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They’ve only walked a block past her apartment when it starts drizzling. She shoots him a warning glare, so he doesn’t say it. After another block it’s full on raining. Clarke scowls at him when he starts laughing.
“What’s funny Bellamy? I don’t see anything funny here.” She’s trying to use his arm to shield her perfectly curled hair because he wore a sensible coat. It’s adorable but she’s not having much success, so he helps her wiggle closer. It’s for his own benefit, too, she looks absolutely stunning in her red dress and the matching lipstick he can’t help stealing glances at. And her hair, soft and shiny and enticing. He’d nearly shit himself when he picked her up, not that she noticed. He wasn’t really inclined to tell her.
He’s still smiling down at her, hiding under his arm taking careful steps. She always avoids the cracks in the sidewalk, strangely superstitious for such a practical person. “I kinda love when nature fucks with your perfect plans. An hour ago you were making a pro/con list about the efficiency of taking a cab versus the eco-friendliness and cost effectiveness of walking. Rain never factored in, the world can still surprise you, I count it as a win.”
She glares a little, but it’s more exasperated than angry. It’s how she looks at him about 98% of the time, but that’s their thing. He loves that they have a thing, that he and Clarke share something she doesn’t have with anyone else. There’s a theme here, with him and Clarke and how he feels about her.
Bellamy’s not ready to confront it, so he’s pointedly not doing that. He knows, of course he knows, but if it’s a conscious thought then he has to do something with it and that is sure as hell not an option.
“What time is it? I told Octavia we’d be there half an hour beforehand and I’m worried the rain has thrown us off schedule,” she trails off into a mumble, fast and a little jumbled because she’s anxious about going back on her word. Dependable is Clarke’s middle name, it’s something he’s grown to admire most about her.
Well, he’s grown to admire everything about her.
He’s grown a lot in general since he met her and it’s all for the better. That’s just what Clarke does, she makes everything better.
It’s like she’s reading his mind when she hums and says, “You know, the weather was exactly like this when we first met.” It’s twinkling in her eyes, the memory of that morning 6 years ago. She’s teasing him, and it’s well deserved; their first meeting was an absolute disaster. He groans.
She tugs on his sleeve and laughs, wiggling closer to him as they walk. He can smell the lavender in her shampoo, and it’s that as much as the weather that takes him back to the memory.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They’d just graduated from college-UChicago, represent-and were both moving to New York. Clarke was friends with Octavia through some nightmare job they worked together, so she offered to take Bellamy with her out of loyalty. In retrospect, he knows that there were a thousand things happening in her life that demanded compassion.
That day, he didn’t know Finn had just used her to cheat on his longtime girlfriend. He didn’t know how deeply she felt the absence of her dad at her graduation ceremony, how her relationship with her mother was crumbling without him as a buffer. He didn’t know she was going to be alone in New York, that she was as scared as he was. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered then anyway. He was covering his fear-of leaving Octavia on her own, of living without her in a city he’s never even visited, of not being good enough to make it-by being a pompous dick. He can own it in now, but it doesn’t make up for the way he treated her. It may not count for much, but he’d take it back.
The morning they met, when it was raining just as it is now, he was standing below the overhang in front of her apartment building. He heard a small cough, at which he turned around to see her. She introduced herself, Clarke, after tucking her long blonde hair over her ear, and shook his hand.
He remembers so clearly thinking two things simultaneously: she’s got a firm handshake for someone with such small hands, and holy christ she’s perfect. He held on a little longer than convention dictates, relishing the spark between their palms. He definitely enjoyed the faint blush on her cheeks when she realized and pulled away.
Maybe maybe maybe, his brain was already jumping as they walked into the parking lot together. He saw them flirting the whole drive, trading snacks and stories and smiles. They’d have such a good time they’d be reluctant to part, so he’d invite her up to his new apartment when they got into the city. They’d order food-maybe Chinese-and he’d kiss her deeply, walk her back to his brand new mattress and make her come undone. It would be the perfect start to this new phase of his life and he wanted it.
He was still picturing it all when he heard Clarke unlock the car. He looked up to see a brand new Benz. She was placing his duffle in the trunk so carefully, the ten-year-old bag that he got at Goodwill and had to patch a hundred times because they could never afford a replacement.
It was a jolt, the very shiny reminder that even as he was going off to New York with what he thought was a clean slate, he was really starting on a lower rung than everyone else. For all he’d accomplished, getting out of his neighborhood and actually graduating from college, and it was still not enough. It coiled in him, the anger and insecurity, and he couldn’t hold it back.
“Oh well excuse me! I didn’t realize we’d be riding in a bona fide carriage, princess, please forgive my casual attire. I wasn’t prepared for the honor of riding with you.”
She looked up, probably expecting to see he was joking even with the cruel edge in his voice. Instead, she found him dropped in a full bow at her feet.
She blinked once and that was all it took. The steel wall was in place, any friendliness in her face gone and his earlier fantasy vanished with it. He wouldn’t see that steel lifted for him until years later.
“Ok,” she said, voice as cold as the look she pinned him with. “You’ve got two choices. One, shut the fuck up and get in the car or two, shut the fuck up and walk to New York. Take your pick.”
Bellamy remembers thinking that he was wrong about her, she’s not a princess she’s the fucking Ice Queen. He chose option A, mostly out of necessity but partly so he could get the last word in. Ten minutes into the drive, he broke the tense silence to do just that.
Pulling an apple out of his backpack he said, “You know, it’s not like we could have been friends anyway.”
She said nothing for a moment, just gripped the steering wheel tighter. But he was pressing her buttons, he knew he was, and apparently she couldn’t hold herself back any better than he could.
“And why is that, exactly? Personally, I can’t see how anyone could resist.” Her jaw was clenched, eyes straight ahead, hands at 9 and 3.
He smirked, plopped his feet on the dash and took a bite, chewing obnoxiously for the effect.
“Well, men and women can’t ever really be friends. The sex thing always gets in the way, even when you think they’re not thinking about it, trust me they are. It’s inevitable. If there’s any attraction it’s a done deal. Objectively, and this is not a come on in any way I swear, you’re very attractive. Therefore, we’d be terrible friends. It’s really for the best.”
He punctuated his point with another loud crunching bite out of his apple. Because, again, he was a dick. He wasn’t expecting her to pull over. She swerved and then stopped so abruptly his feet were thrown off the dash.
She turned and looked him dead in the eyes. “I’m bisexual. You’re telling me every friendship I’ve ever thought I had isn’t real because I may be attracted to them? Wrong. You should get whatever overconfident part of your ego that decided that vitriol was worth saying in check.”
Oh. Oh, shit. He wasn’t biphobic, generally homophobic, or misogynistic. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t ignorant. He was just trying to rile her up.
She stopped to take a breath, exhale leaving on a sigh. She sounded so tired.
“I don’t know why Octavia thought we’d get along, and I really don’t know what your problem is, but this isn’t working. If we’re going to make it through the drive, you have to stop. Put on one of the mixed CDs I made, drive when it’s your shift, and we can forget this ever happened when we get to New York. Can you handle that or not?”
There was only one answer and he knew it. He nodded, muttered an apology, and that was that. The car ride was mostly silent for the whole eighteen hours. They parted with a “Thank you” from him and a curt nod from her.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Clarke is squeezing his arm and tugging a bit, slowing him to a stop next to her. They’re still a good couple blocks from the gallery, but he knows that’s not why they’re stopping.
“Hey, I know that look. Don’t go there Bell, you know we’re past that. You’re past that.”
God, she’s looking at him so softly, with the little smile that tilts the birthmark above her lip. He can feel her hand squeezing his forearm as sharply as his heart jumping in his chest, like it does every time she calls him Bell. She's a great friend, his best friend, and he's going to chant it to himself until he believes it.
He knows she's right, they are past it and they worked really hard to get here.
They met again, 3 years after that terrible road trip, because Octavia always wants the people in her life to get along. Octavia is also good at getting her way, which is why she pushed them to chat at her boyfriend’s housewarming party.
They talked...argued a bit, admittedly loud enough to get kicked out into the hall outside Lincoln’s apartment. But once he convinced her he really wasn’t a hateful asshole-'you really think Octavia wouldn't disown me for that shit? Please Clarke, I got a black eye defending her and her first girlfriend, ok? Swear to God, she has a picture and everything'-and he apologized again, she agreed to be civil.
It took another six months to build enough of a foundation to be actual friends. He started small, “running into” her at Octavia’s, smiling at her with teeth and saying hello. He learned her freakishly specific coffee order. And pizza, Thai, Mexican, Ethiopian...any and all food orders. He wanted to have his bases covered for any possible opening, it was all in the plan.
After about a month of that she chuckled at something he said and didn’t look like she regretted it immediately after. (That’s where he was at as far as counting victories was concerned. The bar was low.)
One night, probably a month after that, they both ended up at Octavia’s waiting for her to get home.
He was looking for a book he’d left the day before, his junk copy of Aeneid that he didn’t feel as guilty ear marking and occasionally underlining. O had left it out for him with a pink post it that read “You left it in the bathroom, idiot.” She’d doodled a poop emoji in the corner, it was cute so he’d pocketed it.
He’d just grabbed the book and was lingering a little in the kitchen, trying to figure out what to say to Clarke that’s both friendly and charming, when she started giggling.
Bellamy didn’t want to say anything to interrupt the sound, light and melodic. His back was to her where she was sitting on the couch in the living room, but the laughter was getting closer.
He turned around to see her mere steps in front of him, halfway between laughing with him and laughing at him. She reached out to flick at his collar. He looked down to see the tag. He managed to get it inside out and backwards. Nice.
“Starting a new trend, Blake? It’s edgy I like it.” There was warmth in her voice. There was warmth in her voice directed at him, specifically. He couldn’t help the smile that blossomed on his face. Hers stretched in response, like she'd been waiting for the right time to give it. Hell, she probably had been, where there's a Clarke there's a plan.
If you were to ask him when it really started, he wouldn’t say it was their first meeting. It was the first time she laughed with him.
That’s the foundation they’ve built on, and they’ve kept at it every day since.
Clarke’s the most particular, Type A woman he’s ever met. He knows he’s hot headed and overbearing. Their relationship isn’t a given, it’s tended to and they do it with care. She’s in almost all of his favorite days. (She’s why they’re his favorite.)
It’s been 2 and a half years now since their restart, and Clarke knows him so well that he wonders how she doesn’t see what this is to him.
No, actually, he knows exactly what it is-she doesn’t want to see it. Clarke’s incredible, unfailingly loyal and smart and funny...but she’s the best compartmentalizer he’s ever met. It’s like she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it half the time.
He's gotta shake this weird nostalgia off. It is enough to have her in his life at all, he's with her now in the present, and they have a show to get to. So Bellamy just smiles back, taps her nose with his finger and says, “Sorry I’m throwing us even more off track here. Come on, bet we can make it at 7:30 on the dot.”
They do of course, because they’re both competitive in the borderline unhealthy way where anything can be won.
Lincoln’s show is in a small, plain brick building with a few vines of ivy crawling up the side. It doesn’t even have an address, which is fitting considering Lincoln’s work attracts the artsiest people he’s ever met. There’s a lot of half shaved heads and tattoos and metal jewelry. It’s cool, he’s cool.
Tonight is special, though. Lincoln met him for coffee a month ago and told Bellamy he was going to propose.
He wanted his blessing, the direct quote was, “I’m not here for your permission, because you know as well as I do that we don’t need it, but I know it would make Octavia happy. That’s all I want, to make her happy.”
Bellamy smiles as they walk in, briefly catching Lincoln’s eye and nodding to him. Tonight’s the night and he’s genuinely excited for both of them.
There was a time when he would have put up a fight. Their childhood bred some really awful codependency issues, but he’s worked through them. He even saw a professional after Clarke researched and found one for him. She was there to drive him to the office and hold his hand when he walked in at every appointment.
God, she has no idea how grateful he is that she let him in.
Clarke is busy shaking her coat and smoothing her hair. She does a cursory assessment of the room and says, “There’s a lot of sculpture in this one. And welding, wow ok there are some serious Picasso vibes in here. Do you want to do a clockwise walk around or just see Lincoln’s stuff first?”
She looks so serious, focused and intent because in her world there has to be a logical unfolding of events. She’s going to be so shocked that Lincoln’s proposing tonight, he can’t wait to see the look on her face. It’s entirely possible Clarke will short circuit altogether, what with the rain and now the engagement. He can see it in his head so clearly, her eyes wide in shock and then accusation because he didn’t tell her. He turns to hide his smile.
“They haven’t actually opened to the public yet, it’ll be another couple minutes, so let’s just grab a drink and check in with O and Lincoln yeah?” She hums in approval, grabbing his arm again.
He puts his hand on hers, because they’re always freezing and she didn’t wear gloves on the walk over. And just because he wants to. There’s only so much he can deny himself when she’s close to him like this. Friends hold hands, he's still in the acceptable zone of affection.
They head to the bar for drinks, a Cabernet for Clarke because she feels more distinguished having wine at an art show and a local craft beer for him. He’s laughing at a story she’s telling about how one of the kids in her Tuesday class at the community center slipped into the splits and couldn’t get up after.
Her hand is still locked on his arm. Bellamy can’t help the wave of contentedness that comes with knowing everything is as it should be. He’s with his most favorite people, they’re happy and healthy, and tonight will be a memory they’ll look back on forever.
By now the gallery is open, people are trickling in, but there’s one piece towards the back of the room that is still covered by a plain white sheet.
Octavia is hustling over there now, even in the towering heels she’s wearing, supremely annoyed that everything isn’t perfect. She slows when she sees Lincoln is already standing by the piece. Bellamy squeezes Clarke’s hand on his arm and directs her towards them, where no more than a handful of people have wandered over to yet.
Once he sees they’re in earshot, Lincoln pulls the cover off the piece with a small and slightly nervous smile. It’s a sculpture of Octavia sitting at the base of a willow tree. It’s beautiful, light in color and tone compared to the rest of the show. He’s called the piece Agape.
Octavia looks stunned as Lincoln walks over to her, murmurs a few words and gets down on one knee. The ring he pulls out glitters in the light. She says yes, a watery chuckle that cuts through the background noise of the room, and the people who have realized what’s happening start clapping as they embrace.
He’s smiling wide enough for his cheeks to feel sore when he turns to look at Clarke.
Bellamy’s expecting abject shock, maybe a little frustration that she wasn’t in on it, probably a happy tear or two, but she...she looks sad. Happy Clarke is animated, she throws her whole being into it. Right now, she’s clapping just slightly off beat of everyone else, her eyes a little glazed over, placid smile frozen on her face.
It’s worrying more than anything and he touches her shoulder gently, as a comfort and a question.
She jolts at the contact, and when he locks eyes with her she looks about ready to run. He doesn’t know what the hell happened, but he knows that look and they need to go.
He grabs her hands and says, “Clarke, don’t move ok? I’m going to say bye to O and we’ll get out of here, I promise.”
“What? No it’s fine, I just wasn’t expecting that tonight. Can’t believe you kept your big mouth shut on that one, how long have you known?” She’s trying to be convincing, but they both know there’s no point.
Bellamy can see through her, probably as well as she can see through him.
“Clarke,” he’s put on his professor voice, serious and final. “Stay, please. I’ll be right back.” She’s still looking at him, resigned now, when he turns to Octavia.
It just takes a minute, the two of them are so wrapped up in each other anyway. He hugs them both, tells them sincerely how happy he is and that he’ll see them at Raven and Wells’ party tomorrow, before pivoting back to find Clarke.
For a moment, Bellamy can’t find her. The crowd has grown, and it’s not a very large space to begin with. He’s scrambling for his phone, heading to the door, when her hand grabs his. He’d know it anywhere, and he sighs in relief.
She gives him a tight smile, interlaces their fingers, and leads him silently to the exit. They walk the whole way back to her apartment like that, until they’re at her door. She hands him her keys and leans against the wall next to him, head tilted back.
He opens the door, guides her in with a hand on her back. It’s freaking him out, that she hasn’t said a word. There’s nothing to work with. If she said something, anything, he’d be able to respond but the silent treatment is a dead end.
Bellamy doesn’t even know where to start. He hasn’t got a clue what set her off in the first place. Is she not happy that Octavia and Lincoln are getting married? She’s good friends with both of them, it seems incredibly unlikely.
He’s too stressed to think, he’s been patient and quiet and it seems like she’s not going to start this conversation. It’s always been an issue for him, holding back what he’s thinking when he’s thinking it. Clarke’s called him out on it a million times before. He’s called her out for holding back and shutting down on her own emotions just as often, so.
Too bad.
He takes a seat on the couch, forearms resting on his knees. “So are we gonna talk about this?”
No response. She’s sitting cross legged in the armchair directly across from him, picking at the tassels on the throw pillow in her lap. She won’t even look at him. He flexes his hands into fists, releases them on an exhale.
“Clarke, come on. Two of your closest friends just got engaged and you didn’t even...there’s clearly something wrong. Just tell me, I want to help.” He lets some frustration leak into his voice this time, the gentle prodding wasn’t working.
Her eyes dart up at him for a moment, chin still on her chest and shoulders still slumped. “I’m sorry I flipped,” she rasps out. “And that you had to leave like that, I’m really sorry.”
He feels heavier, hearing the hurt in her words.
“It’s ok, shit happens, that moment was for them anyway. I just want to understand.” He’s desperate, and frustrated, and trying not to take that out on her. He just wants to be there, for her and with her, that’s all.
She clears her throat. “I, uh. It’s not really logical and it’s going to sound really selfish when I say it and I know that, I do, so you don’t even have to say-”
He moves to crouch in front of her, grabs her hands where they’re still fiddling with the pillow, and cuts her off before she can spiral too far down the Clarke self-deprecation rabbit hole.
“Do you trust me?”
“What?” she says, clearly somewhat disoriented by the quick subject change.
“I said do you trust me?”
“Yeah, yes, you know I do.” Her voice is as sure as he's ever heard it. Bellamy can't help but be warmed by it, her unwavering faith in him, even now.
“Ok good,” he affirms, squeezing her hands with a small smile. “Then trust that I won’t judge you as harshly as you’re judging yourself. I wanna hear about whatever is going on in your head, always.”
She’s just looking at him, open and vulnerable. He wants her to know that she’s safe with him. He tries to tell her without saying it.
Apparently it works, she pulls their hands further into her lap and scoots towards him a bit.
“You know how I am, I like to know everything there is to know. It’s probably an Abby thing, the obsessive need to have a plan and be in control. Well, losing my dad so early definitely didn’t help that either,” she’s speaking low and measured, like she’s spent every moment since they left the gallery thinking about how to get this out.
“I just...I had my future pretty much mapped out, you know? I was going to graduate college and go to New York, so that part was checked off the list. But then I was supposed to work in that office job for a year, maybe two before getting promoted. I was supposed to meet someone good for me, date them, fall in love, move in together, get a dog, get married. At this point I was supposed to already have my first kid Bell! Everything derailed, my job and my relationships just nothing is what I thought it would be.”
Her voice is a little choked, so he starts to run his thumb over her knuckles. She laughs a little, the way you laugh when it’s the only thing left to do.
“Seeing Octavia and Lincoln tonight, and please don’t get me wrong, I love them. I’m so incredibly happy for them.” Her eyes are pleading with him to understand. She’s so emphatic, he just murmurs that he knows, that it’s ok.
“God, I just felt the absence of that in my life and it felt like a failure. I know it’s not, but I know a lot of things logically that the rest of me isn’t caught up on. I'm not unhappy, I'm not lamenting that I'm single, you know that I think it's just scary for me to be off the plan. You help, you help me break out of that so much," she's practically crushing his fingers with the declaration. "But for a minute I was stuck in that thought, and I'm sorry.”
She looks stuck in something else now, puzzling it out with a little wrinkle in her brow. A curl has fallen in her face, she doesn’t seem to notice, but he moves it behind her ear out of habit.
Her eyes snap to his and he sees something solidify in them.
Clarke pulls her hands out of his, grabs his shirt in one hand and cups his jaw with the other, and crashes her lips to his.
For a moment it’s just the warmth of her mouth, his breath trapped in his lungs. He pulls back to look at her, for what? Confirmation? He can’t even think, he just knows that he wants to be kissing her again and he does. He kisses her deeply, kisses her like he's saying something with the force of it. She opens to him, sliding her tongue with his dirty and languid.
Bellamy lifts his body to settle over hers on the chair, cramped and uncomfortable but it doesn’t matter because he can feel all of her along the length of him and it’s perfect.
He tangles a hand in her hair to change the angle, it’s as soft as he always imagined, and nips at her bottom lip as she gasps. His other hand has trailed up right below her breast, he can feel the underwire of her bra and her heartbeat. God, she’s so beautiful.
Clarke’s hand is sliding up his chest, heading for the buttons of his shirt. She grinds into his thigh, moaning wanton and free.
That’s when he realizes. She was on the brink of tears a few minutes ago, having a fucking life crisis and what does he do? Kisses her, feels her up. Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck, no. This isn’t how this is supposed to go.
He pulls away from her, the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, and barely manages, “Clarke, we can’t ok? Not like this. I’m gonna go, call me when you...just call me I guess.” He can’t even look at her, he knows won’t be able to leave.
She’s calling his name when he unbolts the door with trembling fingers and practically runs out. It would wreck him entirely to be with her and pretend it didn't have meaning. He can't just fuck her, it's not everything he wants and it's better for him to run now before she sees how much he feels and rejects him.
He walks home in a daze, barely registering opening his door and pulling off his shoes. Locking the door and taking off his coat is mechanic, he relies on the routine of it.
Of course he can’t have this, he knows that part already, has known it from the moment he saw the world she was from. It was hard to learn again, when they actually became friends and he really got to know how good she is, but it's not like he was surprised. What he really didn’t need was to know how it felt, to be with her and feel her want him even just physically.
But he’d never take advantage of her that way, that’s not who he is and it’s not how he would ever want them to happen. He would want her to choose him when she’s happy, because she’s happy. That's it.
He’s so fucking furious that every time he thinks he’s doing ok, it just falls apart. He's constantly reminded that he doesn't get to have it all.
Before he knows it, he’s thrown his phone at the wall. It’s completely shattered, the glass screen in pieces on the floor. Good, he thinks. Good.
He strips and gets in bed. It’s about all he can manage.
When he gets up, he just goes through the motions again. He makes his coffee, eats toast, showers, gets dressed.
He doesn’t know what to do with himself, but Clarke is all over his apartment and he has to get out so he just walks around the park two blocks away from his apartment. He walks and does everything he can not to think about last night. The most he decides is to let Clarke figure some things out on her own for a little bit, then they can talk and hopefully fall back into what they were before.
Before.
The rest of the day passes in that same fog. Octavia comes over in the late afternoon, worried because he always answers her calls. Is he ok?
He lies and says yeah, he’s fine, he just lost his phone at some point last night.
She makes him put on a nicer shirt for the party. Right, Raven and Wells are having a Christmas party. Clarke was going to go with him.
Bellamy sighs. He’s showing up for the booze, to make an appearance so his friends don’t ask questions, and then he’s going home to get really drunk by himself.
It’s 6pm now, so he’ll make it until 9:30 and call it. Three and a half hours. He can do this.
By the time they make it there, things are in full swing. Raven and Wells have recently moved into this beautiful duplex that they’ve restored together so this party is half housewarming, half holiday explosion. They’re trying to be non-denominational about it.
He greets Raven with a kiss to the cheek and Wells with a sort of hug-backslap thing that he only does with Bellamy and Lincoln. It’s funny and he does miss them, they’ve been so busy with the move, but he doesn’t really have the to energy to pretend tonight.
He heads towards the kitchen for a drink. Raven keeps a bottle of good rye whiskey underneath the sink.
He’s nursing a glass and paging through a book about the native Californian flora, thinking Wells is into such weird shit, when he hears her voice.
Bellamy’s head snaps up, and the book falls to the floor. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself. He gets as far as setting down his glass and wiping his clammy hands on his jeans before she’s there.
She’s gorgeous, so gorgeous he feels it like an echo moving through him. Clarke looks tired and pissed, and she’s wearing her purple sweater with the holes in the armpits. It's the one that she wears when she’s sad.
Shit. That’s his fault. It was necessary, he knows, but it still hurts.
“Bellamy,” she steps right up to him, fire in her eyes. He loves her, he’s spent over a year shutting down the impulse to tell her every day but he does. It’s not fair.
“Clarke, what are you doing here?” He wants to just fast forward through this part, get to where he can go home and sleep for a week.
Apparently she’s not letting him off the hook. “What am I doing here? Well first off I have every right to be here. I was invited too, asshole,” she’s poking his chest as punctuation. He steps backwards a little at the force of each impact.
“But I’m here to talk to you, because you ran out last night before I could. Which is funny because usually I’m the one who runs. It was an interesting learning experience to be on the opposite end of that. I’d say thanks, but I never want it to happen again.”
This is the part where she cuts him out of her life, tells him he crossed a line, he’s so sure. His body braces for it like a physical blow.
“Bellamy,” she steps closer, eyes a little softer now. Instead of poking him she’s laid her whole hand on his chest, above his heart. She can definitely feel it hammering.
“I don’t know what you thought was happening last night, I spent a good long while trying to figure it out after you left. Between agonizing over whether you ran out because it was all in my head or if you had some kind of telepathic vibe that Octavia was hurt, I realized something.”
She’s almost toe to toe with him now. He can’t even breathe, when was the last time he took a breath? Probably too long.
“All this time, I’ve been working under the assumption that you knew we were both in this. It seemed obvious to me, to all of our friends...God, Bell, people on the street recognized it. So I figured it was just a matter of getting the timing right, that you had to know. But you don’t, do you?”
At this point, he’s got so little blood in his brain and having so much trouble focusing on what she’s saying he doesn’t realize what’s happening. But she waits for him, because she’s patient and kind and sure.
It trickles in slowly, like hearing sound traveling through water. We were both in this. She said both. We.
Clarke laughs a little; she must see it in his eyes when it finally clicks for him. He has to clear his throat twice and it still sounds like he’s swallowed gravel when he manages, “What do you mean we? Lay it out for me, Clarke.”
She brings a hand up to cup his jaw, strokes her thumb over his cheek. He feels it heat under her touch.
“Bell, I love you. I’m in love with you. I love that you have to re-heat the same cup of coffee 4 times before you finish it. I love that you have two copies of every book and no socks that perfectly match. I love that you keep everything Octavia’s ever written to you in a shoebox in your closet, that you send me sunflowers on my birthday every year with no note but I always know it’s you. I love that you are always the last person I think about at night and the first I want to talk to in the morning.”
She kisses his cheek, rising on her tiptoes to kiss his temple after. She brings her other hand to his face, turns it so she is the only thing he sees.
“Listen, I know you think that I’ve done all this good for you and that you haven’t offered me anything in return but you’re wrong, ok? You’re wrong because you make me so happy. I get to be myself with you, Bellamy. I feel safe enough to tell you what I think, all of it, without holding back. All the crazy, ugly shit, I want to share it with you. I want to be with you.”
He’s nodding, it's all he can do, and they’re so close their foreheads knock together a bit. She presses hers into his, still holding his face. Bellamy’s hands have moved to hold her waist, his thumbs stroking up and down her sides.
“I love you too, of course I do. God, I’m so in love with you, Clarke,” he’s hoarse, tugging her in closer so he can feel her pressed against him like she was last night. They fit just the same.
“Ok. Ok, good,” she’s smiling again, a real smile, he can feel it against his shoulder. He’s so relieved, so lucky.
She pulls back to look at him. “But Bellamy, you can’t run off again ok? If we’re doing this then we have to talk through things.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I was scared, and I promise I won’t pull that again. I’m here, I’m staying as long as you’ll have me.”
He still can’t believe they got here, that this might actually work out. She kisses him before he can finish the thought.
He’s a lot quicker on the uptake this time, wrapping his arms around her fully and kissing her deeper. Bellamy turns her so she’s backed into the counter and lifts her onto it. She moans, tightening her legs around his waist when he moves to trail wet kisses down her neck. Apparently, the spot behind her ear is particularly sensitive. Noted.
She tugs on his hair to bring him back to her lips for a moment, one, two, three quick kisses before she’s laughing.
“What?” He can’t remember the last time he felt so light.
She hums, running her hands down his biceps and back up to link around his neck. She looks playful and warm. He’s basking in it, he can’t wait to be with her like this every day.
“Just remembering that first day together, with your bullshit ‘we can’t be friends’ speech.”
He groans, “Christ, Clarke, you’re really gonna go there now? I've been waiting forever to makeout with you, let’s just stay the course.” He moves back in to kiss her again, but she ducks away laughing.
“No, hold on, I just think it’s funny that at the end of the day you were sort of right.”
Bellamy’s rubbing circles on her thigh, smiling like it’s his goddamn job. He's so happy. “Which part? I don't remember any redeemable pieces in that speech.”
She’s playing with the hair at the back of his neck. “Well, you said we couldn’t be friends. You were half right. But our problem wasn't becoming friends, it was staying just friends.”
He hums, noses as her neck and smacks a light kiss there. “Yeah, but you know what? I think I’ll like being your best friend and your boyfriend the best.”
It's so clear, the adoration in her eyes, and he knows they're better for it this love that grew from friendship.
Maybe it was greedy, to want her as his friend and lover and everything in between. But she wanted him too, so they'd do it together.
"Have we been sappy enough yet? I love you, you love me, that's all well and good but I'm ready for the part where you take me home and we finish where we left off last night."
Clarke's looking at him, one eyebrow raised, one hand trailing lower and lower down his abdomen.
He smiles.
"Whenever you're ready, babe."