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Clarke didn’t think there was much left on the ground that would surprise her anymore, but then she sees Bellamy Blake wearing shorts and the sight nearly causes her to collide with Raven, who has stopped to admire the view.
When she thinks about it she knows she couldn’t have seen this coming, but it feels like she should have. That first summer on the ground, she’d been running for her life, running from her choices, just running. The next summer, they’d been in the middle of a war. She’d hardly seen Bellamy, hadn’t had time to think about anything except patching up the next person who came into the medical tent. In all honesty, she’d been trying to atone for the last war she’d fought. Seeing Bellamy was hard back then; when she looked at him she only thought of all the decisions they’d made together, and the weight she’d saddled him with when she left. All she saw was guilt.
Things are better between them now. When the war ended, he took whoever wanted to go and moved back into the original camp at the Dropship. The ashes of the grounder warriors had grown into grass and wildflowers, and Clarke took that as a sign of peace. A sign she could return there without being reminded every day of the lives she’s taken. She came quietly with the group but it wasn’t long before Bellamy sought her out to help him rebuild.
Needless to say, she’s had a lot on her mind over the past few years, and now that they’re making a life for themselves that she can be proud of, she has room in her mind to think about things like her co-leader’s calf muscles.
“Hot damn, I love summer,” Raven says, grinning over at Clarke.
“I don’t know,” Clarke responds, glad she’s already red from the stifling heat so Raven maybe won’t notice her ogling Bellamy’s legs. It’s a really nice view. Someone had figured out how to make a ball from animal skins, and he’s kicking it around with a group of people, carefree and enthusiastic. Clarke has gotten used to his shoulders, his arms, his chest– or at least, has achieved facial expressions that don’t give anything away– but this is a whole new challenge. “I didn’t mind the climate control on the Ark. No humidity.”
“It’s only going to get worse,” Raven says, whistling appreciatively when Bellamy lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe sweat from his face. He smirks at the pair of them and while Clarke has never been the swooning type, she might start for the likes of Bellamy Blake.
“Worse?” Clarke asks absently. If she’s staring now, she’s sure she can blame it on wanting to sketch this later. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’s moved by how joyful the scene before her is, how unlikely it would have been two years ago. The front of her mind is fully occupied with less innocent thoughts.
“Monty says there’s a heat wave coming in.” One of the first pieces of equipment Clarke had commissioned Raven to build was a radar for the weather. Conditions on the ground change so quickly, she’d been glad for it on numerous occasions.
Unfortunately for the camp, Monty is right. The very air becomes sticky. Clarke feels perpetually drenched in sweat. Clothing is shed right and left, and Bellamy is no exception. As if the shorts alone weren’t bad enough for Clarke, he takes to wearing his shirt as infrequently as possible. His curls stick to his forehead, his freckles– which cover more of his body than Clarke needs to know to keep her sanity– become more pronounced, his skin darkening. He looks like he was made for weather like this and she can hardly be around him without losing complete focus on her task.
Her response isn’t as mature as she’d like it to be, but she can’t help herself. She starts actively avoiding him. She tells herself it’s not obvious, and that once the heat wave passes she’ll be able to get herself under control again.
She doesn’t think he’s noticing the way she’ll slip out of a tent a few moments after he enters, or the way she’ll send someone else as a go-between to deliver messages. She gets out of camp for a day or two to gather medicinal herbs with Monty, then spends another few days holed up in medical to go over inventory. She even takes to hiding out in Raven’s tent in the evening, knowing Bellamy can find her if he really needs to but can’t just stick his beautiful head in her tent to say goodnight like he usually does.
And maybe he doesn’t notice, at first. But Raven definitely does.
“What’s up with you and Bellamy?” She asks the fourth night she enters her own tent to find Clarke sketching on her floor.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you reverting to how things were when you first came back from finding yourself or whatever?”
Clarke rolls her eyes. She and Raven have talked a lot about Clarke’s time alone, how they’d both had the chance to mourn their respective losses. Granted, they’d been drunk a lot when those conversations took place, but Raven has a better tolerance than Clarke does, so if Clarke remembers it she knows her friend does too. Raven being glib about that time is just a sign that she’s over it enough to make fun of Clarke about it. It helps Clarke feel like she’s over it, too.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” she protests. If it was just about her feelings for Bellamy, she knows she’d tell Raven without any hesitation. She’s mostly come to terms with– well, she wouldn’t even call it pining. Pining implies that she’s hoping one day it will happen. She knows she doesn’t deserve Bellamy. She also knows that if he made a move, she wouldn’t be able to turn him down. Either way, the truth is much more embarrassing. Raven raises a singular, unimpressed eyebrow at Clarke. “I guess that’s what it looks like I’m doing, but I swear it’s not… we’re not fighting. I’m not mad.”
“Maybe you should tell him that,” Raven says seriously. Sometimes Clarke forgets how much Raven and Bellamy mean to each other. “He’s been a nightmare for the past few days, and I don’t think it’s just the heat.”
“I’ll tell him,” Clarke promises her weakly.
The thing is, she doesn’t know how to tell him, or what she’ll say when that conversation does come up. She has no one to blame but herself when he storms into her tent, angry, the following evening.
“Care to tell me why you refuse to be within five feet of me?” He says, the deep timbre of his voice filling her small tent. “I saw you literally turn in the other direction when you saw me today. Whatever your problem is, I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what I’m dealing with.” He’s geared up for a fight, and it’s the last straw for Clarke. Something about the fire in his eyes, the way his chest heaves when he’s speaking with such passion, combined with her struggles for the past week or so, just gets to her.
She snaps.
In half a second, she’s launched herself at him, the way she did when she saw him after returning the first time from Mount Weather. Only this time, her mouth is on his, hot and hard.
Somehow, he’s more prepared for it this time because he reacts almost instantaneously, his arms coming around her like they did then, his teeth scraping against her lower lip. Her mouth opens in a gasp and he takes the opportunity to slide his tongue against hers. One of his hands comes up to pull the pencil from her hair, letting it fall from its twist, and the other slides down to the exposed skin between the hem of her shirt and the waistband of her pants.
“It’s the shorts,” she confesses, undoing his button. It takes her a minute to follow up on this train of thought with the way his mouth is moving behind her ear. If she could think more, she’d probably be over-thinking it, worrying about how much harder it will be not to be in love with him after she knows what he feels like, what he tastes like. If she could think more, she’d be glad her senses were so overwhelmed that she couldn’t think at all. “You hardly wear, like, any clothes anymore.”
“You’ve been avoiding me for a week because you were afraid you couldn’t stop yourself from jumping me?” He sounds like he’s laughing at her, his voice in her ear making her weak at the knees.
“This definitely would have been awkward in front of everyone,” she says, effectively shutting him up by slanting her mouth over his.
After, she pillows her head on his chest and throws one leg over his even though it’s a million degrees and their skin is slick. She just wants to be close to him.
“Next time you’re too overcome with lust to be near me, tell me sooner,” he murmurs into her hair.
“Yeah?” Her heart soars. It’s more than she hoped for.
“Yeah,” he says, easy as anything. As if he’s taken it for granted this won’t be a one hit wonder. “And not just because it’s an easy fix. I– I don’t like not seeing you. I’m hoping to see you a lot more, actually.”
“Me too,” she says, smiling up at him. It’s a wonder how much more easily smiling comes to her now than it used to. “I think we can make that work.”