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Clarke’s been following Bellamy’s tumblr for a while now. She helped set it up for him in the first place, because Octavia kept losing patience with him. It’s nothing too fancy—mostly just a lot of Hamilton gif reblogs, and some seriously in-depth meta about the Roman Empire. He has a couple hundred loyal followers, who periodically ask him for help with their high school history exams. He still has the default theme from when she first made it, and his url—parumchaos— is almost painful to look at, but otherwise, it’s a pretty solid blog.
Combined with the fact that the only other form of social media Bellamy uses at all regularly is Facebook, it’s also her best way to communicate him on the internet—especially since he doesn’t trust cellphone plans and only buys those little reloadable minutes cards at Walmart, which means he almost never texts her back.
She’s painting her nails a pretty mint green color she’d just found at Walgreens while she was buying tampons, when her phone beeps from across the room. Well, it doesn’t beep so much as meow, because that’s the notification sound for her tumblr app. She’s pretty fond of it, actually. It feels like she has a pet cat, but without all the responsibility and litter boxes.
Making sure to maneuver her hands carefully, so she doesn’t smudge her still-wet nails, Clarke fetches and unlocks her phone.
It’s a message from Bellamy, predictably, because he’s the only one who really uses tumblr as a messaging system. The rest of her friends just snapchat her, like normal people. Bellamy doesn’t even know what snapchat is, she’s pretty sure, out of some sort of indignant refusal to learn. Seriously, she knows he can google. He’s on Wiki How all the time, looking up things he will under no circumstances ever need to know. But it’s like he doesn’t know he’s still a millennial, even if he’s a few years older than the rest of them. He even wears those tweed jackets with the elbow patches to all his lectures—the ones that look like they probably itch.
The message itself is simple, like his usually are. It’s always been a little frustrating—she and Bellamy have been friends for close to four years now. Close friends, maybe even best friends, and they’ve talked about nearly everything there is to talk about, but only ever in person. In texts and emails, Bellamy is as impersonal as her tenth grade Algebra teacher, the one who only wrote nice job! in her senior class yearbook.
But, it’s fine, really. Some people just do better face-to-face, and Clarke has learned to accept that. She skims the message quickly.
Found a neat article for you to read. I’ll send the link in an IM.
She shakes her head a little at the screen, fond in spite of herself, because of course he had to send her a message, about sending her a message, just as a heads up. Bellamy Blake is ridiculous.
Her phone meows again in no time, and she sees the little box pop up at the bottom, but she doesn’t recognize the sender’s blog. It says SonofPeleus, and the icon picture is some sort of ancient Grecian statue, so. Let’s just say, Clarke only really has one friend who would use an ancient Grecian statue as their icon.
The link is some article about how to make homemade candles, which is something she’d mentioned being interested in a few weeks ago, so it’s definitely from Bellamy, as thoughtful as his messages usually are. But honestly she’s more interested in the mysterious side blog he seems to have, and has managed to keep secret for a while, going by the archive. He’s had it since March.
She’s not sure who set it up for him—since, realistically, there’s no way he managed to do it himself—and Clarke feels an irrational shock of jealousy.
It’s just. She’s gotten used to being his person, the one he goes to for help troubleshooting his computer, or rebooting his phone. Anything simple enough that she doesn’t have to call in Raven and Monty. He’ll show up at her doorstep, cranky and rumpled, ranting about today’s technology like some World War II veteran, with the day’s newspaper tucked under his arm, so he can do the crossword while he waits for her to fix whatever’s broken. He’ll make her dinner as a thank you, and they’ll curl up on her too-small hand-me-down sofa and watch Netflix, or whatever’s marathoning on IGM. She’ll fall asleep on his shoulder, and he’ll let her, until she wakes up with a cramped neck, cheek stuck to the sleeve of his shirt as he snores.
Logically, Clarke knows Bellamy probably has a reason why he’s kept the mystery blog a secret from her. But she’s too shocked to really care. How long has he been hiding it from her, and why? It looks like one of those journalist blogs, filled with nothing but text posts, poetry it looks like. Was he embarrassed? Did he think she’d judge him on his taste in poems?
She sees a couple mentioning The Iliad, and figures there might be a few Achilles/Patroclus fanfics in the mix. But then when she looks closer, she sees that all the text posts were made by him.
Bellamy Blake runs a secret side blog filled with his own original poetry. They’ve gotten some decent notes too, by the looks of it. He seems to be very popular, in the classically-inspired-sonnets side of tumblr.
The thing is, Clarke has a side blog too. Actually, she has three—her main page, where she posts her art and political rants, and just generally shit talks Seth MacFarlane a lot; the one filled with posts that are too aesthetically pretentious, even for her; and the Bellamy one.
She’s never told Bellamy about the last one, for obvious reasons, but now she’s sort of wishing she had.
The poems are about her. Well, okay, there are a lot of Achilles/Patroclus ones, but for the most part, they’re all very Clarke Griffin. At least, she thinks they are. They’re made up of descriptions of the same girl, with honeycomb hair dripping like candle wax down her back, and eyes from where the sea and sky meet, and the brown angel’s kiss above her lip, like the pinprick of a needle, so. She’s fairly confident.
There are a number of things she could do with this information.
She could always just ignore it. Bellamy would let her—he hasn’t messaged her again, which means he’s probably realized what he’s done, and is having a panic attack in his apartment.
But Clarke doesn’t want to ignore it. She wants to ask him about it, to ask him if he meant the line where he promised two rings as gold as her hair, around our fingers. She wants to tell him it’s the same for her, that it’s always been the same—that she’s been embarrassingly gone for him since practically the night that they first met.
There’s always the chance that he doesn’t mean it quite the same way; maybe he just thinks she’s hot. In which case, she’d still want to ask him about that, and then maybe ask if he wants to make out a lot on his mattress. She could be fine with that. Probably. She could at least try.
But she’s not really sure how to go about asking. Hey fyi, you accidentally sent me the blog where you talk about wanting to fuck me with your tongue a lot. Is that still an option? Seems a bit callous, in light of everything.
In the end, she decides to take a page from his book, and sends back a quick neat article, thanks! from her Bellamy-centric blog. It’s not as nice as his is; she put little to no effort into the posts—they’re mostly just a lot of I’m in love with my best friend, let me complain about it rants, and a few sketches of his eyes, his freckled shoulders and messy hair. There are a lot of pictures of his hands, to be honest. A mortifying amount.
But when he still hasn’t responded fifteen minutes later, she’s had enough. Their apartments are within two blocks of each other; she’s not about to sit in a pool of anxiety for the rest of the night, waiting for him to call.
Clarke reaches his front door, right as Bellamy steps outside, wearing a light jacket, like he’s going somewhere. They both freeze, suddenly awkward.
“Sorry,” she starts, fidgeting. This is not how she’d seen the night going. “I didn’t know you had plans.”
“I don’t,” he says immediately, voice sounding a bit off. Strangled. “You were my plans. I was on my way over.”
Clarke grins at that, instantly relieved, and she can see hope start up in his eyes, like he was actually nervous, like he thought there was any possible way that she didn’t feel the same.
“Good,” she says, and he nods, jerkily, clearing his throat.
“I didn’t mean to send the link to you from that blog.”
Clarke knows what he’s doing—he’s giving her an out. He thinks her message was an accident too, and he’s willing to let her walk away.
She makes a face at him.
“Well, I meant to send mine,” she says, reaching for him. He steps closer with no resistance. “I have excellent side blog control.”
Bellamy grins, wide and impossible to bite back, and dips down to run his nose against her cheek, soft and experimental. Clarke reaches up to put her hands in his hair. She’s felt his hair before of course; Bellamy likes to be petted, and she gives great scalp massages—but it’s never been like this. She likes this so much better.
“You always were better at that newfangled technology,” he teases, and then kisses her.
Bellamy kisses the way he does most things—firm and single-mindedly, like he’s pouring all of his attention into it, licking against her mouth long and slow. Clarke moans a little, unable to help it, and he drags her backwards, fighting to get the door open without pulling apart to look. They make it inside eventually, somehow, but that’s about as far as they get.
Clarke tries to pull away and laughs—her nails were still wet, and she’d forgotten. Now they were a mess, and stuck to the ends of Bellamy’s curls, turning the black there a light green.
“How did you manage to set up a side blog?” she asks, as he works at unbuttoning her shirt. It’s an old flannel, one of her dad’s, and she loves it, but right about now she’s really wishing she’d worn something without a million buttons, easier to take off. Like one of those film noir trench coats, with nothing underneath.
To her delight, Bellamy flushes. “Raven,” he admits, a little grudgingly, and smooths the material down and off of her shoulders, pressing his mouth down against her skin. “She kept saying I should just tell you. She called me dumbass a lot.”
“You are kind of a dumbass,” Clarke muses, and then gasps when he bites at her breast through her bra, in response. “But so am I. I can’t believe neither of us noticed!”
Bellamy stands up again so she can see his grin, looking so happy that she just has to kiss him. She can’t help it—it’s the rule.
“We got here eventually,” he points out, smoothing a hand up through her hair as she rakes her nails against his stomach.
“Yeah,” she agrees, and then adds “I love you,” just in case.
Bellamy’s eyes go soft and he bends down to kiss her again, glasses digging only a little uncomfortably into her nose. “Me too,” he says. “For a few years, now.”
Clarke shoots him a grin. “I expect to see a new poem about this, tomorrow.”
Bellamy makes a face, curling an arm around her to lead her to the bedroom, which is fine. She can shove him up against the wall and go down on him later. They have time.
“Is this going to be a thing, now?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “You know I read your posts too, right? You made one about my veins.”
Clarke shrugs, reaching over to trace the skin of his arm. They’re nice veins. They deserve to be appreciated. Everything about him deserves to be appreciated, and she intends to do just that.
“Play your cards right, and I’ll make one about your dick,” she teases, pulling him down over her, onto the bed. He slots right in between her thighs and kisses her.
He presses a wet kiss to the side of her neck and sits up on his elbows, to look down on her. “Go out with me?”
“Tomorrow,” she says, pulling him back in. “I’m busy tonight.”