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“Morning”.
Clarke looked up, smiling, as Bellamy eased his lanky frame onto the bench opposite her and slid a cup of coffee across the table. It was still early, but the Arkadia mess hall was already filling up with people in search of breakfast. That was the thing about people who were used to getting things done, Clarke reflected, they tended not to be big on sleep-ins. She lifted the steaming cup of coffee to her lips, blowing on it before taking a sip. She wasn’t quite sure when or how it had happened, but sometime during the past few months since the destruction of the City of Light, she and Bellamy had fallen into the habit of eating breakfast together. It had become a sort of unspoken tradition, Clarke usually arrived first, finding an empty table where she could save a seat for Bellamy and he would bring her coffee made just the way she liked it, black and not too sweet.
“How’d you sleep?” Bellamy asked, taking a sip from his own cup.
It wasn’t a casual question. Now that they were no longer fighting for their lives every waking moment, all of the horrors that Clarke had experienced since getting to the ground were finally catching up to her, manifesting themselves as nightmares. She’d tried to keep it quiet, Bellamy had only found out because he’d been walking past her quarters late one night after getting off guard duty and happened to hear her crying. He’d stayed with her the rest of the night, holding her in his arms, stroking her hair and whispering soothing words.
“Better,” replied Clarke now, setting down her coffee cup. “Mom got me some of the valerian root they’re growing on Farm station, it’s helping”.
Bellamy nodded. “That’s good”.
“What about you?”
Bellamy dropped his eyes, contemplating the grain of the wooden table between them.
“Hey,” Clarke reached across the table, taking his hand in hers and squeezing gently. “This works both ways, you know, this offloading thing”.
Bellamy shook his head. “You don’t need me dumping my crap on you”.
Clarke rolled her eyes. “Come on, Bellamy, you can talk to me”. She paused, choosing her next words carefully. “You can talk to me about her if you need to…about Gina”.
Bellamy met her gaze suddenly; his liquid brown eyes filled with surprise, gratitude and something else, something Clarke couldn’t quite place. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but at that moment, Monty slid himself onto the bench next to Clarke, looking rumpled and exhausted.
“Morning, guys,” he yawned, pushing his dark hair, desperately in need of a cut, out of his eyes.
“Morning, Monty,’ responded Bellamy, sounding ever so slightly exasperated at the interruption. Or maybe that was just Clarke’s imagination. “Long night?”
“It’s Raven,” Monty sighed. “She’s got us working all hours on these nuclear power plants”.
Bellamy and Clarke exchanged an uneasy glance. They may no longer have been at war, but Monty’s words were a reminder that they were now facing a less tangible, but equally deadly, threat to their lives.
“She’s going to kill herself if she keeps this up,” sighed Bellamy.
“Maybe you could talk to her?” Monty suggested hopefully. “Please, Bellamy, I can’t keep this up and she listens to you”.
Bellamy downed the last of his coffee, already halfway out of his seat. “I’ll go now”. He moved towards the exit, but then turned around suddenly, looking back at Clarke. “You coming?”
They found Raven in engineering, sitting in front of a computer, furiously tapping away at the keyboard, utterly consumed in her work.
“Hey, Raven,” said Bellamy, stepping through the door. “You coming to breakfast?”
“Not now, Bellamy,” said Raven, not looking up from the screen.
“Come on,” said Bellamy, more firmly this time, moving towards Raven and placing a hand on her shoulder. “Monty says you were up all night, time to take a break”.
“I said not now!” snapped Raven, shaking Bellamy off. “Dammit!” She stood up abruptly, tears in her eyes, kicking her chair over and almost losing her balance. Bellamy caught her elbow before she could fall and pulled her into his arms.
“Shhh, it’s okay,” he soothed. “We’ll figure it out, we always do, but right now you need to sleep”.
Clarke, who had been standing in the doorway watching the scene unfold before her, felt a pang deep in the pit of her stomach as she watched Raven melt into Bellamy’s embrace.
“Come on,” Bellamy repeated, wrapping an arm around Raven’s shoulders and helping her towards to door. He glanced at Clarke, nodding once and she knew it meant I got this. They’d always been good at non-verbal communication. She watched her friends disappear down the corridor in the direction of Raven’s quarters, wondering why the hell Bellamy had wanted her to come with him when he so clearly didn’t need her help. Deciding it didn’t matter, she spun on her heel and walked off in the opposite direction towards the infirmary. Her mother would be wondering where she was.
That evening, walking back to her room after a long day treating patients in the infirmary, Clarke bumped into Raven coming the opposite way down the corridor.
“Hey,” said Raven, catching Clarke’s wrist. “I’m glad I caught you, I wanted to say thank you for this morning”.
“Bellamy’s the one you should thank,” said Clarke. “I don’t even know why I was there”.
Raven rolled her eyes. “When are you going to realize he needs you just as much as you need him?”
Clarke frowned, wondering what Raven was getting at. “We need each other”. She’d said those exact words to Bellamy not so long ago.
Raven searched Clarke’s face as though trying to determine if she was being serious. “You know something, Clarke,” she said finally. “For such a smart person you can be really dense sometimes”.
Clarke waited for Raven to elaborate but she never did. Instead, she simply gave Clarke a quick, one-armed squeeze and walked away, leaving Clarke standing in the middle of the corridor, wondering what the hell that had all been about.
Later that night, lying awake in bed, Clarke found herself thinking over Raven’s words, still unable to make sense of them.
When are you going to realize he needs you just as much as you need him?
She wished Raven had just come out and said what she meant; it wasn’t like her to be so cryptic. Of course Clarke and Bellamy needed each other, they always had, not that either of them had wanted to admit it to begin with. They were friends, they trusted each other and more than that, they’d been to hell and back together, it was no wonder they shared a bond. But even as she thought this, Clarke couldn’t help remembering the unpleasant feeling in her stomach watching Bellamy embrace Raven that morning, or the way he’d looked at Clarke when she’d told him he could talk to her about Gina. With so many confusing thoughts going around in her mind, it took Clarke a long time to fall asleep and when she finally did, her dreams were filled with dark, messy curls, freckles and a smile that made her heart jump.
Clarke didn’t see Bellamy again for three days. It wasn’t by choice, it just so happened that a nasty flu virus broke out and the hoards of sick people in need of medical attention meant that Clarke was a virtual hostage in the infirmary, skipping meals, working late into the night and getting by on as little sleep as she dared. All thoughts of Bellamy and whatever feelings they may or may not have for each other were banished from her mind until he showed up, completely out of the blue, early on the morning of the fourth day following the flu outbreak. Clarke had been up all night monitoring a group of sick children with dangerously high fevers and she was completely exhausted. Bellamy was wearing his guardsman’s jacket and looked every bit as wrecked as Clarke felt. There were dark circles under his eyes and his messy curls were in an even greater state of disarray than usual. He’d clearly just come off guard duty.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who had a long night,” Clarke observed.
“No rest for the wicked, right?” yawned Bellamy. “I don’t know about you but I could really use a caffeine hit, feel like taking a break?”
Clarke looked up into Bellamy’s face, pale and drawn with exhaustion and it suddenly hit her how much she’d missed him these past few days and that right now what she wanted more than anything else was to go down to the mess hall with him and catch up over a very large, very strong coffee. She opened her mouth, about to tell him yes, but closed it again abruptly. There was no way she could leave her mother alone to care for an infirmary full of sick patients, not when Abby was running on fumes herself. She dropped her gaze, avoiding Bellamy’s eyes.
“I’d love to,” she said. “But I…”
“It’s fine,” said Bellamy, cutting her off. “I get it, your mom needs you”. Clarke could hear disappointment, maybe even hurt, in his voice.
“I’m sorry”, she said, it sounded lame, even to her own ears. Part of her knew she was just making excuses, but she also knew that if she started talking to Bellamy, all of the confused thoughts she’d been having since her talk with Raven would come spilling out and she wasn’t ready to have that conversation with him, not yet.
“It’s okay,” said Bellamy, placing a gentle hand on Clarke’s arm.
That he was being so understanding only made her feel worse.
“Look, Bellamy, I…” she began, but stopped, lost for words.
He shook his head, indicating that she didn’t need to explain and Clarke could see, once again, that unidentifiable emotion in his eyes. But the next moment he had turned around and was walking out of the infirmary and Clarke could no longer be sure whether what she thought she’d seen had really been there at all.
Several hours later, Clarke found herself treating Octavia. The other girl had been injured during a sparring match with a couple of Grounders, sustaining a sprained ankle in addition to a rather impressive collection of cuts and bruises. Having to treat such mundane injuries was, quite frankly, the last thing Clarke needed given how snowed under she was already and she made no effort whatsoever to hide her irritation. Not that it seemed to faze Octavia.
“I saw Bellamy earlier,” she said, wincing as Clarke dabbed at a deep gash on her forehead with antiseptic, “in the mess hall”.
Her accusatory tone made the implication of, without you, perfectly plain.
“I was busy in here,” said Clarke dismissively. She didn’t need to defend herself to Octavia, of all people. But Octavia wasn’t having it.
“Stop making excuses, Clarke,” she snapped, making Clarke jump. “He’s not going to wait for you forever”.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Clarke demanded, suddenly feeling defensive. Between Octavia and Raven, she was getting seriously sick of people trying to make her friendship with Bellamy their business.
“It means,” said Octavia, her voice softening, “that I’ve watched my brother be in love with you all these months and I know you’ve been through hell and I know you’ve lost people, people you really loved, but you can’t honestly tell me it’s all one sided”.
Clarke sighed. “It’s not”. There was no use pretending any more and it felt good to finally admit it.
“Then get off your ass and tell him”.
“How?”
Octavia shrugged. “Sorry, you’re going to have to figure that part out for yourself”.
Several more days passed, during which the flu outbreak persisted, but for the first time, Clarke was grateful for the work it created. She needed time to think, to sort through the tangled mess of feelings that were suddenly welling up inside her since her conversations with Raven and Octavia. She loved Bellamy; of that much she was certain, in fact, she suspected she’d loved him for a long time now. Not that she’d been in love with him. That, she suspected, was a recent development. But she had absolutely no idea how she was going to tell him how she felt. Would he even want to hear it, after everything Clarke had put him through? Did he really feel the same way about her, or was Octavia just seeing what she wanted to see? In her head, she played out a range of different scenarios, from reciprocal declarations of love to painful, humiliating rejection. But rather than clarifying the issue, it just made her more confused, with the result that she became distracted and her work suffered until one night, Abby pulled her aside.
“Sweetheart, is everything alright?”
“I’m fine,” Clarke assured her.
Abby did not look convinced in the slightest.
Clarke sighed. “I’ve just…got a few things on my mind”.
Abby smiled knowingly. “Look, it’s been a long week, you’re exhausted, go get some sleep, it’ll help”. She put her arms around Clarke and hugged her tightly. “Don’t overthink it, okay?” Abby whispered into her daughter’s ear. “Just trust yourself and let him know what’s in your heart”.
The next morning, Clarke awoke feeling greatly refreshed. For the first time all week, she’d had a full night’s sleep and it had done her mental state the world of good. She still had no idea how she was going to confess her feelings to Bellamy, but she had decided to take her mother’s advice and not overthink it. Dressing herself in her old blue shirt and dark grey pants, she headed down to the mess hall to get breakfast before returning to the infirmary. The mess hall was, as usual, packed. As she joined the queue of people waiting for coffee, Clarke found herself casting about, searching the crowd for a familiar mop of messy, brown curls. But Bellamy was nowhere to be seen and Clarke couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Then suddenly, her head snapped up as the unmistakable sound of his voice reached her ears. Bellamy was standing at the opposite end of the room, talking to Jasper. He looked up, as though sensing Clarke’s gaze on him and the two locked eyes. Before she could think better of it Clarke began to stride purposefully towards him. Drawing level with him at last, she reached out and grabbed the front of his jacket with both hands, pulling him down to her and pressing her lips hard against his. For the briefest second he seemed taken by surprise, unsure how to respond, but then he pressed back eagerly. At last, his lips seemed to say, at last. They kissed hard and hungry, breathing heavily, their technique sloppy and unpracticed, but they didn’t stop. After several seconds, or it could have been several hours, Clarke couldn’t tell, she lifted herself up on tiptoes, her fingers tangling in Bellamy’s thick hair. He responded by wrapping his strong arms tightly around her waist and from there, the kiss became slow and gentle, each wanting to savor the taste of the other. When they finally broke apart, Bellamy looked down at her with wonder, grinning from ear to ear. He looked happier than Clarke had ever seen him.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for that”.
“I love you,” said Clarke, grinning back at him.
“And I love you, princess”.
He drew her gently against his chest and she rested her head there, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat in her ears. Jasper, standing next to Bellamy, looked every bit as giddy as Clarke felt. He was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, his eyes bright and his smile so wide it almost looked painful. Every trace of depression had vanished and he was suddenly the skinny, slightly awkward and overly excitable fifteen year old he’d been the day the hundred had landed on Earth.
“Well it’s about time!” he exclaimed gleefully, clapping his hands. “I was starting to think you guys were never going to get it together!” He turned to face Clarke. “That was incredible! You just went for it! It was like something out of those old movies I used to watch…”
Clarke felt Bellamy chuckle as Jasper continued to babble on excitedly and she buried her face in his shirt to hide her smile. He smelled like home. When she looked up again, she saw, over Bellamy’s shoulder, Octavia and Raven, standing shoulder to shoulder, plainly having been watching the entire time. Raven looked smug and Octavia had tears in her eyes. Clarke gently extricated herself from Bellamy’s embrace, taking his hand and interlacing her fingers with his as they stepped towards the two girls. Standing in front of them, Clarke looked up at Bellamy.
“Why do I get the feeling we’ve been set up?” she asked him dryly.
“We had to do something!” Raven burst out. “It was getting painful, waiting for one of you to pick up your balls”. She winked at Clarke. “But I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting that, I’m proud of you, girl!”
Clarke laughed and Raven kissed her cheek.
Octavia took hold of Bellamy’s free hand and he pulled her into a tight, one armed hug.
“I don’t know what you said to her, O,” he whispered to his sister, barely loudly enough for Clarke to hear. “But whatever it was, thank you”.
Bellamy dropped a kiss on the top of Octavia’s head and released her before looking back down at Clarke.
“So, what now?” he asked her.
His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright with an emotion that Clarke was at last able to identify. It was love; he had been looking at her with love this entire time.
She smiled up at him, a warm, contented feeling spreading through her.
“I have absolutely no idea”.