#bellarkeroyalty

“But--” She stops.

“I can’t,” he repeats.  “I want to, God, I want to. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something so much.  But…” He sucks in a deep breath.  “I just can’t.”

“Haven’t you been telling me all summer that sometimes you just have to make a decision and go for it?”

Bellamy runs a hand through his hair, clutching tight, the skin of his forehead going white.  “I have responsibilities, Clarke!  We can’t all just pack up and leave the fucking country whenever we want to!”

She stares at him, dumbstruck.

“Shit,” he mutters.  “I...I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then how did you mean it?” Her voice is colder than she’d probably prefer but she doesn’t bother to smooth over the jagged edges of her tone.

“I have Octavia, Clarke.  She’s fifteen, for fuck’s sake.  And who the hell knows how much longer our mom is going to be around.  Not that it even matters, she’s staying here and even if she wasn’t, I don’t trust her with O.   Especially not so that I can go prance around Europe.”

Clarke swallows.  The words hurt, they’re cutting deep, the twisting jabs of a dull blade.  But she knows he’s right.  Somehow she’d always known that it would come down to this.  The Blake sibling loyalty.

“What will you do?” she asks, her voice softer.

He looks up at her, eyes vulnerable and sad.  “Go home.  Take that year off.  Get a couple jobs.  Hopefully go to community college next year.  Get myself a degree.  Get Octavia into school.  Reevaluate.”

Clarke swallows against the tears rising at the back of her eyes.  “You don’t deserve this, Bell.”

“And you don’t deserve a mother who doesn’t give a shit about what you want.”  He shrugs.  “We don’t always get what we deserve.”

“I thought we were both going to get out of here.  Together.”

He loops their fingers together.  “I wanted that, Clarke.  I still do.”

“But there are more important things.”

He leans forward and kisses her forehead.  “I have to take care of my sister.”

She nods.  “I know.”

“Okay,” he whispers.  And leans his head down on hers.  She stares down at their fingers, tangled together like she’d hoped their lives would be, and lets the first of the tears fall, splashing down on his thumb.

Mercifully, he doesn’t say anything.

Bellamy had never hated hospitals until Aurora Blake got cancer.  Now he spends at least two days a week in one, sitting in an uncomfortable chair across from a kindly, grandfatherly-looking man who Bellamy knows he should like.  Instead, he just wants to punch him.

“Your mother is doing spectacularly, Bellamy,” Dr. Cooke tells him now.  “Really wonderfully.”

Bellamy’s not sure what Cooke’s idea of “really wonderfully” is but it doesn’t match up with Bellamy’s.

“My sister and I will be leaving the state in about two weeks,” he tells the doctor.  “Last week you said you were firming up plans for my mother’s permanent check in to the hospital.”

Cooke nods and roots around in one of his desk drawers, pulling out some paperwork.  “It’s all here.  You’re welcome to take this home and look it over if you’d like.”

“I just have to sign it?”

Cooke nods.  Bellamy takes a pen off his desk and scribbles his name on the dotted line.  Cooke stares, mouth gaping.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Bellamy says as he stands. “Keep me up to date with her progress.”

Octavia’s in the passenger seat of his car, playing Trivia Crack on her phone.  As he slides into the passenger seat she curses.  His phone vibrates in his pocket.

“Your turn.”

“Sports?” he guesses.

“Fucking sports,” she acknowledges.

For once he doesn’t bother correcting her language.

“We still meeting Clarke for lunch?” she asks as they pull out of the parking lot.

He nods.

“How are you two doing?”

Bellamy’s hands clench on the wheel.  “We’re fine, O.”

“Bellamy.”

“We are.  Honestly.”

And it’s true.  There had been a few days of requisite awkwardness but two days after Clarke had bought her plane ticket, after two days of them tiptoeing around each other, Clarke had shown up at his front door wearing an angry expression and a declaration on her lips.

“We can’t do this,” she’d told him.  “We have two weeks left together and like hell if I’m going to let us waste them with this bullshit.”

It was incorrect to say that things had returned to their carefree normal from before, back when Clarke had thought he was going with her to Europe and Bellamy hadn’t been able to admit just how locked in stone his future was.

“Kind of ironic, isn’t it,” Octavia muses, “that I was always angry at them for posturing.  And really, it’s us.  We’re the real liars here.”

“You and I are not liars, Octavia,” Bellamy says quietly.  “Don’t ever let them make you think we are.”

“Are you going to be okay?” she asks after a long silence.  “With all of this?”

“I have to be.”

She scoffs.  “Don’t put on that strong act for me.  It’s not doing either of us any favors.”

He looks over at her.  “It’s not for you,” he tells her as they merge onto the highway.  “It’s for me.”

It’s funny, Clarke thinks, how everything in this town always seems to come down to the beach.

It was the first part of Kennebunkport she fell in love with, it was the place that grounded her.  It was the place where, all those months ago, she saw Bellamy and Octavia together for the first time, without the yoke of civilized society that they thought they had to wear.

Now she’s standing in the shallows, sand wet under her feet, waves rushing over her toes, the hemline of her cocktail dress brushing around her knees.

The date is August 27th.

Tonight is the last major event on the Kennebunkport River Club’s summer schedule.  Tomorrow Clarke gets into a car with her father and drives out of Maine for what might be the last time.  Tonight, Bellamy and Octavia Blake are packing up Bellamy’s car and driving back to Virginia.  Tonight, Clarke will say goodbye to the person who had carved out a piece of her heart so big that she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to fill it in again.

The evening air is cool against her skin, which feels feverish to the touch.  Her hair is pinned up into a sweeping updo, her makeup is flawless, her dress ironed to perfection.  As always, on the outside Clarke Griffin looks like the pinnacle of high society.  On the inside, she is a rioting mass.  She wants to get in her car and drive and drive and drive.  Pick a highway and go until she runs out of gas and then get out and walk until her feet gave out.  But she’s promised Jake that she would put in one last appearance.  And she’d promised Bellamy she’d say goodbye.

Even if the idea of looking him in the eye for the last time makes her want to dive into the waves and never come up for air.

Bellamy is only here because he knows that Clarke will be.  But standing in the foyer of the Kennebunkport River Club, wearing semi-formal clothes that still make him feel itchy under the collar, he wishes he didn’t have to be.

Aurora was checked in and settled in her new permanent hospital room.  His and Octavia’s things were packed into boxes and suitcases in the front hallway, ready to be transferred into his car and driven home, back to Virginia.  The house was sold to a retiring couple from Pennsylvania for enough money to seriously deplete the pile of debt Aurora Blake had left for her only son to manage.  Everything has fallen into place, and yet Bellamy still feels like none of this is right.

He’s been chain eating skewered shrimp for the last twenty minutes, just to give himself something to do.  Octavia had vanished immediately after their arrival, he guessed to go track down the few friends she’d made over the summer to say goodbye.  The four of them had already planned a trip down to DC for Christmas break.  This wasn’t going to be goodbye for them.

The smell of roses precedes the familiar hand on his arm and he turns, one arm reaching for the familiar curve of Clarke’s waist.  He barely notices the deep blue of her dress or the fancy twists of her hair before he’s burying his face in her neck and her head is dropping to his shoulder, arms cinching tight around his waist.

“Hi,” she whispers into his hair.

“Hey,” he manages back and even to him, his voice sounds choked.

“Everything ready to go?” she asks.

“Yeah.”  A pause.  “But I wish it wasn’t.”

She laughs, a shaky sound that makes his hands tighten on her hips.

They pull away from each other but her arms remain linked around his neck, his solidly on her waist.

“This can’t be goodbye forever,” she says but it sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself.  “We could--”

“We talked about it, Clarke, you know we did.”

She bites down hard on her lip, looks away.  Nods.

It had been late, about a week after Clarke had booked her tickets.  They’d been lying side by side in Clarke’s bed, his fingers tracing nonsensical patterns down her arms as her eyes lingered over his face.

“We could try to do long distance,” she’d said suddenly, startling him.

“We could,” he’d acknowledged.

“But,” she said and he’d forced himself to look at her.

“But how could that ever work?”

She’d stayed silent and he’d sighed, rolling over onto his back.  He’d heard the sheets shifting, Clarke rolling up onto her elbow to look down at him.

“We’ve been fighting it since we got here and for a while there I thought we were winning, but we’re from different worlds, Clarke.”

She opened her mouth to say something but he put a finger to her lips, softly, just a barely there pressure.

“I don’t resent you.  There’s no point in it.  It’s no more your fault than mine that this is where we ended up.  But I don’t think I can be with you and see you doing everything you’ve dreamed of while I’m working three jobs and taking community college classes at night just so that my sister can be a normal teenager.”

A tear had spilled down Clarke’s cheek at that and she traced a hand down his cheek.  “I’m so sorry, Bellamy.”

“I know.”

“If I could take you both with me….if that was an option.”

He’d looked over at her and smiled sadly.  “If that was ever on the table, we would already be there.”

“I don’t regret a single second of it,” she tells his collar.  “I want you to know that.”

“I know,” he tells her.  “And, Clarke...this summer has been incredible.  You’re incredible.”

She looks up.  “I love you,” she tells him with such bare honestly that he feels his heart constrict.  “So much.”

He nods, taking a moment to bring back his composure.  “There will always be a part of me who will never stop loving you.”

She nods and hesitates, then swiftly leans up on her tiptoes and seals their mouths together.

Bellamy had thought that their first kiss tasted like promise, like youth, like hope.  This one is bittersweet.  There’s something lingering under the surface, like maybe a promise.  A promise that someday none of this will matter, that they’ll be on equal footing again, whether someday is next year or in twenty, they’ll find their way back together.

She pulls away first.  Bellamy blinks down at her as she stares up at him, eyes wide, lips still parted.

“Remember me,” she whispers.

He takes her hand and presses it over his heart.  “Always,” he vows.

She nods.

He makes himself turn away and weaves back through the crowd.  Octavia catches his arm, squeezing.

“Is it over?” she asks.

He nods.  “Yeah,” he manages.

“Okay, big brother.”  She heaves a sigh.  “Let’s go home.”

She tucks her arm through his elbow and takes the lead, tugging him out of the crowded ballroom. As they pass the flung open double doors to the patio something makes him look to his left.  The ocean rocks gently against the horizon of a vivid sunset, reds and oranges and yellows splashed against the darkness of the sky.  A solitary figure stands, shoulders thrown back, head held high, at the railing watching the boats shift in the marina.

She refuses to bristle at the nickname. “Great, then get out of my hair. I have work to do.”

“But watching you work is so entertaining. I might learn something from her supreme highness of Detecting.”

“Fuck off, Blake.” The record will show that she tried to be civil. Kind of.

She wishes she could say that they haven’t always been this way, but from the day she got the job a year ago, if there was a fire, there was Bellamy. And where Bellamy was, the snarky, biting remarks flowed in abundance.

To be fair, she’s the one who started it, when she’d offhandedly commented on the severity of the burn damage at the first crime scene they’d worked together, aghast that she’d have so little evidence to work with. New to the force, and with the ever-present knowledge that she was the great Mayor Griffin’s daughter, she was eager to prove that she’d worked her way here of her own accord, not on her mother’s coattails. And there she was, evidence turning to ashes in front of her eyes.

She hadn’t even noticed him standing next to her when she says, aloud, that she only wishes the fire department had been there quicker. So she can almost understand his anger—she’s the first to know what it’s like to have the very core of your work criticized—but that doesn’t excuse him from responding as strongly as he does.

“We might as well go on record saying that we started the damn fire then, I guess?” he says, turning on her. “Anything to keep a black mark off your precious record.”

She’s almost speechless for a second—only half surprised by the immediate animosity from someone she’s never met. She knew, in the back of her head, that she’d get this from someone eventually, but actually experiencing it is a whole different thing.

She feels the blood rush to her face. “Hey, relax alright? This isn’t personal, I just wanted to catch the guy.”

He scoffs, still scowling as he crosses his arms. “Oh, I’m sure you did,” he sneers. “But you know, I hear they hand out medals for almost catching the bad guy, too, so don’t worry too much about it.”

“What exactly do you want from me?” she seethes, abandoning any pretense of professionalism for a second, barely restraining herself from jabbing a finger to his chest—which is broad in a way that really annoys her, just on principle. “To do a sub-par job? Because it seems like you’ve already got that part covered.”

It’s, admittedly, not her finest moment.

From then on, he always has something to say about her—uptight, all-knowing, pretentious—and she has plenty ammunition of her own—cocky, presumptuous, careless. They fling variations of the same tune back and forth so many times that it’s almost second nature. He knows that her mother’s position is a sore-spot, and she’s come to realize that his pride in his job is the one thing he values over all else, and they’re both relentless in picking at the other’s weakness.

Now, with the upswing in arson reports this month, Clarke’s seeing a lot more of him than she’d prefer. But after working countless, agonizing crime scenes with him since she started, at least now she can readily admit—maybe not out loud, or to his face, but still—that if there’s one thing Bellamy Blake does well, it’s his job. And she has a sneaking suspicion that he’d say the same about her.

You know, if held at gunpoint.

So here they are, a year later, with some level of basic trust, undermined by petty animosity and no small number of biting remarks.

“Just… let me know if any of the other guys saw anything strange, alright?” she sighs, looking back toward the charred kitchen, “We need all the perspective we can get to catch this guy.”

He gives her a wordless mock-salute as he walks away, and she thinks he’s actually being half-pleasant for once until he turns back, catches her watching, and drops into a low bow. She glares, and his laughter carries back to her as she turns to get back to work.

The next week, it’s an ice cream shop, she has no further leads, and everything is frustrating.

“Maybe it’s a 10-year-old who’s angry they wouldn’t let them buy their mint chocolate chip,” Bellamy says, appearing at her shoulder.

She almost smiles. “An angry 10-year-old who leaves no evidence of their accelerant and manages to keep off all the security footage?”

His laugh is humorless. “Clearly you didn’t know my sister at 10 years old.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister at all, actually,” she says. Which is true. This might be the most personal information she’s ever had about Bellamy Blake.

He just hums shortly, probably realizing the same thing at about the same time. He doesn’t meet her eyes and she lets the subject drop.

“So what next then?” he asks after an awkward moment, voice overly bright, with a hint of irony. “Chasing the phantom arsonist? Gonna get the ghostbusters in here? Shouldn’t be a problem for us, I’m sure you have those kinds of connections.”

Right back to normal. Familiar territory.

She rolls her eyes. “Why are you still here? Get out of my crime scene, Blake.”

“Oh,” he gives her a look of mock-confusion, placing a hand to his chest, “Was there not just a fire? Did I not just--,” he looks around in wonder, “put it out and save your crime scene? So careless of me. I better go get you some donuts, at least make myself useful.”

She refuses to acknowledge the theatrics. “It’s really the least you could do.”

“My genius makes you self-conscious, I get it,” he says, lofty. “I’ll just get out of your hair then.” He punctuates the sarcastic comment with a tug of one of her curls before she has time to dodge.

She makes a face. “Pest.”

“Princess.”

After that, it’s a public school in the most disadvantaged part of town, and she’s moved past frustration to anger.

“I can’t believe they’d stoop this low,” she seethes to Lincoln. It’s one thing to hit the wealthy parts of town, but this is… she shakes her head.

Lincoln just nods in silent, sullen agreement.

The call came in at midnight. It’s 2 a.m. now and the fire department is just finishing up on the school. She hasn’t seen Bellamy since his helmet disappeared into the flames two hours ago, but now, finally, seeing his freckled, soot covered face emerge from the blackened building, she lets out a breath without quite realizing that she was holding it, before turning back to Lincoln.

Predictably, she sees Bellamy make his way over once his job is finished and sends Lincoln off to check in with the rest of the team and divvy them up to comb the crime scene just as he steps up beside them.

She blames the early hour for whatever part of her brain decides to say, “I assume you’ve prepared new insults for today,” with a sigh as she sinks down to sit on the parking lot curb.

He sits down beside her, slowly, giving her a strange look.

“Sorry Spock. Too early. Or… late? Fuck, I don’t know. Anyway, you’re on insult duty today.” She realizes, belatedly, that he looks as tired as she feels, slumping backward to lean on his elbows. “I decided.”

She only vaguely registers that he caught the reference.

“This sucks,” she grinds out. “Like, an empty house in a nice part of town? Dick move, but fine, I guess. A fancy ice-cream place? Whatever.” She waves a hand tiredly.

He snorts.

“What?”

“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to say that someone setting a house on fire is ‘fine.’”

She snorts back. “What, are you gonna file a complaint against me?”

“Nnng, too tired.” He yawns hugely. “I’ll probably forget by tomorrow. You got lucky.”

She’s smiling softly up at the sky, until she realizes that she’s smiling because of Bellamy. Which is—she’s not sure how to deal with that.

She clears her throat. “Who sets fire to a school for disadvantaged kids though? They won’t be able to get back in there for days.”

He hums. “Weeks maybe.”

At his response, she sits up straighter, turns to look at him head on.

He’s still leaning back, but he shifts to meet her eyes. “What?”

“You usually have something quippy to add when I’m complaining about things.”

He blinks a little, like he hadn’t realized he’d agreed with her, and is as surprised by their accordance as she is.

After a moment, he just shrugs. “Nah. It’s fucked up.”

“Huh.”

As she ponders if she should take this as a sign of the oncoming apocalypse, she hears a faint series of clanks from the alleyway beside the school, jagged and sharp against the quiet night.

She bolts upright, halfway to her feet before a coherent thought can cross her mind. The arsonist. Her culprit. Finally.

Then she’s sprinting toward the school and around the corner, urging her tired limbs to move faster. Bellamy’s voice rings from somewhere behind her, but her pulse is pounding too hard in her ears for her to hear anything else, her attention solely focused on closing this case. Finally.

She swings around the corner just in time to see a lanky teenager, greasy hair hanging past his ears, drop a spent can of spray paint to the concrete. It falls from his fingers to clatter loudly on the ground.

In the back of her mind, she knows that it doesn’t make sense, that their elusive arsonist would never stick around to tag his work, but logic doesn’t have place in her sleep deprived, manic state, adrenaline pushing her forward.

“Police! Stop where you are!”

She sees his eyes go wide, his body bracing to flee, but she’s got a head start, and her momentum gives her enough time to get past him, blocking his escape down the other end of the alley.

Left only with the way back toward the parking lot where her squad is set up, he lunges for her, quicker than she’s ready for. She’s has more combat training than he does, though, and breaks from his grip after a short struggle. But before she can reach for her gun he’s lunging for her again.

He’s not taller than her, or larger, but he’s aggressive in a wild, unrelenting way and it takes her long moments to get the upper hand, finally leveraging her weight against him to trap him down against the cracked cement.

He’s still struggling too much for her to pull out her handcuffs when she hears Lincoln’s voice and footsteps moving toward her. He appears at her side, easily cuffing the delinquent, his added weight effectively ending the fight.

“Clarke. I’m taking him in.”

Not him, she thinks, mind running wild and fast. Wrong person. Wrong wrong wrong.

“Hey,” Lincoln says, “are you alright?”

She only realizes how heavily she’s breathing when he has to ask again.

“Clarke. I need you to tell me that you’re okay.”

She turns to meet his steady eyes, forcing a miniscule nod. Slowly, she pushes herself up and off of the suspect, only to sink back down against the alley wall, lungs still protesting from the struggle as Lincoln pulls the teenager to his feet, hefting him off toward the parking lot. Before he’s gone, she hears him say something, though presumably not to her.

“Hey! Stay with her. Make sure she’s alright.”

Seconds later, Bellamy appears beside her, breathing heavy, eyes wild. In the mess of her thoughts, she manages a single, grim, coherent one: of course he’d be here for this.

His hand falls heavily on her knee as he crouches next to her. “Clarke? Fuck, all you alright? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she says, words coming out in huffs of breath. “I’m fine,” she says again, louder.

“Jesus,” he breathes, collapsing back against the wall beside her.

The chorus of wrong, wrong, wrong still rings through her head.

He’s silent for a long moment, and then, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Her breathing is more even now, but standing up still seems out of reach. Forming a sentence seems doable though.

She grits her teeth. “I was thinking I was doing my job.”

After a beat, he laughs harshly. “Then how come I’m the one who had to get Lincoln to come help you? Isn’t having back-up part of your job?”

“Fuck.”

It hits her then, how thoroughly she could have screwed this up. How badly this could have gone for her. Never mind that it had been the wrong person, she’d thrown all semblance of protocol out the window.

“Fuck,” she says again, stomach dropping. “You’re right.” Her head falls into her hands. “And wasn’t even our fucking guy.”

When he laughs this time, it’s like he actually finds something funny.

She musters the energy to lift her head and glare. “What?”

His shoulders are still shaking as he holds up two fingers, and it takes him a second to get over his mirth and speak.

When he does, he’s still smiling. “Two things. One, you just told me I was right. It’s a momentous occasion.” If it’s possible for her to glare harder, she does. “Two, even when you screw up, you don’t screw up.”

That catches her off guard. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t catch our guy, but you put away a teenager for defacing public property. You can’t even fail properly, Griffin.”

She must be delirious, between the early hour and the events of the morning, because suddenly she’s laughing too.

After a surprised look, Bellamy’s laughter grows softer and he shakes his head at her, leaning back against the wall again.

Eventually they both lapse into silence, though her breath still comes out a little jagged. She presses her hands down hard against the cement to stop their shaking.

“Why do you try so hard?” he asks after a long moment of silence, head still resting against the wall. “Your mom can always clean up after you if you mess up.”

It’s not unkind, the way he says it. Not like he’s attacking her, but like he’s genuinely curious.

She considers not telling him, leaving him with a snarky non-answer, but she thinks she might feel better if she says it out loud, so she takes a breath.

“This…” she struggles for the right words, to make him understand. “This position is me doing my own thing. Being my own person without using,” she makes weak air quotes, “the ‘Griffin safety net’. Without her watching my back and cleaning up my messes. This is what I want to do, my choice of career. So it matters.”

She lifts her eyes to look at him, voice a little stronger. “It matters that the second I screw up, the immediate response will be ‘Oh yeah, that’s Griffin’s daughter. She’s only here because of her mother. No wonder she’s a shit detective.’”

She looks back down, fascinated by the dark dust left on her hands from the cement. “And then any credibility or respect that I’ve got is gone. Anything that I’ve created for myself here…forget about it. Because everyone else will have.”

Bellamy’s silent for a long moment, and she’s honestly not sure if she’s even going to get a response.

“I guess I never thought about it like that,” he says finally.

She shrugs. “I don’t expect people to.” She doesn’t, really. Because she knows it’s nice to dislike someone for their parents sometimes, to have someone to complain about, like the girl who only seems to have a job because her mother’s important. “As long as I can get them to see that I’m serious, and a want to do a good job, and help people… that’s all that matters to me.”

He’s silent for longer this time, and she’s not sure if she’s expecting a scathing remark or a sympathetic one, though she can’t say she’d rather have one over the other.

In the end, she gets neither as the silence stretches on, though she does think she sees him nod out of the corner of her eye.

After a while, he stands up, pushing off from the wall, and offers her a hand. “C’mon. You should get back.”

She takes it with a nod of thanks, and he follows her down the alley.

Clarke comes down with a nasty cold the next week, and though she says she’s fine when she hears that their arsonist has hit again, Lincoln remarks over the phone that he can literally hear her exhaustion—which, yeah, probably—and insists that she stay home and let the rest of the squad handle this one.

They find nothing, as always, though she still makes Lincoln send over the pictures for her to overanalyze. Over-warm in the stuffiness of her apartment, she heaves open her window and climbs out onto the fire escape to shuffle through the pictures as she works her way through three boxes of kleenex.

There’s nothing there, of course, leaving her with nothing to obsess over but the things she’d said in the alley last week.

Luckily, their perpetrator is generous enough to start another fire the following week, at the Jaha Corporation downtown.

“Missed you at the crime scene last week,” Bellamy says, snarky as always, as he falls in step beside her when she’s heading in from the parking garage. His hair is particularly messy today, and it annoys her for some reason.

“I was sick.”

He’s silent for a second, and when she looks over, he’s staring at her expectantly.

She raises an eyebrow, “What?”

He shakes his head a little. “Oh, sorry, I legitimately thought you were going to follow that up with ‘of your shit.’ My bad.”

He says it with the same tone that he always does, no evidence that he’s taking pity on her after her… outburst a couple weeks prior. And it’s somehow comforting that this has stayed the same, after she gave up something so close to herself. She’d thought of it as a loss at the time. Like telling him about her mother was conceding the battle. Because now he knows something personal about her, and she’s got nothing on him.

But he’s talking to her with his usual snark, not dancing around her feelings or even holding it over her. She’s not sure which of those she’d been expecting, but she’d been expecting one of them. Not this. Not their usual dynamic.

She smiles before she can help it. “Yeah, well, the day’s still young.”

His bark of laughter is just as sarcastic as usual, but he meets her eyes when he does it, and it’s less at her and more with her and… it’s kind of a lot to handle—Bellamy Blake acting friendly.

The crime scene turns out to be enough to take her mind off the anomaly. There are about a thousand pieces of evidence to process in the office building, which sounds like it should be a good thing, but they honestly have no idea what’s actually relevant and what’s not, so it’s mostly monotonous and discouraging.

Bellamy’s actually nowhere to be seen around the building after she gets to work, which is surprising considering his tendency to brood around the outskirts and make unhelpful comments. She wouldn’t say she misses him, but it is fairly strange, not having him there. Better, she tells herself, easier to get things done without him around. Which really isn’t a lie, but also doesn’t feel true for the reasons she wishes it were.

She’s finally takes a break after helping Monty with what they think is a footprint, but, after a good amount of scrutiny just turns out to be a coincidental pattern of soot.

She flops down on a bench outside the massive office building, heaving a heavy sigh, peeling off her jacket.

She’s hardly there for five minutes when a paper bag is dropped unceremoniously on her lap.

“What the f--,” she starts, looking up to see that it’s Bellamy, now taking a seat beside her, as her exclamation fades into rolling eyes. She can’t help but notice that he’s changed out of his uniform, and that a black t-shirt and jeans is really… not a bad look on him.

“What is this?” she asks, refocusing her eyes on the mysterious bag in her lap.

“Donuts,” he supplies promptly, grin shit-eating.

She rolls her eyes harder this time. “Are you serious?”

“You did say it was the least I could do.”

She’s moves to set the donuts down between them, dismissing the joke, but he stops her with a hand against hers, pushing the bag back toward her. When she looks at him, he doesn’t meet her eyes, and his words are more gruff than usual, if that’s possible.

“Take the damn donuts. You’ve been here for hours and I know you haven’t eaten anything…” He pauses, like he’s debating his next words. “And we can all tell you’re still sick.”

He’s not wrong, and she’s unfairly endeared, because his voice is still gruff and grudging, a there’s hint of color at his cheeks. “Can’t expect you to catch our arsonist if you can’t even take care of yourself.”

It’s hard not to blush, because no matter how much he tries to play it off, it’s incredibly thoughtful—and somehow makes her heart beat a little faster—so she ducks her head and accepts the stupid donuts.

“Not like you’re any better,” she says after a second, because she’s seen him work himself to the bone, covered in soot and sweat, more times than she can count.

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her for a long moment with an expression that says just eat the damn donuts.

Finally, she gives in with an exaggerated sigh—“Fine.”—pulling out a donut smothered in powdered sugar. She is pretty hungry, and she’ll admit that the donut is amazing, nearly moaning as the sugar melts on her tongue.

“I see the stereotype is true, then,” Bellamy says, trademark grin in full force.

“Shut up,” she mumbles around her donut. He grins wider.

The just sit there for a while, Clarke enjoying the donuts while Bellamy fiddles with his phone. It’s not necessarily an uncomfortable silence, but it still feels like something that needs to be filled.

She’s just opening her mouth to talk when he starts speaking.

“When I was a kid, our house burned down.”

Surprised by the sudden topic, Clarke turns toward him, but he’s not looking at her, opting instead to stare up at the building in front of them, mind clearly somewhere else.

“It really sucked, because we were poor already, what with my mom’s drug problem.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, lost in sadness or memory, she can’t quite tell. When it seems like he might not speak again, she prompts him.

“What did you do?” she asks, just as quiet, and slow, because this is definitely uncharted territory for them.

“We moved into this horrible, tiny apartment and I got another job.” He runs a hand down his face. “Sometimes I wished, as horrible as it sounds, that our mom would die, because then Octavia—my sister—wouldn’t have had to be around her.” His words look like they’re physically exhausting, requiring effort to force them out, and she wonders why he doesn’t stop. “But now I know that it would have been a bitch to get custody when I was still a minor, so I guess it was better, in a way.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and she doesn’t know what to say, so she stays quiet too, figures that he’ll talk if he wants to talk.

“She died when I was 21 and O was 17.”

She lacks the right words for something so awful. “Bellamy…I’m sorry.”

He shrugs, but she can see the tension in his shoulders. “She was a shitty parent.”

“A shitty parent is still a parent,” she says. “It must have been hard for you both.”

He looks like he’s going to disagree for a second, but then his shoulders slump. “Yeah. It was.”

On impulse, she leans into his shoulder a little, unsure if it’s the right move until he leans back after a second.

“Your house… that’s why you became a firefighter?”

He hums in affirmation, shoulder still warm against hers.

“Why did you tell me all this?” she asks after a while. She finds that she likes knowing, which is strange in itself, but doesn’t explain why he decided to open up.

He shrugs, carefully nonchalant. “You spilled your demons, I’m spilling mine. We’re even.”

His words hit her like a ton of bricks, forcing her to realize how much they understand each other, despite all their animosity—though even that’s fading now. He doesn’t say it exactly, but she can see he knows that this was exactly what she’d been worried about—being somehow at his mercy because of a traumatic night and an impulsive spilling of words.

She smiles a little, the embarrassment of the night flooding back, but also feeling warm for reasons she can’t quite explain. “So what you’re saying is that you definitely had it worse than me.”

He laughs shaking his head. “It’s not a competition. I’m just saying I know what it feels like to have the odds stacked against you.”

“Okay, but not living up to my mother’s crazy legacy isn’t quite the same as having to raise a child and find a career while still managing to eat.”

“No, it’s not. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t trade my life for yours in a heartbeat, but I haven’t been through what you have, and you haven’t been through what I have.” He shrugs again. “Competing over who had a shittier life is pointless.”

He’s so serious, and she appreciates and really, seriously, respects that, because it’s so far from where they began, and from what she ever expected from him, which is probably pretty horrible of her.

But she doesn’t really know how to say all that. What she does know is how to lighten the mood between them, so she settles for that instead.

“Okay, but my life is still less shitty, sorry.”

Bellamy snaps to look at her, almost disbelieving, but he softens when he sees her teasing smile.

He huffs a laugh. “Alright, well then hand over one of those donuts, because I definitely deserve them over your privileged ass.”

She laughs, handing over the bag. “Yeah, you probably do.”

That Sunday, it pours down rain like it hasn’t in ages and Clarke holes up in her apartment, swathed in her father’s old sweater and a pair of leggings.

She’s always loved the rain and the way it makes the world feel small and safe, makes the air feel charged with something like magic. She makes a pot of coffee and idly muses that this means there won’t be any fires today. Unless someone tries really hard.

Deciding that the rain is better enjoyed from the fire escape where she can feel the cold air and hear the drops plinking against the overhang, she pulls on a pair of fuzzy socks and heads out with a blanket and her sketchpad.

Her building faces out into a somewhat busy street, mostly empty now due to the downpour, and she takes to sketching the window boxes of the apartment building across the way.

An hour later, realizing she’s let her coffee turn cold, she steps back inside to warm it up, humming under her breath. When she climbs back outside, she rests her arms against the cold railing, leaning out just far enough for a few fat raindrops to land on her nose. She wipes them away and lets her eyes drop to the street, two floors below, watching the few brave pedestrians huddled under umbrellas that bob along the sidewalk. Her eyes skim over them and catch on a hunched figure, sheltered only by a soaked newspaper in the downpour.

She has to look away and then back before she realizes that the figure is a familiar one. And then she thinks she’s just making herself see things—a side effect of the silly crush she’s probably going to have to admit to soon. But, after a moment, the light from a streetlamp catches on his face, freckled, with brows drawn together.

Bellamy?

She thought she’d heard him mention that he lived just outside of town, not in the thick of it, like her, which means he must be out on some errand, and not just on his way home.

Out on an errand. In the rain. Without a stupid umbrella.

She yells down to him before she really stops to consider, and then yells again, louder, when he doesn’t hear her the first time. His hair is wet and pressed close to his head when he finally looks up, with what she assumes is a confused expression on his face. She thinks that he eventually recognizes her, judging by the change in the set of his shoulders, but then she might actually be delusional.

Either way, after shouting into the wind for him to come to the door—accompanied by pointing and gesturing, and a lot of confused head tilts on his part—his figure finally turns toward her building and she climbs back inside, pulling on a pair of worn boots and snatching her keys before rushing out the door.

She turns around and goes back a moment later, on second thought, for a towel.

When she gets down to the lobby, Bellamy’s waiting outside the door, looking very much like a lost, wet, puppy and she has to try ridiculously hard not to laugh.

(She’s definitely smiling when she opens the door, though.)

“Need something, Princess?” he says before she gets a word out. The nickname doesn’t hold the same sting when she can see through his façade of gruffness; like he’s pretending he doesn’t know she’s going to invite him inside. Like he’s not currently shivering and drenched head to toe. It’s only very slightly cute.

“No, but you do,” she says with a small grin, tilting her head, indicating that he come inside.

For all the careful nonchalance of his greeting, he comes inside with little insistence on her part. She stifles another laugh and hands him the towel.

He takes it with a sheepish grin, tossing it immediately over his head to dry his hair.

“Hi, Bellamy.”

The sheepish grin he gives her this time tells her that knows how stupid he’s being. “Hi, Clarke.”

He finishes with his hair, and it falls, damp and messy, across his forehead as he drapes the towel across his neck. It’s definitely not working for her. At all.

“What are you doing in town without an umbrella?” she manages.

He scowls comically then, looking back toward the door where rain still plummets down outside, like it actually decided to show up just spite him.

“I was trying to pick up flowers for my sister. She’s coming into town tomorrow.”

“And what, you forgot to check the weather?”

“I took the metro in,” he says, defensive, “and I figured it would clear up pretty soon.”

Her grin keeps getting wider. “And what about the flowers, Bellamy? Were you just going to let them drown?”

“Shut up,” he quips, smiling a little, and she has to stop and marvel at the weirdness of Bellamy Blake being in her apartment lobby for a second.

“You want to come up?” she asks. “Dry off, wait for the rain to pass?”

He shuffles his feet, looking down a little. “No, that’s I’ll right. I’ll just—”

“Go back out into the rain? Get soaked again?” she prompts. “Seriously, I don’t mind.”

He looks like he’s debating with himself for a second—which is dumb, because she’s not actually going to let him go back outside—before finally nodding.

“Okay. Sure.” He looks down at the towel around his neck. “Did I say thanks already?”

“Not yet, no.”

“God, sorry,” he says, following her to the elevator. And then finally, “Thanks, Clarke.”

It’s in all ways different from their earlier interactions, and not at all unpleasant.

“You’re welcome.”

“How did you even see me, anyways?” he asks, a beat later.

“Easy, I was out on the fire escape and I just looked for the idiot who didn’t know how to prepare for the rain.”

His scowl is halfhearted, at best, as they step into the elevator.

After a second, a giggle escapes her lips, when the reality of the situation strikes her.

“What else can you possibly be making fun of me for?”

“Sorry, it’s just—prepared for fire, but not so much for the rain. It makes sense, really. I get it.”

“Fuck off,” he says, but he’s grinning—wide and bright—and she feels pretty proud about it.

They step out of the elevator at her floor, and she fumbles with her keys to unlock her door, only mildly embarrassed about having him inside her apartment. It’s small, to be sure, one bedroom and an open kitchen/living room area, but she likes it. It’s hers, completely, no stitch of her mother to be found.

“So, uh, I have a dryer?” she says as he steps inside, taking in the space. “And some sweats that might almost fit you.”

She flits off to the closet before he can respond, rummaging through the clothes there that she hardly ever wears, finding her father’s old sweats and a huge police department t-shirt because she knows it’ll make him smile. Or roll his eyes. One of the two.

It’s absolutely not something she should care about.

He must get some gist of how awkward she feels when she returns with the clothes, because he takes them with another “thanks,” and then: “Be honest, how much do you love that you’re saving me right now?”

She fully knows that she could take this opening to make fun of him, lord it over him like he expects her to, but something about the air, the rain, the way it feels like this day exists outside of the real world has her responding honestly.

“Someone’s gotta do it. You can’t be the goddamn hero all the time.”

And then, because she’s definitely blushing, she points back down the hallway. “Bathroom’s over there, on the right, and laundry is the next room down.”

She sees him smile when goes though, so it was probably worth it. And she’s probably screwed.

When he comes out of the bathroom, he’s looking down at the shirt she’s given him, half amusement, half annoyance.

“I hate you.”

She cackles, stepping toward the kitchen. “You want coffee?”

If he’s surprised by her casual response, he doesn’t show it. “Yeah, sure.”

She pours a cup for him, and another for herself—because she knows what she’s about—before heading back into the living room. Bellamy takes the mug from her, and she nods him toward the couch.

“It’s a nice place,” he says after a moment, as the silence grows slightly awkward.

“I like it, yeah. Small, but I’m in the city and I don’t pay too much.” She doesn’t think she needs to add the part about not wanting to rely on her mother.

“So your sister?” she asks, in lieu of another bout of silence. “Where’s she coming in from?”

He lights up at the mention, and it’s adorable, but also so far from where they’ve been, from when he’d only mentioned his sister on accident, and from when she never would have dared ask about her.

“Yeah, Octavia,” he says. “She’s coming in from California. She teaches at an elementary school there and they get off pretty early for winter break.”

Clarke can’t help a grin as she tucks her feet up under her on the couch. “So, the whole noble, non-self-serving career thing—that’s genetic?”

“What?”

“You know,” she says, grin forming. “Firefighter. Schoolteacher. It doesn’t get much more storybook perfect than that. Unless I should assume it’s a ruse to hide your dark past.”

“It’s all part of the disguise.”

Clarke hums. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“But yeah, they let out early for winter break, so she’s coming in tomorrow. I was gonna have flowers waiting for her at my place because I’m on duty ‘til six and I can’t pick her up.”

It’s like he doesn’t realize how adorable he is—and she would make fun of him for it, except he really does look put off that he’s too busy to pick up his sister.

“I could pick her up. Monday’s my day off.” She’s not sure why she suggests it, except that she really is free tomorrow, and, you know—his face.

“No way,” he says, but she can’t even think about being offended before he goes on. “I’m not gonna commandeer your free day like that.”

“Okay well I offered, so technically I’m commandeering my free day like that.”

He grins a little, but still shakes his head. “Seriously Clarke, it’s not a big deal, she can find her way on her own.”

“You feel bad leaving your sister to navigate the city on her own.” It’s not a question. They both know the answer.

His response is still reluctant. “Yeah.”

“And I’m free. Ergo, you have a friend who can pick up your sister.”

He’s almost smiling again, which she’s definitely proud about. “You sure?”

“Nope, just offered so I could take it back right now and see how you react,” she says, bumping her shoulder into his, knowing full well that she’s acting like a teenager with a crush, resorting to teasing to avoid actual feelings. She’s super mature.

But he bumps back, and then stays close, so.

“Wanna watch something until the rain lets up?”

Bellamy’s sister is surprisingly easy to find. He texts Clarke a picture of her after he leaves that night—along with another round of unnecessary ‘thank you’s—and she has no trouble spotting the energetic, dark haired woman coming down the escalator at the airport.

Clarke must be fairly recognizable too, because Octavia makes a beeline for her, wide grin on her face that strikingly resembles her brother’s. Because apparently being unfairly attractive is a genetic thing.

“Clarke, right?” she asks.

“Yeah. You must be Octavia?”

She nods. “The prodigal sister.” She pauses, gives an indiscernible look. “Is Bellamy still an idiot?”

“I’m not sure that’s something you should count on changing anytime soon.”

Octavia doesn’t laugh, but she does grin. “Yeah, I see why he likes you.”

“Like might be a strong word.”

They make their way over to baggage claim, and Octavia looks like she wants to fight her on this—the like comment, not the baggage claim—but then she seems to let it slide.

“Whatever you say,” she says instead. And having a Blake not fight with her might be weirder than the alternative.

They find her bags easily and head back out the parking lot, Clarke asking about her school all the while.

By the time they get the car started, Clarke can already say she really likes Octavia. She’s young, obviously smart, and dedicated to her students. And Clarke can see exactly why Bellamy is proud of her.

She drives them back to his place, per his insistence that he’s not going to intrude on her any more than he already has. He did seem vaguely worried that she’s going to find something wrong with it. Which is ridiculous. He’s seen her place already.

Octavia’s never been here either, since he’s apparently moved apartments since the last time she visited, so they get turned around a couple times on the way there, but they eventually find the building and the promised guest parking.

They get in the front door with the access code he’d given them and, when they get up to the third floor, Clarke finds the key under the mat, where he said it’d be. When she picks it up, she notices the small piece of paper attached to it, and pauses to read.

Proof that Clarke Griffin is Bellamy Blake’s friend.

It’s written in Bellamy’s messy scrawl and she has to work to keep a smile from filling her entire face. She slips the paper in her pocket, but not, she wagers, before Octavia gets a look at it judging from the smirk on her face.

Bellamy’s place is a bit smaller than hers, Clarke notes as they head inside, but it’s tidy and very him. Masculine, but not overbearingly so. It’s warm.

She and Octavia settle into his couch with coffee, because it’s clearly the only way Clarke knows how to socialize, and she fills Octavia in on the broad details of the case they’ve been working.

After that topic exhausts itself… the conversation isn’t exactly awkward, but after few minutes, Octavia spots Bellamy’s Wii, and that definitely makes it easier.

Which is how they end up a few games deep in Mario Kart by the time Bellamy shows up.

“And here I was worried about you two not making yourselves at home. Clearly a lapse in judgement.”

“Bell!” Octavia exclaims as Clarke turns toward his voice. He’s been swept up in his sister’s arms by the time his eyes meet hers, soft smile on his face.

“You two pass the time okay?”

“Yeah,” Clarke says. “Mostly spilling the secrets of our case.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t get any of the delicate details,” Octavia says, pulling away from her brother, “Just the general gist, and that she’s so much more badass than you.”

He meets Clarke’s eyes. “Yeah. She kind of is.”

“I’m gonna need that in writing.”

He rolls his eyes, but otherwise doesn’t look the least bit annoyed by her teasing, and she’s thinking that being his friend would be perfectly fine if the slightest smile from him didn’t make her stomach twist. She needs some self-restraint.

“You’re staying for dinner, right?” he asks, in lieu of fighting snark with snark.

“You have to,” Octavia says. “He’ll be insufferable if you don’t, because if he can’t feed you, that means he hasn’t sufficiently paid you back.”

“I have enough dignity to admit that she’s not wrong about that,” he says.

“Yeah, because driving twenty minutes to the airport was such a struggle.”

Bellamy narrows his eyes, like he’ll actually hold it over her if she doesn’t stay. Which—she hardly needs convincing.

“But fine, I’ll stay. It’s a good thing mooching free food off of you is one of my favorite pastimes.”

He rolls his eyes. “I knew you liked me for something.”

And yeah… she does.

Dinner is amazing, because Bellamy would be an great cook, damn him, and conversation flows easier when there’s someone to trade teasing jabs with.

It’s late by the time she leaves, with a tight hug from Octavia and a smile from Bellamy that warms her toes.

The worst fire so far comes only four days later, just after Octavia leaves town, at a hospital downtown.

Clarke gets there when the fire is still in full force, the firefighters still focused on saving the people inside before starting the process of putting out the flames. It’s contained to just one wing of the hospital, mostly offices and empty examination rooms, and she hears employees expressing relief that it won’t affect many inpatients.

She lets herself breathe.

As always, Bellamy is already there, and she sees him rush in and out of the building as they clear the upper floors, tugging children and adults outside, into safety, as the fire builds in intensity. She’s not a firefighter, but after the months she’s spent on this case, she gets the feeling that this building might not be salvageable.

In the meantime, she starts interviewing those witnesses that she can, though it’s hard; Many are too shaken up still to provide relevant details, and some are still waiting for loved ones to be evacuated.

As time passes, the flow of civilians delivered to safety slows, and most people seem to be accounted for. She catches Bellamy’s eyes as he steps out of the building for the last time, he meets hers with a grim smile before making his way toward her.

Just as he reaches her, a woman appears at Clarke’s side, all fear and anxiety as she latches onto her arm, sending a jolt through her. “My daughter! Mel! She’s still inside! Please, they have to save her!”

Before Clarke can suggest anything, Bellamy’s turning back toward the building—now ablaze in the truest sense of the word—with nothing but a quick assurance; “I’ll find her.”

“Bellamy!”

She doesn’t have time to say anything more. He’s gone as quickly as he was there, and the woman is still clinging to her arm. It takes Clarke long moments to reluctantly put aside her anxiety, but eventually she does, taking the woman’s hands and removing them from her arm to hold them in her own instead, as steady as she can.

“She’ll be alright,” she assures her. “He’ll find her.”

The woman just nods mutely and they both turn back toward the hospital, with bated breath. Each time a firefighter emerges from the blaze, the woman jolts forward a little, but every time, their arms are empty, and every time, it’s not Bellamy. As slow moments drag on, Clarke finds herself craning her neck farther, jumping a little, too, at each glance of a yellow uniform. But it keeps not being him and soon the trickle of firefighters slows.

She’s done this before, seen this all before. She’s been working cases like these for months now, but it’s never been Bellamy who doesn’t reappear when he should. And she knows that soon he won’t be able to breathe, let alone save this girl. She restlessly pushes away images of him struggling for air, alone in the burning hallways of the hospital.

Bellamy always comes out, she reminds herself. Always. But the reassurance rings weak, and false. Bellamy knows the dangers of staying in a burning house too long, which means he knows he should be out by now. And if he’s not, it’s because he can’t be. And with thoughts like those, it’s becoming increasingly hard for her to remain coolly professional.

She starts to look around for Lincoln, to pass the woman off to him before she completely loses it, when she feels her companion surge forward.

“Is that them?” she breathes, hesitant hope written across her face.

Whipping her head toward the building, Clarke catches sight of the yellow uniform the woman must have seen through the smoke. The figure moves laboriously forward, but she can’t see well enough to catch any details. Then, finally, finally, she sees a head of messy hair coming through the door, into the night, arms full of the missing girl.

The woman leaves her side in a flash and the tightness constricting Clarke’s chest finds its release, letting her breathe again, feet carrying her toward him as he passes the girl off to the waiting paramedics and her mother.

Her pace quickens, matching her racing heartbeat, until finally he’s right in front of her, eyes still on the girl—Mel—and looking very much alive.

“Thank God,” she breathes in a rush, throwing her arms around his neck.

He stumbles back under the suddenness of her weight, but she hardly notices, burying her nose into his neck, fingers curling into his uniform. He smells like smoke and soot, but beneath all that he smells like something distinctly Bellamy and her chest lightens further.

As he regains his footing, his arms come up around her, solid and warm, and he must realize that it’s her who’s hugging him, because his embrace tightens after a second and his cheek comes to rest on her hair.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” he whispers after a long moment, voice deep and rough from the smoke. “You’re okay.” She can feel him burying his face further into her neck.

She tries to laugh, but it comes out choked. “I’m not the one who walked into the fiery death house not knowing if I’d come out again.”

He pulls back from her with a laugh, and god, seeing him smiling and alive, albeit somewhat singed, is probably the best thing she’s ever looked at.

“And where’s your fucking helmet?” she asks, watery, as she takes him in, detaching her fingers from the death grip on his arms, but still keeping them on him, reassuring herself of his solid there-ness.

He shrugs, smiling a little ruefully. “Couldn’t see through it. The visor got fogged up.”

She doesn’t have words that are any nicer than you fucking idiot so she keeps her mouth shut and settles for smacking her hand against his arm. He grins again, wide, so she figures he gets the message.

He looks like he’s going to say something more as they stand there, arms braced together, her heart still racing, but as he opens his mouth to speak, his breath catches on a barrage of grating coughs, forcing him to pull one arm out of her grasp to cover his mouth. A paramedic appears at his side, insisting that he’s inhaled a lot of smoke, that they need to check him out.

Clarke tries, weakly, to catch hold of him as they pull him away, but he gently disentangles from her, his hand running down her arm as they hurry him away, fingers catching hers for a second before he has to let go.

“I’m okay, Clarke,” he says over his shoulder, as if he needs to make sure she believes it before they take him away.

“I know,” she breathes, but it’s too quiet for him to hear, so she sends him a soft smile and sees him return it fleetingly, before he finally disappears behind the fire truck.

She lets out a shaky breath, the mantra of he’s okay continuing its endless cycle in her brain as her breathing finally evens out. She’s eventually calm enough to realize exactly how freaked out she’d been when she didn’t know where he was. How much she cares about him.

It’s not necessarily an unpleasant realization. More like a surprise, considering the way she once felt about Bellamy Blake. But it is different to her, somehow, than letting herself be friends with him, or having a tiny crush. It’s an entirely new depth that she wasn’t ready for, and she’s a little terrified, but maybe excited, too, to put a name to it.

But it’s a topic to ponder another time, because she has work to do: witnesses to interview, and evidence to process.

She finds him later, resting against the back of an ambulance, after her team is finished scouring what’s left of the building.

“Hey,” she says, settling down next to him and leaning into his side without really thinking about it. Stupid crush aside, she’s exhausted and still very glad that he’s alive, and it makes her touchy.

“Hey,” he echoes, leaning back, resting his cheek against her hair for a moment. She has to remind herself that this is just how they are. As new as it is, she’s getting the impression that being friends with Bellamy Blake comes with casual affection, and she can deal with that.

“You feeling better?”

“Yeah, just inhaled a lot of smoke. Got yelled at and then given two days off, so clearly my life is like, the worst.”

She laughs, “Slacker. Some of us like getting our jobs done. You know, greater good and all that.”

“Some of us aren’t high-and-mighty perfectionists.”

She rolls her eyes at the jab, reminiscent of their early days, and then pulls back to look at him. To look at where they are, at how far they’ve come.

He looks back at her, clearly exhausted, but smiling, and she might love him, a little.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says.

He’s quiet for a moment.

“Thinking about you... and how pissed you’d be if I didn’t come out,” he grins sarcastically, though the tips of his ears are pink, “it helped.”

She rolls her eyes, even as the flush builds in her cheeks. “I’m blushing, Blake.”

There’s a flash of something like hesitance in eyes for a moment, but she hardly has the chance to wonder what that means before he’s leaning down to kiss her. And she must have good instincts, when it comes to him, because she’s leaning up to meet him before she’s conscious of it.

The kiss is short and his lips are warm, but she doesn’t get to savor it before he pulls away.

“Okay?” he asks, like he’s not sure if she’s into it. Like she didn’t just meet him halfway.

“Yeah,” she breathes, nodding even as she leans back in, chasing his lips.

His hand finds the back of her neck and he kisses her back. She can feel him smiling at her eagerness, and then she’s smiling too, and laughing a little so that their kisses are less kisses and more like the awkward meeting of grins and happy breaths. She regains enough composure to properly kiss him, in a way that she hopes will communicate how much he’s come to mean to her, and he responds in kind. His hand settles at her waist, and hers in his hair as she melts against him, and she thinks that the burning between them might give their elusive arsonist a run for his money.

He breaks the kiss long moments later to rest his forehead against hers. When he laughs softly, she feels the flutter of his breath across her nose.

“What?”

“I’m just thinking about what my past self would think if he could see me,” he says, thumb drawing slow patterns against her hip.

“Oh my god, why her?” she suggests.

“No, more like, god, he looks happy,” he says, with a heart stopping grin.

“Bellamy Blake is a cheesy romantic, alert the presses,” she says, not more than a whisper, before she presses her lips to his again.

Then, before he can respond, “She looks happy, too.”

“Clarke Griffin likes cheesy romantics,” he says, stealing another kiss before standing up and offering her a hand, grinning. “Alert the presses.”

The next time there’s a fire, it’s the first time Bellamy stays over at her place, so the arsonist really must have something out for her in particular. For now, waking up to each other with lazy kisses and warm, sleepy skin will have to wait for another day.

She still holds her breath from the moment Bellamy enters the building ‘til the second she sees him reappear, but there is some solace in the fact that she can wind her arm around him when he comes to find her afterward, and hold him close as he presses a casual kiss to her hair.

“My boyfriend, such the hero.”

“Says my girlfriend,” he says and she can tell how much he enjoys it, using the title, “who literally puts away criminals for a living.”

He rolls his eyes.  Next to him, his phone chirps.  Clarke’s name flashes across the screen.  He opens the text and smiles.

“Clarke and Wells got ice cream,” he tells his sister.

“Isn’t that nice,” she replies sarcastically.  “Thank you, Bellamy, for informing me of Clarke’s every move.”

“I didn’t—“

She tilts her head back to look at him, looking a little cross.  “Bell.  All afternoon it’s been ‘Clarke this’ and ‘Clarke’s doing that.’”

His cheeks heat.

She grins.  “It’s sickening but also a little endearing.”

Despite himself, he laughs. “They’re going to pick house three,” he tells her.  “The wife loved the kitchen.”

“You wanna bet?”

His eyebrows go up. “A week’s worth of chores.”

“You’re on.”

In typical HGTV fashion, the couple is wandering down a tree-lined lane, interwoven hands swinging between them, discussing their options.

“I just loved that kitchen,” the woman sighs and Bellamy grins.

“But the open floor plan of house two was incredible,” her husband counters. “We could watch the kids playing from every room.”

“And it did have great lighting.”

“But that backyard was just so small for the dog.”

They look at each other for a long moment as music swells in the background.

“House three?” she prompts and he nods.

“Mother—!” Octavia yells.

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Bellamy deadpans.  “I really don’t want to know how large your swear word vocabulary is.”

“98% of it is your fault.”

“I didn’t need to know that either.”

His phone chirps again.  Clarke, asking if he and O want to join her and Wells for dinner in town.  When he looks up, Octavia is studying him, brow furrowed.

“What?”

O gestures to his phone.  “What are you going to do when the summer’s over?”

It’s as if she’d dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.  “I don’t know, we haven’t talked about it yet.”

“It’s almost the end of July.”

“I know what the date is, O,” he says defensively.

She lifts her hands in a placating gestures.  “Just….things are going to chance.  You know that, right?  She’s going to go back to her fancy life and meet more fancy friends at Brown and you’ll go back to Virginia and do exactly what you were doing before this summer.”

“And who says that we can’t make it work?” he challenges.

“History.”

He swallows. “I thought you were over all this ‘Clarke is just using you as a distraction’ bullshit.”

“I am.  I don’t think you’re a distraction.  I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”

“Then what’s the—“

“The problem,” Octavia says loudly over him.  “Is that you’re eighteen years old, Bell, and after August you won’t be seeing each other all the time anymore.  Things change and people grow apart.”

“We’re going to make it work.”

She nods.  “I hope so.  Like I said, she’s good for you.”  She smiles at him softly.  “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

He reaches out to ruffle her hair.  “Thanks, O,” is all he can think to say.

Wells went back to Boston on a Thursday and Aurora Blake was released from the hospital two days later.  Clarke had talked to Bellamy sporadically in the days after his mom went home and he’d said she was weak but doing okay.  According to him they still hadn’t talked about the blow up in Aurora’s hospital room.  Clarke, who had practically invented shoving conflicts with parents under the rug, understood.

She’s startled awake five days after Aurora went home by her phone chirping insistently at her from her bedside table.  She groans and rolls over, grabbing it and squinting at the screen.

Bell: O and I are going mini golfing, you game?

Clarke smiles and rolls out of bed.

The house is silent when she tiptoes downstairs, not surprising for such an early hour.  Her parents had both taken the week off work and were likely passed out upstairs after a night spent drinking too much champagne and laughing.  Clarke had made sure she was upstairs and in bed before they came home just to avoid the merrymaking.  Abby was still riding her hard about Brown and course selection and Clarke wasn’t in the mood.

She throws a couple pieces of toast in the toaster and warms up some bacon, chugging back a glass of orange juice before snagging her keys off the counter and sliding into her car.

She meets Bellamy and Octavia in the parking lot for Magic Mike’s Mini Golf, the only respectable course within a thirty minute radius, even if it was clown-themed and probably older than Bellamy, Clarke, and Octavia all put together.  The sign is a bit graying over the entrance to the main building but Clarke has always loved this place.  She and her father had made regular trips when she was a kid, oftentimes with Wells and his father.

Bellamy and Octavia are leaning across Bellamy’s car, seemingly engrossed in a conversation between them.  His hair is ruffling a bit in the slight breeze that’s shifting the hem of Octavia’s dress, the bright summer sun turning their matching eyes a dark chocolate brown in the shadows of their faces.

Octavia is the first to notice her and she raises a hand in greeting.  Her call of, “hey, Clarke!” wafts across the few lanes of empty parking spaces between them and perks Bellamy up.

He grins widely at her, hand reaching out before she’s even within reaching distance to wrap around her waist and pull her in for a quick peck.

“Hey,” he says and she grins back.

“Hey, yourself.”  Her smile slides to Octavia, who’s pretending to look nauseous.  “Hey, O.”

“Gross,” is all the younger girl replies with.

Bellamy grins wider and chucks the back of her hair, his hand sliding into Clarke’s.  “You ready to get your ass kicked?” he asks her and Clarke snorts.

“Please.  I’ve been playing this course since I was four.  You two assholes are going down.”

It turns out that when Bellamy had asked her if she was ready to get clobbered, he hadn’t been talking about himself.  He had been talking about his sister. Octavia Blake is astoundingly good at mini golf.  So good, that after her fifth hole in one in a row, Clarke has come to only one conclusion.

“Where’s the genie, Blake?” Clarke demands.

Octavia just slings her golf club over her shoulder, narrowly missing braining a passing preteen who squawks and runs away.  “A girl never shares her secrets, Griffin,” she replies cryptically as Bellamy lines up his shot.

Bellamy, meanwhile, is atrocious.  Clarke is honestly a bit surprised.  He seems like one of those carelessly jock type guys who played soccer in high school and like doing banal jock things like throwing frisbees and playing touch football in his spare time.  She’s also not quite sure where she got that idea.  But it doesn’t matter.  Bellamy misses half the shots he takes and the times he does manage to hit the ball, it often goes careening in the opposite direction.  At the sixth hole, Clarke and Octavia are forced to stand patiently on the path, making apologetic faces at the line building up behind them as Bellamy tries for his seventeenth shot.

Par was five.  Octavia had done it in three and Clarke in four.  After twenty, Bellamy’s lime green ball finally drops into the hole.

The sigh of relief from the crowd behind them almost has a presence.  Clarke grabs Bellamy’s arm and drags him away before he has the chance to notice.

Surprising no one, Octavia cleans the floor with both of them and Clarke’s too impressed to be angry.  Bellamy buys them all Cokes and they claim one of the grimy picnic tables behind the main building.

Clarke’s ankle wraps around Bellamy’s under the table.  Octavia takes slow sips from her drink, eyes unfocused and out on the course somewhere, watching a group’s progress.

Clarke’s the first to break the silence.  “How’s your mom?”  She asks it quietly, as if that would help temper the awkwardness of the situation.  Nevertheless, both Blake siblings tense, then relax.  But there’s still a tightness in Bellamy’s shoulders that Clarke wishes didn’t exist.

“She’s doing all right,” he says slowly.  There’s a long pause.  “Too tired to do much of anything.”

“And the hospital bills?”

“That’s a fun story,” Octavia mutters into her can and Bellamy shoots her an unreadable glance.

“Mom didn’t tell us about the cancer because it wasn’t responding well to other treatments,” he tells Clarke.  “Which you’d think is even more reason to tell your two kids and only family you’re dying, but whatever.”  There’s bitterness in his tone that makes Clarke reach out and put her hand over his.  He looks down, swallows.  She squeezes.

“But?” she prompts.

“But apparently there’s this new drug they’re testing.  The FDA just approved it for human trials a couple months ago.  And I guess we were in the right time at the right place because Mom’s doctor was able to get her into the trial.”

“Which means the drugs and all her treatment are free,” Octavia offers.

“That’s great,” Clarke tells them and Bellamy shrugs.

“Doesn’t erase the giant mountain of debt she left me with but at least we don’t have to worry about more of it.”  His laugh is bitter.  “We’ll sell the house at the end of the summer, that’ll take care of most of it.”

Clarke has been expecting this. Since Bellamy had told her about the bills, this possibility had been floating around in the back of her head.  The possibility of Bellamy and Octavia leaving.  Leaving Kennebunkport, going back to Virginia.  Leaving Clarke.

It would have happened anyway, a voice in the back of her head chides.

But this is permanent, she protests.

But then, where was her own guarantee that she was ever coming back to Kennebunkport?  Once she had managed to get out from Abby’s thumb and away from the world of rich society housewives and multi-million dollar houses, who said she would ever want to go back?

“Back to Virginia then?” she asks, trying to keep her tone light.

Bellamy nods absently.  “Yep.  O’s got a high school diploma to earn.”

“You’ll come visit us, right, Clarke?” Octavia prompts, eyes shining bright.

Clarke chokes on her answer.  Bellamy’s fingers tighten around hers and squeeze so hard she can feel her knuckles cracking.  “Of course,” she says.  “Of course I’ll come visit you.”

Bellamy goes over to the Griffins’ the next day.  Clarke had told him that her parents would be driving up to Portland for an overnight trip and he’d been hoping to avoid running into both of them.  Jake he didn’t mind but he was almost always followed or preceded by Abby, who though she was no longer looking at him like he was a piece of gum her daughter had scraped off the bottom of her shoe, still had a calculating look in her eye whenever she saw him.

Clarke had said that they were leaving around one, but clearly they’d gotten to a late start because they’re in the driveway, loading a wheeled suitcase into the back of Jake’s spotless Mercedes when Bellamy pulls into the driveway at 1:20.  His hands clench around the steering wheel as he coasts to a stop.  Jake waves to him, a wide grin breaking across his face like waves. Clarke’s nowhere in sight.

Bellamy turns off his car and slides out, wandering up the driveway.

“You here to hang out with Clarke?” Jake asks, slamming the trunk shut.

Bellamy nods.

“She’s in the backyard,” Abby tells him, meaning their stretch of private beach he and Octavia had once accidentally trespassed across.

“Great, thanks,” Bellamy says.  He shoves his hands deep into his pockets and kicks the asphalt of the driveway.

“We should get going, sweetie,” Jake prompts, hand on Abby’s back.  “Leave the young ones to their afternoon.”  He winks and Bellamy smiles back.  “Don’t have too much fun without us.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Bellamy jokes back.

He steps out of the way and watches as they get into the car.  It reverses out of the driveway with the smooth growl that Bellamy has come to associate with money.  He waits for a long unnecessary moment after the Mercedes disappears around the corner to snag the spare key out of the window boxes next to the front door and opens the door.

The house still feels too big to him but he knows it better now.  He doesn’t feel awkward and out of place walking down the hallway alone as he passes the closed door to Jake’s study and the sweeping grand staircase that goes up to the second floor.  He allows his eyes to trace the carpeted stairs and the careful molding of the bannister as he passes.  The upstairs is the one part of the house he’s never seen.  He squashes his temptation and pads into the living room.

True to Abby’s word, Clarke is stretched out on a towel on the beach a few feet from the stairs to the deck.  From his vantage point it looks like she’s only wearing a tank top and a pair of jeans she’d chopped into shorts earlier in the summer.  The sun glints off her hair, turning the blonde into liquid gold.

She tilts her head back when she hears the bang of the screen door and even though he can’t see it, he knows she’s smiling.

“You made it,” she says, happily, reaching up to grab his arm and pull him down.

Her mouth finds his and her lips are soft and taste vaguely of strawberries.  It’s a fast kiss but her tongue still slides past his just briefly before she pulls away, grinning, hand still tangled in his shirt sleeve.  He groans and sinks down next to her, leaning in for a second, longer kiss.

Her hand migrates to the back of his neck, sliding into the dark strands he’d let grow out a little, if only because she seemed to like playing with them so much.

“My parents are gone?” she asks into his mouth, biting down briefly on his lip.

“Ran into them in the driveway,” he breathes into her neck, sliding kisses down to her bare shoulder.  Her head tips back again.  She smells like roses.  “But yes.”

She hums and turns her nose into his hair.  “You smell nice.”

He laughs and she shivers at the brush of his breath across her neck.

“You eat lunch yet?  I made you a sandwich.”

He pulls away after a last kiss to her shoulder.  “No, I’ve been driving Octavia around all day.”

She hands him the sandwich and he slings an arm around her shoulder, pressing a kiss to her hair.

“You are the greatest girlfriend I’ve ever had.”

She leans into him for a second before pulling away and reaching for a second sandwich.  He takes a bite, freezes.  “Does this have…?”

“Extra mayo, just for you, you fucking heathen,” she tells the waves, and Bellamy grins.

They chew in silence for a long moment, not touching but with only inches between them on the towel.  Bellamy’s toes dig into the sand and he breathes in the smell of the ocean.  Gulls wheel overhead, calling to each other.  For just a moment, he allows himself to admit that he’s going to miss this when they leave.

He wonders if Clarke will bring up the overnight bag she’d told him to bring.  It was shoved into his backseat, sparsely packed with a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and his glasses.  She didn’t and neither did he, content to sit next to her on an empty beach, eating his sandwich.

They’d gotten good at silence over the few months of their relationship.  He figured they both needed it.  Bellamy had practically raised Octavia from even before he’d known that was what he was doing and she’d never been a quiet one.  Especially when she was younger she’d always been buzzing about this thing or that thing, this boy she liked or that activity they’d done at school that day.  And Clarke, Clarke lived in a world of loud talkers and posturing.  A summer in Kennebunkport had proved to him that high society types avoided silence to hide the deepest part of themselves, the parts they didn’t want anyone seeing.

He’s not sure how long they’re sitting out there before she speaks again, voice a little rusty with uncertainty.  “I don’t think I want to go to Brown.”

Bellamy chews his bite of sandwich and swallows slowly.  “Then don’t.”

She looks over at him.  He expects her to fight him on it, just like every other time they’ve had this conversation.  He expects her to say something about her family’s expectations, how it’s not that easy.  Instead, all he sees in her eyes is acceptance.

“I’ve told you before, Clarke,” he says carefully.  “And I’ll tell you again.  It doesn’t matter what your last name is or what your parents want you to do.  Live your life for you.”

She looks back out at the water.  A small smile plays around her lips.  “I already wrote the email telling them I changed my mind,” she tells the waves.  “I couldn’t send it though.  But I want to.”

“Have you told Abby?”

She snorts.  “Fuck no.  And I won’t until I’ve done it, until there’s no way she can take control of my life again.”

He reaches for her hand.  “I’m proud of you,” he tells her.

“It’s like you’ve been saying all summer,” she says softly. “It’s about time that I take control of my own life.”

“What are you going to do instead?” he asks.

She leans back on her hands, face pensive.  “I was thinking about backpacking my way through Europe.”

He nods.

“I want you to come with me.”

Clarke hadn’t thought this through.  The words has just popped into her head and she’d said them before she realized what they really meant.  But they’re hovering between her and Bellamy now and from the expression on his face you’d think she’d hit him.  She swallows.

“You want me to come to Europe with you?” he manages finally.

“I do.”  And she means it.  Now that she’s thinking about it, there’s nothing that she wants more than to wander the old and crumbling and winding streets of European city after city, climbing towers, looking out over rooftops, pacing silently through the cavernous halls of the continent’s great churches, leading him through the Louvre, past the famous exhibits of the Vatican Museum.  “Come with me to Europe, Bellamy.”

A wide grin spreads across his face and something warm blooms in her chest.

“I’m sure your mom would love that,” he teases and she slaps his arm.

“I don’t want to think about my mom right now.”

“Then what do you want to talk about?” he teases.  She bites her lip.

“You.  Me.  Us.”

His eyes darken and Clarke somehow feels more apprehensive about this than she did about asking her boyfriend of only a few months to follow her on a backpacking trip across another continent.

“Clarke,” he says slowly, “you know that I’m with you  right?  No matter what you do.  If you go to Brown, if you don’t, if you decide to live under a highway underpass.”  His eyes are serious, beseeching.  “I’m with you until you don’t want me anymore.”

“That’s good,” she breathes, “because I’m never going to not want you.”

She feels him grin against her lips as his mouth seals over hers again and this time the kiss tastes like a promise.

The breeze kicks up shortly after that and they migrate back inside.  Bellamy waits in the living room as Clarke puts their plates in the dishwasher and folds the towel they were sitting on before she jerks her head at him in a wordless request to follow her back into the hallway.

“Did you bring it?” she asks, suddenly apprehensive, even though she knows there’s no reason to.

Bellamy’s shoulders are a line of tension as he nods.  “Do you want me to…?” He gestures towards the door vaguely and she grins.

She drops down onto the second stair and nods.  “Yeah.  If you want to, that is.”

“For Christ’s sake, Griffin,” he replies, fondness coloring his tone and Clarke’s cheeks heat.  She looks away as she hears him unlock the door and open it.

He’s back in minutes, overnight bag slung over his shoulder, keys twisting around his finger.  It’s one of his nervous tics, she’s learned, and that somehow makes her feel even warmer towards him, the idea that he’s just as nervous about this as she is.

She reaches out for his hand and he lets her take it.  Their fingers weave together as she stands and starts up the stairs.

“I’m already intimidated by this fucking carpet,” Bellamy grumbles behind her and she grins.  “Seriously, how the fuck do you keep it this white?  I don’t even think this color is natural in nature.”

“You are a drama queen,” she tells him and she’s rewarded with a squeeze to her fingers.

“You knew that,” he reminds her.  And it’s true.

Until now Clarke has managed to avoid bringing Bellamy upstairs.  Not because it feels too personal but because she feels it exposes too much about her.  Bellamy sees through her like no one ever has and yet there were still those small parts of her that she kept so well guarded that not even he could break down the walls surrounding them.  This, she thinks as she pushed open her door, was her last surrender.  Her last stand.  And she isn’t even going to put up a fight.

Clarke’s room is at the end of the hall, past carefully framed and scientifically placed baby pictures and there her high school graduation, black cap sandwiched down securely over her hair, grinning and happy, Wells’ arm around her shoulder, the two of them clutching their diplomas, watching the world open up in front of them.

Clarke’s door is painted white like the rest of the ones off the hall, nondescript and plain, except for the scuff mark near the bottom, a remnant of her more rebellious pre-teen years.  She pushes it open slowly and looks back at Bellamy. He’s watching her, warmth in his eyes, the product of an emotion she doesn’t want to try to decipher for fear of changing her mind.  Instead, she steps inside and then to the side, and he follows her in, eyes sweeping over the walls.

She looks at the murals, at the constellations painted around her window, at the faded blue of the ceiling, and the massive cork board across from the door and tries to imagine how they must seem to Bellamy.  He takes slow steps to a wall and traces his fingers across the painted surface, following the twisting path of a bouquet of roses as they reach up in vain towards a painted sun.

“This is incredible,” he tells the wall.  “You did this?”

She nods.

There’s wonder in his eyes.  “Thank God you’re not going to med school.”

It seems so incongruous to the gravity of the moment that Clarke can’t help but snort out a laugh.  When Bellamy looks at her, he’s grinning.

“You’re amazing, Clarke Griffin.”

She bites down on her lip and looks away.

“I’m serious.  This…this is insane, I’ve never seen anything like it.”  She hears his footsteps again as he crosses the room, fingertips trailing over the patchwork quilt thrown hastily over the sheets she hadn’t bothered to make that morning, tracing the squares of fabric that made up her childhood.

“My dad’s mom gave me that quilt when I went into high school,” she blurts out.

“I have one like it,” he replies softly.  “It’s folded up in a trunk in the attic.”  He fingers one of the patches, black stitched with the vague outline of the Blink-182 logo.  “Even Clarke Griffin went through an emo phase, huh?”

“We’re all human,” she answers, flopping back on the bed and crossing her hands over her chest.

She doesn’t have to look at him to know that he’s grinning.  There’s a long silence as he takes in the rest of the room.  She thinks about the ticket stubs and photos and playbills stuck to her cork board.  What will he make of these pieces of her life that he didn’t and probably never will know about?

“You looked a lot like Abby when you were younger,” he comments and she turns her head to see that he’s inspecting a photo from her early middle school years.  She’s wearing absolutely too much denim and her hair was chopped short, just under her jawline, her cheeks chubby.

“Everyone always told me I looked like my dad.”

He tilts his head.  “It’s not the physical,” he says slowly. “It’s something in your eyes.”  He looks back at her, studying her face.  “I still see it.  The determination.  It’s one of the first things that drew me to you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “That I’m an asshole?”

“A lovable asshole.”

“Oh, good.  I was worried.”

She almost misses his quick intake of breath.  His footsteps have carried him to about Clarke’s bedside table and she doesn’t have to look up to know what he’s looking at.

“Clarke,” he breathes, and there’s something choked in his voice.

She does look up at him now, eyes finding his and finding a vulnerability there that she wasn’t expecting.  He’s holding the picture frame in a white-knuckled grip, eyes glued to it like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

“I love that picture,” she says softly, sitting up and swinging her legs over onto his side of the bed.

“I’m on your bedside table,” he whispers and she smiles.

“Of course you are.”

He slowly, reverently, puts the picture frame back, adjusting it so it’s just right and Clarke’s eyes slip to it.  Bellamy in a worn t-shirt and boardshorts, can of soda in his hand, hair ruffled into an unruly mess by the sea breeze, eyes alight with the wild grin that’s splashed across his face.

“It’s the first thing I see every morning when I wake up,” she tells him honestly and something in his expression breaks.

“God, I love you,” he says and she holds out her hand to him.

He reaches for it like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver and she pulls him into her, over her, and this is Clarke’s home.

“I love you, too,” she whispers into the skin under his neck before pressing a long kiss there.

His exhale onto her shoulder is shaky but his hands are sure as they fist in the pillow on either side of her head.

“Clarke—“ he starts but she cuts him off.

“Yes.”

She’s fairly sure that she’s never seen him so serious.  “You’re sure.”

In answer she swiftly sits up and strips her shirt off, leaving her in only a polka dot bra and acres of pale skin.  His eyes trace over her collar bones, across her chest, down to her stomach, the waistline of her shorts.  It doesn’t matter how many times Clarke has worn a bikini in front of him but this feels different somehow, in an empty house, in the inner sanctum of her bedroom.

“God you’re beautiful,” he murmurs before leaning forward and capturing her lips with his.

She grins and leans back.  He follows her down, one hand sliding into her hair as the other traced down her side, the callouses on his fingers rough against her skin.

“I figured that would work,” she told the ceiling as his lips track a path across her cheek to her neck.

“You fight dirty, Griffin.”

“It’s not my fault teenage boys are ruled entirely by their hormones.”

She yanks him back by his hair, other hand sliding under his shirt to trace up his back.

“Right, like if I were to take my shirt off right now, you wouldn’t stare.”

She pulls back and grins, finding the mischievous glint in his eyes.

“I never said that.”

His answering grin sends a bolt of heat through her.  He pushes himself up and grabs his shirt by the collar, pulling it over his head in a smooth motion.  His hair is tousled and messy, the bright light in his eyes matched by a flush dark enough to show up under his dark tan and olive complexion.

Clarke lifts a hand and traces it down his chest, feeling out the muscles there.  She looks back up and him and grins.  “It’s okay, Bell, if a hot girl took her shirt off in front of me, I’d be speechless, too.”

“You,” he says, dropping back down and kissing her again. “Are the worst.”

She just laughs and twines a hand around the back of his neck.

His hands are slow and exploratory, tracing over every inch of bared skin with an almost reverent look in his eye that makes Clarke’s breath catch in her throat.  She’s far from new at this, she’s had boyfriends and girlfriends, but this is different.  No one has ever looked at her like that.

He flips her suddenly, hands spanning her hips, burning against hers, thumbs tracing against her waistband.  Her fingers feel clumsy to her as she reaches for the button on her shorts, popping it and shoving them down her legs.

Bellamy’s head is against her neck and she can feel his breathing, ghosting too fast puffs of air across her skin as he presses his lips under her ear.  “Clarke,” he says slowly, but it’s just a comment, not a question, not meant to be addressed.  Instead, she just traces her hands down his back, dizzy on the expanse of skin.  Hers to touch, hers to trace her nails down until he groans and kisses her again, biting her lip until she whimpers.

She loses her bra next, his fingers capable and adept, slipping the clasp and leaning down to lick across her collarbone.  The rest of their clothes don’t last much longer, strewn in matching piles across Clarke’s floor, and then it’s just hands and lips on skin, and their rushed breathing, and the rush of Clarke’s heartbeat in her ears.