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It starts with the dress.
Looking back after everything, Clarke will say that Octavia’s latest scheme was inspired by the fact that her eighth-grade language arts class just started a unit on irony. She might make a joke that clearly the younger Blake had also inherited the nerd gene, and it was finally being expressed with the above-and-beyond absurdity characteristic of that family. (And if the older Blake were around at the time, that probably would’ve launch a debate on genetics and ethics in biology, and those who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat it, punctuated by good-natured insults and some shoving of shoulders.)
Most people decide to go to a dance before they start looking for something to wear to said dance, not the other way around. But then again, Octavia Blake has never been most people.
“Seriously, Clarke, you’ve gotta try it on!” she insists.
A glance around for help does no good; Clarke’s best friend, Octavia’s older brother, has long since fled to the bookstore in fear of just such a situation, and she is alone against his sister’s stubbornness. (A terrifying prospect she should have foreseen when she suggested the outing — Octavia is a force of nature even when she gets her way.)
Even knowing resistance is futile, Clarke tries an appeal to logic first. “I don’t need another dress, Octavia. Mom made me get a bunch last year, half of which I’ve never worn. Besides, I’m not going to any dances anytime soon.”
The younger girl says nothing, just let her bottom lip jut out in a familiar pout, paired with the very same puppy-dog eyes her brother uses to charm unsuspecting underclassmen when he’s in a flirtatious mood (or feels like annoying his best friend). The look speaks far louder and more effectively than words ever could have, and Clarke concedes the battle with a dramatic sigh.
“See, it looks perfect on you,” Octavia gushes when Clarke comes out of the dressing room, striking a pose sarcastically. “You’ve gotta get it.”
Looking in the mirror, Clarke has to admit that the cut and color do look good on her, far more so than any of the dresses her mother picked out. Still…
“Are you guys done yet, or —?” Stopping short a few paces from them, Bellamy Blake halts, whatever book he’s reading on his phone screen waiting forgotten in his hand. His eyes widen as he takes in the navy blue dress, flatteringly form-fitted and showing just enough skin to fall within the slightly more relaxed dress code for a school dance (which is to say, a lot). “Wow. Um. You look nice. Special occasion?”
“Pick your jaw up off the ground, Bell,” his sister teases. “You can stare at winter formal; that’s the occasion.”
“No, it’s not,” Clarke hastens to say when Bellamy raises an eyebrow at her. “We’re still not going, unless you changed your mind without telling me. Your sister saw it and insisted that I try it on, so — yeah, here we are,” she finishes lamely.
“I didn’t even say anything.” Bellamy grins, a bright flash accompanied a sparkle in his eyes. Then his expression softens. “But seriously, you should get the dress, princess. Looks good on you.”
“See!” Octavia crows.
Clarke just smiles. Yeah, it’s a keeper.
The clang of a locker announces Raven’s presence, fittingly enough — the whole school associates everyone’s favorite rocket-scientist-in-training with metal and loud noises. Clarke automatically braces herself for the teasing to come. (Raven has been friends with the Blakes longer than Clarke has, so the other girl is even closer friends with Octavia, which entails an almost-constant exchange via text and Snapchat; there’s no way she hasn’t heard about the dress, and even less chance she won’t ask about it.)
But Raven doesn’t speak while Clarke gathers her binders and zips up her backpack. In fact, she remains uncharacteristically silent until they’re halfway to the library. Suddenly she stops short, and Clarke almost runs into her.
“Is Wells going to formal, do you know?” Raven starts walking again, deliberately nonchalant.
Surprised, Clarke has to take a moment to process the question before she shrugs in reply, jogging a little to catch up with her friend. “Probably, it’s his kind of scene. We haven’t really talked about it. Why?”
“No reason.” It may be Clarke’s imagination, or the wind whipping at their scarves, but there’s a flush of color along Raven’s cheeks as she pulls open the library door and ushers her friend inside.
“Oh,” Clarke says, dragging out the syllable. “Should’ve said something, Rae. Do you think he’s going to ask you?”
“I should just ask him, right?” For once in her life, Raven looks unsure. “It’s the twenty-first century, girls don’t have to sit around waiting for boys to make the first move. If I want to ask him to go to the dance with me, I can damn well ask him to go to the dance with me.”
“Definitely, yeah,” Clarke agrees. When Raven glares, she grins unapologetically. “Sorry, I assumed that since you came up to me, you wanted me to participate in the conversation. Carry on.”
“You’re an asshole, Griffin,” Raven says as they reach Bellamy’s table.
In response, Clarke deliberately drops her backpack next to his head, pillowed on an open APUSH textbook. The library’s loud enough that it draws only brief glances, more reflexive than curious — after all, it’s break and it seems like half the school is in here seeking sanctuary from the biting cold — but it does manage to startle him awake.
Lazily, unembarrassed at having been caught napping in the middle of the day, Bellamy straightens in his chair, tapping his pen against the table as he straightens his glasses with his free hand. “I’m gonna have to agree with you on that one, Reyes. Just this once. Better savor the moment; who knows how long it’ll be till the next time?”
“Screw you too, Blake.” But she’s smiling.
“Maybe some other time; I just woke up and we’re in the middle of the school library,” he snarks back automatically, the corners of his own mouth curling up. “What’s up?”
“Raven here was thinking about asking Wells to formal,” Clarke says cheerfully, reaching for Bellamy’s chapter notes.
He swats her hand away automatically — “Do your own work, princess” — and turns to their friend. “Huh. Need any help with that? Someone to lead him blindfolded from the parking lot to you? Press play on the boom box while you climb the trellis outside his bedroom?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of pick out flowers,” Raven snorts. “But I can do that myself. Aurora loves me more anyway, so I’ll just ask for the family discount. You can help me come up with a stupid pun for my asking poster, though; I hear that’s your specialty.”
“Wells Jaha,” Bellamy says slowly, thoughtfully. “You could go for the obvious, with his first name. Might need to get a bit more creative if you wanted to incorporate the last name. Clarke, you doing the artsy stuff?”
She doesn’t even look up from her phone, so he nudges her leg, dangling over the corner of the table where she’s perched herself despite the librarian’s despairing pleas over the years. “Princess. Are you gonna do the poster?”
“Sure, once you tell me what to put on it.” She frowns at the screen before shoving her phone into her back pocket to focus on her friends. “Yeah. Do we have an asking yet?”
Bellamy smirks, gleefully mischievous, and the look sends an alarmingly familiar rush of affection through Clarke, which she tries to hide by clearing her throat. “So? Out with it.”
When he says it out loud, Raven groans and Clarke rolls her eyes. A beat later, all three of them burst out laughing and set to work.
“J-AHA! There’s the boy who makes sure things go WELLS. Formal?” Shaking his head a little disbelievingly, Wells can’t help a snicker as he reads the bold letters on the poster Clarke is holding up. “Let me guess, Bellamy’s handiwork?”
“No way, you think he could write this neatly?” At his jab to her ribs, Clarke grins sweetly as she steps on Bellamy’s foot in retaliation. “The actual words, though, yeah. That’s on him.”
“So if Bellamy did the slogan and Clarke did the poster,” Wells begins, turning to Raven expectantly.
She doesn’t disappoint, revealing half a dozen yellow roses tipped with red. “Bellamy’s mother put it together, you’d know better than I what it means. Based on the way she was grinning, I’m sure it’s ridiculously inappropriate and I don’t want to know.”
To the girls’ surprise, Wells ducks his head shyly as he accepts the bouquet. “Thanks, Raven.”
Clarke treads on Bellamy’s foot again, softer this time. “Tell me,” she whispers. Helping Aurora out in the flower shop as often as he does, he’s bound to know what the flowers signify.
“Later,” he replies quietly, avoiding her gaze.
With a huff that’s more for show than out of annoyance, she turns back to their friends, wolf-whistling obnoxiously as they hug awkwardly.
Really, it’s only a matter of time.
When Raven finally broaches the subject a week before the dance, Clarke is ready and waiting.
“So I know you said you weren’t going to winter formal, but you can’t seriously leave me alone. You know I can’t stand half the people at this school, and most of them will be there.”
“No one made you decide to take Wells. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea and I’m rooting for you guys, but that was all you. If I’m going to third-wheel two of my closest friends, I want to know what’s in it for me.” (She already has every intention of agreeing, but Clarke’s going to make her friend squirm a little first. Just ’cause she can.)
“Come on, you definitely owe me for something. I can’t remember what, off the top of my head, but I’ve done you way more favors than you have me. There’s gotta be something you haven’t paid me back for yet.”
“Anyone else would’ve just asked me to go because we’re friends,” Clarke pointed out, amused. “But that works too. Sure, I’m in — as long as you help me drag Bellamy along.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’ll need my help with that. Have you ever known the guy to say no to you?”
“Um, plenty of times.” But petty bickering isn’t what Raven’s referring to, and Clarke knows it. She just doesn’t want to face the implications. “Okay, fine. Point taken.”
“While you’re at it, you could ask him to be your boyfriend. Two birds, one stone.”
There was no good response to that, so Clarke chose to walk away.
“Absolutely not” is Bellamy’s reflexive response when he looks up from rearranging the cactus display to finding Clarke leaning too casually against the checkout counter, a familiar look in her eyes. The shop is mostly empty, save a handful of regulars who all know how to find Bellamy or Aurora if they need help; all things considered, it definitely isn’t the worst time she could have chosen to bother him at work.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”
“Excuse you, I can read minds.” When she doesn’t laugh or even roll her eyes, he knows it’s pretty serious — or at least means a lot to her, which is basically the same thing in his book. “Hey. Talk to me?”
“Um.” Clarke glances around, more nervous than he’s seen her in a while. “When does your shift end?”
“Right now,” Aurora says cheerfully, setting a stack of fresh pots on the shelf. “Hi, Clarke. I’m guessing you’ve come to make sure our boy doesn’t forget that the outside world exists.”
Bellamy glances at his watch. “Mom, it’s only five. I was going to —”
“Your sister’s around here somewhere, it’ll be fine. Go have fun!” She winks at Clarke. “I want him home by midnight, young lady.”
“I think that’s doable.” Grinning, Clarke tugs him out by the wrist, all too aware of how easy it would be to slide her hand down a few inches to take his.
“Did you walk all the way here?” Bellamy asks as they climb into his beat-up but beloved Honda.
“Wells was my ride,” Clarke replies, pointing to her friend through the shop window. “He wanted some advice on what kind of flowers to bring when he picks Raven up for formal. Speaking of which, you never told me what the one she gave him meant.”
At that, Bellamy deliberately turns his focus to the road. “Where are we going?”
“Raven wanted our feedback on a project, she’s waiting at my place. Answer the question, Bellamy.”
“Well, half-a-dozen roses, yellow with red tips,” he says slowly, as though he isn’t intimately familiar with the bouquet. As though he hasn’t thought about giving an similar one to his best friend. “Okay. So six roses, that indicates a need to be loved and cherished. Which is our Raven, though she’d never admit it; that’s what I would’ve picked out for her too.”
“It’s almost like you’re your mother’s son or something,” teases Clarke, pulling her hair over her shoulder to start braiding it back. (As with any science lab, Raven’s work zone and loose hair were hazards to each other.) “Go on. What does the color mean?”
“Yellow by itself is friendship, joy. With red tips, it’s, um. Falling in love.”
After a moment, Clarke ventures, “Would you have picked those too?”
Bellamy just shrugs, but there’s a new tension to his shoulders that Clarke takes as her cue to change the subject.
They soon discover that Raven is, in fact, not waiting at the Griffins’ house. She has, however, texted Clarke: dont chicken out u got this
“She stood us up,” Clarke sighs, a rueful twist to her mouth.
Bellamy notices that she doesn’t show him the message and tries not to read into it. They may be best friends, but that doesn’t mean they tell each other absolutely everything. “So what did you need to talk to me about?”
“So.” Clarke exhales slowly. “Um. I know we weren’t going to winter formal, but now that Raven’s going, she wants me to go to. I’ve already got that dress Octavia made me get, and, well. You know it’s traditionally a date dance, and, well. It wouldn’t be any fun without you.”
Ever since elementary school, they’ve been best friends of the firmly platonic variety, though they both maintain that boys and girls can’t be friends loses all credibility when both parties are bisexual. They were each the first person the other came out to, and they’ve seen each other through awful crushes and awkward dates and bad breakups. They’re each other’s constant in life, true north on their moral compass.
But they’ve always been just friends, laughing off all allegations to the contrary. Neither has overtly admitted to having feelings for the other; neither could imagine going through life without the other, so they’ve both stopped just short of crossing the line.
It’s no small thing Clarke’s asking of Bellamy now, to be her date to a public event —a formal dance no less — and they both know it.
They also know she wouldn’t be asking if she didn’t mean it.
“You wanna come in?” His expression has shifted, and it unsettles Clarke that she can’t read it.
“Sure.” She’d been so sure, but she’s been wrong before. (Not about Bellamy, though — never about Bellamy.)
“I, um. I’ve got something for you,” Bellamy explains as he leads her up the stairs to his room. “Wait here a sec.”
He ducks inside, returning with something hidden behind his back. Clarke is reminded of Raven’s asking Wells to the formal — the same carefully casual posture undermined by his obvious tension, the shy hopefulness in his eyes. Then he reveals the single rose he’s holding, and Clarke’s attention is diverted.
“I was actually thinking about asking you, and I thought maybe you’d want to go since Raven and Wells are, but then I wasn’t sure since we’ve always hated school dances, but I figured if I didn’t ask you now I’d never do it, then you beat me to it, and —”
“Yellow with red for falling in love, right?” Her beatific smile widens slowly, and damn if she isn’t the most brilliant, beautiful thing that Bellamy’s ever seen.
His answering grin is probably disgustingly sappy, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Exactly. Single rose for utmost devotion. I’ve been told it’s pretty obvious that I’m totally gone for you.”
“I was hoping, yeah.”
To no one’s surprise, Bellamy and Clarke are unanimously voted Best Dressed of the night.
“There’s a fine line between PDA and public indecency, and you’re flirting with it,” Raven tells them in lieu of congratulations. She’s maybe a little bitter, having actually gone out and found a dress for the event. Her eyeliner is sharp enough to kill a man, and she looks amazing.
Wells hasn’t been able to take his eyes off her all night. “Well, to be fair, Bellamy cleans up nicer than you might think. The shock factor probably influenced the vote. That, or they rigged it.”
“Damn, you’ve found us out.” Bellamy grins lazily, relaxing against the wall beside Clarke. “You’re right, it was supposed to be you guys. The princess distracted them in that dress while I switched the ballots.”
“I knew it,” Raven exclaims. “C’mon, Wells, let’s go tell the commissioners. They won’t get away with this!” She winks at them over her shoulder as she leads him away, and they laugh.
After they’re gone, Clarke snuggles in against Bellamy’s chest. “You do clean up nice. I’m a fan of the tie.”
“Is that so,” he murmurs, looping an arm around her shoulders. “Well, I don’t know if I’ve told you yet, but I really like the dress you’re wearing.”