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In all honesty, she’s not even sure who started the conversation.
She and Bellamy have been friends for years, best friends even, so it’s not really a surprise that they can make conversation (or arguments) out of almost anything. They live in each other’s pockets at this point and while she knows everything from his shoe size down to the type of body wash he uses, they never, ever discuss their sex lives.
Until now apparently.
It’s not like Clarke doesn’t know anything about his; she’s seen him go home with all kinds of people, sometimes even two at a time, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. Same with hers; he’ll smirk and make one or two pointed comments the next time he sees her, but they never really bring up the topic.
So when he slumps down in the vacant barstool next to her with a, “Fuck, I need to get laid,” she understandably chokes on her tongue.
“What was that?” she asks once she can control her vocal chords again.
Bellamy waves down the bartender, ordering a round of shots. “Get laid. Have sex. Whatever funny lingo the kids are using these days to mean precisely that.”
“Okay…?”
He scowls at her, even as he struggles to bite back a smile. “You’re so bad at this.”
“Honestly, it’s because I’m not sure what angle I’m supposed to be playing here.” She shrugs. “Concerned friend? Gentle teasing? Reminding you that love is fleeting and we’re all going to be dead in like sixty years?”
“ So bad ,” he repeats before offering her one of the shots the bartender just set down in front of them. They clink glasses and he knocks back his like a pro while she screws up her face at the burn. “I’m attractive right?”
“Your face is rather symmetrical,” she allows and he kicks her lightly until she says, “Oh come on, you’re a pretty boy and we both know it.”
He rubs a weary hand down his faces, knocking his glasses askew. “So it’s my personality then.”
“Oh, definitely.”
“ Clarke .”
“I’m still failing to see the problem here,” she admits, trailing a finger through the condensation ring left behind by her glass.
He sighs. “I haven’t had sex in over four months,” he says bluntly. “It’s like I’ve forgotten how a hook up is supposed to work.”
It does come as a bit of a surprise. She has seen him chatting up different girls whenever they go out, but now that she’s thinking about it, she can’t remember ever seeing him leave with one. She knows that Bellamy can be a little strange at times, but he looks like thatー all tanned skin and freckles and stupidly muscled body that she doesn’t even know how a high school history teacher managed to get. Who in their right mind would be able to turn him down?
“We’ve all been through a dry spell, Bellamy,” she says after a moment, patting his back. “Just use your hand like the rest of us.”
“It’s not the same,” he grumbles, dropping his head on top of the bar counter and that’s how she knows it’s actually bothering him. Bellamy is a notorious germaphobe, carrying around more hand sanitizer and wet wipes than a middle aged suburban mom of three. It’s cute.
Clarke manages to slide a napkin between his skin and the sticky surface and he groans again. “I haven’t slept with anyone since Gina . I miss ー ” he cuts himself off rather abruptly, turning his face away from her.
“You miss?” she prods, resting her hand between his shoulder blades.
The tips of his ears turn red in a seldom show of embarrassment. “I miss eating girls out,” he says in one breath, and she freezes.
It’s not like she hasn’t thought about Bellamy like that before, she’s been halfway in love with him for almost a year now and while she’s resigned herself to never moving beyond friendship with him, well... her mind tends to wander.
(He has really nice hands okay? And one tequila filled night a few years ago Raven let it slip just how good he was at everything else.)
So yeah, she has thought about it a few times, but hearing it straight from him, that he actually misses it, sends a bolt of warmth straight through her, arousal settling heavily in her core. Clarke finds herself actually thinking about it, Bellamy settled in the cradle of her hips, slowly pulling off her underwear, and her legs clench together.
It’s her distraction that leads her to end up saying, “Well I mean, I can always give you a hand. If you want.”
By the time her brain has managed to catch up with what she just said, his eyes have already snapped over to her and she pretends to be engrossed in the salt slowly dissolving around the rim of her margarita.
“Really,” he says flat.
“What are friends for, am I right?” she says breezily, looking anywhere but at him.
He snorts. “That’s one way of putting it,” he says, before licking his lips. “I’m game if you are.”
“What?” she asks, head snapping up to look at him. There’s still a flush of colour dashed across his cheeks, but besides that he looks remarkably put together.
“Unless we were just joking around, in which case consider that just another part of it,” he backtracks quickly, and she worries her bottom lip between her teeth, thinking about it.
Finally, she picks up her glass and drains the last of her drink, setting it down on the bar with a definitive thud. “I mean, I’ll be a good friend if I help you out right?” she says, hopping off the stool as he snorts again. “Just let me get my purse.”
“Oh yeah. Such a good friend,” he nods, and the edges of his smile are tinged in relief. He reaches out and squeezes her hip, and Clarke can feel his eyes on her the entire time while she’s saying her goodbyes and settling her tab. It makes her legs feel like they might give out at any moment.
It doesn’t surprise anyone when he follows her out the door. They both live in the same direction, and everyone knows Bellamy would never let her walk home by herself. As soon as they’re outside in the brisk spring air, he places a hand on the small of her back, making her feel warm all over.
They make it about a block before she ends up pushing him against the side of a building and kissing him like she’s been aching to do for the longest while, and then they’re off .
She and Bellamy stumble through the door to his apartment, kissing each other deep and sloppy while trying to rid themselves of their clothes. Clarke’s been over a thousand times and she still runs into the side table on her way to the bedroom. She blames it on the fact that he’s biting down on the side of her neck while his hands wander over her thighs and stomach, a massive distraction.
They’re both down to their underwear by the time they get to his room and for one heart stopping moment they just stop, breathing heavily and staring at each other, and she’s almost afraid that he’ll stop them right here, saying that this is a mistake.
Instead, Bellamy reaches out and snaps the elastic band of her boyshorts. “Cute,” he says, and just like that, all her worries disappear.
“They’re practical ,” she harrumphs, tugging him in for another kiss. It’s not like she didn’t know how hot her best friend is before, but there’s a stark difference between boardshorts at the beach and boxers in his bedroom while they make out. He’s all tanned skin and taut muscles and prominent bulge and really, a high school history teacher has no business being this ripped.
Bellamy chuckles against her mouth. “I didn’t say they weren’t,” he murmurs, guiding her back towards the bed. “The elephants are a nice touch.”
“I know for a fact that you have founding fathers themed boxers. You don’t get to judge my elephant print underwear here.”
“That’s because you bought those for me as a gag gift,” he says with a roll of his eyes. He presses down on the swell of her stomach lightly, until she’s lying against the mattress and he settles between her thighs, pressing a kiss behind her knee. “I just said you looked cute in them.” His fingers curl into the waistband and he looks up at her with a wicked grin. “And I’m sure you’ll look even better out of them.”
She blushes for some inexplicable reason, chest feeling tight. “Only one way to find out,” she says, her tone falling just shy of flirtatious. Bellamy nuzzles her hipbone, settling the butterflies that have made home in her stomach just long enough for her to lift her hips so that he could slide off her underwear.
He brushes his fingers through her folds and she tries not to squirm too much, but judging from the way he bites back a pleased smile, she must fall short. In her defence it’s been a while, and she’s pretty certain her panties have been wet the moment they started talking about this back at the bar.
A hand drifts up to squeeze one of her breasts as he hitches a leg over his shoulder. “Glad to know I was right,” he says, and before she could get another word out, colouring even further at his admission, he’s licking into her like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.
Clarke throws her head back, groaning, because it’s just as good as she thought it would be, even when they’re both slightly tipsy, and it’s ー
It’s fun in a way she’s never experienced before.
Bellamy makes her laugh and moan at the same time, licking into her easily as they keep up a steady back and forth, Clarke sniping at him, telling him to go faster, and him teasing her about her lack of patience. He’s almost sloppy about it, lazy, but it’s still so good and she can feel her orgasm building steadily in her veins until it explodes, and she’s floating and falling all at once.
He keeps going, seeing her through another one after, and she ends up having to actually push him away because it’s becoming too much. He’s more than a little smug as he crawls up her body to kiss her again, and Clarke tangles her fingers in his hair.
“Fuck, Bellamy,” she sighs, nipping at him.
“Yeah? Good?” he asks, hands finding her breasts again and squeezing. She whimpers into his mouth.
“You know it was good,” she says as she lets her own hands skim across his body. She didn’t get to touch him as much as she wanted to earlier. He’s very broad and warm, and his dick is hard against her leg when she kisses him again.
“Everyone likes being validated, Clarke,” he snarks, voice going a little thready when she pushes him onto his back.
“I’ll make you a blue ribbon later,” she says, tugging off his boxers. “World’s Best at Cunnilingus.”
“So long as I get that in writing,” he gasps when she finally gets her hands on him, and she grins.
She jerks him off, hard and fast, and it only takes him a few minutes to come, groaning into her neck as he does before slumping backward. They both just lay there in a weird half slouch, breathing heavily, and when she rolls away from him to start getting dressed, his arm tightens around her waist and he whines into her hair.
“It’s almost 1 a.m. I’m pretty sure you’ll be hard pressed to catch a train at this hour. Just stay over.”
He has his free arm over his eyes and his mouth is still hanging open a bit as he catches his breath. The sheets lay in a rumpled mess around him, doing nothing to cover his naked form. With his hair a tangled mess and nothing more than the orange glow from the streetlamps outside illuminating the room, he looks like one of the gods from his mythology books he likes so much, or maybe something out of a renaissance painting.
It’s almost pathetic how easily she caves, flopping back down on the bed and stealing a pillow from behind his back. He grumbles a little, the old man that he is, but he tosses her another one, as well as the corner of the blanket.
“I want waffles in the morning,” she tells him, pulling the covers up to her neck. She’s turned away from him, trying to maintain some sort of friendship boundary, or at least as much it could be maintained when you’re lying next to each other naked after having two impressive orgasms.
“You’ll be lucky enough if I even give you a Pop Tart,” he sniffs, throwing an arm over her side as he settles into sleep.
When she wakes up, the bed is empty and Bellamy is in the kitchen wearing just his boxers as he cuts up fruit while the waffle maker ticks away. There’s already a stack of them on the table and as well as a can of whipped cream and a her favourite chipped mug filled with coffee.
“This is only because the strawberries were starting to go bad,” he tells her, and she just snorts, dabbing whipped cream across his nose, making him splutter.
It becomes a thing between the two of them after that.
They don’t hook up all the time ー it seems that whatever problems he was having with finding a hookup disappear after that night with her ー so while there’s been the odd occasion where Bellamy will go home with someone else, most times, when they’re up for it, it’s her who’s tucked under his arm as they had home and it’s her that’ll be clawing at the sheets a mere thirty minutes after leaving the bar. Clarke tries not to read too much into it.
They’re still Bellamy and Clarke. They still go to the movies and have Chopped night and she still makes him hold her hand while they watch Buzzfeed Unsolved because she’s a wimp. None of that has changed, they just added sex into the mix and that. Well.
Clarke isn’t sure if she should be upset or grateful for the fact that their dynamic is still the same. She figures that she’ll get used to that pain in her chest whenever he smiles at her over the table when they’re out with their friends eventually.
(She’ll get over him eventually, and she tries to pretend that that’s not the biggest lie that she’s ever told herself.)
“Are you busy tomorrow?” he asks, when they’re still breathing heavy, sweat cooling on their skin. Clarke is still on top of him, head against his chest, and she knows that she should move but she quite likes it likes this, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat beneath her ear while he traces indiscernible patterns across her skin.
“Hmm,” she hums, trying to pull up her schedule and coming up blank. She’s too blissed out to think right now, the tips of her fingers and toes still tingling from a good orgasm. “I don’t know. Why?”
“I was thinking we could go catch a movie or something,” he says, brushing a hand down her spine. “Get dinner after since apparently you hate my cooking now.”
“I don’t hate your cooking,” she scowls, pinching the soft inner skin of his bicep and ignoring his resulting yelp. “I just hate the fact that you’ve made me eat kale for the past three days.”
“It’s nutritional .”
“It’s disgusting .”
“You’re disgusting,” he scowls and she snorts.
“Nice comeback. What are you? Eight?”
“Go fuck yourself, Griffin.”
“But why should I do that when you’re right here?” she smiles sweetly, and his lips slowly curl into a wicked smirk.
“That’s true,” he says, voice dropping into that delicious sex roughened tone that has that familiar warmth pooling in her belly once more. His eyes darken and his hands drift to her hips, holding them tight. “I am right here.”
He rolls her onto her back and she tries very hard to seem unaffected. It doesn’t really work.
“Don’t you have essays to grade?” she asks while he starts pressing kisses into her thighs.
“I’m taking a well deserved break.”
“You’ve been taking this break for almost an hour now.”
“It’s really well deserved,” he murmurs, breath ghosting over her centre, and he smirks again when she clenches down on nothing. Jackass.
There’s no point in arguing with him, not if she doesn’t want him to draw things out, leaving her shaking and begging while he takes his time in teasing her, so Clarke just widens her legs and sighs, “If you insist,” before slumping back against the pillows with a groan as his fingers tease her entrance.
“Glad we could come to an agreement,” he grins, fingers rubbing up inside her just so and making her see white.
“Less talk and more of that,” she pants, a hand twisting in his hair, and he kisses her hip, laughing.
“Yes ma’am,” he says with a crooked smirk, and she tugs on his hair again.
They do go to the movies the next day. Bellamy swings by the clinic after work and they go see some shitty historical fantasy because everything else was either sold out or not starting for another hour.
Of course, he starts grumbling about the inaccuracies merely five minutes into it so Clarke shuts him up by kissing him. They end up making out in the back row for almost the entire movie, like a pair of randy teenagers out on their first date, and he laughs when she points it out afterwards, swinging an arm around her shoulders and drawing her into his side.
They go to the greasy diner down the street from his apartment for dinner, because neither of them want to face the Friday evening rush downtown.
“Hope you enjoy your impending heart attack,” he says darkly as she happily munches down on a burger.
“Hope you enjoy your sad, kale filled life,” she shoots back, giving his plate a dismissive glare. As far as she’s concerned, you don’t come to a diner and order something with that much greenery. It’s a crime.
“At least I get to live my life without worrying about cholesterol levels.”
She throws a french fry at his face. “Please. You’ll probably still end up worrying about that.”
“Shut up and eat your death burger, Clarke,” he sniffs before reaching out and stealing another fry from her plate. He pops it in his mouth with a grin while she grumbles about how if he wanted fries he could have just ordered a basket instead of eating half of hers.
(She does nudge the basket closer to the centre of the table though, so he won’t have to stretch too much.)
They split a sundae for dessert and Bellamy insists on paying because she covered the cost of their movie tickets. It starts feeling more and more like a date, especially when she follows him home and crawls into his bed, wearing one of his t-shirts as pyjamas while he curls in behind her.
That’s something else that’s been happening a lot recently too, the sleeping.
Before she at least had the excuse of sex to stay over, cuddled next to him while she listens to his breathing. Now it’s just something they do. She has her own side, and he turns down the thermostat because she likes when it’s freezing, and it’s different.
Not bad, just… different.
She always spent a lot of time with Bellamy before they started hooking up, stayed over sometimes too, sleeping on the couch. She has her own mug that she made herself, the one that’s slightly chipped at the rim, and a winter coat stuffed in the back of his closet somewhere, and they have joint custody over the Harry Potter box set they bought at Target one night when they were both more than a little tipsy and couldn’t find the movies on Netflix a few years ago.
Now there’s more to that.
Now she has her clothes hanging up next to his in the closet, and a toothbrush in the cup next to his. He bought one of those bathroom caddies and hung it up in the shower after complaining about all the clutter because, ‘Jesus Clarke what the hell do you need six different products for? ’ There’s a box of tampons under the sink from when she stayed over a month ago and got her period early and he ran out to buy some. She’s even walked on in him doing their laundry together, folding her underwear alongside his without even batting an eyelid and...
And it’s all so domestic that it makes her heart hurt more and more each day.
She’s in love with him, has been for a while, and while the sex is great, she craves an intimacy that they’ve never truly discussed, yet still managed to blossom between them.
She ends up confessing to Raven when she gets dragged out for a girls night. She and Bellamy spent another night wrapped around each other, just sleeping, and in the morning she woke up to find him ironing her scrubs alongside his work clothes while the percolator bubbled away on the counter. There’s only so much her heart could take, and she ends up blabbing out the whole story shamefacedly over their second round of drinks while she sits there, stoic, and absorbs every word.
Finally, after she got it all out, Raven pinches the bridge of her nose and says, “Why can’t you two just be normal ?”
“You’re supposed to be helping me ,” Clarke bemoans.
She pins her in place with a glare. “Fine. You want help? Then just talk to each other . I know it may sound like a novel concept, but that shit actually does work.”
“That’s the least helpful bit of advice ー ”
“Bellamy’s in love with you too, you know,” she cuts in, and Clarke falls silent. “Even before you two started ー whatever the fuck this is, anyone with eyes could have seen it. So just tell him.”
A part of her deep down inside knows that what Raven is saying could be true, and that talking to him would clear everything up, but at the same time she can’t help but ask in the smallest of voices, “But what if he doesn’t?”
“Clarke,” she starts, squeezing her hand, “You practically live at his place these days. You guys do dinner and movie almost every other week, and if you’re not doing that then you’re going to the museum together, or some stupid hipster production in the park, or throwing popcorn at the tv back at his place. He’s cleared room in his wardrobe for you, you got him to keep a box of those disgustingly sweet caramel chocolates he hates in his pantry for you, and he does your laundry together with his. That’s not even normal boyfriend things; that’s straight up married shit. So stop being such a baby and tell him .”
She doesn’t think that she breathed at all during Raven’s little speech, and when the other girl squeezes her hand again, she exhales heavily.
“Okay,” she says at last. “I’ll tell him, but not tonight. It’s just a lot and... I can’t do that tonight.”
“Well, it’s a start,” Raven sighs, and then flags down the bartender for another round.
She probably ends up drinking far too much in an effort to quash all the emotions tumbling around her right now, which is why when her Uber showed up at the bar, she gave them Bellamy’s address instead of her own.
It’s late, and she didn’t call ahead, so his door it locked of course, but she has a key.
He made her a copy sometime during the third month, when she started staying over more and more, and her shifts at the clinic started later than his school. Bellamy never kicked her out so he could lock up, he just gave her a key instead. It seems rather obvious now that they haven’t been ‘just friends’ for a while now.
Clarke tries to be silent in kicking off her shoes and downing a glass of water, but when she creeps into the bedroom he’s sitting up, blinking blurrily as silvery moonlight drips in through his curtains.
“Hey,” he says, voice rough with sleep. “I thought you were hanging out with Raven tonight?”
“I was, but it’s late and I-” she stops herself, biting her lip.
He seems to get what she was trying to say anyway, and gives her a sleepy smile. “Well don’t just stand there, Griffin. Some of us like to keep natural circadian rhythms.”
“You can not still be half asleep and manage to use the word circadian properly in a sentence,” she says, ducking her head and smiling. Bellamy just shushes her.
“Bite me,” he says, flopping back onto the bed.
“Maybe later,” she shoots back, unbuttoning the snap of her jeans as she heads towards his bathroom, and he boos at her joke.
After she’s done changing and brushing her teeth, she pads back out to the bedroom where he’s already fallen back to sleep.
As usual, her side is left undisturbed, and she grins rather stupidly as she climbs under the covers, wrapping her arms around his torso. He mutters something unintelligible under his breath, and there’s that ache again, though this time it doesn’t hurt quite as much. Clarke just smiles and to herself and brushes a kiss between his shoulder blades before drifting off to sleep.
She finds him in the kitchen as usual the next morning, flipping pancakes at the stove, and his grin when he sees her is brighter than the late morning sunshine streaming in through his windows.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Sleeping Beauty,” he teases, spooning more batter onto the griddle while she pours herself a glass of water.
“Shut up.” She pouts, hauling herself up onto the counter.
Bellamy makes a distressed sound in the back of his throat and swats her thigh with a dish towel. “There are chairs for a reason you know,” he says pointedly, jerking his head towards the table.
She just grins and swipes a blueberry from the bowl next to the batter. “I like being tall.”
“You like being a pain in my ass,” he grumbles, but leaves her there until the last of the pancakes are finished. “Go pour out the coffee, I’ve already set the table.”
She pulls a face but jumps off the counter to grab the mugs by the sink when she actually catches a glance of the table. True to his word, there are already two plates set out with eggs and bacon, and he’s arranged hers into a smiley face like the absolute dork he is.
This time when she feels the telltale squeeze in her chest, she doesn’t try to swallow down the words that keep bubbling up her throat.
“I love you,” she says, keeping her back turned towards him as she makes their coffee.
There’s a clatter, as though the spatula sipped from his grasp, and then comes his startled, “What?”
She waits until she’s done adding the milk to hers before turning around and facing him. Bellamy is gaping at her and she flushes, glancing down into her mug. “I know we never really mentioned anything about feelings, but… it’s been this way for a while, even before we started this whole thing, and yeah.” She shrugs lamely. “I love you.”
Bellamy is still staring at her, looking completely shocked, and she takes a healthy sip of her coffee, trying not to wince when it scalds her tongue. That’s when his jaw clicks shut, and he’s crossing the kitchen in three strides, crowding her up against the counter.
Slowly, giving her time to resist, he pries the mug out of her numb fingers and rests it on the counter behind them.
Then he brings both palms up, cupping her cheeks, and kissing her with an almost bruising kind of passion that elicits a squeak of surprise from Clarke as her hands scramble against his back.
In all six months that they’ve been doing this, Clarke used to think that she has come to know all kinds of kisses from Bellamy. There’s been fast ones, slow ones, angry, soft… the list goes on and on, but this is something else entirely.
The only word that comes to mind when he tenderly strokes his thumb across her cheekbone, when his fingers trace the curve of her jaw, when he sighs into her mouth like that, holding her close, is loving .
“I don’t want to just be your best friend,” she murmurs when they finally part, foreheads still pressed together. “I want to be able to hold your hand, and go out on dates with you, and kiss you whenever I like.”
“So you mean pretty much everything that we’ve already been doing then,” he says wryly, eyes fluttering open, and she presses a kiss to the tip of his nose.
“Yeah, but I want to do those things as your girlfriend ,” she says, carding her fingers through his hair. “I want you be mine .”
She didn’t think it was possible for his eyes to get any softer than they already were, but Bellamy proves her wrong.
“I’ve always been yours,” he admits softly, linking their hands together. “It was never just casual for me. After the first time, I thought I could, but I just kept on thinking about you , no matter who I was with and then it became just you.” He lifts their hands, pressing a kiss to the pads of her fingers before he finally says the words that she’s been dying to hear.
“I love you too.”
Clarke laughs, and he grins crookedly back at her, albeit a tad sheepishly too, and then he’s back there again, slanting his mouth over hers and licking the mirth straight from her tongue. His hands creep under her over large shirt, sliding over her thighs, and ass and stomach before pulling it off entirely.
Breakfast goes cold, and she doesn’t care, not when he keeps murmuring those three words over and over into her skin and making her feel like she’s about to burst with joy.