Bellamy is still drunk when he first decides to tell Clarke that he an Echo broke up, which is a good thing as far as Clarke's concerned, because it decreases the chances of him catching the sure way her pupils must dilate when her eyes dropped to his lips for a fraction of a second just before ducking her head behind her hair, which does absolutely nothing to stop her from stumbling into the door.
"Why are you on the floor?" Bellamy asks, unhelpfully swaying above her with a frown.
Clarke rubs her head and tries to glare up at him, but ends up just squinting so she'll stop seeing double. "Quit wobbling," she grumbles. "It's making me dizzy."
His frown deepens and he straightens his spine, "I'm not wobbly, you're wobbly."
"Bellamy."
"Who's the one standing, Clarke?"
"If you don't help me get off my ass in about ten seconds, you'll be down here with me."
There's a significant pause before he clears his throat, tugging her up to him by her sleeve, steadying them both when his hands fall to her hips.
Her cheeks warm at their sudden proximity and while she can't quite manage to meet his gaze, she doesn't miss the movement of his throat when he swallows and his lips part slightly.
She startles back, putting some much needed distance between them for her own sanity.
She might also still be drunk.
Possibly.
"Remind me again why I let you drag me out of bed?" she asks through the strain in her voice.
He huffs, nudging her forward. "Let is such a strong word for someone who sleeps with a knife under her pillow."
"Like you don't sleep with a pistol under yours," she retorts, rolling her eyes.
He shrugs, not missing a beat when he replies, "Only when I know there's a chance the princess will need her knight to save her from doing something stupid and reckless . . . again."
Clarke abruptly stops walking and Bellamy collides into her bringing them both to the ground.
"Impressive," he says, dryly.
His front presses against her back, hands framed on either side of her head to prevent his weight from crushing her. Clarke is very much aware that if she wiggles just the right wrong amount her butt could easily wind up pressed against his groin, so naturally the next thing that comes out of her mouth is, "I'm even better on top."
She regrets it immediately.
"What."
"I said what said," she snaps, because she refuses to let him know she's slowly dying inside. "Care to get off now?" she asks and then winces.
Poor choice of words, Clarke.
And once again, "What?"
"Absolutely not," she decides, narrowing her eyes at him reaching an arm out, preparing to drag her up the ladder kicking and screaming. She bats his hand away.
"It's the best view, Clarke," Bellamy argues.
"I can see perfectly fine from right here," she pouts, tilting her head back. "Yep, that's the sky all right."
He snorts, kicking her ankle, smirking when she nearly loses her balance.
"Why settle for fine when you can have better?" And then the bastard winks at her. Clarke bristles.
"Come on," he sighs. "Since when are you scared of heights?"
"Since I made the stupid and reckless decision of having a drink with a total ass."
He smirks at her obvious choice of words.
She briefly wonders how good it might feel to wipe that smirk off with her mouth, and buries the thought immediately, because he's never given any indication that things between them would ever be more than painfully platonic.
Unless you count the eye thing—the thing that she's not even sure is an actual thing, because after all this time she's half convinced she imagined it—the way his face softens and eyelids flutter when he catches her watching him sometimes.
But then there was Echo.
"It's not my fault you can't hold—"
"One drink you said—"
"—your own, princess."
"It'll be fun you said."
Bellamy squints at her, frown deepening. "You've been hanging around Shaw too much."
"You only think that because he's funnier than you."
There's a pause. "Funny lookin'."
She snorts. "Good one, Blake."
"Shut up," he groans, coming up to stand next to her, flicking her nose, playfully. "You go first then. I'll be here to catch you if you slip."
"And who will catch you if you fall?"
He blinks.
"What?" she asks, fidgeting under his stare, and the unwelcomed excitement bubbling up in her stomach.
He reaches to brush a strand of hair off her cheek, and there it is—that look she wants to believe is just for her. "Oh, Clarke." He sighs. "I've already fallen."
Despite Clarke's protests that the two suns certainly weren't going anywhere, Bellamy might have been right to shame her for not taking the time to witness the break of day sooner.
He seems to know this, judging by the smug look on his face when her breath catches at the sight of the suns rising steadily over the horizon, pinks spilling into a vibrant reds bleeding outward across the sky like wildfire.
Her fingers itch for the paints Madi helped her make with the fruits of this new world, eager to recreate its beauty with her hands.
"Worth the headache, am I right?" he says, pressing his warmth into her side.
"It hurt less than expected," she says, quietly. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, easy, much like the way he had when they first laid eyes on their new home. Her chest tightens, thankful he doesn't know the double meaning of her words.
"I knew it would," he agrees, resting his head on top of hers,
On Earth, the sunrise reminded her too much of Finn, the boy who made wishes on heated hydrogen gas shooting across the sky, and stopped to smell the flowers in the midst of Clarke worrying they were all going to starve to death.
Sure was pretty though.
Still, back then it was difficult to appreciate the beauty of anything on a planet that was constantly trying to destroy them.
"So," Clarke hedges, eager to find a new distraction from such thoughts. ". . . You and Echo?"
"People destroy, Clarke," Bellamy would have once said. "The Earth was just another casualty."
She smiles at that and he tightens his arm around her and Clarke absolutely does not snuggle against him, but it's hard to resist.
"I told you that my girlfriend of over a century just dumped me, princess. You could at least pretend not to be happy about it." He's pouting, but there's a soft twitch in corner of his lips like he's pleased.
"It's not that," she admits, although she's not exactly unhappy about it. "I was just thinking of something else," Clarke says, soft. "Someone we lost." He hums in response, thumb brushing down her back and up again. She knows he wants to ask, but seems to have gotten used to her talking around his questions. It's not uncommon for Clarke to get lost in her own head sometimes—it's difficult to remember that her friends are there to talk to, and she doesn't have to keep making up their responses in her head.
He doesn't push though.
"Things changed," he says after a beat.
"They always do," she sighs.
He stiffens beside her and Clarke forces herself to tilt her chin up to look at him properly. His eyes are shining down at her full of an emotion she's too afraid to recognize, even more fearful of what he sees reflecting back in her own.
"Not everything," he confesses, cheeks flushing beneath all those freckles she could never quite get right in her memories of him.
Clarke squirms under his hold, releasing all the air from her lungs. "Don't do that," she begs.
His brows furrow, cocking his head to catch her gaze again. "Do what?"
"Speak in riddles," Clarke huffs. "If you have something you're trying to tell me, just say it. Don't leave me to fill in the blanks, okay? I'm not like you, Bell. I don't know how to use my heart and not my head. I need more than just hope to—"
He's wrapping a hand around her neck and tugging her in before she even has time to figure out what's happening or what to do with her hands.
The kiss is soft and wet, lazy even, like they have all the time in the world to figure it out.
She smiles into the kiss, letting him press her down onto the cool metal, slotting a knee in between her thighs, giggling at the brush of his beard tickling her cheek.
He pulls back to look at her and her grin widens.
"This okay?" he asks, breathing hard.
"Better than I could have hoped for."
He beams down at her and she can't not kiss him again.
"The best," he agrees, smiling into her mouth.