it's not the nouns. the miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done.
x
respectfully-
when she slides a slick hint of silver into a boy's jugular. there's a soft note of lullaby on her lips vibrating intone with the hum of the emerald suffocation of trees and overbearing blue sky and if this is death with sunlight reflected in her hair and striking the gold of her eyes, he's ready to make a sacrifice to a god he isn't sure exists.
(in some ways he knows it's twisted and forty kinds of fucked up, but his deference for her sky rockets.)
x
surprisingly-
she's a fun drunk. he can tell by the way she giggles into her hands and stumbles standing in place. it's honestly another fact he adds to the list of attributes about the princess that he never would've imagined. this fact joins the following observations:
her hands shake each time she places them on a rifle as well as each time she places them on a sick juvenile delinquent despite the fact that she had been trained for this up in the sky.
she has the patience of a saint when it comes to stupid shit like Octavia and her grounder boyfriend or dire stuff like their entire supply of winter food burning to a crisp, but all is shot to hell the moment that finn opens his mouth in her presence. he can practically see her teeth grinding together as the other boy speaks.
she likes sunrises more than sunsets. she never wears her hair up. she has only cried twice since they've been on the ground and he has been there both times. she's not afraid of anything. her giving up just isn't an option. she is the only person whose approval he is searching for these days.
(not that that last one matters really to anyone except him.)
x
bitterly-
if there is one thing he is taught up in the air, it's that he is always going to be the juvenile delinquent janitor that almost got floated for having a kid sister and a whore of a mother. he'll be shackled no matter if he is a free man on the soil or a kept man in space; his wrists will forever be manacled be it by one responsibility or another. he does not have the fortune of eternal life, the luck of a prince, the freedom of perfect silence on the horizon. bellamy blake has always and will always be out of chance and out of turn unlike the golden haloed girl with the sea glass eyes and the seashell lips.
she's like a goddamn hurricane and he hasn't a house in which to hide. men like him and women like her do not coincide until one fateful day when
suddenly they do.
x
warmly-
her grin is the brightest thing on this earth. and that's really all he has to say about that.
(her body against his in the wake of almost certain death more fucking times than he can count feels like all the fortune and luck that he never had came true in the form of a lush sweeping curve of a gilded girl that he read about in the books that Octavia heard through floorboards and in hushed tones. she laughs without humor, the heat of her breath upon his cheek and he stifles with the contact because he hasn't been this close to a girl that rules every plane they've ever been on. his heart stammers in its cage.)
x
relentlessly-
the way her mouth forms arguments is an art unto itself that he is certain no other being could ever be able to replicate. the words twist and barb, landing in the most effective way possible. the way that makes him think on it for hours and days at a time, so frustratingly so. it will be an entire passing of the sun before he figures out what she is saying and then he stalks back over to where is standing, eyes already rolling in her head, arms crossed over her ample chest, sighs heaving in her shoulders and they fight, by good god they fight.
they yell and they scream and they strangle each other with their own voices, opponent's syllables stuck midair caught between head and heart.
breathless, pink cheeked and out of insults, she flounces away victory on her mouth. heavily gasping, eyes agog, and heart racing, he wonders how she always wins.
(it's almost as good as sex.)
x
teasingly-
it's the swish of the small of her back that first makes him realize how close he is standing to her in the bunker, darkness cloying annoyingly near, her scent of pine and air and clarke billowed in the column of her neck and he just stops—
wait, it's just clarke.
(two days later when finn rushes to her rescue doing the whole save the damsel in distress act, those hands on the swoosh of the small of her back and all that whip of her wrapped up in him, bellamy clears his throat and starts barking out orders, voice crushed a note or two. only Octavia notices as she clicks her tongue and whistles at him lowly out the corner of her matching ebony eyes.
"shut up," he warns disappearing into the drops ship tugging the curtain behind him.
he approaches a sleepy clarke with undone buttery strands of loose hair in her sea glass eyes and nudges her over to solitary, relishing the feel of her skin upon his.
finn gets guard duty the next three nights in a row.)
x
often-
she slights grins at him when no one is looking. (he grabs an extra blanket for her while she's on watch.)
he chuckles when he sees her duck when finn comes around the bend from the forest. (she chokes back a giggle when she sees him seeing jasper trying to flirt with Octavia.)
her fingers bring down the rate of his heart, her hands calm his pulse. his fingers speed up the rate of her heart, her hands eradicate her pulse.
the way she looks to him, just him, for approval, for a blessing, for aid, it's more than anyone ever gave him before. (the way that he looks to her to bring him back to earth, for salvation, for grace.)
bellamy's mother once told him to be cautious and not to love more than necessary because god, bell, people are crude and horrid. they are not medicine.
but his mother never met clarke.
x
tragically-
I am become death, destroyer of worlds. oppenhemier was a douchebag, he decides with some warrior's hands tightening around his neck and the only object in his blurred vision is a golden girl with a titled halo and sunlight stricken eyes, deep curves of skin, and seashell lips shouting a maelstrom of ashes in a storm that they cannot weather.
history is written by the survivors.
(the last he recalls is her voice overpowering the sounds of battle and the stench of fire. he can count the freckles on his nose and his heart is screaming in its cage. and then white.
in the end, in his end it's still the brave princess and him.)