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There's a part of him that realizes what he's doing is--not wrong, exactly, but kind of sketchy. He's not telling anyone, not even Miller, and telling Miller dumb shit he does so Miller can laugh at him is basically his number-one hobby. But he's getting kind of tired of talking to Miller about Clarke, because Miller has shifted from regular Miller teasing into Jesus, just ask her out already, which is less fun for Bellamy. Because it's not like he wants to date Clarke. Miller's just jealous that the two of them are so close. He probably thinks his status as Bellamy's BFF is in danger. And he obviously can't tell Clarke, because it's about Clarke.
It's his dumb secret, and it starts like this: they're at Monty and Jasper's for game night, and Monty makes a reference to Clarke's fanfiction.
Bellamy has never really considered himself a geek, not the kind Monty and Jasper are, with the gaming and the Dungeons and Dragons and being really into computers. In high school, he was academically-minded, but also poor and from the wrong side of the tracks, metaphorically if not literally. So while he spent plenty of time reading mythology books and studying to try to get himself a scholarship to a decent college, he never really got involved with the nerdy kids, even though, according to Octavia, they were totally his people.
So Bellamy learned about all this stuff later in life, Magic: The Gathering and Settlers of Catan and comic books and all that. He and Monty were roommates for a while, when Monty was in college and before Jasper moved back, and it was a crash-course in geekery. And he took to it pretty well, honestly.
It was also how met Clarke, but she's never been that involved in the whole thing. Her main interaction with Monty's nerdier hobbies, in his experience, was painting Monty's Warhammer figures for fun, before Age of Sigmar came out and destroyed Monty's interest in the whole game.
All of which means that while Bellamy understands, in theory, what fanfiction is, it wouldn't have occurred to him in a million years that Clarke would write it. Not just because her interests tend more toward art and yelling at misogynists on Reddit, but just because--it's Clarke. And there's a part of him that can't help feeling hurt she has a hobby like that that he doesn't know about.
"Your fanfiction?" he asks, raising his eyebrows at her.
She rolls her eyes and takes a drink of beer, which is her version of blushing. "What?"
"You write fanfiction?"
"Yeah. Why?"
She says it in this defiant, aggressively casual way that clearly says, This is not a big deal. So if he presses, he's being the weird one.
So he has to just start trying to find her stuff himself. That's the only option, when she's being like this.
The problem is that finding someone's fanfiction is actually really difficult. Googling "fanfiction" gets him some sites, but it's kind of overwhelming, trying to figure out what site she'd be writing on, what she'd be writing fanfic about, a TV show or a movie or book or what. And even if he could figure that out, he'd still have to determine which fanfic was hers. Which makes the whole thing an exercise in stupid futility, honestly.
But he can't stop, and he can't tell anyone. Which makes him feel like the world's stupidest and least effective spy, most of the time. He has this whole secret life where he's trying and failing to internet-stalk Clarke.
Parts of it are easy. He and Clarke are friends, and they spend a lot of time together. They talk about interests and watch movies and after they finish a movie that she seems to really like, he'll go onto fanfiction.net for the next few days, to see if she seems to have been inspired. But if she has, he can't tell.
After a month, he figures she's probably forgotten the conversation with Monty, because why wouldn't she? It's stupid that it's still bothering him so much, but--he didn't know Clarke wrote at all. He wants to know what she writes, and he remembers the tension in her shoulders when Monty mentioned it.
He's an asshole, right? He knows she doesn't want him to ask, so he's trying to find it on his own. That's what assholes do, when their friends don't tell them things.
Still, he's all-in on this one, so he asks her, "You have any book recommendations?"
She takes a drink of wine, eyebrows raised. "Book recommendations?"
"TV, anything. It's summer and I'm already bored out of my mind."
She breaks out into a grin. "God, you're so bad at not working."
"I'm great at not working," he grumbles. "I haven't worked for days. I'm just bad at not doing anything. And I never have time to read during the school year. So help me out. I don't want to just play Hearthstone all summer."
"You do."
"I don't want to just play Hearthstone all summer."
Clarke smiles. "You're a dork. I haven't read anything great recently, but I'll email you some older recommendations. And some video games for you. You should just get addicted to World of Warcraft or something. It'll give you background on all your favorite Hearthstone characters."
"I don't care about the characters, and WoW costs money. Hearthstone is free."
"Cheapskate," she says, with enough warmth and fondness that he has to duck his head. "Fine, I'll do books. But I'm telling your sister you need more hobbies."
"Noted."
It starts as a ploy to figure out if she's writing fanfic about any of her favorite books, but it ends up distracting him, because reading good books and talking to Clarke about them is honestly better than spending hours on the internet, trying to locate her writing. It still nags at him, sometimes, when he'll show up to meet her at the coffee shop or wherever and she shuts her laptop in a way that suggests to him she was doing something she doesn't want him to know about. And then he feels like a dick--again--because he does plenty of things on his laptop he wouldn't want anyone to see. He doesn't like people reading over his shoulder ever, honestly, even when he's not doing anything weird.
So by the time school starts back up in the fall, he's basically stopped trying to find her stuff. It's not even like looking for a needle in a haystack; it's like looking for a needle in a barn full of haystacks, each of which is full of needles, and he doesn't know if he's looking in the right one, and he's not even sure he'd recognize the needle if he did see it. The knowledge of it sometimes bothers him, but--he did read a little fanfic during his search, and he guesses it might be kind of private. Monty knows, but Monty has known Clarke for longer than he has, and it seems like the kind of thing that would come up in college. And as far as he knows, Monty doesn't even read the fic, just knows about it.
So, yeah. It's fine. He's not looking anymore, and he's fine with that.
So, as always happens, once he's basically actually forgotten about it, he stumbles into her account, completely by accident.
Bellamy's never gotten into online fandom particularly. Not just the fanfic side of it, but any of it. He tends to consume media, possibly discuss it with friends, and then move on with his life.
Except for Dreamscape.
It's not that he likes the show better than anything else he watches; it's schlocky, kind of goofy sci-fi, and while he enjoys it every week, it's not the best show ever, or even his favorite show. But Octavia has a recurring role on it, and so he'd watch every episode even if it was a piece of shit, and he also reads every review he can find, and occasionally gets in fights in the comments sections about the hokey effects and the convoluted storylines and people objectifying the female characters.
He knew Clarke liked the show too, and it had been one of the first sections he'd checked for her stories. He'd done some browsing, but nothing had leaped out at him as looking like her work, and he'd given up on it as a lost cause. It was just too hard to recognize her in a sea of unfamiliar usernames and story summaries.
The comment is innocuous enough; it's from one of his favorite reviewers, responding his complaining about a plot hole in the first season of the show that still bugs him, because it still has ramifications on his favorite character's storyline. The reviewer says, Yeah, it sucks that we're never going to get any kind of resolution for this on the show. If you like fanfic (I know not everyone does), I really liked this take on it. That's basically my headcanon now.
He clicks the link and finds a story on a fanfic site he hadn't checked before, and when he starts reading, it's actually eerily familiar. It's the exact explanation he came up with, just expanded into a full story, instead of a drunken ramble. And it's not as if no one else could have come up with it. He thinks it's the most logical, easiest fix; anyone could have reached the same conclusion.
But then he hits the end, and there's an author's note: Credit for this idea goes to my best friend, who likes to get drunk and talk about how much he loves Gavin. Like, all the time.
And that could be a coincidence too, but--it really might not be. Clarke's made fun of him for doing exactly that on more than one occasion.
He scrolls back up and discovers the author's name is MartianVeronica, which could, plausibly, be Clarke. Her email address is just cgriffin, but he doubts that's what she'd use for fanfic. Most people seem to prefer pseudonyms, from what he's seen. She likes Veronica Mars, and she might use it for a username.
When he clicks her profile, he doesn't expect to find anything decisive. He doesn't even know what decisive would look like, honestly. Everything is plausible; there's nothing in their profile, but MartianVeronica seems to have been active for a while, writing in fandoms he knows Clarke is interested in, stuff like Harry Potter and The Legend of Korra, but anyone could be interested in those things. It feels impossible to find a smoking gun, some real proof that his hunch is right.
He can't help checking out their Dreamscape stuff anyway.
The titles are familiar, and he realizes they're mostly from songs he knows Clarke likes, including a couple from Hamilton. They write mostly Gavin/Lissandra, and he knows that Lissandra is Clarke's favorite character, and that she really wants those two to get together.
It's all so possibly her, but none of it feels unique. He couldn't prove it in a court of law. He can't even convince himself all the way.
Not until he starts reading. And even then, it's not Clarke that he recognizes. At last, not nearly as much as he recognizes himself.
He's always liked Gavin in part because he identifies with him, his loyalty to his people, the sense of responsibility he has, the way he'll do whatever it takes to protect his team. He's the kind of person Bellamy hopes he'd be, in a combat situation, and some of the insecurities he got as part of later character-shading hit a little uncomfortably close to home.
It's not really like reading about himself, when he reads MartianVeronica's stories, but it's more like reading about himself than anything else ever has been. They write a lot of alternate universe-stuff, set in the real world, which he doesn't quite get--taking the characters out of their context seems weird to him--but he can't deny that she's a talented writer and the stories are fun.
It's just that he can't quite get lost in them, because suddenly he'll be jarred out of the narrative by Gavin saying something he'd say, or by Lissandra really reminding him of Clarke. It's like deja-vu, this feeling of reading conversations that maybe haven't happened, but plausibly could.
He still can't prove it's Clarke, but it really does sound like her. It sounds like them, and that makes him feel hot all over, full of strange energy. They're writing stories about two people in love, over and over, and the people really feel like the two of them.
So MartianVeronica's fanfic might ruin his life. Especially because he has no idea what to say to Clarke about it. He found it in a completely innocuous way, which is nice, but he did start snooping because he thought it was her. And just asking feels--well, he doesn't want to, now that he's read so much.
He decides to call Octavia, because Miller would still just laugh at him.
"Do you know anyone who writes fanfic about you?"
"About me or about my characters?" she asks, like this is a normal question. O isn't a huge name--she's very firmly in hey, it's that girl territory--but she lives in Vancouver and manages to pick up random roles on a lot of shows, some of which were pretty memorable. She definitely has fans. But her ease with the whole weird celebrity culture is a little surreal to him.
"People write fanfic about you? Like--you?"
"I don't know. That's why I was asking." She huffs. "I have a date in twenty minutes, so why don't you just tell me what you want to ask and get it over with. Did you find porn about me and you want to fight for my honor or what?"
He chokes. "Jesus, no. What?"
"What? Fanfic porn. It's a thing."
"About you?"
"I don't know, probably. I don't look. Seriously, Bell, what's the issue?"
"I think Clarke is writing fanfic about your show."
"Really?" She sounds completely delighted. "Is it about me? Is it porn about me?"
"Uh, no, you're not really in it. Sorry."
"No, that's awesome. Are you worried I'm going to think it's weird? Because I think it's great."
"Yeah, I'm getting that." It feels so stupid to say, but he doesn't know how not to say it, at this point. He called her; he might as well get the most he can out of the call. "I think it's about me."
"About you?"
"Like--the way she writes Gavin. It feels a lot like me."
"Oh, yeah, probably," she says, so easy and unimpressed that it makes him bristle.
"What?"
"I'm pretty sure that's what writers do. Like, all the time. Just use people they know for stories. Is she saying bad things? Are you the villain?"
"No. I'm the romantic lead."
"Oh, I get it. If you're trying to figure out this is a sign she's secretly in love with you, just stop. She's definitely in love with you and it's barely a secret. Everyone but you knows." There's a pause. "Is she writing porn?"
He closes his eyes. "I haven't read any of her porn yet."
"Why not?"
"It's creepy."
"She's publishing it on the Internet, Bell. If she didn't want people to read it, she wouldn't put it online."
"She's not linking me to it and telling me to read it."
"Then how did you find it? How do you know it's hers?"
"By accident. And I don't know. But it sounds like her. Like us."
"You're incredibly sad. Just ask her, Jesus. I gotta go."
The rest of the conversation catches up with him. "Shit, did you say you had a date?"
"Yup." She pauses. "What pairing is she writing?"
"Gavin and Lissandra."
"Yeah, that's definitely about you guys. But tell her if she wants a first-person account of what it's like to make out with Lincoln Oakbridge, I'm going to have one after tonight."
It takes him a minute to place the name, but it's the guy who plays Gavin, because of course it is. That's where his life is at. "O--"
"Love you! Talk soon!" she says, and hangs up on him.
He stares at the phone for a minute, trying to figure out if the call actually helped, and then texts Clarke, My sister has a date with the guy who plays Gavin. Want to get drunk so I don't think about that?
You had me at "get drunk," she replies. I can be there in half an hour.
She brings a six-pack of beer and says, "For the record, I'm a little jealous of your sister, but I assume you are too."
They've had more than one conversation about how the entire cast of Dreamscape is stupidly pretty, and Gavin is still the prettiest, so it feels stupid to deny it.
"Why do you think I wanted booze?" he asks, and she grins.
"I'm here for you in this time of crisis. But I also texted your sister to get some. For all of us."
"Fuck, what did she say?" he asks. Knowing Octavia, there are all sorts of terrible options.
"Nothing. So I hope she's already getting some."
"Her date couldn't have started more than, like--forty minutes ago. And that's if it was literally outside her apartment. I'm pretty sure they're not having sex yet."
"No, you want to have sex at the beginning of the date."
He raises his eyebrows. "Since when?"
She perks up, shifting on the couch and moving closer to him. He doesn't think he used to be this aware of her, not before he started thinking she might be into him, but--maybe he always has been.
Maybe there's been some denial involved in his life.
"So, it's just distracting, right? You're on a date, and you really want to be having sex with them. So--sex first, and then dinner. It's way less stressful."
"What if you're on the date because you're not sure you want to have sex with them?"
"Then obviously no." She turns to give him a smirk. "But, come on. Your sister definitely wants to have sex with Lincoln Oakbridge. One-hundred percent. One-hundred-ten percent."
"Shut up. Aren't you supposed to be making me feel better?"
"Am I? That doesn't sound like me. How about thinking about how you're one degree of separation from making out with Gavin? Does that help?"
"I have no idea why I called you."
She cuddles up to his side, and it's another thing that felt pretty normal before and now feels, like--well, she always makes a big deal of casual cuddling as a sign of feelings in her fic. Assuming she's MartianVeronica. Which she still might not be.
"Because I'm the best," she says, and he takes a long drink of beer.
His life is getting ridiculous, honestly.
For the next few days, he tries not to think about it. But he did request an invitation to the website MartianVeronica uses to post her fic, and once he got an account, subscribed to her. Just because--well, he's curious. He really wants to know, and he feels weird just reading every single thing she's ever written, searching for clues. Keeping up with her new stuff feels less creepy, and he has no real idea why. He can't explain most of his feelings about this; he's just sort of flailing internally and hoping he figures it out later.
As it turns out, later is Tuesday, when MartianVeronica posts a story where Gavin and Lissandra discuss Gavin's belief that sex should happen before dates, as a way of hitting on Lissandra. It's rated explicit, and he just sort of stares at the notification in his inbox for a few minutes. It's absolutely, no doubt, one-hundred-ten percent Clarke. This is Clarke's fanfic, where the characters are having a discussion she's had with him, and it involves said characters having sex.
"I'm definitely going to hell," he mutters, and opens the story.
The beginning is as familiar as he thought it would be, the two of them hanging out and joking around, Lissandra taking on Bellamy's role as generally dubious, but unlike Clarke, Gavin manages to turn the whole thing into a pickup line, tugging Lissandra into his lap for a long kiss, and then it's just--
Hot, honestly. She's writing from Gavin's perspective, and he knows she's had sex with a lot of girls, but it's still kind of unreal to read her description of someone else doing it, the loving way she talks about Lissandra's breasts--which, again, they've talked about a lot--and the way Gavin's fingers work inside her, the track of his mouth down her stomach, and--
He actually has to stop reading, he feels so guilty. It's impossible to not think of him and Clarke, and even if he knows it doesn't mean she was thinking about them, he still can't help feeling like she probably was.
Mostly, he really wants to know for sure.
What are you doing right now? he texts her.
Absolutely nothing. Why?
He worries his lip, but settles on, Can I come over?
He brings a six pack on his way and holds it up when she opens the door. "I owed you one."
"I drank half of those, so you technically owed me three," she says. "What's up?"
He wets his lips. "Is your fanfic account MartianVeronica?"
She freezes, goes pale, and he honestly thinks she might faint. He's never seen her look so rattled, in three years of friendship.
"It's okay," he asks. "You're, uh--I like your stories. I just--they're kind of familiar. Really familiar. So, uh, do you want to go out with me? Or am I projecting because I'm full of myself?"
She lets out a strangled, relieved sound, and he feels himself starting to smile. "Projecting?"
"Just saying, three days after we talked about pre-date sex, you wrote a story about two people talking about pre-date sex and then having pre-date sex. So, if you want to--"
"Fuck, you should have led with that," she says, with a short, sharp laugh. "I thought you were pissed."
"No, not pissed." He steps in closer. "Do you want to?"
The color has come back to her face, and there's a teasing glint in her eye. He really, really hopes she wants to make out. He hadn't let himself think about it before, but now that he is, he's aware of how much he wants her.
More than wants her, really. Because that's the other thing he noticed, reading her stories. The feelings were just as familiar as the conversations, the way she talked about love exactly how he feels about her. All the warmth and the fondness, and he'd just been ignoring it, because he didn't want to think of her like that. Not when she might not feel the same.
But she says, "Are you asking if I want to go out with you or have pre-date sex with you?"
"Go out with me," he says. "We need a date before we can talk about pre-date sex."
She laughs and winds her arms around his neck; he leans down to nudge his nose against hers without any real input from her brain. He just wants to be closer.
"How did you find it?" she asks.
It takes him a minute to figure out what she means, and even then he's not sure. "What? Your fanfic?"
"Yeah. It was Monty, right? He told you."
"Just that it existed. But--someone linked me to one of your stories in an episode review. So even if Monty never said anything, I would have figured it out. You were using my headcanon."
Her laugh is bright and delighted. "That was what did it?"
"I wasn't sure until the story today. I thought--I didn't know how to ask. But the one today was--"
"Not subtle," Clarke agrees. "I really wanted to climb into your lap and fuck you on your couch the other day."
He has to swallow hard, the mental image so clear and good. "Yeah, I got that impression. But you're not actually doing it."
"Well, you didn't tell me how you feel about pre-date sex."
The first brush of his lips on hers makes her sigh, soft and happy, and it takes all his self-control to speak instead of doing it again. "I feel great about it," he says, and does really kiss her this time, firm and a little sharp, just like she wrote it.
It makes her laugh. "You were taking notes, huh?"
"Seems like you've been thinking about it a lot. I don't want to disappoint."
She grins and tugs him back down. "Don't worry. The real thing is always better."
Four days later, she posts a new story, about Lissandra writing fanfic and Gavin finding out about it.
"This is getting way too meta for me," he grumbles. "Am I using meta right? That seems right."
"You're using meta right," she says. "I'm secretly not creative at all. You're just, like, the best muse ever."
"Yeah?"
She pecks him on the jaw. "Don't fish for compliments."
"I don't need to fish. Your entire Dreamscape fanfic output is basically one big compliment. It's right there." He grins. "You love me. It's a matter of public record."
She closes her laptop. "I guess the cat's out of the bag, yeah."
"You're done?" he asks, a little surprised, and she snorts and puts the computer aside so she can climb into his lap.
"I've got better things to do," she tells him, and he really can't argue with that.