Bellarke + parent-trapped (canonverse and maybe angst but a sweet ending?? if it’s not too late)
This is not canonverse and there’s no angst, but I hope you will accept this toothrotting fluff anyway. Based loosely on a tumblr post I’m too lazy to find about warring teachers.
Clarke leaned her shoulder against the side of the bleachers and fought the urge to check the clock. She knew what it would say— still just barely after 10pm, meaning she was stuck in the gym for at least another hour. She had volunteered to chaperone prom mostly because she was a pushover when her students begged her to, but also because she figured there should be at least one openly queer adult there to intervene in case any of the parent chaperones got weird and judgy about a kid’s choices. But so far, it was just terrible dancing and way more teenage hormones than anyone should have to deal with on their free time.
At least half the girls on the dance floor had kicked off their shoes, and if Clarke wasn’t quite so concerned about catching athlete’s foot she’d probably join them, because her calves were killing her. Across the room Bellamy was mirroring her posture, leaning against a pillar with his stupidly big arms crossed across his stupidly big chest.
She really should be more mature about her dislike of him, but something about Mr. Blake reduced her to acting like one of their students. Things could have gone very differently between them, but he had gone and picked a fight with her during their first all-faculty inservice and Clarke had a hard time backing down from anything, least of all a well-earned grudge. He appeared to be made of the same stuff, and by now their animosity was legendary.
What had started as low-simmering hatred, surfacing as barbed comments during faculty meetings and sotto voce asides on the hallway, had recently boiled over into all out war. A weird quirk of scheduling meant Clarke’s third period art class was virtually the same roster as Bellamy’s fourth period world history. She overheard a couple of students whispering Mr. Blake told Mr. Miller that Ms. Griffin is annoying, and decided that if he was going to be so unprofessional as to say that shit in front of students, she would escalate things.
And that was how twenty-five teenagers had made their own Roman helmets and wore them to their next class under the strict condition they would refuse to acknowledge that they were wearing anything unusual. Two days later her students spent the entire class period talking in pig-latin, which was both annoying and secretly a little hilarious because she knew he had probably wanted to get them to speak actual latin but figured that was too difficult to pull off in one day.
For the past month, their classes had been in an all out prank war. Nothing was off limits— Clarke’s class turned his entire room into a life size chessboard (using washable paint, she wasn’t a monster); Bellamy’s refused to draw anything that wasn’t in Egyptian Middle Kingdom style even though they were doing an exercise on goddamn perspective. Clarke got them to pair up and switch names for an entire class period; Bellamy walked into her class and handed back his goddamn tests like he owned the place.
It was, quite frankly, entirely out of hand. The students loved it, of course, and the whole school seemed to be waiting to see what each of them would come up with next. Clarke kept waiting for Principal Kane to step in, and even though he was technically her step-dad, she was a little worried he’d side with Bellamy anyway, since they seemed to have an easy, almost-father-son vibe.
Clarke shifted her weight and lost the battle with her willpower, checking the clock for the hundredth time in an hour. Ten-fifteen; you can make it another forty-five minutes. She turned back to the dance floor and noticed Madi Black making her way over, a mischievous look on her face. Across the room Bellamy was talking to Jordan Green, brow furrowed. “Having fun, Madi?” Clarke asked, dragging her gaze away from Bellamy’s obnoxiously handsome face.
“Loads,” Madi said. “But remember when you said you owed me? That day when I helped you carry all your things in from your car?”
Clarke stood up straighter, because she did remember saying that, but it was the sort of off-hand comment you make as a thank you, not an actual contract written in blood. “I do,” she said carefully.
“Well, I’m here to cash in,” Madi said, her grin almost dangerous. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Which is?”
“Dance with Mr. Blake.”
“Wh— what?” Clarke spluttered. On the other side of the gym, Bellamy seemed to be having the same disagreement with Jordan. He was shaking his head, but Jordan looked determined. “I don’t think that’s—”
“It’s just a dance, Ms. Griffin,” Madi wheedled. “For me? Come on, you promised.”
Clarke glared at her because she’d done nothing of the sort, but she knew she’d lost. She was, as previously established, a complete pushover for her students. She nervously straightened her bracelet as she walked towards Bellamy, and noticed he seemed to be fidgeting with his tie. Students parted before them and they met awkwardly in the middle. Bellamy held out his hand and she took it, a fleeting smile on both their faces. As if on cue, the DJ switched from the pulsing beat of hip hop to something much slower.
“It seems we have an audience,” Bellamy said, clearing his throat. He didn’t seem able to meet her gaze, which was fine with Clarke because she was having trouble hiding the blush crawling up her neck. She really should have found a dress with a high collar or something, because this was...not ideal.
The entire junior and senior classes had stopped dancing to watch them, chaperones included. “It seems we do,” she murmured. She kept her gaze fixed just over his shoulder. “How’d they get you?”
“Jordan handed in an extra credit project and said he’d rather have me do one activity of his choice at prom, within reason, instead of the points. I thought he was going to make me do a Fortnite dance, quite frankly, and I wish I hadn’t spent so much damn time trying to learn one. You?”
“Madi helped me carry my stuff in one day and I said I owed her. Which in retrospect is feeling sort of like a set up.”
Bellamy huffed out a laugh. He flexed his hand on her lower back and Clarke steadfastly ignored the pleasant shiver that ran up her spine. “I think it’s safe to say this was planned. Possibly for months.”
“It’s tough to say who’s more to blame for teaching them that; my strategic brilliance or your knack for subterfuge,” Clarke said, biting back an inexplicable grin.
Bellamy laughed again and her stomach did a little flip flop. “I think we can both take credit for this. Or maybe blame. How long did it take you to make those life size chess pieces, by the way?”
“Way too long,” she admitted. “Did you really spend an entire class period teaching them pig latin?”
“Two, actually. The first was my attempt to teach them rudimentary latin, which went about as well as can be expected.”
She couldn’t stop the smile on her face now, and there were excited gasps from the crowd. Even Kane was beaming. “Truce?” she offered.
“That depends. Did you or did you not tell them which car was mine so they could toilet paper it?”
Clarke winced, but they were both laughing now. “I plead the fifth. And it wasn’t toilet paper, it was washable paint.”
“I suppose this is where I admit there might be some toilet paper on your car, then,” he said, and oh no that smile no no no I’m screwed, she thought. An entire year of fighting a stupid crush, destroyed in under three minutes.
“Okay, fair enough. If—” she broke off, keenly aware that they were literally dancing in a spotlight.
“If?” he prompted.
Oh what the hell. “If you buy me pancakes after the dance is over.”
“Only if you pay for the car wash.” The song ended. Their students burst into a wild round of applause and wolf-whistles, and Clarke decided to throw caution to the wind.
The resulting noise when she kissed his cheek almost blew the roof off the gym.
