Archive of Our Own

...the Octavii family was respectable, but undistinguished. Their wealth came from- A hand waves across the book, pulling Bellamy out of 63BC and away from a future Roman Emperor, into his own life again.

“Team three need a new crate,” his line boss says, and Bellamy nods, packing his books away, break over. Factory shift is ten am till four pm, hauling boxes of parts around the warehouse floor and loading the assembly lines for the engineers. It’s tough, boring work, but it’s what Bellamy’s got, so he makes do.

The history degree he’s being trying to get for the last two years crawls along in breaks and at weekends, when he’s not picking up extra shifts or working at the bar down the street, Sky. Too much reading, too much need for him to work; something has to give, and he’s always been shitty about making himself a priority. At the end of his shift he swings his locker opens and pulls off his heavy work gloves, tossing them on top of the source books he’s using to write a paper. Trying to write.

For a moment he considers leaving the books there, instead of trying to work on them before the bar, but it’s not worth it; Octavia would flip out at him if she knew he was giving up.

He checks in with his sister before leaving the factory, and he’s halfway home when his phone buzzes with Octavia’s reply; at yours xx, it simply says. He abandons the idea of detouring for groceries; they’ll order in, catch up over pizza or lo mein from the place down the street that slips them extra egg rolls whenever he collects.

When he reaches his floor, taking the last few steps at a jump, there’s a woman stood with Octavia, smart in a pale suit and neatly braided hair. Bellamy catches his sister’s eye over the stranger’s shoulder, and waves. She speaks to the woman, who turns; her face is familiar, but he hasn’t seen O for two weeks, and his priority is giving his little sister a hug.

Only then does he turn to her, hand outstretched, and realises that he’s meeting the Governor’s daughter.

“Nice to meet you,” she says, golden Clarke Griffin, pretty and privileged and still holding onto his hand.

“I’m interning for Clarke,” Octavia adds, when he misses his cue to say something back, dropping his hand faster than he can engage his brain. “I started yesterday.” From her tone she expects him to know this.

And oh, he’s a shitty brother sometimes. Octavia’s been going on about the internship for weeks, but he’s tuned it out, like the last one she got; some tiny little tech company, who used her to make coffee for three weeks and half-heartedly taught her to code. She was bored to tears, and he started to ignore her complaints on about day three.

“We needed an intern for a big project we’ve got going on,” Clarke says, all smooth polish and professional handshake. “Octavia was the best candidate, she’s going to be great.” They both look over at his sister, and yeah, he’s seen that look on O’s face before; the passion and the determination. Bellamy finally finds his tongue.

“Nice to meet you too, princess.” Octavia glares at him, and yeah, he’s an asshole sometimes. But Clarke smiles at him and fuck, it’s like the sun coming out.

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Later on, Bellamy learns that who he met was the public Clarke, the image she has as the head of the Jake Griffin Foundation. That Clarke is smooth and cool, a hardass when she wants to be, ripping apart interviewers who think they got stuck with the blonde because she makes for a good visual segment. He’s seen her all over the tv for years, by her mom’s side, then on her own, working for a different agenda and running the show.

When he actually listens, Octavia talks about her like she hung the moon, the stars, and then arranged world peace in her spare time. One evening, stood in the kitchen of Octavia’s shared student house, he chops vegetables and pretends he’s not eavesdropping on a skype call between the two of them. It’s kind hard, given that his sister is sat at the kitchen table behind him, so he figures it’s not like it’s private.

“But the talks with Director Wallace went well this time,” Octavia is saying, and on the laptop screen in front of her Clarke nods.

“Hopefully,” Clarke says, and he has no idea what they’re talking about, but he’s coming to understand that behind every slick interview Clarke does, there’s a shitload of work to do. He hears her sigh, and the rustle of papers. When he glances round, she’s leaning back from her camera, work finished for the night. She looks tired, Bellamy notices. “Is that Bellamy I can see?”

“He’s cooking for me,” Octavia says, grabbing his arm and pulling him in so he’s stood behind her. “Being the best big brother ever.”

Clarke gives him a wave. “Hi, Bellamy.”

“Hey, princess. Had to drag my sister out of any trouble yet?”

Octavia elbows him, but Clarke laughs. “Not yet, but it’s only the second week.”

He goes back to making dinner, trying not to think about the glimpse he’s just had of Clarke’s life. A gray couch set in front of a window, drawings on the wall to one side, a tatty-looking blanket slung round her shoulders. It’s worlds away from the Clarke he met outside his apartment door ten days ago.

The real Clarke, he learns, is the one who shows up at his apartment to meet Octavia in yoga pants and a hoodie, dirt smudges on her cheek from where she fell over on her run and forgot to wash it off. She loves forests, chocolate, and art, wanted to be a doctor but says she found other ways of helping people, hates her mom (but never, ever talks about it), and she truly, deeply believes in a better world.

She also looks fucking hot in casual clothes, tight jeans and henleys that show off just enough of what he can tell is an amazing rack to make his mouth go dry sometimes.

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Octavia’s internship lasts for two months, but Clarke sticks around, and somehow, he finds himself spending as much as with her as his sister does. They eat takeout together when he has time to eat at his place instead of at the bar, good pizza, mediocre Thai, some insane Ethiopian stuff he’s almost willing to beg to find out where Clarke gets it from. He shows her the books he’s trying to read, the credits he’s trying to get; tells her about Octavia’s name, and listens to her talk about trying to run her dad’s foundation now he’s gone.

Once, he winds up finding a way onto the roof of the town museum with her, because they went to see an exhibition and apparently Clarke has a criminal side.

“Pretty sure this is illegal,” Bellamy tells her, holding the fire escape door open. Clarke rolls her eyes, and slides past him. “What if there’s a fire?”

“Then we get out,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Come on, don’t you want to see what the view’s like up here?”

“You’re going to get me arrested, princess,” he says, and means it, but he follows her anyway.

She was right; the view is spectacular.

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They also argue like fucking cats and dogs, sometimes. Petty shit, important things, politics; it doesn’t matter. If there’s an argument in it, they’ll find it. Sometimes just for fun, because Bellamy’s an asshole and Clarke hates being told what to think, and neither of them is afraid of expressing their opinions.

Loudly.

Tonight, Clarke is flicking through the term paper he’s left lying on the kitchen table, half-completed and covered in notes. Usually she doesn’t comment; they’ve come to an understanding, over the weeks. He doesn’t ask about her mom, and she doesn’t ask about the history degree he’s failing at finding the time for.

“If you took a class,” Clarke starts, and he knows she means well, he does, but it’s been a shitty week, and he’s not in the fucking mood. He’s worked over at the factory almost every night that week, and spent more time being a bouncer than actually serving drinks at Sky; he’s looking for a fight.

It spirals, somehow, the way things do sometimes between him and Clarke; he makes a sarcastic comment about something, she throws a comment back, and they have a blistering argument about something unrelated for ten minutes until they settle down again. Tonight, though, she’s under his skin more than she’s ever been before, and fuck knows how, but it starts off with disagreeing about his studies and crashes into them ripping each other apart over the local nuclear disaster, and what he sees as her mom’s militaristic approach to being Governor.

“You were there,” he throws at her, finally, “at Shenandoah, when the military blocked all medical access to the site. On her orders, Clarke.”

Clarke flinches back, hard. “I was there,” she throws back at him, “and not even you, high and mighty and perfect Bellamy Blake, can make me feel worse about it than I do already.”

The apartment door clicks softly shut behind her, somehow worse than if she’d slammed it.

Bellamy has never felt more like an asshole in his life.

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Hours after Clarke left, Octavia lets herself into the apartment and knocks gently on his bedroom door. She pushes it open and leans against the doorframe when he answers, watching him silently. For his part, Bellamy stops working on that evening’s set of notes and doodles instead, drawing trees and mountains while his little sister looks at him like he’s a bug on her shoe.

“She suited up with the medical crew,” his sister finally says, voice quiet. “Got them through the barricade on faked orders from her mom. They saved forty eight people, got them out before the radiation hit their section.”

“I didn’t know,” he says, lamely, and drops his pencil in frustration. “She didn’t say-”

“She never will,” Octavia interrupts coming into the room and sitting on the edge of his bed, one knee tucked up underneath her. “She’s not like that, Bell. She’s a different person to the one on tv.”

Bellamy goes to sit next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder when she leans against him. For a long moment he hugs his little sister, feels the guilt fade a bit. “I should apologise,” he says into her hair.

“You will apologise,” she corrects, and he huffs out a laugh. “She likes art, you jerk, and biographies. Also people being nice to her.”

“Two out of three?”

Octavia elbows him. “She could do without the books,” she says, and rolls her eyes at his mock groan. Bellamy files away the information for later.

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There’s a cold tang in the air the next day, and three people give him weird looks as he waits outside Clarke’s building. He’s still in his factory clothes, beat up jeans and heavy work boots, a shirt that used to be white but now has oil and grime from the machinery ingrained into it, his black jacket. Several more people give him a once-over, appraising him, but they’re not Clarke; they’re not who he’s waiting for.

Eventually she comes round the corner of the block, and he straightens from his slouch, watching her stride down the street. He knows the instant she looks up and sees him, because her steps falter for a brief second, and her chin goes up.

“Bellamy,” she says, when she’s near enough, but that’s all she says. She’s in a low cut henley and jeans again, covered by a dark gray jacket, two paper grocery bags in her arms, and a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. She looks casual and comfortable, sure of her place in the world. Bellamy, in his work clothes and heavy boots, suddenly feels like their friendship is a mistake; like she’ll wake up one day and remember that people like her don’t hang out with guys in oil-covered shirts and work boots.

“I came to see you,” he says lamely, before that thought can run away with him. She lifts an eyebrow.

“I figured.”

“Octavia said-” He starts, but that’s not good enough. He holds out the gift, wrapped in the plastic bag from the store, tries again. “I’m sorry.”

“You might as well come up,” is all she says after a moment, settling the gift on top of her groceries. “You look cold.”

He is; less so now that Clarke is smiling at him again, and oh man, he is so screwed. “Thank you.”

“Bit of a trek,” she says, glancing back over her shoulder. “I live on the-”

“-fourth floor,” he finishes, and shrugs when Clarke turns to look at him, surprised. “There was a party,” he says, remembering people in costume. “Fancy dress? I picked O up.”

Clarke laughs, and if it’s a little awkward, he pretends not to notice. “Yeah,” she says, “like six months ago? The elevator was broken then as well, landlord’s kinda shitty.” She leads the way up the stairs; Bellamy fights the urge to look at her ass for the first flight, but her jeans are tight and she’s right in front of him, so by the time they reach her apartment he’s staring and half-hard.

“Hold these?” She says, and hands him her bags so she can open the door. Bellamy follows her inside, looking round; last time, he waited outside for Octavia in the hallway outside, but this is the first time he’s been in Clarke’s apartment. It’s mostly open plan, full of light, and the walls are covered in art; the gray couch he recognises from several skype calls is covered in the same old blanket Clarke wraps herself up in, and an assortment of cushions. Any other time and he’d be curious, but he’s here for Clarke.

She takes the bags off him, sets the groceries down and unwraps his plastic bag, a real smile blooming over her face when she pulls his gift out. He hadn’t known what kind of art she liked, had sent a text to Octavia that got a anything as long as you apologise dumbass!! back, but looking round her apartment, he could’ve done worse than the watercolour set.

“I’m an ass,” he says quietly, when she doesn’t say anything. Clarke flicks the lid of the tin open and runs her hands over the set of paints.

“Yeah,” she agrees, but she’s still smiling. “And you’re still my friend.” She strokes a gentle hand over the paints again, then sets them down on the kitchen counter and comes towards him. His arms open without thought and she steps into his space, hugging him tightly. For a moment he thinks about pulling away and catching her chin in one hand, sliding the other into her hair, and kissing her.

It’d be like kissing sunshine, he thinks, like walking out of a dark room on a sunny day and being blinded by the overwhelming light and warmth. It’s just possible he’d burn up in the process, but he reckons most people probably feel like that about Clarke. She’s the sun, and people move around her.

Back on the street outside Bellamy exhales hard. He wants, in a way he hasn’t wanted anything for himself in a long time. Even the degree feels like habit now, just something else he does, like work two jobs and worry about Octavia’s taste in boyfriends.

But Clarke, in her henley and her golden hair, sunny smile, her apartment full of light... Yeah. He wants that.

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The town is quiet at two am, apart from the odd car and one late-night dog walker who makes Clarke laugh so much she has to clamp her hand over her mouth. Bellamy absolutely doesn’t want to do that for her, he tells himself. Instead he grabs her free hand and pulls her down the street, away from the unwitting guy.

“Who even does that,” she gasps, when he slows down and lets her hand go.

“He’s just a guy walking his dog, Clarke,” Bellamy says, more amused at Clarke than anything else. She looks up at him, eyes dancing, smile practically incandescent, lips slick red from the cocktails she’d insisted on ordering.

“At two in the morning,” she said, words tumbling into laughter. “That poor dog, oh my god.”

‘Maybe the dog prefers it,” he says in the most serious voice he can manage, and sets her off again. In the end he wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her along. She’s warm against his side, and he’s suddenly, sharply, happy.

Octavia has a job, a real one, one that fits around her classes and doesn’t involve flirting for tips at the diner next to her college. She’s an adult, he gets that, he hasn’t broken anyone’s nose for her in at least a year now, but it’s good to know he won’t need to at all. She’s long gone home, exhausted and still smiling, packed into a cab with her housemates. Bellamy is pleasantly buzzed, he’s got the day off tomorrow, and he’s got Clarke tucked under his arm, still laughing.

Yeah, he’s happy.

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Two long weeks go by, and all he sees of Clarke is her texts. One night, while he’s stood in the alley behind Sky catching his breath and some cool air, Octavia sends him a photo of the two of them, around eleven; they’re in a club somewhere, Octavia clearly two drinks over the limit any big brother wants to see his sister at.

She’s got her other arm, the one not holding the camera, looped around Clarke’s neck, pulling her in, sending them off-balance and half out of camera shot. They both have smiles that light up the alleyway, practically. Bellamy looks at it for a long time, too long, and overshoots his break at the bar by five minutes wondering if he should reply.

In the end, he taps out, dont get too drunk you’re a lightweight remember xx, because he knows she’ll pretend to be annoyed, but it’ll still make her laugh.

He goes back inside and serves drinks until his head spins from shots, cocktails, pints, real ales no-not-that-one, we had this whisky once in a bar on the other side of town, do you have it? He collects empties, resets the pool table a dozen times, sweeps up broken glass, and kicks out a bachelor party for trying to dance on the tables - without their clothes.

At the end of his shift, Bellamy resists the urge to check his phone again, instead tucking it into his jacket pocket without a glance. He walks the two blocks home in the midnight quiet, savouring the stillness of the streets. It’s early fall, and there’s more of a chill in the air now, the kind of night that makes him want to go for a run until dawn.

At the corner onto his street, he pulls his phone out, and turns it on. A text comes through straight away, a photo of the two women again, taken outside a club he thinks he recognises as a trendy place downtown; Ground or Grounders, something like that. It’s partly out of focus, but the two of them are clear, and Bellamy’s breath catches.

Underneath is a caption: your best girls look fiiiiiine xxxxx

On the one hand, his sister is drunk, and he’s conflicted regarding the fact that she’s an adult but also his little sister, but on the other hand, Clarke is so fucking hot he almost walks into the side of his building. She’s golden and glowing, eyes so blue they’re unreal, hair down in curls. Her curves are wrapped up in a silver dress that looks like thousands of spangles of light in the flash from the phone’s camera, more incredible cleavage on show than he’s ever seen from her before.

He misses the keyhole twice before he drops his head onto his front door with a thud and takes a deep breath. Clarke is- she’s the most frustrating woman he’s ever met, opinionated and determined in the belief that there is always a decent solution to everything. She never backs down until he can prove why she should, and she never apologies for any of it.

Clarke also knows him better than anyone else, sets his world to rights with a text or a brush of her hand over his hair when he’s slumped on the couch, exhausted.

Her golden hair and her curves fill his imagination as he throws himself onto the bed, toeing off his boots, unbuckling his belt to the image of her smile. It’s been awhile since he did this, longer still since he allowed himself to think about Clarke; it’s too easy, too much for his own good- he’s hard already, just thinking about her, and by the time he gets a hand around himself he’s shaking.

Bellamy is good at control. It keeps his life going, keeps things smooth, but for Clarke he’d ditch the control, take her hard and ruin her, silver dress pushed up around her waist. He shudders, hand moving faster, wonders what he’d have done if she’d come into Sky, leaned over the bar in that dress to order a drink.

Fucked her over the pool table, his brain supplies, and he imagines that until he comes hard, groaning into the darkness of his apartment.

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The week after, he’s so fucking glad that Clarke doesn’t hold grudges, because his hands are shaking when he dials her number and he needs her.

“Bellamy,” she says, when she picks up. There’s music on in the background, upbeat pop, and her voice is warm. For a moment he forgets that he has his little sisters blood on his shirt, that Octavia is unconscious in the back of an ambulance, the drunk driver who hit her in the back of another.

“There’s been an accident,” he tells her, and the music cuts out abruptly. “It’s Octavia. Can you-”

“Which hospital?”

“Jaha General.”

“I’ll be there.” She cuts the call off without saying anything else, but he doesn’t care. Octavia is breathing and Clarke will be there at the other end, and that’s- that’s all he can process, right now.

That’s all he needs.

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“There’s nothing,” a voice says. Feet in beat up Chucks step into Bellamy’s field of vision, then legs in college track pants and finally an old hoodie he recognises as his own, stolen by Octavia when she moved out. It suits Clarke.

“What?” He stares at her for a moment, brain trying to catch up, torn between useless panic over the surgeons operating and how Clarke got here so fast, and he flinches when something cool touches his clenched hands. It’s a thermos, full of the borderline tar-like coffee Clarke drinks; he gulps down a hit of it, caffeine replacing the adrenaline rushing through his body.

“You were thinking of something you could do to help her,” she says, quietly. “And there’s nothing. Not right now.”

It takes an effort of will to not clench his hands into fists. He screws the lid back onto the thermos instead and sets it down between them, carefully. “I can’t just sit here-” his throat closes, and he turns his head to look down the hallway, to the big double doors where Octavia is being operated on. “I’m her big brother,” he says, and knows Clarke gets that.

“I know,” she says, and sits down next to him.

They sit in silence for a long while. He can hear muffled noises from behind the theatre doors, and louder ones from the ward down the hall, machines beeping and people talking quietly. Eventually his back cramps and he stands, pacing up and down the hallway.

Once, about two hours in, a nurse steps out of the elevator and wheels a cart into the operating theatre, full of more surgical instruments and a few bags of blood. Bellamy freezes, Clarke standing abruptly. A doctor holds the door for the new nurse, gloved hands bloody; “she’s doing okay,” he says, curt, and the door swings shut behind him.

He starts pacing again, fifteen steps towards the elevator, fifteen steps back, to where there’s a line marked on the floor in front of the theatre doors.

“My dad was a theoretical engineer,” Clarke says, suddenly, voice soft even in the quiet corridor. “The engineering was theoretical, I mean. He was real.” Bellamy stops pacing to look at her, and she’s smiling up at him. Her eyes are strained and her hands are worrying at the zip on her - his - hoodie, and the smile is small, but it’s real, and he feels a little less numb.

“Yeah?”

“He was working on a new method of storing energy.” Clarke leans back, hair falling away from her face, achingly bright against the white hospital wall. “Like from wind farms, solar panels, that kind of thing. So much of it is wasted, or new installations aren’t built, because there isn’t really an efficient enough way of storing the energy. Everything is so big, and too expensive. So he was working on a new energy storage process.”

Bellamy feels a flicker of interest, despite the circumstances. “Like giant batteries?”

“Kinda, yeah. There’s a lot of places around the world working on it, but it’s expensive research, and there’s a lot of competition to hire the best staff. His work was always top secret; if a country could figure out the problem, then they’d be less dependent on outside energy sources. He used to-” her voice cracks, and Bellamy wants to reach out to her.

“You miss him.” It’s a statement, not a question, but she nods anyway.

“He used to tell me about it, a little. We’d sit on the steps outside the house for hours, sometimes, and he’d draw little diagrams for me on the back of my hand.”

Bellamy opens his mouth to ask a question, then shuts it again. Clarke is looking away, talking to him but shoulders tight where she’s twisted her neck to watch the theatre doors. At some point, he realises, he started watching Clarke instead.

“Go on,” he says softly.

She sighs. “My mom- you know what she’s like,” and ouch, this time Bellamy almost flinches, because he’s a fucking idiot. “She liked talking about his work because it was useful. Better for the environment, solving the energy problem, whatever. But he asked her not to talk about this project.”

A crash from down the hall has them both half out of their seats, Bellamy down the corridor and half into the ward before he can think about it. A startled nurse looks up, on her knees collecting medical charts, and she smiles tiredly when he stoops to help. Back in the corridor Clarke is pale and still, waiting.

“Just an accident,” he tells her, and she sighs, shoulders slumping. She’s yanked on the ties of her - his - hoodie, pulling the hood in and making them uneven, so he moves forward, straightens them out gently. “There you go.”

“Thanks,” she says quietly, one hand coming up to the ties before she shoves both firmly into the hoodie pockets. He resumes pacing, slower this time, and not moving so far away from her; she sits down again, and after a while starts talking again, voice softer, wearier.

“She did talk about it, though, in an interview. Made this big deal about the project, y’know, all can’t say much, very important, energy problems need solving kind of thing. No details, unless you were in the industry and could read between the lines.”

Bellamy thinks he remembers that interview. Octavia had gone through an intense activist phase in her early teens, around the same time as the accident at Shenandoah; for a while, people like Abby Griffin and their political rhetoric had been a staple in his apartment.

Probably why he hates her so much; it’s hard to eat breakfast with someone shouting at you about radiation poisoning, even if it is only the tv.

Clarke’s hands are worrying at the hoodie ties again. “He went missing, about a week later. Mom didn’t report him missing for two days, said he’d be at the office working, but I begged her to check. And he wasn’t. He wasn’t anywhere, until they found him in some shitty warehouse downtown. He’d been, uh-”

This time Bellamy knows exactly what he’s doing. He reaches out to her with one arm, and pulls her in against his side when she steps in close enough. They fit together easily, Bellamy leaning back against the wall, Clarke tucked under his arm and leaning on his chest. One of her hands slips around his back, the other tucked into the pocket of her - his - hoodie.

“They tortured him,” Clarke says, eventually, words muffled, her face presses against his chest and turned away. The corridor is silent now, their ears attuned to the beeping machinery and barely registering it any more. He can’t hear anything from the operating room at all. “His hands, and his-”

“Don’t go there, princess,” he says, into her hair, and she leans into him a little more.

“The cops looked into it, and made some arrests; it was sloppy work, they said. But mom, she promised. The company he worked for hadn’t even done a press release, no one knew what he was working on. And then she told the world.”

“Did you ever find out who it was?”

She shrugs. “The cops, they looked into everything, found some links and evidence or whatever, connections to dirty company. But I couldn’t get past the fact that mom broke her promise, and then my dad was dead.”

Bellamy doesn’t know what to say to that - to any of it. He listens to her breathe for a while, watching the double doors. Feels her breathe, more than hears her, where they’re pressed against each other. “So you moved?”

Clarke nods, her hair brushing his neck, tickling slightly. “I couldn’t stay. Even if she wasn’t the reason he died, in the end, we didn’t really have a relationship after that. She refused to even accept that she’d had a part in it, and it kind of spiralled. Things...weren’t that great anyway.”

“You got out,” he says, and before he can think about it too hard, he kisses the top of her head, lingering as much as he thinks he can get away with. The arm Clarke has around his waist tightens for a moment.

“I did,” she agrees. He doesn’t push it any further.

He’s lost track of the time when one of the operating theatre doors swings open. Bellamy pushes away from the wall, but he doesn’t let go of Clarke, and her arm stays tight around him. The surgeon strips off his bloodied gloves and looks round, striding down the corridor when he sees them waiting.

“Family of Octavia Blake?”

“I’m her brother,” Bellamy says, heart pounding. The surgeon’s observant glance flicks over them both, but he doesn’t ask who Clarke is. “How is she?”

“She’s going to pull through,” he says, exhaustion in every line of his body, but his tone is satisfied with a job well done. “There shouldn’t be any difficulties in recovery; she may need physical therapy for her leg, but we’ll see how the bone sets. They’ll be bringing her out shortly.” He nods to them and returns to the theatre, leaving Bellamy to feel briefly weak at the knees.

“Your keys,” Clarke says, startling him. When he pulls his eyes away from the operating theatre doors to look down, she’s holding her hand out, palm up.

“What?”

“Your keys, dumbass,” she repeats, impatient. “I need them, please.” Her hand closes over the tangle of keys before he’s even aware that he’s obeyed her. She nods once, decisive in the way only Clarke can be, and slips out from underneath his arm. “I’ll get her things, you wait here for her.”

For a moment he has an armful of Clarke again, her hug warm and fierce and grounding, smelling like citrus. Then she’s gone, striding down the corridor and out of sight, his keys jangling in her hand, leaving him dazed in the sudden silence.

Stood alone in the hospital corridor, Bellamy gets it. Get why she told him this. Clarke is stubborn and pushy and naive in a way that sets his teeth on edge, sometimes, but she also has this sixth sense of what to say - and when to say it. Right now - when his only family is being operated on a few meters away - right now it was exactly what he needed.

She walked in, set his world to rights, and walked out. Just like Clarke.

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The factory gives him some time off, that he splits up into half-days so he can visit Octavia without worrying about missing too much work. His bar shifts don’t interfere with visiting hours, so he goes to Sky as normal, switching off and serving drinks like everything is okay.

Things are normal, for the most part. It’s just that sometimes he comes home to find Clarke Griffin tucked up on his couch, studying or working on projects for her dad’s Foundation, waiting for him so they can visit his sister together. Sometimes she’s drawing, in charcoal or pencil, though it’s rare he catches her doing that.

Bellamy tucks those moments away for long shifts in the factory, or when there’s a series of shitty customers at Sky.

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The day Octavia is discharged from the hospital, Bellamy is sick to his gut about the bill that’s coming their way.

“The doctor said something about physiotherapy?” More debt, he thinks, but it can’t be avoided, and for Octavia, he’ll find an extra day in the week to pick up more shifts. Or a third job.

“All booked in,” the nurse on duty tells him. She hands up a booklet, a letter tucked inside that gives details of a physio clinic. According to it, Miss O. Blake has six sessions scheduled, on Wednesdays at two pm. “And all paid for in advance. As are her hospital charges. If you could just sign here-”

“I’m sorry, what?” He leans in over the desk, trying to look at her paperwork, but she frowns and tilts the clipboard up. “How can it be paid for?”

The nurse blinks up at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Her bills, the physio, how can it be fu-” He catches himself, takes a breath. “Can you tell me who paid for it all, please?”

“Organised by, let me check-” she shuffles some papers around, flicks through them until Bellamy is about to snatch them away and do it himself, “ah, here we go. Insurance arranged by the Jake Griffin Foundation. Says here it was provided under the terms of an internship Miss Blake completed for them last year. Must’ve been a damn good intern,” the nurse adds with a smile. “Sign here, please.”

Bellamy signs automatically, mind working overdrive. For a moment he’s angry, but anger takes energy, and he has enough left to get Octavia home; that’s about it. And this- this is the least patronising way she could do this for them, he knows that, like he knows Clarke, down to his bones.

It still kills him a little, though, that he couldn’t do it alone.

“Bellamy?” He turns, looks down to see Octavia wheeling her way towards him. She’s pale, and the bruises on her face stand out starkly, but the gash on her forehead is already half healed. “Can we go home now?”

Home means his apartment, her old room tidy and waiting. “Yeah,” he says, smiling, ruffling her hair with a gentle hand. “We can go home.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Octavia’s room isn’t just tidy, it’s organised. Bed made, furniture rearranged to make room for the wheelchair, a bowl and jug from the kitchen set up on Octavia’s old desk she she doesn’t have to go as far as the bathroom to wash or brush her teeth if she doesn’t want to. He’d said Clarke could get a key copied, leant on her - too much, probably - when she’d say she could grab him clean clothes on her way past, bringing them to the hospital he couldn’t stand to leave for a while.

But he wasn’t expecting this, done in the few hours it takes to get Octavia discharged.

Clarke’s careful touch is everywhere, down to the vase of flowers set on the small bedside table. Bellamy leans against the doorframe and watches his sister gently touch a petal. He almost makes a joke about checking the kitchen for a pie, but swallows the comment at the look on Octavia’s face when she wheels round.

“Hungry?” He asks instead, and fixes them both grilled cheese when she makes pleading eyes at him; it works as successfully now as it did when she was four and couldn’t pronounce ‘cheese’ properly. Or grilled, for that matter.

Only once Octavia is sacked out in bed at three in the afternoon, leaving him in a quiet apartment with nothing to do but wait until his shift at the bar starts, does he have any attention spare to notice the other little changes in the apartment. A side table is missing from the living room, that he finds tucked into the tiny closet by the front door; it leaves a clear space between the couch and beat up armchair he rescued from a yard sale, big enough for the wheelchair to move through.

The kitchen table has been moved over several inches, there are two sets of towels on the rail in the tiny bathroom, and Octavia’s prescriptions have already been filled, rowed up neatly on the desk in her room. If it were anyone else - hell, if it were the Clarke he thought he’d met at the start - then he’d be pissied off at the intrusion.

As it is, it feels like anything but. Clarke’s changes are unobtrusive, but necessary. Left to his own devices, Bellamy knows he’d had managed the towels and the medication, but the rest? That’s Clarke all over, the details that smooth the way. Bellamy drags a hand over his face, figures he’s got time to nap before his shift; not thinking for a while sounds good right now.

He drops onto his bed with a groan, setting his phone alarm and setting it on the floor with a careless clunk. Something crackles when he drops his head down onto the pillow, and he frowns, wondering if he has the energy to figure out what it was. Twisting to shrug his jacket off, he pats the bed down, searching for the source. Under the pillows, his fingers meet a scrap of paper, ripped off the edge of a pharmacy bag, familiar writing curling across it.

Don’t forget to eat.

Bellamy falls asleep with it curled in his hand.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Third time Clarke visits, Bellamy catches himself being sharp with her, and she shuts the door to Octavia’s room a little too hard.

Fourth time, he picks a petty argument with her about politics, and she’s barely civil to him when she says her goodbyes.

Fifth time, they blow up at each other over the remains of an awkward lunch, Octavia worn out from trying to catch up on some school work, and sleeping.

“Look, I appreciate your help,” Bellamy says, stacking their used dishes up as he tries to control his irritation. “And I’ll pay you back, but you don’t need to come around so often. I know you’ve got your own shit to manage.”

Clarke frowns. “Bellamy, what is your problem, I can help-”

“She’s my responsibility,” Bellamy throws back, setting the stack of dishes down, “mine, not yours, no matter how many strays you think you can take in and help while looking good for the camera.”

Clarke’s face flushes with anger, because that was shitty and unfair, and he’ll pay for it later; he knows that. But not right now, not angry and frustrated and faced with Clarke fucking Griffin.“She’s not just your sister, you dumbass,” Clarke yells at him, “she’s my friend.”

“Do you buy all your friends?” he shouts back, because fuck, apparently he’s still angry about this, and it feels good to fight- to fight with Clarke.

Clarke’s jaw juts out, her face suddenly gone pale, eyes piercingly blue. For a split second he thinks she’s going to throw the glass in her hand at him, but she sets it down with a table-rattling thud. “I do not buy my friends,” she spits, “how dare you.”

“Then what the fuck were you doing? The insurance, the physio, the fucking swimming-” Bellamy is past caring what the neighbours think. If she’s gonna yell, so if he, and Clarke might be loud for such a tiny person, but he’s goddamn louder.

“I’m trying to make up for past mistakes,” she yells again, and if the words had been fists, Bellamy would’ve rocked on his heels. She takes a deep breath, and tones it down; her voice shakes with control, but the volume is halved. “If I can help Octavia, then it’s my duty to do that. Not walk away like some coward.”

She grabs the stack of dishes and firmly turns her back on him, leaving him stood in the middle of his apartment, ears ringing in the sudden dead silence, watching Clarke wash their lunch things.

After a moment, he takes a tea towel and starts drying up.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You’re an asshole,” Octavia tells him when he takes her meds in. Clarke is long gone, leaving a tidy kitchen and a stack of job applications they’d been looking at before all hell broke loose. Bellamy hands her the medication and sits on the side of her bed.

“I know that, and so does Clarke,” he points out. “We’re still friends.”

Octavia glares at him until she’s swallowed the six tablets she’s on. It’s impressive. “All she ever wants to do is help, Bell. I know she’s pushy, but she has to be; she took over the Foundation when she was eighteen, for fuck’s sake-”

“Don’t swear,” Bellamy says, mildly. He takes Octavia’s hand and squeezes when she rolls her eyes. “Look, O, Clarke and me, we’re-” what? He doesn’t know what they are, not really. Sometimes they set the world to rights over takeout and a bottle of wine, and she’ll call him from shitty meetings at work just to ask him to a stupid question, just to hear his voice. And then sometimes they bring out the worst in each other and slam doors to get away, leaving a tattered friendship and an ache in Bellamy’s heart.

“I know,” Octavia says softly. “I’m not blind, Bell, I know it’s not easy. But there’s something between the two of you.” She leans back onto her pillows, still easily tired out, though it’s been a month. “You need to figure out what that is.”

“And how do you suggest I do that,” Bellamy asks, trying to tease her a little, but he knows she’s right.

“How about you stop yelling at her, and listen.”

Closing the door softly on his napping sister, Bellamy moves into his own room, taking a seat at the desk. Open books, their spines cracked in a dozen places, judge him for not finishing his paper, but he stacks them all up out of the way. On one of her visits, Clarke had mentioned that her Foundation provided financial funding for students;

“Not all students,” she’d added with a frown. “Just certain majors.”

“Can’t help them all,” Bellamy had said. He remembers resting a hand on her shoulder, just for a moment, one of the few touches he rations out when he sees her. Clarke had turned into the touch, looking up at him.

“I want to be able to,” she’d said, so fucking sincere and determined. Sometimes her drive to be good, to be better, irritates the shit out of him. Other times, it’s the kick he needs to stop being an asshole.

He starts with Google, types in the basics. Course, university, and area, Clarke had told him once, the only other time she’s brought the subject up. He’d looked into financial funding years ago, but juggling payments and commitments of his own as well as Octavia’s just wasn’t possible, not on his own. But now...she’s working, and covering her own costs for the most part; the money he managed to put away while she was younger helps.

It figures that it took Clarke to look at things and see how they could change. His life has condensed over the years, focus getting narrower and narrower until all he really has is Octavia and survive. Bellamy knows what Clarke would say, had he not fucked up their evening: that’s not a life.

He opens the first search result, and starts reading.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Towards the end of his shift at Sky that same night, Monty interrupts him where he’s trying to make six different cocktails for a group of corporate women out for the night. His head is full of financial aid and businesses that will support a part-time student through a degree if he minors in something like criminal law, and he’s finding it hard to remember the correct ratios for a White Russian.

“Someone really wants your attention,” Monty says, jerking a hand over his shoulder towards their lockers. “Your phone’s ringing non-stop.”

“Two mojitos and a Cosmo,” Bellamy tells him, tossing the cocktail shaker and pushing through into the back room. He flips open his locker and reaches in, expects to see his sister’s name on his phone’s screen, not three missed calls from Clarke. It rings again; Clarke, the screen still says, not changing even when he blinks at it. It keeps ringing, the obnoxious pop song she loves loud in the small room.

“Hey.” He isn’t sure what to expect, after their fight, keeps it neutral even though most of his brain is desperate to apologise- to grovel, even, if she sounds hurt still.

“Bellamy, are you- can you come over? Please?”

“What’s wrong, what happened?” He’s throwing the bar towel off his shoulder and shrugging into his jacket in an instant, Clarke’s bad attempt at sounding normal enough to get him moving even if her request wasn’t (it is).

“Someone broke into my place.” For an instant, his hand clenches, and he almost punches the locker door. The urge to protect her, to hurt whoever made her sound so small and shaken, so unsure of herself, is too powerful for him to ignore what it means.

“I’ll be there as quick as I can,” he promises, and hangs up when she says thank you, sticking his head back out into the bar and snagging Monty’s sleeve as he moves past. “I’ve gotta go,” he says, and Monty nods. “Cover for me?”

“No problem.”

It’s a twenty minute walk to Clarke’s building, longer if they’re drunk and he’s trying to draw it out. Now he runs it, the cold fall air burning his lungs as he dodges round the few people out this late at night. He’s done this before, for Octavia, rescuing her from house parties gotten too wild or a disastrous date. Once he turned up at the diner where she used to work and broke up a fight that was freaking her out, on a really long break from Sky.

There’s a cop car outside Clarke’s building, and as he climbs the stairs there are people leaning out of the other apartments, watching and listening. On the fourth floor her door is wide open, and there’s a female officer on watch outside it, Clarke stood next to her, face pale and hair a tousled mess.

Bellamy hesitates at the top of the staircase, just long enough for the officer to give him a once-over that starts as a threat assessment and ends as appraising. Clarke looks up at the sound of his boots, and tries to smile. She says something to the officer, who nods and moves away slightly.

“You came,” Clarke says, and Bellamy crosses the distance to hug her.

“Of course I did, princess.” He steps back, hands moving to her shoulders before dropping away, takes a good look; she’s tired, but doesn’t look hurt. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m okay.” She leans back against the wall, expression miserable. “I wasn’t here when it happened.”

“Fuck, Clarke.” His palms itch with the need to pull her in again, hold her close, but he’s had his ration; she’s not his, for all she called him before - it looks like - calling anyone else.

“I’m okay,” she says again, as if he’s the one who needs reassuring. That's Clarke all over though; making sure everyone else is okay first, having her own meltdown second. “I ran to the store, and when I got back the place was trashed.”

Aside from what the hell she needed so badly at one am, the implications of that make Bellamy go cold. “They were watching,” he says, unnecessarily, and only realizes how angry he sounds, voice gone low and rough, when Clarke steps forward, taking his face between her hands.

“I’m okay, Bellamy.” She looks up at him, so fucking sincere and golden, even in his old hoodie and her pyjama pants. “They won’t let me back inside, though.”

“That’s the last thing you should be worrying about,” he says, and isn’t surprised when she shakes her head.

“I have paperwork, people’s information-”

“Clarke.” He interrupts her, “the cops will figure it out.” She looks at him for a long moment, and he knows what she’s thinking; about the last time she had cops crawling all over her home, digging through her stuff. Except this time she’s not alone, and he wants her to understand that like it’s an ache in his bones.

“I know,” Clarke says, eventually, shoulders slumping. Her arms go up and round his neck and she clings to him fiercely, her head tucked into his neck. He lets go when he thinks holding on becomes borderline possessive, and Clarke does too, although neither of them move far. They chat about nothings, how his shift had been going, Clarke’s latest project with the Foundation; their argument, by mutual unspoken assent, is swept aside and not mentioned.

After a short while one of the cops gestures them inside, says they need to ask Clarke some things. They stand in her kitchen, out of the way of the other cops and the forensics team, and Clarke answers the questions until the officer finishes, thanks her, and flips his notebook closed.

“If you think of anything else,” he says, and holds out a card. Clarke takes it with a nod, shoves it into the pocket of her - his - hoodie. Bellamy props himself against the fridge and watches Clarke, leaning back against the kitchen counter, body tense as they watch her apartment get turned upside down.

“That’s my hoodie, by the way.”

“What?”

“You’re wearing my hoodie.” Bellamy smiles when Clarke looks over at him with a puzzled expression. “Octavia stole it when she moved out.”

“Oh.” Clarke lifts an arm, looking at the hoodie’s sleeve like she’s never seen it before. “I don’t- I stayed over at hers once, I borrowed it then. Never gave it back I guess.”

“It looks good on you.” The words are out before he can think it through, but fuck, tonight of all nights he wants to make her smile. Clarke’s across the small kitchen and back into his arms in an instant, face pressed into his neck, arms tight around him. He wraps his arms around her and holds on, bends to press a kiss onto the top of her head; fuck it, it’s a shitty night, the least he can do it give her what he thinks - hopes - she wants.

They’re still stood like that, wrapped around each other, when her mom walks in.

Governor Griffin brings her bodyguard and a PA, like she can’t go anywhere alone, her time apparently so important that her people are on call even at one in the morning. Bellamy dislikes her even more in person, he decides. Clarke stiffens in his arms when she hears her mom calling for her; the officer in charge straightens up from talking to one of the forensics team and moves forward to greet the Governor, like it’s perfectly normal for her to walk in on a routine break-in.

“Governor Griffin,” she says, and her tone is deferential, but not familiar; not one of the Governor’s pet officers, Bellamy thinks, knows he’s being an assohole but whatever, Clarke can’t hear him think it. She pulls back, enough to turn around and face her mom, but not away. Bellamy lets his arms drop again, but he keeps one resting on her hip, just out of sight of anyone looking; Clarke squeezes his hand, and then the Governor is approaching.

“Clarke,” she says, and pointedly doesn’t come close enough for a hug. Her glance flicks over Bellamy, and dismisses him; five seconds to make it obvious what she thinks of him, and not a word spoken. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Clarke reassures her, but there’s a new strain in her voice. “I wasn’t here when it happened.”

“Has anything been taken?”

Clarke shakes her head; “I don’t know yet, they’re still looking.” Her mom frowns, looks around at the team of people working on the trashed furniture, the drawings pulled off the walls, the piles of papers ripped by booted feet lying all over the floor.

“We’ve got evidence of three people,” the officer in charge says, just deferential enough. Bellamy tunes out her conversation with Clarke’s mom; he concentrates on tracking the braid in Clarke’s messy hair, how the cuffs of her - his - hoodie are turned over because they’re too long, the way she tilts her hip, ever so slightly, into his palm.

“Please, call me Abigail.” The Governor says it distantly, automatically, ever the politician; it’d be a good gesture, if Bellamy hadn’t seen Clarke do it a dozen times, and turn it into something warm and sincere. The officer nods, but her posture doesn’t relax, and she takes it as the dismissal the Govern- Abigail probably meant it as. Bellamy’s hand, the one not on Clarke’s hip, tightens around the edge of the kitchen counter. People like her mom bring out the worst in him,

“I’ll have my people take over,” Abigail says, speaking to Clarke now, making a gesture over her shoulder. The PA pulls out a tablet, begins to tap; Clarke shakes her head, steps forward enough to catch her mom’s attention. Bellamy catches himself before he can follow, hand cold without her warmth under it.

“Mom, it’s fine, the cops are handling it.” Bellamy catches the look on the officer in charge’s face; she hadn’t appreciated the casual attempt at subverting her authority, he can tell, and she’s looking at Clarke with some respect. Sometimes, Clarke’s ability to lead surprises him; not often, these days, but she’s facing down the Governor - more importantly, he knows, she’s facing down her mom.

For a split second Abigail frowns, then she moves on smoothly.

“Then let me arrange a hotel for you,” her mom says, and gestures to the PA again. “Call Polis, tell them I need a suite for-”

“I have somewhere to stay,” Clarke interrupts, and takes a step back again; a small step, but it’s clearly into Bellamy’s personal space. Abigail’s eyes snap to Bellamy again, assessing him. He gives her his best asshole look, because apparently he really is a possessive shit, but doesn’t make a move towards Clarke. If anything, Clarke shifts back towards him even more, arms folded; one of her hands slides back, fingers outstretched, and he slips his own into hers, the movement visible to Abigail but not clear enough for her to see what they’re doing.

“Clarke-”

“She’s more than welcome to stay with me as long as she needs to. Governor,” Bellamy adds, when Abigail’s eyes narrow. She dismisses him again, focusing on her daughter.

“This is a serious matter, Clarke.”

“Which is why there are cops all over my apartment,” she says evenly, but her hand is like a vice around Bellamy’s. She takes a deep breath. “And mom- this isn’t your home. It’s mine. Stop trying to control it.”

If ever Bellamy had wanted to know what Governor Griffin looks like when slapped - and yeah, he’s wondered sometimes - he thinks this is pretty close. He’d bet anything that Clarke never spoke to her mom like this when they were falling apart; not even when she moved out. Clarke always, always wants the best case scenario, up to the point where she cuts her losses and does it her way.

One of the forensics team steps over, speaks to Clarke. “You can go into the bedroom now,” he says, motioning, “we’re done in there. The place’ll be a crime scene for a while though, I’m afraid.”

Clarke nods, once, sharp and decisive. “Thank you. I’ll grab my stuff,” she says, ignoring her mom, turning to say it Bellamy over her shoulder, already moving.

He doesn’t speak to Abigail while they wait. She, in her turn, ignores him completely, head bent over the tablet with her PA; he resists the urge to be an asshole to her, mostly because Clarke would know and give him hell for it. Eventually she reappears, holding an overnight bag. She hugs her mom, brief and awkward, thanks the people working on her trashed apartment, and looks at Bellamy.

“Can we go now,” she asks, quietly, while her mom watches them carefully. He reaches out, takes the bag she hands him without question.

“Sure, princess. Let’s go.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

They walk to his building in silence, Clarke tucking herself under his arm once they hit the sidewalk, her arm curled around his waist, her bag slung over his shoulder. At his place Octavia’s room is dark, her door shut; Clarke glances to it and then to Bellamy, lifts her eyebrows in a question. He shrugs.

“She’s a pain in my ass,” he says, dropping Clarke’s bag next to the couch. “But she’s doing fine.”

“You keep bringing home strays,” Clarke says, with a smile. All the tension has gone from her, and she runs a hand across the back of the couch. “Room for me?”

Bellamy shakes his head, smiles back. “You can take my bed,” he says, trying not to stumble over the words. He’s always been a smooth guy, when it comes to women, but Clarke puts him on the wrong foot just by existing, practically. She tilts her head, gaze sharp.

“I don’t think so,” she says, and turns her back. She stops in the door to his bedroom and looks over at her shoulder at him; he follows, like he always does, and she slips behind him, closing the door silently.

“Clarke?”

“You came.” She speaks quietly, and he’s forgotten why she’s here, for a moment, forgotten their argument, her apartment crawling with cops and her mom trying to control everything. Forgotten everything that isn’t Clarke Griffin, golden and privileged and looking at him like he’s something she needs. “I called, and you dropped everything.”

“Any time, princess.” It comes out rough, and he wants to say more, to explain but Clarke’s eyes fall shut and she shivers, and it’s the hottest fucking thing he’s ever seen.

“I knew it was yours,” she says quietly, opening her eyes, features dark in the shadowy room. “That’s why I wear it, why I- why I took it in the first place.”

For a moment he can’t work out what she means, but then she unzips the hoodie, and his mind blanks, because she’s wearing nothing but a bra underneath. He swallows, hard, says the first thing that comes into his head.

“You should’ve said if you were cold.” Clarke’s lips twist into a smile and she laughs suddenly, bright in the dark room. “I’m an ass,” Bellamy says, and pulls her into his arms before she can make the smartass comment thay’s on her lips, sliding one hand underneath the hoodie to curve around her waist, the other cupping the back of his neck as he leans down to kiss her.

She shivers under him, mouth hot, tongue sliding against his. “I’m not cold,” she says, pulling back with a nip at his lower lip. He smirks down at her.

“No, princess, you’re fucking hot.”

Clarke groans and smacks his arm, and then they’re off. He strips the hoodie off her, and her hands are rough on his belt, both kicking their shoes off, Clarke yanking his shirt over his head, stepping into his space to bite at his collarbone while he’s still struggling to pull it off his arms. He kicks his jeans and briefs off and tangles a hand in her hair again, pulling her head back, sucking marks onto her neck.

“More,” she demands, and he does, pressing her down onto the bed, marking her neck until she’s gasping underneath him. He covers her mouth with one hand before he thinks, leans up to look at her; Octavia, he mouths, and she nods. She’s gone still, one leg hooked around his waist, eyes dark and wide.
She leans up when he takes his hand away, bracing it on the pillow by her neck, whispering into his ear. “If you don’t fuck me right now,” and shit, his whole body shakes, “then I’m going to check into that hotel and get myself off, thinking about this-”

“Is that a threat, princess?”

“Depends if you’re going to fuck me or not,” she says, biting his ear, and shit, Bellamy didn’t know that was a fucking turn-on. His hips snap into her and she moans, once, before he catches her mouth in a kiss. “I need- can you-” He ignores her legs around his waist pulling him in, and instead pushing back, slides down the length of her body taking her pyjama pants and panties with him.

Bellamy ignores her quiet but insistent complaints to bend his head and lick a stripe from cunt to clit, smirking up at Clarke when she groans and tangles her fingers in his hair.

“Problem, princess?”

“Shut up and keep going,” she bitches, and he knows when to argue; not right now, not when she’s hot and slick and her legs are shaking before he’s settled in properly. When he glances up again, tongue flat against her clit, she’s got one arm thrown above her head, the other over her mouth. His hips jerk against the bed and he groans, feeling her shudder under his hands. “This- this isn’t what I, Bellamy, please.”

Bellamy keeps a hand between her legs as he pushes up to reach into the bedside table, Clarke pulling him in for a bruising kiss when he slips two fingers into her. She arches up, voice catching on a sob. He fumbles with a condom, slides it on just as Clarke twists them over, pushing him down onto his back. She kisses him with the same fierce passion that she argues with, golden hair a tousled curtain around their faces, and then she leans up and away.

“Fuck, Clarke.” Her name catches in his throat when she sinks down onto his cock, hot and tight, so good, head thrown back, her hands sliding up to cup her breasts. Her hips rock forwards and back, slow at first, until he catches the rhythm she wants and begins to move too. Bellamy slides his hands up to her breasts and she drops hers, arching up into his touch, bracing her hands on his thighs to ride him faster.

When he’s close, veins on fire with how good it feels, Clarke almost incoherent, he sits up, pulling her close. She gasps and groans, clutching at his shoulders, settling herself again. Bellamy clings on to his control for as long as he can, almost losing it when Clarke slips a hand between them to move over her clit.

“Next time,” he says, into her ear, sliding a hand up her side to flick over a nipple again, “I’m going to make you scream.”

“Promises, promises,” she gasps back, and twists her hips; Bellamy swears and bites her lip He flips them over and fucks into her hard, once, twice, and comes so hard he swears he sees fucking stars. Clarke drags him down for a kiss, hand working between them, and she closes round him tight, so tight, the noises muffled in her throat almost sending him off a second time.

When he can breathe again - can think again - Clarke is talking.

“Months, Bellamy. We wasted months.”

Bellamy rolls over and props himself onto an elbow, looking down at her. The golden hair is spread out over his pillow, and she’s glaring at him - as if he didn’t make her come so hard she’s still breathing hard, skin sheened with sweat.

“We can make up for it now, princess,” he says, and bends down with a smirk.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

She stays with him for a month, and despite Octavia predicting, mostly joking, that they’ll kill each other before the first week it out, they fit so well Bellamy keeps waiting for his luck to run out. At first, they hardly see each other; he works two jobs, and Clarke spends hours in the downtown offices her dad rented out, running his Foundation. After a few days they find a balance, like they always do.

Octavia moves out halfway through, healed enough to manage, and Bellamy turns her old room into an office for good. He works in there while Clarke uses the couch, working on projects or drawing. She draws a lot more these days, leaving little sketches or him to find. One he stares at for a long time, before tucking it away into a drawer; it’s of him, bent over his desk, lit only by the anglepoise lamp Octavia had bought him three Christmases ago.

Bellamy remembers what he was doing at the time; finalising an application for part-time study as a major/minor student, ancient history and philosophy, job as a department assistant included. He’s bent over the paperwork, concentrating, and Clarke has captured him in every detail. He doesn’t remember her watching him, or her drawing, but that’s Clarke. When he’s not looking, she catches him, turns him into the kind of person he wants to be.

It’s a perk of being with Clarke that he thinks he can get used to.

The other major upside is that after so long spent watching her, limiting himself to a few touches, Bellamy thinks he can be excused going a bit overboard. From not touching at all, he finds an excuse to touch her all the fucking time; fingers trailing over her hip, a kiss onto her bare shoulder, dropping to his knees to eat her out when she’s sat on the couch trying to work, wearing nothing but his hoodie and a pair of panties.

He explains this to Clarke, two weeks in, but he’s not sure she gets it; she swears against him, head tipped back, golden hair tangled from his hands holding her head where he wanted it so he could kiss her senseless against the apartment door.

“I wanted you to,” she says, fierce and hot, and leans down, shifting her hips as he drives into her again, her legs tight around him as he fucks her against the wall. He cranes up to kiss her, and she bites his lip, laughs at his groan, gasps when his hands tighten on her hips. “Could’ve been doing this for fucking months, Bellamy, you ass-” Her nails scrape up his back and he arches into her, makes her gasp again, hips snapping forward to drive her as wild as she makes him.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clarke is in the kitchen, wearing his shirt and nothing else, drinking what’s probably her second coffee of the morning. He stands and looks at her, staring, wondering how this happened to them. She’s the most frustrating woman he knows, but he also wants to pin her against a wall again and get his hands on her, slide her shirt up and get her off again with just his fingers.

“I was thinking,” Clarke says, and he drags his attention away from her legs to pay attention. The smirk on her lips says his wandering focus hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Dangerous habit, princess.”

She snorts. “Only when you’re doing it.”

He leans against the doorframe into his - their - bedroom and smirks back. “Who tried to blow up a car when they were sixteen again?”

“For the seventh time, not my fault.” She comes close when he reaches out, leans into him for a languid kiss. Clarke in the morning sun is a sight to behold, as long as she’s well-caffeinated. He groans when she bites down on his lower lip, slipping out of his arms and moving away to pick up her coffee mug again. “So, I was thinking.”

“You said that already.”

Clarke ignores him. “My apartment is ready to go back to,” she says, and something in his gut twists. Instinct takes over for a second, she’s leaving you leaving leaving leaving spinning through his head before he can stop it. It’s been over a month; he knew this was coming. Clarke’s expression is neutral, her hands wrapped around her mug. “And I thought, I should move back. And you should move back with me.”

For a moment, his mind goes blank. “What?”

“Move in with me. It’s not that far away, so it won’t mean changing jobs, and my place is actually closer to the college for-”

“Don’t sell it to me,” he snaps, and if this were a month ago, Clarke would have flinched. No, he realises, she would never have flinched from that, but she wouldn’t have looked at him so open and raw either. Now she comes forward, mug abandoned, and takes his face in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says earnestly, and he can’t. Clarke is dangerous when she’s determined, largely because he doesn’t know how to deny her anything, and he thinks it’s too late to start learning. “Please, I’m trying to expl-”

He grasps her wrists gently, pulls her hands down. For a moment she looks hurt; then the expression vanishes, and shitting fuck Bellamy is a dumbass, somewhere Octavia wants to yell at him but doesn’t know why. He bites down the instinctual reply, the one that would break this fragile thing for good, send her storming out, leaving him twice as broken as before.

Worse, leaving him knowing just how broken he is.

“I need to think about it,” he says instead, dropping his hands when she pulls away. “It’s not- I haven’t had something for myself in a long time.” Clarke gives him a long look, then nods, and leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“Okay,” is all she says, but fuck, he’s done, he’d go to hell and back for this woman, all because she doesn’t ask. “Shower’s all yours, I need to be downtown in half an hour.

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The factory is one breakdown after another, and the bar is crowded with what feels like one shitty customer after another; when he finishes slicing lemons for the bachelorette party that walks in around midnight and leaves the knife upright in the wooden bar counter, his manager tells him to take an early night.

Clarke is waiting up for him, curled up on the couch in her - his - hoodie.

“I need you,” she says, “I need you with me, and you hate this place. Come home with me, please.”

He goes to her without a second thought, because yes, he can do that. He can.

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They fuck slowly, like there’s something to be repaired between them. Bellamy kisses her everywhere he can reach until she shudders underneath him and pulls him down, snug between her legs. Clarke’s arms wrap around his neck until there’s no air between them, just her soft, choked-off moans, his whispers into her hair that might be Clarke but that might also be love you.

“Are you sure you want to go back?” He asks softly, afterwards. It’s a nice place, and tomorrow he’ll tell her just how much he wants to live with her in the light and space she’s created there. But its just an apartment; they can find another.

“I own it,” she says, and there’s a bitter twist to the words. Bellamy props himself up onto an elbow until he can see her face, lit by the dim yellow streetlight through his thin curtains. Clarke sighs. “My dad, he used to tell me to plan for the future, because no one else would do it for me, the way I wanted.”

Bellamy wishes he could’ve met Jake Griffin. “Bet your mom didn’t like that,” he comments. Clarke laughs, but it’s small and strained.

“She wasn’t included in the conversation.” The bed jolts as she turns over, tucks one hand under her head and looks up at him. In the dimness her blue eyes are dark, almost black. “He helped me look for my own place, as a backup. Mom was running for Governor around then, and I was- rebelling, I guess.”

“Yeah, I remember.” There was a few months when the town papers were full of it; Clarke Griffin, going wild, out of her mom’s shadow and in with the wrong crowd. He’d thought about the stories when he realised where Octavia was interning, but never since. Clarke acknowledges that with a wry smile.

“It was a safety net, in case she decided having me around was a liability instead of an asset and kicked me out. And then when I left, it was all I had left of my dad.”

Bellamy leans down and kisses her forehead, just a brush of his lips across her soft skin. “It’s just a place, princess. He’d understand if you found somewhere new.”

Clarke doesn’t answer, and after a moment he leans back. There are tears on her face, glittering in the weak light; when he gathers her to his chest, she crumples in, clinging to him.

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They find somewhere new.

Clarke has a list of needs, that she mentally ticks off against realtor sales pitches and literally ticks off against real estate listings. She even has a sheet with the list on, that Octavia types up for her after a drunken evening spent laughing together; Bellamy had got back from work that night to find them curled around each other on his couch, everything he never knew he wanted and didn’t know he needed until it was right there in front of him.

She storms out of one viewing because they argue over the location, but that’s okay; he gets a text halfway through his shift at the bar saying you’re an ass. we need ice cream, which is her way of saying he’s forgiven. He goes home, wakes her up with gentle kisses, and then eats her out until she’s come twice and can’t think straight.

Bellamy’s list is much shorter: space for Octavia to stay, near to the university when the pieces fall together and he finally, finally starts his studies, and light, lots of light.

And Clarke.

♣