks of the horny male variety.

Tristan offered that since they were both going to college in the fall they could just give a fun summer thing a try.

Sterling said that it was pretty badass how she handled Finn back there and he wouldn’t mind if she wanted to order him around like that once in a while.

Murphy had just walked up, honked her boobs, and announced ‘let’s fuck’.

Clarke had experienced a lifetime’s worth of sexual harassment and demoralizing interactions with men before she was able to reach the back door. She managed to push past Jonesy who was drunkly offering to help fit her for a new bra and finally escaped outside. She thought she was free but apparently news had reached the crew in the pool and a rousing cheer went up as soon as she set foot on the deck.

Clarke could feel tears burning the back of her eyes. She had gone from feeling like someone immensely special to a collection of holes that teenage boys wanted to have a go at within 15 minutes.

She yanked off her heels, hoping to speed up her getaway when a deep familiar voice called her name. Clarke closed her eyes and wished she could disappear. She could deal with the rest of the guys in the house being pigs but this she could not handle. The person she’d had a crush on forever trying to seize on an opportunity to fuck her when she was vulnerable was probably going to be the thing to break her that night. She touched the letter through her pouch again for strength and whirled around to see Bellamy Blake’s handsome face.

He didn’t have the smarmy look so many of the other’s had, if anything he looked a little flustered, but he was also infinitely more clever and probably much less drunk than them as well. If Bellamy wanted to cut her to her core she had no doubt he could pull it off so she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to try.

“What?” she snapped. “Has public humiliation knocked the princess down enough pegs that you’re willing to throw her a bone finally?”

Bellamy looked confused ,which almost shut her up but he also still had those perfect freckles dusting his cheeks and she just couldn’t have those freckles associated with whatever brutal take down he was sure to have locked and loaded.

“If we could just go someplace and talk- “ he said hesitantly and Clarke saw red. It was even worse than she thought. He wasn’t just going to ridicule her, he was just looking to fuck her just like everyone else.

“This is pretty fucked up even for you Bellamy,” she continued, the humiliated tears that had been threatening to break, spilling over, “I’m finally low enough and now I’m supposed to what? Strip off all my clothes and do you right here? Why don’t you just go off and get yourself a goddamn life, asshole?”

Bellamy stared at her and muttered something that sounded like ‘I figured’ and turned and went back into the house in front of a chorus of laughter.

“Man Clarke you are just dropping heat tonight, that was the funniest thing I’ve seen all year,” someone shouted at her retreating back but Clarke could barely hear with the blood rushing in her ears and definitely couldn’t see with the tears blurring her vision.

She was able to call Wells who picked her up without question and drove her the few blocks to their neighboring homes in an even wealthier subdivision. He did try a few questions before letting her out of the car and offered to stay since it was clear from the dark house that her mother was not home. Clarke composed herself enough to offer him a watery smile and a polite refusal, as sweet and well intentioned as Wells was, she really just wanted to be by herself.

Clarke tossed her abandoned heels in the foyer and made her way up to her room. The only game plan she had been able to conceive of was to go to sleep and forget for at least 8 hours that her entire social and romantic life had imploded for the second time in a week.

If Bellamy had seen her room during his one visit to the Griffin family home the Princess-tag would have been really cemented. It wasn’t her aesthetic at all, but her mother had it decorated and she didn’t care enough to do anything about it. By the time Abby had finished with the decorations the room had already begun to feel like a stop over on her way to adulthood, a feeling that was only amplified after her father died.

The only thing she wanted more than to collapse on her bed, the only part of the room she actually liked, was to get out of her constricting dress. Clarke braced herself on her vanity and wiggled out of the dress, taking a deep breath when she was free. She stopped, standing at the vanity in nothing but her cutest pair of panties, there was no fitting a bra under that torture device disguised as a dress, and she looked at the pictures surrounding the mirror.

The fall out with Finn and Raven had been bookended by a dozen different senior events and tasks so she hadn’t had time to purge her room of her old relationship yet. Clarke started pulling pictures loose and crumpling them before dropping them to the floor. It was like a scene out of a teen movie and she had to say that she understood the appeal now, it was very cathartic. She ripped a final picture lose and tore Finn’s face directly down the middle.

She was about to get in bed when her eyes caught on a slip of paper tucked into the mirror frame where the pictures had formerly resided, and a pit of dread began to resolve itself in her stomach.

It was a quarter sheet of notebook paper that had been slipped into her locker at some point during her absence after her dad had died. On it was just a quote from Mark Twain in which he asserted that he did not fear death since he had been dead so many years before he was born and not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. It was signed, I’m so sorry Clarke -B.

The quote seemed a little dark for someone who had just lost a parent and she felt Harper recoil behind her when she read it over her shoulder but it had been the most perfect sympathy note she received. Her dad had adored Mark Twain, something Bellamy must have picked up on in his short time in their library, and the simple dark humor reminded her so much of her dad and exactly how he would have tried to cheer her up.

It wasn’t the quote or the difficult memories evoked by the note that made her feel like she was going to throw up- and she did want to puke, and cry, and break things. It was the handwriting which she shakily compared to the letter from the party after retrieving it from her pouch.

“Oh, fuck.”

Bellamy had walked promptly back to his car after the spectacularly disastrous encounter with Clarke.

When he had gotten back in the house he had seen Finn standing in the middle of the room looking shell shocked and defeated but Clarke was no where in sight. Clearly shit had gone down in the time he had spent decompressing in his car. He made a quick search of the couch for the letter but after failing to find it decided it was much more important to try and talk to Clarke and just have it out in person rather than to waste more time trying to find the note.

He ran to the back door figuring that he would have seen her if she left through the front, and that was when she finally trashed any and all of his hopes that she might feel similarly about him.

“The timing was probably just really bad,” Jasper had offered after they had all piled into the car and left to help him avoid further humiliation.

Miller and Monty just offered him apologies and Octavia had some really vivid threats of violence that Bellamy had to make her promise not to follow through on.

“It’s done,” is all he could manage and they spent the rest of the car ride in depressing silence.

They had all made it back to the Blake’s home where their mother was unsurprisingly not in residence. Between three jobs and a string of undeserving boyfriends, neither Blake saw their only parent very often.

“Let’s get shit-faced then,” Bellamy offered and he could see the rest of the group relax a little with the suggestion. He really wasn’t in any mood to drink, he was an even more emotional drunk, but he hated the sympathetic looks he was getting and liquor was the only way he knew to get them to stop. He also had some guilt over ruining their good time which was just something he carried around as the caregiver of the group. He always felt responsible for the moods and well-being of others.

Jasper was concocting some sort of atrocious looking mixed drink with 50% of the bottles from Aurora’s liquor cabinet while Monty and Miller counted out decks of cards to see if they could piece together a full deck. Bellamy looked on and tried to will himself into a better state of mind.  He changed into a ratty t-shirt and pajama pants and took out his contacts since he was pretty sure he was going to cry about all this at some point tonight and he might as well be prepared.

Loving Clarke had just become a facet of who he was. It was just a piece of him just like being obsessed with history and getting into arguments in comments sections. It could always just continue to exist because, while he had some evidence she wasn’t interested, he had never had definitive proof from the source that he had no chance with her. Miller had hoped that having a resolution would help him abandon that and move on but he was beginning to think it was just permanently engrained in him at this point and he was just going to have to learn to live with that piece while incorporating the devastating knowledge that it was never going to be anything more than a stupid unrequited crush.

Bellamy heard a knock at the door and Octavia jumped up to quickly go answer it. He was pretty sure he saw her pressing her number into Lincoln’s hand on her way out the door so there was a good chance he was the one joining their little after party.

“What do you want?” he heard her ask, her voice a barely controlled shout and definitely vibrating with an anger that she would not be using for her hopeful boyfriend.

Whoever was at the door said something he couldn’t quite catch but he could hear Octavia scoff in response.

“I’m a great kick boxer. I will literally end you if you don’t leave right now.”

Bellamy went to go see who Octavia was threatening at their front door. It should be a short list of people his sister would inflict violence on but unfortunately that was not the case so he was shocked when he rounded the corner and saw Octavia trying to close the door on Clarke.

She was looking down, fishing something out of the pocket of her sweats. She looked a mess, her hair in that haphazard style he had been informed was called a messy bun, mascara smudged under her eyes which were red and watery, and mismatched slippers that she had paired with an Ark Soccer sweatsuit. Of course he still thought she was beautiful and his traitor of a heart felt a tug towards her.

Clarke finally found what she was looking for in her oversized pants and pulled his letter out with trembling fingers. “I found this at the party.”

Bellamy winced and ran his hands through his already unruly hair.

“He didn’t-“ she began, before noticing him standing a few paces behind his sister, “you didn’t sign it.”

Octavia sighed.

“Of course he didn’t,” she muttered, “he’s rewritten that fucking letter a thousand times but at no point did he think to include his own fucking name.”

“Can I talk to him?” Clarke asked Octavia and Bellamy couldn’t help but soften a little at her acknowledgment of his relationship with his sister.

“I’ll allow it,” Octavia said evenly, “but if you’re just here to hurt him more or pull some condescending shit to try and make yourself look better I will not feel bad about anything I do to you.”

She gave Clarke a final warning glare and went back into the living room, ushering the rest of the group back to give them a little privacy as they had snuck out to see what the commotion was. Jasper was especially reluctant to retreat but Monty dragged him by the ear.

Bellamy stared at Clarke, trying his best not to be moved by how utterly wrecked she looked. She had showed up at his house after publicly rejecting him so it was on her to do the talking even if a small spark of hope had reignited at her presence.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, her face crumbling a little though she struggled to keep her composure.

“Finn had just pulled some really stupid shit and when I told him off it apparently meant that, as a whore who sleeps with other girl’s boyfriends and wears dresses that showcase her tits, I must have only come to the party to fuck each and every person of the graduating class of 2016. You said we should go somewhere and I just assumed that meant-“

She trailed off and hid her face briefly in the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

“I shouldn’t have,” she continued, “I know that isn’t who you are I just never thought you’d actually be interested in me so it had never even crossed my mind that the letter was from you. I’ve had a crush on you since the ninth grade and you’ve never done anything but-“

This time Bellamy cut her off.

“I love you. Fuck. I’ve been in love with you since the day we met.”

The tormented look on Clarke’s face started to recede and was replaced with a shy smile.

“I was sort of hoping that’s what the letter meant.”

“Jesus I didn’t say that in there either? What the fuck have I been editing for four years?”

“You had almost 2 full pages discussing my taste in books, so maybe that?”

Bellamy shrugged helplessly. He did have a lot of mostly positive thoughts about her reading choices.

He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly feeling awkward. She had the letter and now she had a verbal declaration of his feelings and despite the fact that she was there and had admitted to once nursing a crush on him she hadn’t actually been explicit about her intentions yet. There was still a terrified part of him that was convinced she was there to say ‘thanks but no thanks’.

“You were making out with Lexa two hours ago and you just broke up with your boyfriend of two years,” he reminded her. It felt judgmental and petty when it came out of his mouth and he instantly regretted it, but that insecure part of him that couldn’t believe that the Prom Queen was actually interested in him needed to have this addressed.

“Lexa made out with me,” Clarke said defensively, “That was like a drive by make out.”

Bellamy barely managed to repress a smile, “And Finn?”

Clarke sighed, “That’s a little more complicated.”

Bellamy saw her gaze move to focus on something behind him and he turned to catch Octavia and Jasper both peeking around the corner of the living room. He was suddenly very aware that this wasn’t a conversation he had ever envisioned having in the front hallway of his shitty apartment and considered his options.

“Do you want to go to my room? I know that seems pretty forward under the circumstances but…” he trailed off hoping she would get the picture without him having to go into more detail over the inadequacies of his home.

Clarke shoved her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie and nodded for him to lead the way.

It saved him a lot of agonized over-analysis when she flopped onto his bed and patted the space beside her for him to sit.

They sat in silence that was remarkably comfortable as she looked around his room and he studied her profile, feeling increasingly positive at the downright fond look she had as she took in his ragtag bookshelves and the slightly malnourished plant on his dresser.

“It was your freckles,” she finally said and Bellamy could honestly say that was a somewhat surprising response to his question about Finn.

Her cheeks flared red but she managed to look at him as she continued.

“I thought you were SO cute and you were going to walk me to class and I had pretty much planned out our entire life together within the first 5 minutes of meeting you but then you called me a Princess and acted like the most self-righteous dick ever.”

Bellamy winced and she grabbed one of his hands and pulled it into her lap to reassure him that impression had been rectified.

“I was disappointed but being cute can’t make up for someone having like, the biggest chip on their shoulder ever, so I figured that was the end of it. Then in the first week you advocated for the recognition of female scientists in Biology, went on a 15 minute long rant against colonialism in U.S. History, and threatened to punch a kid at lunch when he told Jasper he looked like a demented meerkat. It was all kinds of perfect. And then you just kept….. doing those things. For four straight years.”

Bellamy felt like he was swallowing paste as he sat there trying to wrap his head around the fact that he and Clarke had apparently just wasted four whole years that they could have been together.

“You never said anything.”

“You asked me how I got so lucky that my fairy godmother blessed me with both a terrible personality AND an ugly face,” Clarke said drily, “You weren’t exactly sending out the ‘I’m into you’ bat signal.”

“You were supposed to read between the lines,” Bellamy offered sheepishly. Apparently he had done a better job of pretending to hate her than he had realized. Having Miller and Octavia so close to him and moaning about how obvious and useless he was meant he was under the impression the whole school knew he had a big fat stupid crush on Clarke Griffin. It was a revelation to hear what an amazing actor he apparently was.

“I thought you hated me. You have such strong convictions about everything so I was sure when you made up your mind that I was a spoiled rich princess that was as much as I would ever be to you.”

Bellamy dropped his head into his hands, half embarrassed by his poor behavior and half agonized that they had apparently wasted so much fucking time when they had been on the same page since day one.

“I thought for a second things were changing but then we got stuck together for that stupid English project and I thought you were never going to speak to me again. I figured seeing my house reminded you of everything terrible thing you had ever thought about me and you seemed like you hated me more than ever. Finn came along and he was sweet and cute and pursued me so aggressively when he could have had any girl in school so it just seemed like a natural excuse to try and finally get over you.”

Bellamy groaned and pushed himself off the bed to call into the hallway for Miller.

Miller walked into the room with his hand clamped over his eyes.

“You’re a handsome man Blake but I’m not into facilitating this thing if that’s what’s going on here.”

Bellamy shoved him him into a bookcase but it was mostly playful.

“Tell Clarke about our english project.”

“That time the amount of books in her house made you want to cum and then propose but then you pussied out because Finn was sniffing around?”

Though he would have preferred the story be told in a much more flattering manner the gist of it was close enough that he dismissed Miller with another shove, this time out the door and shut it behind him.

“So we spent the entirety of high school pretending to hate each other and dating other people because we are spiteful know-it-alls that have the communication skills of furniture,” Clarke summarized with a wry smile.

“I’m going to kiss you and put an end to that right now if that’s ok?”

Bellamy didn’t know if it was smooth or completely idiotic but it seemed to have the desired effect on Clarke as she flushed and nodded.

She surged up the same moment he pressed forward and within the space of seconds Bellamy was suddenly and very throughly kissing Clarke Griffin. There was a lot of fantasy to live up to but fortunately four years of denial and pining made for pretty spectacular chemistry. There was also the fact that this was finally happening for real and there wasn’t any fantasy that could live up to that.

Bellamy fisted his hand into Clarke’s mess of blonde hair and she clung to his shoulders to compensate for the height difference as her tongue traced the seam of his mouth. Bellamy groaned and if he hadn’t been so hopelessly happy and simultaneously turned on, he might have found a way to be embarrassed about how obvious he was. He hitched Clarke’s legs up around his waist and stumbled blindly backwards to sit on the bed with her firmly in his lap.

They had to break apart to breathe and Clarke’s lips and teeth quickly reattached themselves to his throat, seemingly hellbent on sucking possessive marks on his darker skin as she ground down into his lap. It was easily one of the best things that had ever happened to him and he was deeply annoyed that he was going to have to make it stop.

He used a crooked finger under her chin to gently lift her face so he could kiss her one more time, softer and quicker than before. He could see confusion and anxiety starting to creep into her gaze as he pulled back.

“Clarke I want this, I want you,” he said, quickly trying to alleviate her growing unease, “I don’t know how long you have before you leave for California but I want to-.”

“I’m um- I’m not,” Clarke interrupted and it was his turn to feel the self-doubt encroaching, maybe she wasn’t as serious as he was after all.

“Leaving that is,” she quickly clarified with a crooked smile.

“You know Lincoln Wood? On the football team?”

“Yeah I’ve seen him around,” Bellamy replied as if he didn’t get updates on the life and times of Lincoln including detailed critiques of which pants adequately displayed his fantastic ass from his sister on a daily basis.

“Well we both took two credits of AP Art together this year and he harassed me into putting a portfolio together for MICA with him as a show of solidarity. Defy expectations together, or something, and then we both got in. I was just kind of sitting on the acceptance until some dick told me I was amazing and deserved to be happy and some other sappy shit.”

Clarke was looking up at him through her eyelashes almost shyly, as if there was any universe in which he wouldn’t think this was a good thing.

“MICA? The MICA in Baltimore?”

“I’ve heard that the M does stand for Maryland so that’s a pretty safe bet,” Clarke teased, self-consciousness evaporating in the face of his complete lack of chill.

“The Baltimore that’s 40 minutes away from College Park?”

Clarke answered his second very obvious question with a kiss that was slightly less successful than any of their previous given both of their beaming smiles.

“Since I don’t actually want our first time together to be while my little sister likely listens in at the door,” he said, rolling his eyes as he heard several sets of feet stumble away down the hall, “I’d really like to go out there and introduce all of my friends to my girlfriend.”

“I’m very okay with that,” Clarke said, climbing out of his lap and pulling him up, not dropping his hand as they headed for the door.

“Wait,” Bellamy said, yanking her back just before they left the room, “You mean to tell me that you caught that whole ‘you’re amazing’ thing and you still managed to be unaware I was completely in love with you? Do you have some sort of weird condition where you are completely oblivious to people’s feelings for you unless they are explicitly presented in written form?”

“I thought you meant I was amazing at art!”

Bellamy dropped a kiss on top of her head and Clarke shifted closer so he could throw an arm around her shoulders.

“Let’s be honest though, a 15 page letter detailing four years worth of things that made you fall in love with me ranks up there as far as grand romantic gestures go. You’ve set the bar pretty high for this relationship.”

“I’ll do my best to live up to expectations,” he promises as they finally leave the room to finish celebrating graduation with his friends.

Bellamy thinks he does a pretty good job when his second epic letter 7 years later ends with ‘will you marry me?’