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i.
Clarke is a fan of one night stands.
In the words of her mother, “as long as it isn’t bad for your health” – and a one night stand isn’t bad for Clarke’s health as long as they use the necessary protection. Which is good, because this guy – tall, curly hair, tan skin and freckles like constellations she wants to map with her tongue – seems rather enthusiastic when Clarke states that she won’t bed him without it. He even produces the box of condoms from his bedside drawer, and tells her that if she wants to be even safer, she can put it on him.
Which she does.
Both because she’ll sleep better knowing she did it herself and made no mistakes, and because she looks really awesome when rolling a condom onto a dude’s dick. She knows. She has references.
Clarke forgets the man’s name by the time they reach his place, but it doesn’t really matter, seeing as she largely calls out to three various deities instead of him – and that is one of the many tells that this is a good time for her, because usually she only calls out to one. But there’s something about this man; something about the way he holds her; grips his fingers into her hips hard enough to bruise; sucks on her neck like he’s never going to taste anything as good even again; yet kisses her like she’s delicate and fragile – there’s just something that makes her love the night more than others in the past.
It’s the type of sex she’ll be able to write into her next book. It’s the type of sex that should lead to more than just sex.
When she introduced herself to him, back at the bar, she told him she was an author. She didn’t say best-selling, though. Clarke Griffin has published three books; each better than the last, and each with complex and idiotic plots and unimaginably written sex scenes, the latter of which she tends to write from experience, not that her mother ever needs to know that.
But this – this type of sex with the nameless man – this is the type she’d write about and romanticise; as if it’s the sort of sex that turns into making love. Like they can only do this so intimately when they’re looking into one another’s eyes and checking to make sure the other is okay.
If Clarke didn’t know any better, she’d get wrapped up in this sort of sex. She’d learn his name and ask to see him again; she’d wait until morning to leave and eat breakfast at his dining room table. She’d type his number into her phone and call him within forty-eight hours to find out if he wanted to do it all again.
But Clarke does know better, so when he rolls off of her, panting and smiling, she does, too.
“Wore you out there, huh?” she asks, glancing over. He rolls his eyes, a lazy smile plastered on his face.
“Not at all,” he replies, a blatant lie.
“Oh yeah? So you’re good to go again?” He turns back towards her, before huffing, still smiling, and rolling back onto his back.
“Yeah. Just gimme a minute.” Clarke laughs and he does, too – the extent of their conversation before they start up once more. He lets her nails dig into his shoulders, and he bites bruises into her thighs – Clarke finds particular pleasure in twisting her fingers through his hair and tugging at it when he hits the right spot. Then, when it’s over, Clarke waits until he falls asleep before climbing out of bed and getting dressed.
She stops off in his bathroom on the way out, just to be hygienic, and glances at herself in the mirror; hair mussed and make up smudged. Her eyes are drawn to a post it note, suck against the surface, and she smiles as she reads it.
Bellamy, I used up all of your toothpaste trying to make a homemade bomb. Sorry. Love you big brother – O.
“Bellamy,” she whispers as she leaves, closing the front door to his apartment gently behind her. His name tastes like sugar and candy floss on her tongue, and she runs a hand through her hair – she won’t be able to forget about him for quite a while.
ii.
It’s a week later and Clarke leans across the bar, calling for Gina’s attention. Her friend – or acquaintance through being her regular bar tender – rolls her eyes, heading over and getting out Clarke’s regular Slippery Nipple shots.
“You just get them because you like the name,” Gina smirks, settling two shot glasses in front of the blonde.
“That I do,” Clarke agrees, toasting her with one of the glasses before downing the drink. It burns at her throat and she shakes her head, wincing as she swallows. “Good shit right there.” Gina smiles, heading to another customer, and Clarke turns to look out across The Dropship Bar.
It’s the best dive bar in town; filled to the rim with punk rock drunks and loud, angry music. There’s a couple of back rooms where people tend to hook up before running back out into the fray, and most of the tables are either broken, or held together through will power and duct tape.
Clarke’s friends, Harper and Monroe, sidle over with their drinks.
“How’s it going?” Monroe yells over the noise.
“It’s good – the book is coming along fine.”
“Are you on the prowl?” Harper asks, grinning as she says the last word like it’s the funniest thing imaginable. Clarke shakes her head. She’s not – it’s not just that she’s unsure if the last hook up a week before could be beaten so soon, but it’s also because she’s not feeling it. Clarke may like a good one night stand, but she’s a firm believer in not having sex if she simply doesn’t feel like it – and Clarke adamantly does not want sex tonight.
“Not in the slightest,” Clarke replies.
“Then you wanna dance?” Monroe asks. Clarke downs the second Slippery Nipple (she laughs in her head over the name once more), and lets herself be pulled into the crowd.
Together, the three of them dance. The music pounds beneath them; strobe lighting flashing, and the band screaming down their microphones. At the end of the song, the lead singer flips the bird at the audience, and the crowd does it right back. There’s a sheen of sweat covering Clarke’s skin, and a wide smile plastered to her face as she tumbles from the audience, right into another body.
“Ah, shit, sorry,” she apologises, straightening and turning to look who she bumped into.
“Don’t worry about it,” the man replies, before he looks to her. They hesitate when they meet eyes, and his name flashes across her mind – not for the first time since she left his place the week before. Bellamy.
“Hey,” he says, his voice neutral now.
“Hey,” she replies. “You come here often?” He cracks somewhat of a smile.
“Apparently so.” The music is now being filtered through the speakers; something bassy and not as loud as the band before. “You want a drink?” Clarke pauses, mouth open, before nodding.
“Sure, why not.” He leads her to the bar, and they lean against it together. Bellamy nods Gina down, and she looks at the two of them.
“Your usuals?” she asks, and Clarke glances at Bellamy as he nods.
“I’ll have water, actually,” Clarke tells her. “I pre-gamed and I’ve gotta walk myself home.” Gina smiles and serves up their drinks – a glass of water for Clarke, and a smaller glass of a dark liquid for Bellamy. He turns to her then, drink in hand and still leaning against the bar.
“Noticed you had to leave pretty quick,” he comments, and Clarke ducks her head, sipping at her drink. “I’m not saying it in a bad way,” he continues. “I just meant – I had pancakes for breakfast. You missed out.” Clarke hears the teasing in his voice and she smiles despite herself.
“I try to leave without disturbing the natural order of things,” she replies. “Did you ever get new toothpaste?” Bellamy pauses, staring at her for a moment, before his face breaks out into a grin. Clarke hates how she’s never seen a better smile in her life.
“I did, thanks,” he nods.
“And how did the homemade bomb go?”
“It worked to an extent,” he says with a shrug.
“What would the extent be?” Bellamy smirks now.
“Not enough for an actual explosion, but enough to singe her eyebrows off.” Clarke snorts, ducking her head once more as she laughs.
“I would pay to see that,” she tells him, shaking her head.
“Buy me another drink and we’ll be square,” he replies, pulling out her phone. Clarke nods and agrees and Bellamy taps through his photos, producing one of a beautiful brunette. She’s flipping off the camera, and her eyebrows consist of approximately four hairs. Clarke breaks down into laughter, and Bellamy joins a second after.
“So, Clarke, the next drink.”
iii.
They didn’t get each other’s numbers on that night, even after he walked her home, and it’s two weeks later when they run into each other again. This time it’s in the laundromat three blocks from her flat. Her clothes are in the dryer, and she’s sitting on another, back against the wall and legs crossed. Clarke is typing away at her laptop, trying to flesh out the story she’s almost finished. She’s nearing the final scene where everything comes to a head; where her leads realise they’re in love, where epidemic might just get cured before the contingency plan begins (she really hasn’t decided yet whether to create the cure or to leave everyone for dead), and the main bad guy who created the disease gets killed.
The door at the end of the room swings open, and Bellamy walks in. The only other people are the mother and son in the corner, who haven’t disrupted Clarke from her work – but it’s Bellamy, so of course he’s going to.
“I’ve never seen you here,” he says as he walks past. Clarke glances up, finding Bellamy looking at her before turning and opening the laundry bag he was carrying.
“My building’s laundry room is out of order,” she replies, clicking the save button and turning to look at him properly. “This is the closest place. Is this your regular place?” Bellamy nods like it’s obvious.
“I live literally right there,” he says, gesturing vaguely to the window at the front of the store. Clarke hadn’t looked closely enough before, but there it is, clear as day: the apartment building she’d walked out of a few weeks before in the middle of the night, trying to figure out her way home from there.
“Ah, right. Yeah.” It’s a noncommittal answer and he takes it as such; going and filling the washing machine and taking a seat on the machines opposite; across the aisle from Clarke. He pulls out a book, and she sees the title – The Iliad – as he fumbles to find the right page.
“Pretty hefty book,” she comments, glancing back down to her screen. Her character has just spotted her love interest across the room. They’re probably going to make out next, she decides.
“Have you ever read it?” Bellamy asks. Clarke shakes her head.
“I think it’s just a little too hefty for me,” she replies. “It’s massive. It’s deep. It’s in another language.”
“It’s translated.”
“It’s still difficult,” Clarke points out. “But I respect anyone who can get through it, definitely.” Bellamy smiles, and Clarke forces herself to look away from it; she doesn’t understand how one person can have such a wonderful smile.
“What are you writing?”
“My book,” she replies. He raises his eyebrows.
“I’d forgotten you’re writing a book,” he says. She shrugs.
“It’s fine – I forgot your name back on the first night.”
Clarke’s dryer beeps as it finishes, and she slides down onto the floor.
“What’s the book about?”
“Finding love in a disease-ridden planet where the illness spreads through babies.”
“Through babies?” Clarke smiles as she unloads the dryer, moving everything back into her laundry bag. She nods as she goes.
“Yeah – so this disease forms in the womb, and comes out with the baby; passing it to the mother as it goes. The baby then grows up with the disease, but it’s not particularly life threatening until you have these hormones that only adults have-“
“So the disease continues to pass as those babies have children, and then everyone receives a gruesome and violent death.”
“But only the women can pass it on,” Clarke agrees. “So it’s like the entire world is in the women’s hands, and they collectively decide to just not get pregnant ever again to save the human race.”
She turns to look at him, grinning, and he is staring back at her like he’s trying to both figure the book and her out all at once.
“Wouldn’t the entire human race die out if no one’s having babies?”
“My friend,” Clarke says with a serene smile, placing one hand on his shoulder – stretching so that she can reach him. “Have you ever considered the possibility of clones?” Bellamy’s confused face makes Clarke laugh as she leaves – the original editor for her book had the same expression when she pitched it. They left their job a month later, and Clarke still doesn’t know if it’s because of her ludicrous plot idea or not.
iv.
Bellamy knows one of Clarke’s oldest friends, Bryan, and she’s sure that its fate at this point. It’s been just over a month since they hooked up, and yet this is the third time they’ve run into each other.
Bryan had invited Miller, his boyfriend, and Miller’s best friend to get drinks with them, and this slightly less divey place called Grounders, and when her friend stood up from the booth to greet Miller, Clarke caught sight of Bellamy following behind.
She was already sitting on the end, and so it was easy for him to plonk himself down next to her and huff, still smiling like always, as if he knew what it did to her.
“You’ve got to be stalking me at this point,” he tells her, and Clarke laughs.
“I think it’s the other way around,” she replies. “I had no idea you were going to be here.”
“Well neither did I – I was just dragged along by Miller. How do you even know Bryan?”
“He’s my cousin,” Clarke says. “Our dads are brothers. One went into the multi-million business of Griffin Industries and the other started a farm.” Bellamy hesitated, looking between Bryan and Clarke for a moment.
“He’s the farmer, right?” Bellamy asks.
Clarke nods, stage-whispering back, “he’s a chicken fanatic, really.” Bellamy nods slowly as their friends sit down and ordered drinks. It’s funny, how it works; how they can get along and joke around together.
Bellamy asks about her book a little more, to gain clarification, and Clarke asks about his job, which is in the publishing industry - another uncanny fact she can’t help but think was pre-destined.
“I’m between jobs right now, though,” he shrugs. “I’m thinking about changing publishers – I kind of want to edit books that aren’t two hundred pages of smut.” Clarke grins.
“You’re an erotica editor?”
“One of the best,” he replies sarcastically.
“No wonder you know so much about what a girl likes.” Clarke takes a swig of her drink, not looking back at Bellamy, but feeling his eyes boring into the side of her head. She doesn’t turn back, just joins in with Bryan’s conversation and pretends as if she said nothing at all. After a little while, Bellamy does, too, and they laugh like they had been friends for years.
Absently, Clarke wonders about what she missed out on. She wonders if there was an opportunity, when she was at his flat on the first night; she wonders if she should have stayed – climbed back into bed and slept through until morning. If she should have had pancakes and turned the one night stand into something more, if she should have thought for just a bit about how he had felt different to everyone else she’d been with. Maybe then she wouldn’t be sitting here as an awkward friend-turning-acquaintance, and she could kiss him when she felt like it, and ask him about The Iliad, and learn about he and his sister who has her own customised ringtone on his phone, whilst everyone else gets the default chime.
There’s a lot that she must have missed, and Clarke wishes, as Bellamy stands to get the next round, that there had been a bright, blinking arrow on his apartment building, that told her that it was where she was meant to be.
v.
Clarke sits in the reception of her new editor’s office at Ark Publishing. She’d sent this mystery editor – one she hadn’t yet been told even the name of – the manuscript for her novel three days ago, and she was here to meet with them about it.
There’s a lot they could say – “the clones make no sense”, “the cyborg plot line you wrote about in your notes would have worked better”, “what the fuck were you thinking”, “I see why the last editor quit”. Clarke’s stomach feels like it’s turning on itself over and over as she fidgets in the plastic seat. She’d poured a lot into this book; she’d followed the science, she’d done her research, the plot was over forty years in total and she had the technology reflect that. There was a lot.
Clarke’s books have always been known for being a little out there: her first novel was about a zombie apocalypse where they ended up evacuating Greenland and shipping all of the Z’s there. Her second was about aliens which had actually been hidden amongst humans for centuries, masquerading as household pets, and her third revolved largely around a conspiracy where the President of The United States was actually a robot.
How she’s a critically acclaimed author is beyond her, considering she comes up with her plot lines when drunk.
The receptionist looks up, saying she can go in now, and Clarke stands, gritting her teeth and swallowing as she strides into the editor’s office.
She’s surprised to find Bellamy sitting behind the desk, but it makes sense, seeing as the universe fucking hates her.
“I understand the clones now,” is the first thing he says and Clarke grins, moving past her shock. She doesn’t sit down, just dumps her bag on the chair as he continues. “It actually all works out – it makes sense, Clarke. The clones repopulate the Earth due to the genome that was taken from their cells, and the humans can continue on without the disease – as long as the original humans keep going with not having children.” Clarke nods, still smiling as she slides out of her jacket.
“You like it?”
“It’s actually really great,” he replies. “I mean, I’ve covered the thing in notes – literally hundreds – but this is amazing, Clarke. And you know, there’s one scene I really liked?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t my favourite – that was, by far, the one where you describe childbirth in excruciating detail-“ Clarke laughs, ducking her head. “But I really liked the scene in… chapter fifteen, I think, where Sam and Kingsley have sex for the first time.”
“Well you would, you’re an erotica editor at heart,” Clarke replies, rolling her eyes, but then she stops. She meets Bellamy’s eye for just a second, understanding what he’s saying, but he decides to say it out loud anyway.
“Clarke,” he says slowly. “Did you write our hook up into your book, and just switch the names to your characters?” Clarke hesitates, running through her options.
“Depends,” she decides at last.
“On what?”
“On what your opinion of that is.”
Bellamy moves out from behind the desk, eyes not leaving hers, and smirks.
“I found it real fucking hot, Clarke.” She grins then.
“Then absolutely. Yes. I-“ She doesn’t get a chance to finish as Bellamy captures her lips with his own. It’s fast and rough; messy as their teeth clash and their tongues hit each other like they don’t know what they’re doing. Then, when his hands reach her hips, and she bumps back against his desk, he slows, pressing gentle kisses to her lips, savouring her for just a moment. When he pulls back, she meets his eyes, and there’s so much in them. There’s longing and want; but something more intimate – like he’s been wondering where that golden arrow of fate has been the whole time. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something important, and it really does feel like it for Clarke, too.
But this is them, and they don’t say important things when they should be said, so instead, he quirks the corners of his lips and says:
“We really need to talk about the cyborgs, though.”