Hey Chash, as always thanks for doing this! Can I please prompt bellarke as exes who get drunk and sleep together again?? Thank you!!!
Clarke knew it was a bad idea to date Bellamy. All of her friends told her to do it, because their sexual tension was so obvious, and he clearly liked her, and she liked him. It was perfect, and Clarke resisted mostly because she knew that if it went wrong, it would be awful. Bellamy is Octavia’s brother and Miller’s best friend, and he gets along with all her friends as well as she does. She’d known that if the two of them ever broke up, she wouldn’t be able to avoid him, and a month after ending it, it’s obvious how right she was.
“Remind me why me and Bellamy broke up,” she tells Raven.
“Dumb shit,” says Raven, without even the slightest pause.
She rubs her face. “It wasn’t dumb.”
“Yeah? Then you remind yourself why you guys broke up. If you don’t remember, maybe it’s because it was fucking stupid, and you guys are stubborn assholes.”
“I remember,” Clarke says, petulant. “Just because we didn’t work out doesn’t mean he stopped being hot.”
“Seriously, I want you to tell me why you broke up again. I bet you won’t think it makes sense either. You’re drunk enough to not censor yourself.”
Clarke’s not sure she’ll ever be drunk enough to ever tell Raven the whole truth about breaking up with Bellamy, because the whole truth is simple and awful and embarrassing, all at once.
The whole truth is that she heard Bellamy talking to Miller about how they could move in together, and it freaked her out, and it still freaks her out. Clarke’s never been serious enough with someone to move in with them before, and the simultaneous realizations that Bellamy wanted to live with her and she wanted to live with him terrified her enough that she broke up with him.
It was not a good response, and she knows that.
“It wasn’t working out,” she says instead.
“So, you need another shot before you tell me.”
“It was fun, but–you know me and Bellamy couldn’t really last.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
Clarke glances over at him again. He’s been completely fine since the breakup, and that’s the other thing that sucks. She expected him to fight her on it, to be upset. When he just shrugged and told her it was her decision, it had just made her more confident that he didn’t care, that his asking–or thinking about asking–her to move in was a checkbox on some mental list of relationship steps.
When she’s being fair, she knows how stupid this is. But it’s hard to be fair.
“We’re too similar,” she says.
“See, that’s what I meant about shitty reasons. You’re both stubborn assholes who won’t admit you’re wrong, but I know you started this one. I get it,” she adds, and Clarke knows she does. Raven’s not great at intimacy either. “But you don’t get to act like this wasn’t all on you.”
“I know.”
“And I think you could still fix it, if you wanted to.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I could.” She downs her beer. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” says Raven, dubious, and Clarke finally lets herself go talk to him.
*
She knows all the steps that bring her to the next morning. She goes to talk to Bellamy, he’s friendly, she can’t stop looking at his mouth, he teases her about it, and it just seems like so much of a better idea to flirt with him than to try to have a serious conversation about how she thinks she was in love with him and probably still is and she dealt with it poorly.
It’s so much easier to drag him to the bathroom and blow him, to let him take her home and fuck her.
If she’d just left after that, it all would have been incredibly easy, but Bellamy wrapped his arm around her and kissed her hair and it felt so good, to be curled up against him, to be in his life again.
It still feels good, aside from the profound, existential panic about waking up in her ex-boyfriend’s bed.
Bellamy isn’t there anymore, but she can hear him in the kitchen, probably making coffee, maybe cooking.
There are two options here: he did this because he likes sex with her and feelings aren’t an issue, or he did this because he still has feelings for her and he’ll take whatever he can get.
She really, really wants it to be the second one, so much so it scares her. So much so she doesn’t even want to ask, for fear he’ll tell her that she fucked up so badly he won’t ever forgive her.
On the other hand, they’re already broken up, and he’s probably already pissed at her. She has almost nothing to lose.
She finds her favorite shirt of his, in the same drawer it’s always in, and pulls it on. Her hair hurts and she’s definitely a little hungover, but he has a glass of water on his bedside table, which she’s drunk half of before she notices the condensation on the side.
Her stomach lurches in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with her hangover.
She finds him leaning against the kitchen counter with his phone in his hand. He’s wearing boxers and an old t-shirt, his traditional morning ensemble, with his hair still messy and his glasses on. He looked good at the bar last night, dressed to pick someone up, but Clarke’s always liked him best like this, unguarded and casual.
“Hi,” she says.
His eyes flick up and then go back to the phone. “Hi.”
She props herself against the counter next to him, her arm brushing his. Aside from last night, it’s the first time they’ve been alone since she broke up with him, and he clearly knows it too.
“So, I fucked up,” she says.
“You were drunk.”
He says it so quickly she thinks he must have been rehearsing it, that he must have been thinking about this the whole time she was asleep. He’s so ready to write this one off, to let her off the hook.
“I was too,” he continues. “It’s muscle memory, right? It happens.”
It would be so easy to let it go. To just agree with him, let him give her coffee and leave. He wouldn’t get mad at her, they wouldn’t have a fight about how shitty it was of her to break up with him in the first place.
And they’d still be broken up.
“No,” she says. “Not that. I fucked up when I broke up with you.”
He snorts. “I know the sex is good, but–”
“Bellamy. That’s not why. You know that’s not why.”
“Do I?” he asks. “You told me it wasn’t working for you. I don’t know what changed except that you remembered you’re into me.”
She swallows. “Can I have coffee before I talk about how massively stupid I was?”
The tension still isn’t leaving his shoulders, and it makes her ache.
She fucked up so hard.
“Sure,” he says, pours her a cup and adds sugar and milk, just how she likes.
“I heard you telling Miller you wanted me to move in,” she admits. “I showed up early at the bar, and–it freaked me out.”
“Okay.”
“I just–I realized that I loved you, and this was serious, and if we kept going out, it would just get more and more serious, and I–broke up with you.”
“Because you didn’t want to get serious.”
“No. Because I never have been before and–” She closes her eyes. “There was no good reason, except I thought that if we broke up later, it would be even worse.”
When she opens her eyes again, he’s looking ahead, sipping his coffee, apparently waiting for more.
“I fucked up, and I’m sorry, and I want to fix it.”
“Fix it,” he repeats. “What does that mean?”
“I’m still in love with you and I still want to be with you,” she admits. “And if there’s a way for you to want that too, I want to make it work.”
Finally, he says, “You know you broke my heart, right?”
She doesn’t let herself wince. It’s his pain, not hers. “I thought I might have, yeah. But I was hoping I didn’t.” He snorts again, and she smiles, helpless and embarrassed. “I thought if I broke your heart, you’d fight harder.”
“I never thought it would work out,” he admits. “I always thought you were going to dump me sooner or later. So I was ready when you did.”
“I’m so sorry, Bellamy. And I get it, if it was too much. If you can’t—“
“What if I can?” he asks. He’s still not looking at her.
“Can?”
“What if I just forgive you? What if I just want you back?”
“Then you’ve got me,” she says.
It still takes a second. He takes the mug out of her hands carefully, like he’s expecting her to protest, puts it down like he’s afraid even the slightest contact with the counter will shatter it. For another moment, he looks at her, and then he leans down and kisses her.
They did kiss last night. They weren’t avoiding it or anything. But it was kissing as a first step, kissing hot and hard as they pulled off clothing, kissing because they didn’t want to break contact.
This kiss feels like she broke his heart, and he’s waiting for her to do it again.
“Bellamy,” she murmurs.
“What?”
There isn’t really anything to say, though. She already apologized, and he already told her he wanted to try again.
“I’m going to do better,” she finally settles on, and he smiles a little.
“I’m in love with you,” he says. “I, uh—I thought it might have made a difference, if I said it before.”
“I probably would have freaked out anyway. But yeah, I love you too.”
“I don’t mind freaking out. Just maybe next time, freak out with me. Instead of dumping me.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t a good response. I’m still sorry.”
“Cool,” he says. “Good talk. You want breakfast?”
She wets her lips, lets her hands trace up his chest. She missed him, and all she really wants is to be close again, to feel like this is real. And she can’t imagine he’s going to mind.
“I want a do-over.”
“A do-over of what, exactly?”
“Last night. Once more, with feelings.”
He laughs, and kisses her again, and when she tugs him to the bedroom, he follows her happily. She blows him again, and he eats her out, and this time when he fucks her it’s slow and deep and perfect, and when they curl up together, she doesn’t even think about leaving.
“Better?” he asks, and she kisses his collarbone, feeling perfectly content for the first time since she broke up with him.
“So much better.”
*
Six months later, she’s the one to bring up cohabitation.
“You’re sure?” he asks. “We don’t have to, if you’re not ready.”
“I’m sure,” she promises. “No freak-outs, no breakups, no drunken fumbling.”
He grins. “I like drunken fumbling.”
“Okay, a little drunken fumbling. When we want to.”
“When we want to,” he agrees. “Like when we’re celebrating moving in together, maybe?”
“Sounds perfect,” she says, and it really, really does.
This was such a cute prompt, I had to turn it into complete, sickening fluff (with just a tiny dash of angst). This fic works well as a companion piece to this little ficlet, but can be read alone as well. Thank you for the prompt!
It’sraining.
Ofcourse, that in itself is nothing special, and no one except forClarke takes note of it at all. But the thing is, Clarke hasn’t quitemade the transition from thinking of rain as a deadly enemy to notthinking much of it at all. After all, they’re safe now that they’vemoved further North, finding refuge from the nuclear fallout with theIce Nation. But this development is still recent enough that she hasto actively remind herself of it, and more than once she starts awakefrom a nightmare and has to calm herself down with a mantra of “We’resafe, we’re safe, we’re safe.”
Becauseshe still remembers when they weren’t; during those horrible monthsbefore Roan’s invitation, when black rain and invisible radiationpoisoning whittled down their courage along with their numbers.
Sheremembers how often they went out to find people still trapped outthere, to try and help them to safety, and how Bellamy went out twiceas often as anyone else. She remembers how much it terrified her, howmuch she hated watching him put on the suit, how much she tried notto think that this might be the last time she’d see his face everytime he closed the visor.
Shealso remembers seeing the bodies of those he couldn’t get to in time,burned and blistered beyond recognition, and the expression on hisface when they brought them in later: like he’d killed each and everyone of them himself.
So,when she steps out onto the stone balcony of Roan’s palace to see fatraindrops spatter the muddy ground of the open courtyard beneath her,there’s a split second of panic when she wants to flee back insideand barricade herself from the threat. And that is when Roanand Bellamy enter the courtyard below, returning from a friendlysparring session with smiles on their faces and rain soaking theirhair.
Beforeshe’s had time to turn to her trusted mantra, Clarke is alreadythrowing herself down the stairs. She’s not sure what it is supposedto accomplish, because if that rain was poisonous, her throwingherself into its path wouldn’t help Bellamy one bit. But she’s actingon instinct, and rational thinking only returns when she’s alreadystanding before them, stopping just short of throwing herself at himand making a complete spectacle of herself.
Afterall, it’s been less than three hours since they sat side by side atbreakfast, so there’s really no need to act like they’ve beenseparated for months. Still, as she knows well enough, it only takesthree seconds to lose someone forever, and this… this is the onesomeone she couldn’t bear to lose.
Luckily,Bellamy and Roan are so engrossed in their conversation that theydon’t witness her frantic dash down the stairs, and only notice herwhen she skids to a stop before them.
Twoheads turn to her in unison, take in her dishevelled appearance,flushed face and heavy breathing, and two faces darken with worry.
“Clarke?Are you alright?” Bellamy asks, at the same time as Roan says:
“Whathappened?”
Andnow she really does feel ridiculous because, well, nothinghappened. Nothing at all, except for her being paranoid and also,most likely, in love with her co-leader and best friend.
“Nothing,everything’s fine.” Judging by their faces, neither of the menbelieve her, despite the attempt at a breezy tone. “I justwanted to say Hi.”
“Right,”Bellamy says, clearly not understanding. Beside him, Roan rolls hiseyes, then excuses himself with a jovial slap on Bellamy’s back and aknowing look at Clarke.
“Areyou sure you’re alright? Did you have a nightmare?”
“It’sten in the morning, Bellamy. I didn’t spend the day napping, youknow. I had a ton of things to do.” She hopes he’ll ask furtherabout those things, but her diversion tactic fails completely.Bellamy continues to look at her searchingly, trying to figure outwhat’s got her so rattled, and if he worries about her the way sheworries about him, it’s just cruel to leave him guessing at thispoint.
“Therain freaked me out.” It doesn’t seem to be enough of anexplanation, so she continues. “I forgot for a moment that it’snot poisonous up here. And then I saw you getting drenched and I…”She breaks off as her throat closes, and suddenly that feeling ofpanic is back and she needs to reassure herself that he’s really hereand fine and that something as simple as rain won’t harmhim.
Sheraises one trembling hand to his jaw, tracing the little rivulets ofrainwater dripping from his hair and down his face. At her touch, hiseyelashes flutter rapidly and his mouth falls open a little bit, halfsurprise and half something else, she thinks. The tiny movementcauses water to cascade from his lower lip down his chin where a fewdrops remain, trembling, in the little dimple pressed in the middleof it.
Andwithout really knowing what she’s doing, Clarke stretches up andkisses them away.
Which,it occurs to her almost immediately, is just a plain weird thingto do.
It’snot the first weird thing she’s done around him lately, not by a longshot - there’s been burrowing into his side during conversations outon the balcony, under the guise of trying to stay warm of course.There’s been that time he even gave her his jacket for the samepurpose and she actually buried her face in its upturned collar tobreathe him in. (He didn’t see that, luckily.) There’s been fallingasleep with her head on his shoulder and letting him tease her aboutbeing not a morning person until he managed to get a smile out of herafter all. There’s been giggling, for fuck’s sake.
Inshort, she’s been acting like a lovesick lunatic around him, and thisrenewed ridiculousness is just the tip of the iceberg.
Butfor all that Clarke wishes the ground would open up and swallow her,Bellamy doesn’t seem to mind. Sure, he looks a little surprised, anddefinitely confused, but not at all put out. He looks like…
Shestudies him; blinking to get stray raindrops off his long lashes,cheeks a little flushed - from the sparring session, no doubt - mouthclosing as he swallows hard.
Helooks like he’s waiting to see what she’ll do next.
Whichmeans that this moment right here might make a hell of a differenceon how the next few minutes of her life will play out, or perhapsmore than minutes. Perhaps what started out as a day like any otherhas suddenly led up to a sort of tipping point - a point that, ifshe’s perfectly honest, has been a long time coming. Because ifClarke has been acting a little silly lately, Bellamy has been justas bad. She’s been in denial about this fact for quite some time, notsure if she was more afraid of being right about this or wrong. Butit’s become pretty clear that Bellamy’s been in just about the samestate she is in, and that sooner or later, something had to happen.
Shejust didn’t expect it to happen like this, while they’re beingpummelled by frigid rain in the deserted courtyard of Roan’s castle.But then, on earth, nothing ever really happens the way she expectsit to. Why should this be any different?
Andof all the choices she’s had to make since landing on earth, choicesabout other people’s future and her own, the choice to stretch uponce more and really, properly kiss him, lips on lips and all,is the easiest by far.
Once you get this, you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly. Then you have to send this to ten of your favourite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool~) 🌻💖
I apologise for taking forever to get around to this, but I’ve been really busy recently and my self esteem has been out the window so I didn’t feel like answering this.
But now I’m pumped on coffee and feeling productive sooo:
my smile (shout out to my mum and dad for letting me get braces)
my commitment to finishing a task (I can’t leave anything half done unless it’s 20k of a fic that’s just sat on my laptop)
I think I’m easy to talk to(?) so I’ll go with that
the fact that I’m a positive person despite everything
my ability to get myself all hyped up and excited about almost anything (honestly if anyone ever needs a hype girl/cheerleader I’ll do it!)