Happy new year, again, Rosie!! I'd like a drabble. I feel like we don't get enough flustered Clarke on the show so can you write a drabble with flustered Clarke + Bellamy's freckles. It could be canon or modern AU. Thanks for doing this, and you're amazing! <3
Three weeks later, and I finally got there. Sorry for sucking. Anyway, this fic is very ridiculous, deviates slightly from the prompt, and is a lot longer than originally anticipated, but I hope you enjoy it anyway, Hana :)
In retrospect, Clarke probably should’ve realised what was going on.
She’s in her third year of med school, after all, and usually has at least a basic level of common sense in her.
As it is, apparently Bellamy Blake makes her a bit of an idiot. And Bellamy Blake half naked? Well, Clarke’s not sure anyone can truly blame her for her brain short-circuiting and subsequently shutting down at the sight.
“You’re staring,” Raven comments easily, as he pulls off his top, leaving him in nothing but his swimming shorts.
And okay, Clarke at least has enough brain power to recognise that yes, she is staring, and it’d probably be a good idea to, you know — stop. But honestly, she’s not entirely sure how everyone on this goddamn beach isn’t watching him. Because Bellamy taking his top off definitely happened in slow-motion. With his skin glistening and his muscles rippling and his hair remaining perfectly dishevelled. That can’t have just been Clarke. She didn’t just imagine that.
But a quick glance to her friends, all still focused on their own tasks, tells her she did just imagine it. Which is a level above how her brain traditionally deals with her stupid feelings. Usually, she just fantasises about kissing him, or confessing her love, or worst of all, simply snuggling into his side and falling asleep. But this is some weird movie set shit her brain is delving into.
Which is probably the first sign that Clarke ignores.
“Shut up,” she mutters to Raven, spinning on her feet so she’s no longer facing Bellamy. He has a lot of nerve, being as beautiful as he is.
“I’m just saying,” Raven muses, ignoring Clarke’s response as she pulls out her towel and lays it down on the sand. “It’s likely that you’ll die today. Like, you barely keep it together as it is, and now you have to spend all day with him half naked. So, you know, just let me know how nice you want your casket to be.”
“If you think I want to be anything but cremated, you don’t know me very well.”
Raven snorts as Clarke helps lower her down onto her towel. “As someone who works in the medical field, your genuine belief that people can accidentally be buried alive is a weird one.”
“It could happen,” Clarke says, kicking Raven lightly in the shoulder when she just cackles.
“What could happen?” She hears from behind her, and when Clarke turns around there’s Bellamy, smile wide and eyes dazzling and freckles standing out so clearly against his warm golden skin. It’s a lot to take in all at once.
“Clarke could die of dehydration from being so thirsty,” Raven supplies unhelpfully, cocking an amused eyebrow when Clarke shoots her a dirty look.
“What?” Bellamy asks, frowning in confusion.
“Ignore her,” Clarke says, thankful that internet lingo isn’t really a strong point of his. “She’s being an asshole.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bellamy mutters with a small quirk of his lips. And then he looks back at Clarke, smile widening into a bright grin, and her brain kind of short-circuits again. “Want me to do your back?”
And, yeah, that certainly doesn’t help. Clarke blinks once, unable to get anything out but, “What?”
“Your back,” he repeats slowly, amused. When she just stares at him, probably resembling a deer in headlights, he continues, cocking an eyebrow. “You burn pretty quickly, princess. You really should put on sunscreen.”
“Oh right,” Clarke breathes out, shaking her head. She feels very warm suddenly, and it’s messing with her head. When Bellamy just keeps watching her with that amused expression of his, she realises she hasn’t actually answered him, and quickly amends. “Yeah, um. Thanks. That’d be, um — good,” she finishes lamely.
Bellamy chuckles, sending her a funny look as she grabs her bottle of sunscreen and passes it to him. And then she’s tugging off her top and turning around, and Bellamy’s hands are on her, and it’s like the universe is trying to punish her for some past life atrocity. Because his hands are large and rough and perfect, rubbing deep into her skin, and it’s hard not to imagine this exact same feeling in a very different context.
She feels a flush rise quickly on her chest at the thought, can’t help but sway back into Bellamy’s touch a little, but thankfully he doesn’t seem to notice, continuing with his task easily.
“Okay,” he announces a good minute later, running his hands down her back one last time. “I’m done. Do me?”
“What?” She asks, dazed, and when her brain catches up, “Oh, uh — yeah, of course,” she stutters out, feeling like a fourteen year old with her first crush again.
Of course, having her hands on Bellamy doesn’t help much, not with the way she feels the warmth of his skin and the tautness of his muscles, or the fact that she zones in on the freckles running down his back, all the way to the bottom of his scapulae before they pepper out.
It’s like the sun kissed each individual one onto his skin just to torture Clarke. She fucking loves his freckles.
And yes, she sees his freckles all the time, but for some reason they’re particularly mesmerising today, tugging on Clarke’s mind until it unravels a little. She feels herself rock backwards without really meaning to, stumbling in her stance, and has to brace herself using Bellamy’s shoulders.
Which is definitely the second sign, and once again, one she ignores.
It doesn’t get any better after that.
The water is lovely, of course, and the weather just as much, with the sun high and bright in the sky. And Clarke loves hanging out with her friends, enjoys swimming around with them and attempting to body surf, even finds herself joining in on the seaweed fight that breaks out when Miller cops some in the face curtesy of Jasper.
But she doesn’t feel completely right, skin hot and tight and mind muddled enough that she misses when people try to talk to her a few times. Her eyes keep getting caught on Bellamy’s form, from the curls stuck to his forehead to the golden brown of his chest, and when it gets bad enough that she feels slightly faint, she decides it’s time to get back onto solid ground.
“You okay?” Raven asks, when she joins her back on the beach, flopping down heavily on her towel. She still feels all hot and flustered, and apparently looks it too, if Raven’s concerned tone is anything to go by. “You don’t look good, babe. You need some water?”
And yeah, it’s kind of embarrassing that even that sign, spelt out right there in front of her, practically flashing to get her attention, isn’t enough for Clarke to realise something’s up.
Something other than the ridiculous explanation she’s come up with for feeling so out of it.
“I’m fine,” she mutters, beginning to fan her face with her hands. She just feels so dazed, and it’s absolutely absurd that seeing Bellamy like he is today is affecting her so much. It’s honestly normally not this bad. “I just — I don’t understand how he looks this good,” she explains, knowing Raven will catch on to her complaints quickly. “It’s like… it’s like he’s specifically trying to torture me.”
Raven laughs, sending Clarke a sly grin. “He’s probably just trying to look irresistible enough that you finally make a move.”
Clarke groans, letting her head drop back even as she shakes it in denial. “You’re delusional,” she sighs, eyes falling shut. They feel heavy, probably because they’ve had to look at something so beautiful for over an hour, which is totally a logical explanation.
“Yeah, I’m the delusional one,” Raven mutters lowly, and Clarke throws an arm out in an attempt to hit her, only to feel sand beneath her skin instead. “Okay, seriously, you’re acting even weirder than usual,” Raven says, voice etching on concerned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Clarke responds, stressing her point by waving her arms out wildly. She can practically feel Raven’s disbelief in the silence that follows, and sighs loudly. “Okay,” she eventually continues, words slurring slightly. “This is what it is. He’s a beautiful, freckled man, and my body can no longer handle it, probably because it knows my love is unrequited and I’m going to die alone, and therefore wants to punish me.”
“Uh huh,” Raven responds after a very long beat, voice slightly strangled. Then, “Babe?”
“You, um, might want to look up.”
“Why?” Clarke huffs, opening her eyes to throw Raven a glare for making her do something that requires effort, only to find Bellamy standing right in front of her, eyes wide and mouth parted as he watches her closely. She blinks, feels her face heat up even as her brain sort of decides to shut down. “Oh.”
“I just came to check up on you,” he says, voice inscrutable. His brows pull together and he runs a hand through his hair, and Clarke watches in mute horror as any possible explanation for her words escapes her. “Who were you…”
“What?” she asks, shaking her head quickly as though it could rid her of his question. “No one,” she says, and without much thought at all stumbles up to her feet, just needing to get away.
She makes it one step before the world goes fuzzy around the edges, and all at once a wave of nausea floods her.
“Woah, woah. Clarke,” she hears in Bellamy’s voice, as a pair of strong hands quickly circle her around the arms, keeping her upright even as she feels her whole body waver, losing every ounce of energy.
“Bell,” she breathes out, blinking up slowly to look at him, catching his worried expression and his big, brown eyes.
She sees him say something, his mouth moving as though he’s calling out her name, but his words are lost to the sound of blood rushing past her ears, and the next thing she knows, the galaxy across his face fades until it’s nothing but the dark night sky, and she’s out.
Clarke’s fainted once before in her life. It was when she was nine years old, and trying to beat her personal record of thirteen cartwheels in a row.
When she woke up it was to Wells’ worrying, and the first thing she asked him was if she beat her record. She had, getting a fourteenth cartwheel before she apparently stood up, stumbled, and fell back down again, and it was an exciting enough revelation that Clarke viewed the whole experience in a positive light.
This time, the first thing she says when she’s awake and semi-coherent is: “Your freckles.”
It comes out slurred and somehow accusatory, and Bellamy’s brow furrows in confusion as he watches her closely. Her head is in his lap, and his hands are gently stroking her face, and Clarke has enough brain activity to recognise that it feels really, really nice.
And also, that she accidentally confessed her love to Bellamy.
“Okay,” Bellamy says, sweeping her hair from her forehead. “I caught you before you fell, so there’s no way you have a concussion. Want to try that again?”
Clarke shakes her head, struggles to sit up and lets Bellamy help her when she can’t on her own. Her mind is still sluggish, and so she doesn’t stop herself from continuing to talk. Just, you know, to knock in that final nail that is her coffin. Or however it is you prepare an urn.
“Your freckles,” she says, frowning when Bellamy’s lips pull up into a smile. “They — they made me confused. And flustered. And I couldn’t — I couldn’t think.”
“Okay, I’m only a history teacher and I definitely know that that’s not how things work.” His smile widens when Clarke frowns, and he passes her a bottle of water. She takes it and downs it greedily, not having realised how thirsty she was until the first drop of water hit her lips. She feels worlds better for it, her head clearing of its cloudiness and her body feeling a lot stronger. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“What?” Clarke asks, confused again.
“The last time you ate,” Bellamy repeats, reaching behind her to grab something. Clarke looks over her shoulder to find Raven, somehow both looking concerned and amused, handing Bellamy a banana and a bag of jelly lollies. “Or had any water, for that matter.
“I don’t know,” Clarke mutters, feeling herself flush all at once because oh my fucking god, she is such a fucking idiot. “Last night, I guess.”
Bellamy shakes his head, peeling the banana before handing it over.
“Eat,” he tells her, tone leaving absolutely no room to argue. Not that Clarke would, now that she recognises that her feeling faint was not the result of Bellamy Blake’s freckles like she originally thought, but instead a combination of low blood sugar, mild dehydration and heat exhaustion. You know, the more logical explanation. Seriously, she’s in med school. This is beyond embarrassing.
She does eat, finishing the banana quickly before taking a few of the jelly lollies, getting some sugar into her system.
“So, let me get this straight,” Bellamy says after a good minute of just watching her eat. Clarke feels herself blush furiously, and she’s honestly wondering how much of an overreaction it would be to move to the other side of the world tomorrow. But she confessed her love to Bellamy, fainted in his arms, and then told him it was because of his freckles, all in about a three minute time span. The mountains of New Zealand sound pretty damn good right now. “You skip breakfast,” Bellamy begins to list off, pulling Clarke from her spiralling thoughts, “forget to drink any water, go to the beach on a ninety five degree day, and when you feel flustered you think it’s because of me.”
He sounds amused, but something more too. Hopeful, maybe, and it sends a pang of warmth through Clarke’s chest. A good pang, not an I’m-going-to-faint-again pang.
“Have you seen you?” She asks, tentative, and when Bellamy ducks his head in a shy grin she feels herself smile. “It made a lot more sense in my mind.”
Bellamy’s laugh comes out surprised and delighted, and when he looks back up his eyes are shining bright and his smile is as happy as Clarke ever remembers seeing. Again, it’s a lot to take in, but the flutter beneath her skin is a distinctly good kind.
“So if I kiss you right now, because your love in not at all unrequited, is there any chance you’ll faint again?”
“No,” Clarke responds quickly, shaking her head. “I’m in med school; I know these things.”
He’s grinning even as he rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I don’t trust you at all,” he says, but Clarke’s already reaching out to pull him down, guiding his mouth to hers.
His lips are warm and soft, and she sighs against them, slanting her mouth against his to better the angle. She deepens the kiss quickly, lets her tongue trace the seam of his lips until it slides against his, and then Bellamy’s pulling her onto his lap and Clarke’s hands are tangling into his hair, and they’re kissing like they don’t want to be doing anything else in the entire world.
She only pulls away when she starts feeling faint again, but it’s the good kind of breathless this time. The one that comes with being thoroughly kissed.
Plus, Bellamy basically just told her he loved her too, and that thought is enough to send her mind spinning a little.
She probably should eat some more, before they continue making out.
“I kind of died seeing you in this bikini,” Bellamy tells her as he rests his forehead against hers.
Clarke laughs softly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says, hands tracing up her sides to reach the band of her bathers top. “But unlike some people, I recognise the importance of eating and staying hydrated, so you probably couldn’t tell.”
Clarke groans, dropping her head onto Bellamy’s shoulder as his body shakes with laughter. “You’re never gonna let me live this down, are you?”“Yeah, absolutely not.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” she mutters, moving off of his lap to sit beside him instead. As much as she wishes she could, she can’t exactly keep making out with him on a public beach, in front of strangers. In front of their friends.
Remembering that little fact, Clarke turns around to find Raven staring back at her, thankfully alone, but looking altogether incredibly unimpressed.
“I can’t believe you literally had to faint into his arms to work out your shit,” she says, and Clarke shrugs even as Bellamy snorts out a laugh at the comment.
Tucking herself into his side and lacing their fingers together, it’s had to find a part of her that cares.
