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At nine years old, Clarke decided she wanted to be a spy when she grew up. When she told her best friend, he’d scoffed and told her that spies have to be observant and that she wasn’t cut out for the job.
Instead of arguing (because even at nine, she knew all Bellamy wanted was to make her argue with him; she’d seen him do it time and time again to Octavia), she tore the written-on pages out of last year’s composition notebook and began filling it with observations, mostly about him. The feeling of triumph that came with dropping the full notebook in his lap a couple of weeks later, the way she’d made him grudgingly admit that maybe she could be a spy or anything else she wanted to be, was totally worth it.
She thinks of that notebook sometimes. Thinks of one of her conclusions often, because it feels just as relevant at twenty two as it had at nine: that the more Bellamy Blake scowls at you, the more he likes you.
Of course, Clarke at nine phrased it differently. She also drew very carefully a green crayon portrait of Bellamy peering out from within a trashcan, labeled “Bellamy the Grouch,” which she still references from time to time. But the principle holds.
“I don’t get it,” Miller declares.
Bellamy is across the room chatting up a guy whose skin is more ink than natural pigment and whose smile is gentle and genuine. Miller had asked Clarke how she’s not more distraught, watching Bellamy find people to take home for the night. She hadn’t known how to explain herself without letting Miller in on the secret.
“It’s not that hard to understand. The more he frowns at someone, the more he likes them. It’s simple, really.”
She takes a sip of her beer and studies the way her best friend-- and possibly the love of her life, though she’s felt that way long enough that it’s almost background noise these days-- is smiling at the man he’s talking to. It’s equal parts cocky and charming, a deadly combination that doesn’t worry her in the slightest.
“You’re saying he doesn’t want to sleep with that dude.”
“Of course he wants to sleep with him. But--” She huffs. She doesn’t like dwelling on the subject, and here Miller is making her talk about it. “Look at his face right now.”
Miller looks.
“It’s his game face.”
“Exactly. It’s-- That’s how he looks when he feels like he has to be on. When he’s really comfortable with someone, he doesn’t mind relaxing into his natural state of being.”
“A grumpy asshole,” Miller supplies.
“Ready to fight anyone about anything, just for the fun of it,” Clarke agrees.
It’s not that Bellamy doesn’t smile at the people he likes best. Her heart melts a little when he looks at Octavia with fondness underneath his annoyance. Or when he looks at Jasper like he might look at one of those monkeys with the bellhop coats and the little cymbals: confused but entertained. Or when Murphy is able to surprise a smile out of him with a stroke of brilliant snark.
And Clarke may have kept a tally, at one point in their friendship, of how many times in an hour she could make him smile. Not the one he pastes on for customers or coworkers or casual flings, but a real, eye-crinkling grin. She doesn’t keep count anymore, but she’s never stopped trying to provoke that expression. Some habits are hard to break.
So he doesn’t exactly frown at the people closest to him. He lets his guard down, lets his resting brood face take over. He frowns near them. It’s a whole different thing.
“Let me get this straight,” says Miller skeptically. “If Bellamy was arguing with Biceps VonTattoostein, or frowning at him, then you’d be worried.”
Clarke shrugs.
“I was worried when he met you,” she admits, taking a long pull of her beer.
“Me.”
“Sure. You guys feed off of each other’s surliness.”
“Which, as it turns out, is exactly why we wouldn’t make a good couple,” Miller points out.
“Yeah, Monty is an actual ray of sunshine,” Clarke grants. “Once I figured out that’s your type, I wasn’t as worried anymore.”
Miller gives her a searching look, and she thinks that if he were a superhero he’d have x-ray vision or something, because she feels absolutely transparent when he does that.
“What are you gonna do when he does find someone he can frown around?”
Clarke picks at the label on her bottle and avoids his eyes. She’s asked herself the same question more than once, and she’s never been able to come up with a remotely satisfying answer.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “Move to Antarctica and study penguins?”
“Well,” Miller says, pragmatic. “As long as you have a plan.”
Bellamy drifts back to them before Clarke can come up with a subject change.
“Strike out?” She asks, a little sympathetic but mostly patronizing. “Don’t worry, it’s probably not your looks, just your personality.”
“It’s not him, it’s you,” Miller adds, ducking when Bellamy moves to smack the back of his head.
“Why am I even friends with you?” Bellamy swipes Clarke’s beer and grunts unhappily when he finds it empty. “Turns out he’s straight, but he’s been looking for a place to box so I gave him Octavia’s card.”
“You just willingly gave a guy who is a solid twelve out of ten--”
“And who you’ve been chatting up for the past twenty minutes--”
“--your sister’s number?”
Bellamy pauses, thinking it over, then tips his head back against the booth and swears.
“Think of it this way: maybe if it seems like you approve of him, he’ll be less desirable to Octavia.”
“I don’t see O passing up this opportunity.” He scrunches his nose and groans. “I was just trying not to let my efforts be entirely wasted.”
Clarke pats his arm consolingly and he opens his eyes to glare at her. She can’t help but grin. It's that expression that makes her think she might be his favorite.
“You’re getting way too much enjoyment out of this.”
“It’s the highlight of my week,” she assures him, and wishes it were less true.
“Huh,” Bellamy says, cocking his head to one side. “I’ve had a pretty good week, but I just struck out and accidentally set my sister up with a guy I hit on first, so that makes this my low point. I guess you like seeing me in pain.”
“I’m a sadist,” she agrees. “Look on the bright side: the week isn’t over yet. It can always get worse.”
“She’s right,” says Miller. “It’s not even that low of a low point. There’s plenty of opportunity for things to really go downhill.”
“You guys are inspiring. But tomorrow’s Saturday. I’m not going to be doing--” His eyes widen as he cuts himself off and he lets his head drop against the wall behind him with a clunk. “The career fair.”
Clarke matches his groan while Miller snickers at them. She’d forgotten all about it. She had only agreed to go in the first place as a tactic to get her mother off her back about the importance of networking and Bellamy, as a recent alum and the lowest man on the totem pole at work, got stuck running the booth for the security system company he works for.
“See?” Miller says, gleeful. “Things are looking down already.”
Bellamy sighs and flags down the waitress so he can order a drink of his own.
“That’s the spirit.”
* * *
Clarke’s feet are killing her. She’d specifically worn flats to avoid this problem, but the shoes in question had been in the back of her closet since her internship last summer and her ankles have gotten all torn up.
It’s a relief when the fair ends (she’s only been here two hours, but she told Bellamy she’d wait for him to be done so they can grab lunch), if primarily because she can collapse in the chair next to Bellamy’s and slip her shoes off as she swings her feet into his lap. He’s scrolling on his phone and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone who might want to hear about a career in security system installation.
“Remind me to keep band-aids in my purse.”
“Keep band-aids in your purse,” he says on reflex, like the pedantic asshole he is, but he rests his free hand on her ankle, thumb rubbing back and forth over her foot soothingly.
“Super helpful.”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
He pockets his phone and stretches, nose wrinkling as he looks at her for the first time.
“I forgot how much I hate it when you go all Corporate Barbie.”
“Stop. I’ll swoon.”
“I think it’s probably the hair? When O was little she used to practice doing mine and her liberal use of bobby pins always felt like she was trying to dig a trench in my scalp. I see a hairstyle like that and I associate it with pain.”
Clarke laughs and starts undoing the professional bun she’d managed to throw together that morning. She does feel a little bit better with her hair down.
“I hope that helps, because I don’t have a change of clothes with me.”
“I don’t have a problem with the clothes,” he says, eyes dropping to her blouse and tracing their way down her skirt. It’s a couple of years old and a little tighter in the hips than it had been when she bought it, and until this moment, that hadn’t bothered Clarke. He’s giving her the smirk he gives his bar flings and, well, that’s not the Bellamy she wants. Though she can hardly blame anyone for being susceptible to his charms. They’re almost working on her. Almost.
“Well… good.”
He blinks and his burning gaze begins to dissipate.
“You just--” Color creeps up his neck and he looks away, at the other tables and booths around them. “You don’t look like you. I saw you across the room a few times and it almost looked like someone else wearing a Clarke mask.”
“Creepy. Did they get it specially made? Are they wearing my skin?”
He flicks her ankle.
“Maybe more like… a wax figure Clarke. A Madame Tussaud’s version of you. It’s just weird to look over and think, ‘Wait. That’s not what the real Clarke is like.’” He shrugs, uncomfortable and still not looking at her.
“I know what you mean,” she says, after a minute of stilted silence. “Remember when we were kids and I made that spy journal?”
“How could I forget? I still can’t sleep with my blinds open.”
“Well, that’s the first time I really saw it: the way you acted differently with grown ups and strangers and friends of mine that you didn’t know. Everyone does it. And you still do it today. Not-- I get detached, but you work up this charisma. It’s like-- nesting doll Bellamy. With the real you stuck inside, hiding comfortably in the shell of the smoother, cooler, more competent you.”
He laughs at this, as she hoped he would. She’s pretty good, by this point in her life, at getting a smile out of him.
“Maybe that’s the guy I want to be,” he says, and it doesn’t sound completely like he’s joking.
“Nah.” She nudges his side companionably with her foot. “The guy you are is hard to beat.” This silence is less stilted but just as heavy, so she clears her throat and drops her feet to the floor. “Anyway. Tacos?”
She makes herself be brave enough to look him in the eye, and she can’t quite decipher the look on his face as he nods.
“Tacos.”
* * *
“He’s a veterinarian, Clarke. He literally spends all day every day saving the lives of adorable animals. And being hot while he does it.”
“I can’t tell if you’re still bummed he’s straight or if you feel awkward knowing he’s dating Octavia and you hit on him first.”
She nudges him so that he’ll make room for her on the couch and he glowers at her. The effect is mostly lost, as it reminds her that she’s his favorite and unknots the jealousy in the pit of her stomach that formed when he started ranting about his sister’s new boyfriend.
“He has a motorcycle. She’s probably gonna marry him.” A look of horror overtakes his glare. “Can you imagine the family dinners?”
“What are you gonna tell her children about how their parents met?”
He swears and flops back down, this time with his head in her lap. Her fingers weave through his hair. It’s thick and soft and perfect, and she takes every opportunity she can to touch it.
“I’m just kidding, Bell. You’ve got time to figure that out. At minimum, nine months plus however long it takes a child to learn to speak. Besides, maybe he didn’t notice you were hitting on him.”
“He definitely noticed.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t tell your sister.”
“She already made fun of me about it.” His eyes flutter closed as she smooths the hair at his temple. “It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t bother Lincoln or O, and it doesn’t bother me either, really. It’s just marginally weird since it looks like they’re gonna be serious.”
“Did she say that?” Clarke asks, surprised.
“Yeah. They’ve only been dating a month, but she says there's something different about him. And I can see it, too. Did I mention the motorcycle?”
“You did.” She lets herself study the planes of his face, the slope of his nose, the spread of his freckles like she doesn’t usually allow for. It usually makes her heart ache. “So what I’m getting here is that nobody feels that awkward but you wanted to be melodramatic about it and get some sympathetic hair petting.”
He squints up at her.
“Are you saying I’m a drama queen?”
“Only because I know you.”
He snorts and rolls over to grab for his bag, pulling out a black and white composition notebook and rifling through it.
“Conclusion number one,” he says in his reading-aloud voice. “Clarke Griffin is not the Ice Princess she pretends to be when she’s doing stuff like the career fair. Evidence: her real smile actually reaches her eyes, she never laughs with her mouth closed if it’s real, and, in her own words, ‘I get detached.’”
“What is that?” Clarke asks, grabbing for the notebook. He moves it out of her reach, catching one of her hands with his and bringing them down absently to rest against his chest.
“It’s my super secret spy notebook. The career fair inspired me to change professions.” He clears his throat. “Conclusion number two: Clarke Griffin is fair, but she does not mess around with revenge. Evidence: that one time when she gave Nick Cho a reverse mohawk in his sleep as retaliation for spitting gum in her hair.”
“That was in seventh grade.”
“I know. I’m the one who cut the huge chunk with the gum out after third period.”
“No way you’ve been keeping this notebook since seventh grade.”
“Nah, I just have a lifetime of knowledge to utilize.” He flips a few pages with his free hand, the other still holding onto Clarke’s. She’s stuck between confusion and wonder.
“Conclusion number eleven: Clarke Griffin is gorgeous. See evidence below.” He turns the notebook to show her that he’s taped pictures of her below his careful handwriting. They’re grainy and grayscale, obviously from his shitty work printer, and they range from the first high school dance they attended together, when Clarke still had braces and Bellamy had more acne than freckles, to Clarke flipping the camera off, drunk and loose and silly at Octavia’s eighteenth birthday party, to a selfie she sent him a few weeks ago when she was tired of studying.
“Bell--”
He pats her hand and flips a few more pages. She dares to hope about where he might be going with this.
“Conclusion number fourteen: Clarke Griffin knows Bellamy Blake better than anyone else. Evidence…” He turns to show her the page again, and she gives a watery laugh when she sees that he’s drawn nesting dolls with emoji-like expressions, from a side-eye smirk to an angry frown, to a face with heart eyes.
“Bellamy the grouch?” She asks, tapping the middle one. He nods and smiles softly. “What’s with the smallest one?”
Under her palm she can feel his heart speed up.
“Sub-conclusion: Griffin may not know about the innermost layer. If Blake is being honest, he still puts up a front around Griffin. If she hasn’t seen it on her own by now, the only way he can makes sure she knows--”
Clarke can’t stand it anymore. His lips are still forming words when hers brush up against them but he gets with the program quickly, dropping the notebook in his lap so he can cradle the back of her head and pull her closer. He kisses her firm and unhurried, like he wants to make sure she gets it, and she has to break away to laugh.
“I know,” she promises, catching his bottom lip with a gentle scrape of her teeth. He draws her in again.
“You’re not even gonna let me say it?”
“You can say it as much as you want.”
He kisses her again and tugs her down until he’s hovering over her on the couch. His lips trace her jaw, her neck, brush featherlight against her collarbone as his hands explore the skin where her shirt has ridden up.
“I love you.”
She grins and pulls him back to kiss him sweetly.
“I figured.”
* * *
“I think you need to add a new conclusion,” she says later, her head resting in the crook of his neck and her legs tangled with his.
“What is it?”
“Write this down,” she says, poking him, and he scoffs even as he reaches for his spy journal.
“Is it that you’re bossy? I already knew that but I felt like it might undermine my love confession.”
“Conclusion: Clarke Griffin loves Bellamy Blake.”
He looks down at her, unmasked delight lighting up his face. She rolls her eyes and nuzzles his neck as he writes.
“Evidence?” He asks, pen poised.
“I just said so. Isn’t that enough?”
“Fine,” he mutters, writing it down begrudgingly. “But you have to sign and date it.” He passes her the pen with a frown that only makes her grin widen.
If she didn’t know better, his expression might have her worried, but she does know better. She knows Bellamy. And there's no question in her mind; she’s definitely his favorite. So she takes the pen and snuggles in closer as she reaches across him to sign her name, beaming from ear to ear.
She's not worried at all.