THIS EVENING HAS BEEN
by AliLamba
rated T
notes This was written over a year ago for a tumblr 12 Days of Xmas bellarke style thing. In the vein of keeping my ffnet page like a cv of crayon drawings I'm proud of, i'm cross-posting it here.
Day 6: Naughty/Nice AU
It's Christmas, so prepare to try your hardest.
Their homeroom teacher was running late, and the entire class was bored with it already. Most people had taken to chatting or using their phones, but Clarke was content to doodle in the margins of her notebook until Jasper decided to ring in the spirit of the coming holiday by playing Santa.
"Clarke Griffin!" Jasper announced. He handed her a piece of paper with her name on it. "Naughty."
Her mouth opened before she could stop it. "Naughty?" she echoed, feeling the protest rise in her throat.
"I know, and not even the good kind either." He sounded honestly a little upset about it. Clarke frowned at him. "Maybe if you were nicer to guys."
"What so this is all some ploy to get me to go on a date with you?" she accused, ignoring the people around them.
"N-no!" he said, maybe a little too loud. He recovered like he always did. "You're not even my type, anyway."
"Oh so we've sworn off females and moved right onto dolls then."
"Can we hurry this up?"
Bellamy was trying not to tap his foot in front of the assistant principal. The man was a grouchy son of a bitch on a good day, and with a whole two and a half weeks left before the holiday break, today was not one of those days.
"Do you have somewhere to be, Mister Blake?"
Yeah, Bellamy thought. He had about a million places to be. Work started in less than an hour, and before that he had to buy milk and something for dinner, had to get Olivia home from practice, and had to write an essay that was a week late already.
"No," was what he said instead.
"That's what I thought."
Assistant Principal Kane was looking at him as if he had one glass eye and he didn't want anyone to know it. The thought made Bellamy snigger.
"Am I amusing you?" Kane asked, hands still on the papers detailing Bellamy's crimes. Bellamy schooled his expression immediately, eyes darting to the pen that could decide his fate. He really needed Kane to be lenient this time; he really couldn't afford to take time off work right now.
Bellamy licked his lips, and tried to look Kane in his non-glass eye. "Look," he said, "I can't handle the suspense anymore. We both know you're not going to let me off with a warning, so just – tell me my punishment."
Kane pursed his lips, and leaned back in his chair a little bit.
"Detention, Mister Blake." Shit. "And you'll be serving it with your new tutor, Clarke Griffin."
Shiiiiit.
Clarke inhaled a shaky breath, organizing her small stack of notes for the fourteenth time. It was a ploy to avoid rechecking her watch, because she already knew her new pupil was ten minutes late. Not so much that it mattered. Tutoring kids who didn't want to be tutored never led to a very fun afternoon, and her new ward might even top her list of Worst Tutees Ever.
"Seriously? Bellamy Blake."
"Yes, Miss Clarke, I think it would be a real coup for your college application. I'm sure you could get an entire essay out of the job if you manage to turn his grades around."
She still had her doubts.
There were noises coming from the hallway.
Clarke looked up, craning her neck to see where (or rather, who) it was coming from. The voices were indistinct and multiple; she could only tell that at least the majority of them were guys. Clarke held her breath.
One voice became louder than the others. It said something about seeing them later, I'll give you a call, something or other, and then the crowd of voices started to fade.
Here we go…
"Are you Clarke Griffin?"
He wasn't at all what she'd been expecting. When she saw him in a simple parka and dark cargo pants she realized she was expecting him to drive in on a Harley. He wasn't wearing aviators and a leather jacket, and there wasn't a packet of cigarettes rolled into his sleeve.
I really gotta stop watching movies with dad.
Bellamy dropped his head and looked around the room. "Hello?"
"Yeah," she answered too quickly. "Sorry, yeah, that's…that's me."
Bellamy gave her a queer look and stepped inside the room. Sinclair had been generous enough to let them borrow his physics lab for just such occasion.
Clarke looked down at her notes, trying to decide where to start. Before she could, she heard the sound of a backpack hitting linoleum half a room away. She looked up to find Bellamy slouched in a faraway desk with his phone out.
"Oh," Clarke said. "I was actually expecting to tutor you."
"Yeah well I wasn't actually expecting to care."
She frowned. Clarke considered her options, and then she picked up her stuff and started navigating desks. She noticed when Bellamy started flicking glances at her and sitting up a little bit straighter.
"Okay," she sighed, putting her stuff down on a desk next to him. "Where do you want to start."
"It's really just about memorizing the formulas." Clarke pulled out her own cheat sheet. "And once you use them enough you sort of memorize them whether you want to or not."
Bellamy didn't look convinced. "Oh yeah?" he asked, taking the paper out of her hands, looking it over dubiously. The formulas took up most of a page and her handwriting wasn't exactly bubbly. "How do you get the volume of a cone?"
Clarke closed her eyes and sighed. This was not an impressive talent. This spoke of hours spent studying when she could have been doing something more productive. "One-third times pi times radius cubed times height."
She opened her eyes, and Bellamy was frowning at the sheet. "Shit," he muttered under his breath.
When Clarke looked up to check the time, she was surprised to see the hour was totally gone.
"Oh," she said. "Bellamy, it's four o'clock, we're done."
Their desks were pushed right next to each other, so when he looked up he almost knocked into her forehead. His surprise shifted to the clock on the wall, and he leaned back when he confirmed what she'd said.
"Right," he agreed, sounding a little mysterious. "I should…I have to go." Clarke's lips flattened together while she tried to interpret the tone of his voice. She almost had the feeling he didn't want to leave.
They packed up in relative silence. Days were short this time of year, and already dusk was turning the sky outside lavender.
"Are you coming back tomorrow?"
Considering how hesitant he was when they started, she thought it was a legitimate question.
"Well it turns out all of my teachers have banded together," Bellamy said, sounding as if he was a little amused by it all. "Looks like I won't pass the semester if I don't."
Clarke already knew this, but hearing him say it was still something else. She wasn't particularly proud to be his tutor and she wondered why. He hadn't called her a bitch like Murphy had, and he didn't cry every time she corrected him like Charlotte…but still. She felt almost a little sad being in the position she was in, and she wondered if it was pity. She really hoped it wasn't.
Bellamy offered her a tight smile by the door, backpack slung over one shoulder. "See you tomorrow then, Princess."
"Clarke, is something on your mind?"
Clarke looked up at her mother, realizing she'd been raking her dinner absently with her fork while lost in thought. "Hmm?" she said, before quickly shoveling a bite of something cold into her mouth. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine."
Her mom was still staring at her, eyes probing. Something about the way her mom's brown eyes glittered always made Clarke feel transparent. "Kane tells us that you have a new pupil."
"Yeah," she answered too quickly, pushing her fork around to get something else that would distract her mother.
"A real doozy of a pupil, too, if Kane explains it right."
Clarke shrugged with one shoulder, tightening her lips offhandedly. "He's not so bad." She glanced at her father to figure out whether he was convinced by her flippancy, but he had also mastered the art of hidden thoughts.
"That reminds me," Abby Griffin said, and she turned to Jake Griffin ready to tell some story about her day. Clarke sighed with the loss of attention. A doozy?
It was fair to say that she'd been able to think of little else other than Bellamy Blake all day. Mostly because she didn't know a whole lot about him: he was a fifth-year senior, having something to do with mysterious circumstances involving his mom. She also knew he had a younger sister, who was a year below Clarke. Octavia was famous for being not only obscenely beautiful, but also the only sophomore allowed on the varsity lacrosse team.
She knew Bellamy was handsome and had a lot of friends, and that he had an afterschool job. She'd heard alternately that he was a mechanic, a bartender, and a drag racer. Her guess was mostly on the first option, though she hadn't necessarily asked.
"This is a good essay," she was saying. Said essay was covered in blue marks (red was simply too depressing), but after finishing her second read-through she had to admit…he'd made some really excellent points.
Bellamy was scowling in his chair. His frown had been deepening ever since she'd corrected the fifth grammatical error.
"I'm serious. All this stuff," she insisted, gesturing to her corrections, "could have been done by a computer. What I didn't touch was the content, Bellamy. You have some really elegant ideas in here."
He cocked an eyebrow. "Elegant?"
Clarke rolled her eyes, fighting a grin. "Yeah," she taunted. "Elegant. You could take this paper to the prom."
Bellamy snorted, grinning.
It was the end of their first week together, and they were packing up in relatively good spirits.
"So what've you got planned today, Clarke," Bellamy was asking, sounding borderline boisterous. It had been a good day. "Big date tonight or what."
Clarke tried not to har har. "Or what," she answered. "More like it's spaghetti western night at home. And yeah, that means we make spaghetti and watch a western movie. My dad is obsessed." She grinned affectionately, pushing her notebooks into her bag. It took a moment to realize Bellamy had stopped cleaning up, and that he wasn't saying anything. She looked up, and found his thoughts a million miles away.
"Sounds nice," he said, his voice just as far.
Clarke and Wells were walking between classes Monday morning. Because of the nature and location of the school, there weren't a lot of advanced placement offerings. If you were enrolled in any of them you could expect with relative safety to see the same people every hour of the day, and the only time she and Wells left each other's company was with seventh period science: Clarke was taking physiology, and Wells had biotechnology.
"You coming to chess club today?" he asked her, hand on his backpack. Clarke nodded absently.
A voice echoed from up ahead, and it drew Clarke's attention. She could see that just a few hundred feet down the hall, Bellamy and his friends were walking toward her and Wells, and that it was obvious they would pass right by each other on their way to their next class.
Clarke found she could barely look away. She met Bellamy's gaze when he was in easy shouting distance, and they maintained their eye contact even as they came closer, and passed each other's shoulder. She almost turned around just to see the back of his head.
"Hey, is it really true you're tutoring that guy?"
Wells' question almost went unanswered. She felt like her head was suddenly fogged through, and it took a quick shake to clear it.
"Clarke?"
"Clarke?"
Bellamy was looking up at her from down below; he'd dipped his head to interrupt her empty line of vision. She realized she'd zoned out with a start.
"Sorry," she said. "What were we talking about?"
He frowned at her. "Hey if I'm being in any way an inconvenience to you…"
"You're not," she said too quickly. "You're not," she said again. "Sorry, it was a long weekend."
Bellamy leaned back in his chair. "So you did go out. Who's the lucky guy? Bet it's the Jaha kid. When your dad's the principal I bet you get all the babes."
"No," she frowned at him. "No, it's not that." Clarke looked away, considering whether she was going to tell him. It came out of her mouth almost like an accident. "No, my dad might lost his job."
When he didn't respond all at once, Clarke turned to look Bellamy in the eye. She didn't know what she was expecting; probably some sort of confused so what attitude. But it was almost as if a whole week of tutoring had made them friends. Bellamy's eyes were wide as if he couldn't believe it either.
"Shit."
Bellamy met her outside physiology two days later. When she looked surprised to see him, he answered before she could ask. "Got let out early, decided not to wait by Sinclair's room." Clarke's expression softened into an Ah.
"How's your dad?"
Clarke looked to the side as her classmates filed into the hall around her. She wondered if any of them had heard, and her expression tightened. "He's fine," she said, her voice set to match.
She clutched her books to her chest and started walking down the hall in the direction of the AP physics lab. When she realized her mood was still darkening a few hundred steps later, she realized she needed to say something. "Look, no one knows about that, okay?" She cut half a glance in Bellamy's direction, observing only that he was still at her side. "Not even Wells."
Bellamy didn't say anything at first. "Got it?" she asked, her voice a little higher than necessary.
"Got it," he answered, his voice grizzly and low.
When they got into the familiar classroom, Sinclair was just leaving. "Hi Clarke," he acknowledged, brightly. "Don't forget to lock up on your way out." He winked, grabbed his briefcase, and was out the door.
Clarke threw herself into a seat at random and pulled out her stuff.
"Where were we," she snapped. "Geometry? Do you know the equation for the volume of a cube yet or do you need my sheet."
Bellamy was carefully taking the seat next to her, acting like she was a bomb it was his unfortunate job to detonate.
"I'm good." His tone was clipped.
Clarke felt the frustration rising inside of her. It was the helpless kind that had to do with everything and nothing, and fighting it was like fighting the tide.
"Did you finish the rewrites I told you to do?" she asked, holding out her hand as if he'd give it to her. "And what about the short answers for government, did you get to those?"
Bellamy's eyes were dark and foreboding. "Hey if you don't want to do this anymore just say so. I don't need this. I don't need this shit."
"What happened to you last year."
The question hung in the air like a dead body.
"Why didn't you graduate."
Bellamy looked at her as if she were finally revealing herself to be his assassin, and she had already pulled out the knife.
She already wished she could take the questions back, but they were already there: in the space between them, large and heavy and expanding with every passing second.
"I don't need this."
Bellamy stood and marched to the door, but Clarke didn't watch him leave. She held her breath until she couldn't hear his footsteps anymore, and then she folded herself onto her desk, and cried.
Bellamy didn't show up the next day. She wondered what it meant about her that Clarke did, and that she spent a lonely hour sketching in the margins of her notebook, watching the light in the room fade with the dark.
The next day was Friday, and the last full school day before finals' week. Clarke dragged her feet to Sinclair's classroom, knowing she was just setting herself up for disappointment again. Bellamy wouldn't be there. She'd seen him across the quad at lunchtime, and he'd legitimately pretended not to see her back.
Sinclair again smiled when he said goodbye, and for the first time Clarke wondered why he smiled at her, and not at Bellamy. Was it because she was a female? Was it because she'd taken his class, or that she'd earned a top grade in it? She's sure Bellamy at some point took his class too.
Clarke sighed and took a seat. She pulled out her notebook, flipping through the pages to see whether there were any anatomical designs she could redo. The muscles were by far her favorite; not only did they require an incredible attention to detail, but they were almost everywhere in the body: legs, arms, heart.
"Hey."
She looked up, and felt the muscles in her body contract in a way she could never draw. Bellamy was in the doorway. Clarke was embarrassed to realize she thought about crying again, but there was something in him showing up: something hopeful. She was legitimately glad to see him.
"Hey," she said back, and then she pushed some stuff off the seat next to her so he could take it.
He did.
It was almost six o'clock when they finally found a place to close, and it only maybe had something to do with the fact the janitor walked in on them.
"What are you doing with your sister tonight?" she asked.
Bellamy was pushing notebooks and textbooks into his backpack at random. "Oh, nothing special. Pretty sure she'll want to have all her friends over, and it'll be my job to keep everyone sober. Fun stuff."
"Do you want to come over to my house?"
Thoughts raced through Bellamy's mind. She could see them plainly. "It's not a date," she felt like clarifying. "Sorry, it's just, it's just spaghetti western night. I mean, if you have something better to do I understand—"
"I don't."
Clarke was silent for a moment, staring at him. "Okay then," she finally said.
Clarke questioned her decision for the seventh time while getting out of her car in her family's driveway. She thought about texting her parents so they could prepare, but in the end she hadn't…and she doesn't know why.
Bellamy's truck pulled up in front of her parent's lawn. She wondered what her house looked like from the street. To her it had just always been home…Clarke wondered what Bellamy's house looked like. Now her own house felt a little ostentatious, even for a pretty standard two story.
Bellamy walked up the driveway, which was still wet with the midday rain. He stopped in front of her, staring at the lights on in the windows. "Nice house," he said.
Clarke took a preparatory breath. She started walking toward her house and Bellamy fell in behind. She opened the door without questioning her own motives.
"Mom! Dad! I'm home!" She ignored the heavy smirk Bellamy sent in her direction.
"Hey Clarke!" Her dad's voice echoed recognizably through to the foyer. "Perfect timing. Just getting done with the garlic bread."
"Could use your help with the salad though!" her mom's voice joined in, and Clarke would've rolled her eyes in other circumstances. Where her dad was all about butter slathered on white bread, her mom was extra virgin olive oil and whole organic grains. It was the engineer and the doctor in both of them, respectively.
Clarke put down her bag inside the door, and slipped off her shoes. Bellamy saw and followed suit. His socks had seen better days, and he seemed to notice.
Abby Griffin walked out to meet her daughter, a dish towel clasped between her hands. She stopped short when she saw they had a guest.
"Oh, Clarke," she said, not wanting to be rude. "You brought company."
"Mom, this is Bellamy Blake," Clarke introduced, holding her ground. She noticed when her mom's astute gaze traveled to their guest, and she recognize the name.
"Oh," she said. "Well, the more the merrier." She was consummately polite, and it was one of her best qualities. Clarke's mom extended her hand. "Hi, my names Abby. Clarke told me she's been working with you after school."
"Yes ma'am," Bellamy answered, his voice the very picture of good grace. "She's been really helpful. You must be proud."
There is a way to a mother's heart, and it is in complimenting their daughter. Abby's lips twitched at the corners, and then she smiled.
"I like this guy," Jake was saying, because both he and Bellamy had their fork in the last meatball, and Bellamy wasn't about to give it up without a fight. Jake relented with an appreciative grin.
Abby agreed. "The man has good taste." Clarke smiled and took a sip of her water. It had been a fun dinner; Bellamy was up on his football so he and her dad had something to talk about. Bellamy apparently used to play his freshman and sophomore years, but had since stopped. When asked the natural question – why – Bellamy had offered only a cagey response having to do with priorities and stuff at home.
"Just you wait for the movie," Abby said, standing to clear the plates. "You've never seen such awful grandstanding on a soundstage in 1950."
Clarke took pity on their guest. "The most important thing is to mock it heavily," she explained, when Bellamy looked as if he were having trouble remaining politely enthusiastic. He relaxed a little bit.
Bellamy moved to stand. "Let me help you with that, Dr. Griffin."
Bellamy fell asleep during the movie. Clarke wouldn't have noticed except he fell asleep almost entirely on her shoulder.
"Thanks for everything, Mr. and Mrs. Griffin. I had a really wonderful time."
"It was our pleasure," Abby insisted.
"You come over any time," Jake added.
Clarke ignored her parents, and decided to walk Bellamy out to his car. She knew they were either watching from the door, the window, or were doing their very best eavesdropping from halfway across the house while trying to be completely impartial.
"Your parents are really nice."
"Yeah," Clarke agreed. "They can be a little overbearing sometimes, but in general…I dunno. I guess I could do a lot worse."
Bellamy's lip curled sardonically as he looked into the distance, opening his car door and throwing his backpack into the passenger's seat. "You most definitely could."
Clarke examined him impassively, again wondering what his home life was like to make such a naturally smart, funny, and handsome guy go so off the rails. Her entire experience with Bellamy had been freakishly pleasant; he was an excellent listener and absorber of information, and she rarely had to teach him anything twice. After the initial few days of him asking all the utterly basic questions any new pupil of hers asks in complete embarrassment, they'd worked at an incredibly steady pace.
"So what're your plans for this weekend?" she found herself asking.
Bellamy palmed his car keys, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat so they hung in front of his abdomen. He shrugged. "Work, study. Nothing too crazy."
"Where do you work?"
The question didn't seem to faze him at all. "Downtown, at Ridley's Oil Change."
"You change oil?" She couldn't help the surprise in her voice. Bellamy shrugged again.
"Sometimes. Sometimes he has me stock, or fix up some of the old junkers sitting around the lot."
"Is that what you want to do after you graduate? Fix cars?"
Bellamy looked at her carefully, almost as if gauging whether he wanted to share the information. "No," he said simply, and when he didn't continue all at once she realized he wasn't going to elaborate. Clarke couldn't think of anything else to say. She glanced at her shoes, and then back at her house, and then she realized she didn't want to say goodbye yet, but there was no reason to keep him with her.
"I can't date you."
The statement hit her like a kick to the back of the head. "I don't remember asking."
He looked into her eyes, and she held them back steadily. His seemed to know something already. She wondered if they knew that her heart was picking up speed.
"I need to pass my classes for one."
She nodded, agreeing. Clarke had no idea what she looked like. "And another?"
Bellamy's head tilted an inch to the side. His full lips appeared to tighten. "You're too nice for a guy like me."
Memories of Jasper Jordan come back to her uninvited, of a homeroom game not two weeks before in which her classmate had claimed the exact opposite. The less than tactful teenage side of her wanted to mention that now just to be purely argumentative.
"Bellamy," she said, her voice far more put together than she felt. "This was just dinner with my family. Purely platonic."
Clarke couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought she heard Bellamy's hand tighten over his keys. "Good," he said.
She nodded. "Good."
Clarke woke up the next morning feeling uneasy. Her day was laid out so predictably before her, and while she used to enjoy the routine of productivity, something about it was bothering her today. Maybe it was the lack of sleep she'd got the night before. Her and Bellamy's conversation had hung heavy in her mind, and it was hard to shake.
She found herself holding her cellphone, pinching her lips with indecision. Her fingers tapped a message before she could reconsider.
Wells and I go to the library in Mecha to study on the weekends, she typed. It's quieter there, not a lot of kids we know. You're welcome to join if you want.
Clarke didn't realize all at once that she was holding her breath. In fact, it took a return text from Bellamy and an expellant sigh for her brain to regain oxygen.
What time?
Wells shot another glance at Clarke. She had found them timed mostly to whenever Bellamy leaned over to ask her a question at a whisper; his effort not to bother Wells' studying. Wells was about ninety-percent successful in convincing Bellamy he wasn't interrupted every time.
This time, after a hushed conversation about something she and Wells had been taught their freshman year, he really let his gaze linger on Clarke's face.
"Am I interrupting your studying?"
Clarke put her pen down on top of notebook, and leaned back into her chair.
"No," she lied. Bellamy calling her at 9 o'clock at night on a Sunday had shocked her so much, she wouldn't have been able to study even if she hadn't answered.
"I just had a quick question," he started. There was a commotion in the background. "O!" he shouted, his voice sounding distant all of a sudden, like there was something between his mouth and the mouthpiece. "What did I tell you!"
When he came back to their conversation his voice sounded stressed. "Look I can't concentrate here. Can I just come to your house? I promise it'll be quick."
Again, her pulse quickened. It shouldn't have. But the threat of having him in her house again…of having him in her room…well, it was almost terrifying.
"That's fine," she said.
Clarke opened the door before he could ring the bell, and her finger was immediately to her lips. She tilted the top of her head toward the living room, where the sounds of the evening news echoed from the television her parents were watching. Bellamy's expression set seriously, and together they tiptoed upstairs.
They moved silently until Clarke's bedroom door was closed behind them.
"Thanks for letting me come over," Bellamy said immediately. "O doesn't have a final tomorrow until the afternoon. There was no way she was going to let me study."
Clarke waved it off. "It's fine, I was just reviewing. What's up?"
Bellamy was glancing around her room, and it became immediately apparent that they had a problem: there was no communal table from which to work. They could either settle on the floor…or onto Clarke's hastily made bed.
Bellamy didn't seem distracted in the slightest. He dropped his backpack to the ground and slid to the carpet next to it.
"It's probably a really stupid question…" he started, and Clarke released a breath as she took the seat next to him.
Close to half an hour later, Clarke stepped back inside her bedroom after a quick trip to the bathroom, and found Bellamy not where she'd left him.
He was standing by her bookshelf, attention fixed on the framed photographs decorating the shelves. Clarke moved into the room until she could see what he saw. It was a picture of her and her friends from her old school.
"I didn't know you used to go to Alpha."
It had been a long time since she'd thought of those years of her life, and the private school across town that had once been her second home.
"Wells did too," she found herself saying. "He left when after I was kicked out."
Bellamy turned his head so he could openly stare at her, and she knew she'd have to explain.
"It's a long story."
Bellamy didn't miss a beat. "I'm listening," he pointed out.
Clarke frowned. She took a deep breath and released it, as if it would diminish the whole ordeal. "It basically boiled down to the fact I caught our principal diverting funds. A few of us stood together – Wells' dad was one of them, even though he was just a teacher then. But our principal covered her tracks, and no one would believe the few's word against the many – specifically the many members of the board of trustees' council."
Bellamy's eyes were round. "That sucks."
She smirked. "It did." They held each other's gaze for a beat, and then: "But Wells came with me. It wasn't so bad after that. To this day I still picture the villains of classic literature with Principal Diana Sydney's face."
Bellamy almost smiled. "Oh," he said, sounding like he was almost making a joke. "Me too."
Clarke woke up on top of her covers in a room with every light blazing. She looked around blearily, confused, until she found Bellamy dozing on the carpet just below herself. She checked the clock on her bedside table; it was 3:02 in the morning.
"Bellamy," she whispered, her voice heavy with sleep. "Bellamy you have to wake up, my parents will see your car." Clarke tried to sit up, when she found the textbook she'd been reading propped across her belly.
"Bellamy," she whispered again.
He jumped, his whole jerking into wakefulness.
"Clarke?" he questioned, under his breath.
She didn't have time for formalities.
"You have to leave. My parents are going to wake up and find your car. They only just stopped telling me babies came from storks three weeks ago."
Bellamy chuckled under his breath.
She couldn't believe how cold and tired she was, walking Bellamy out to the curb for the second time (mostly to ensure he survived the journey from her room and did not encounter her vicious blood-sucking monster parents who came out only when their daughter was in perceived danger). Clarke longed for her bed and her flannel pajamas with the little pieces of chocolate cake print.
Bellamy seemed deliriously tired. He fumbled with his keys so much she thought he might wake the neighbors.
"Thanks for letting me come over," he said again, and again Clarke nodded tightly.
She was squinting through the haze of her own fatigue and the misty darkness that accompanied early morning, when she did not observe Bellamy's head dipping around the side of hers. One second she was contemplating whether this was the same weather in which Harry Potter encountered the Knight Bus, and in the next Bellamy's curly hair was tickling her nose, and she felt his warm, soft lips on her cheek.
"See you tomorrow."
His grin disappeared into the cab of his truck, and Clarke watched in suspended animation as his engine turned over, and he drove into the distance. Even when he turned the corner at the end of her block, and she finally went back inside, did she not fully believe what had happened.
Clarke eschewed the pajamas, and the book, and any other studying she would have done. Instead she turned off all the lights in her room, slunk into bed wearing only her t-shirt and underwear, and fell asleep immediately.
The first day of finals went by uneventfully. The prompt for her in-class English essay had been predictable, and her calculus test only covered material through November. There was a text from Bellamy waiting for her as soon as started walking toward her car.
Are you going to Mecha today?
No, she typed back quickly. Just going back to my house. D'you want to come over?
His response was almost immediate.
Yes.
Clarke was sure she grinned the whole way home.
"Hi, sweetie."
The grin died when she walked into her kitchen.
Her mother was home. Abby's voice was calm, but held just the hint of something more: of more emotion lurking just below the surface, as if she'd been angrier earlier, or more upset earlier. Just more.
"Mom," Clarke started, unsure what to say. "What're you doing home?" Abby wasn't due until after six. A thought occurred to her. "Is it dad? Is everything okay?"
"Your dad's fine," she said immediately. Again there was something else going on, something that made the tiniest hairs on the back of Clarke's neck stand on end.
"Clarke, I need to talk to you about Bellamy."
The floor seemed to drop from under her. There was no better way to describe the total shift in how she felt against gravity. "What?" she asked, nearly breathless.
"Clarke I went to turn off the lights in your room last night," she explained, and Clarke's chest constricted around her heart. "And – and you can probably imagine – I don't know maybe you can't – but you could maybe see how I – how it could look – "
"Mom nothing happened."
Abby looked into her daughter's eyes as if expecting to hear just that.
"I just don't think this is a very normal tutor-student relationship anymore, sweetheart." The affectionate names were starting to grate on her, inexplicably. "And it was something when he was coming over for dinner without you telling us beforehand, and – and it's another to find him almost in your bed – "
"Mom," she said again, sounding more desperate now. "Nothing happened."
"I know," Abby answered. Her voice made her sound like she was on the verge of tears. "Or, I'm going to choose to believe that. But Clarke – you can't tell me that it's not becoming more than that."
Her mind was disastrously blank.
"And I know that you're a good girl, Clarke."
Jasper handed her the paper and winced. Naughty. Bellamy looked at her implacably in the dark. Too nice for a guy like me.
"And I worry – I worry about him. I worry about Bellamy."
"Bellamy?" The name echoed from her lips before she could stop it.
"If you only knew," Abby said under her breath. "Clarke, if you only knew what I know about that boy, I really don't think you would be breaking our trust and sneaking him into your room at night."
Clarke's eyes grew impossibly larger. What? "Mom – " she said, and her thoughts ran away from her. Her parents had met the boy once – I like this guy – No, wait, they'd talked about him once too – A real doozy of a pupil too, if Kane explains it right.
She had no idea what her mom was talking about. The fact her mom wasn't being immediately forthcoming was frustrating, until it clicked – oh my God – Abby Griffin couldn't tell her. What her mom knew, whatever it was, had something to do with the privacy shared between a doctor and their patient.
"Mom he's not like that," she said immediately.
"Clarke," her mom cautioned. "I know this boy, better than you think I do. Has he told you about what happened to him last year? Has he told you anything about his past whatsoever?"
"No, but – "
"Clarke," she stressed. "Please. Please just trust me. Please just tell me that you won't' let things go too far with this boy."
Her cheek burned where he'd kissed it last night.
And because she was stubborn, or stupid, or her mother's daughter, she said: "Mom, I trust him."
"Please Clarke, listen to me."
Clarke had heard enough. "No!" she shouted, knowing Bellamy was on his way over at just that moment. "Mom, I know him! And I trust him!"
"Clarke!"
Tears were rising in her throat now, the angry ones that sense impasses and anticipate hurt feelings. "Mom, you say you trust me, so trust me."
Her mother's tears spilled over. "Clarke."
Clarke's thoughts were scattered with the whipping wind in her hair. She stormed out of her parents' house exactly when Bellamy pulled up to the curb. They made eye contact through his windshield, and Bellamy's expression immediately shifted. He reached against his seatbelt to open the passenger side door and Clarke clambered in.
"Drive," she begged, and Bellamy didn't need telling twice. She put on her seatbelt as he peeled away from the curb, never having shifted his truck into park.
"What's going on?" he asked, but Clarke had her head between her hands. She was going over every interaction, every glance Bellamy and her mother had shared when he'd been over to their house on Friday night.
She tried to interpret the way he'd helped her wash the dishes, the way her mother had agreed with her dad's assessment that Bellamy was a good guy. She tried to tell herself that she only cared about Bellamy superficially – she only felt excited for his successes because he was her student and he was a good student – and then she tried to tell herself fighting with her mother was worth it because Bellamy was worth it.
"Clarke where are we going? I don't understand."
"Pull over."
She had no idea where they were at that moment, but Bellamy did as she asked, guiding the car gently to the curb, shifting the truck into park, and shutting off the engine. He turned toward her – the tension in the car felt thick and electric, heavy with the anticipation of whoever would speak or act first – and Clarke unbuckled her seatbelt.
She climbed onto the bench, combed her hand into the hair at Bellamy's temple, and kissed him.
He didn't kiss back all at once. A part of her had been terrified he would push her away immediately, and she would be gutted. But his shock faded with time, and eventually he was kissing her back, lips pressing into hers with increasing fervor. They both stepped into this abyss together, with open lips and sucking breaths and mingled tongues. When he pulled back there were tears in her eyes, and Bellamy stared into hers unabashedly.
"Can't say a girl has ever cried after kissing me," he said, and Clarke laughed softly.
"It's…it's my mom."
Bellamy didn't look quite so surprised to hear her say that. His lips closed over his teeth.
"She was home when I got there."
He leaned back in his chair, making Clarke realize he still had his seatbelt on. His hand took the place of hers, forking through the hair at his left temple while he looked out the window.
"What did she tell you?" he asked, his voice gruff and quiet.
"Not much," Clarke whispered back. "And knowing my mom, not much is enough."
It felt like someone was stepping on her stomach and applying increasing pressure. She waited for Bellamy to say something, to say anything, so she would have some idea of what to do.
"Well I guess it's time to take you home," he said, listlessly, and the pressure inside her gut twisted like an angry knife. Clarke pressed her lips together, fighting tears, and rebuckled her seatbelt. He was right, of course. Clarke couldn't avoid the proverbial music, and she would have to face her mother again. It said a lot about Bellamy that he knew this, and would push the two of them together rather than take her down a dirty and sordid path with him.
She looked away while Bellamy turned the key in the ignition and pulled out on the street, and she kept her gaze diverted until he made a wrong turn. Bellamy struck her as the kind of person who never missed a turn.
She tried to look at his face when he made another one. "Bellamy," she started to say, and he made brief eye contact so that she would realize: they were not going to her home.
They were going to his.
Clarke's eyes grew as she shifted her attention to the road. They made every turn the horse in Beauty & the Beast would've been too scared to make on his own.
She found herself on a street she'd never been on before. The trees were sparse and bare here, and litter punctuated the the gutters instead of multi-colored leaves. The houses hadn't been painted probably since they were cheaply erected; each one looked like it came from the same boxy blueprint, with random attachments placed over the years. One faded blue house had a plastic awning over the stoop, another had applied decorative and defunct shutters to the front-facing windows. Fences were made with chain-link metal.
Bellamy pulled up to one on the end, its sideboard tan and fading. The gutters around the roof overflowed, and the grass was patchy and dead. A car sat on cinderblocks around the side of the house, she was guessing to mark the edge of the property.
"Home sweet home," he muttered. Clarke didn't trust herself to say anything, so she remained silent as Bellamy opened his car door and ambled toward the house. She followed.
He used a key to unlock the deadbolt on the door, and then he held the door open for her so she could pass inside.
She'd never appreciated how clean her house was until she saw the state of Bellamy's. There were piles of stuff – just indiscernible stuff – everywhere. It didn't look like anyone who lived there was a hoarder, per se, but more like they just lacked…tables, and drawers, and that the people who lived there couldn't tell what was important to keep or not.
"So this used to be me and Octavia's room," Bellamy said, standing in the living room. She could tell it was the living room only because of the heavily holed couch. "We'd string a curtain here for when my mom had guests. She was…" He looked like he'd been preparing to say this for awhile. "She was a prostitute, so she had guests over a lot."
Clarke didn't trust herself to speak.
Bellamy put down his back pack. He moved to the left and flicked on a light. Fluorescent bulbs overhead illuminated the kitchen, which was a grimy collection of yellow tiles and peeling wallpaper. Cupboards tilted precariously on their hinges, and the sink was full of unwashed dishes.
"I would offer you something from the fridge," Bellamy said, his voice gently sardonic, "but I'm the one who does the shopping. When Octavia's not available to help you can expect milk and a loaf of bread. Might be some ketchup, but I probably wouldn't eat it if I were you."
Clarke felt like Bellamy was making a joke for her expense, and she wished she was capable of laughing at it, for his sake. As it was she could offer a small smile, and let him continue. "Oh!" he said, flipping open cabinets. "Crackers." He picked up the box, and they both could immediately tell it was empty. Bellamy frowned and put it back into the cupboard. "Well let's finish up the tour."
Clarke followed Bellamy down a short hallway. "That's where Octavia sleeps now," he explained, gesturing through a half-open door. "It used to be filled with just crap, I dunno I never really looked." Through the gap she could see more cracked paint, posters hung everywhere. "Through there's the bathroom," he didn't stop to show her what a bathroom looked like and Clarke didn't want to peek. He opened a third door, which exposed the end of the tour. Bellamy stood in the doorway, and waited until Clarke was at his elbow. His shoulders were slumped now, as if thinking about something he tried not to every day.
"And this is where I shot the man who killed my mom."
The blood in Clarke's veins seemed to congeal, and she felt as if she moved in slow motion because it was no longer circulating properly.
"You…Bellamy…"
He frowned, not looking at her. "It was hard to hide what she was doing once we became teenagers, so she did her business while we were at school. I heard screaming when I came home early one day. Octavia was still at school, but I'd picked a fight and Kane sent me home early. But I heard the screaming, and I knew…I just knew what to do. We kept the gun in the kitchen, so I – I just went and got it. And I…I opened this door, and…and she was dead…so I shot him."
"You shot who?"
"His name is Grus. I didn't even kill him, Clarke. He's serving life in Allenwood."
"I…I had no idea."
Bellamy shrugged. "Yeah, you might be one of the only ones who doesn't. I was eighteen when it happened, so no one kept my name out of the police reports. My mom didn't really make the news, but this block is kinda small. People know. People at school know."
My mom knows.
"They wanted to kick Octavia into the foster system, because she's still underage. We get to stay together if I can stay in school, graduate, and keep my job."
It suddenly made her extracurriculars - chess club, art club, tutoring kids afterschool – look woefully unimportant.
"So that's how my mom knows you then? From what happened with your mom?"
He nodded, not looking at her. "That, and…" He sighed. "Last year was a really dark year for me, Clarke. I did a lot of crap I'm not proud of, and it almost cost me everything." He looked over at her, his dark eyes calculating, his lips firm. "It also made me realize what was important in life. It's protecting the people I care about."
Clarke swallowed against a very sticky throat.
They drove back to Clarke's house, because there was nothing else to do at Bellamy's house. They both had final exams the next day, and plans to run away together weren't seriously considered. She felt too ashamed to hear him actually express out loud how important it was to be nice to your mother.
She sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at her parent's house. Her thoughts swirled like a gathering storm, and she didn't know where to start. Bellamy's past, and the kiss they'd shared pervaded most thoughts, but in gathering ideas: she couldn't imagine the horror of discovering your murdered mother. She couldn't imagine supporting a family at eighteen-years-old. She couldn't imagine the embarrassment of having to walk the halls every day knowing that you should have finished already, and having to stomach what people could think of you.
She was in awe of Bellamy's strength, and it was this hazy impression that let her know with absolute certainty that it was time to go inside.
"Are you sure you wouldn't come in with me?"
Bellamy shook his head. He grinned crookedly, and he was so youthful and handsome. "I have to study, remember?"
Wednesday, and the end of final's week, came in a blur of chewed pen caps, chipped fingernail polish, and her chocolate cake pajamas. Bellamy had a few questions that were covered through text messages or late-night phone calls.
Bellamy and Octavia came over for dinner Wednesday night to celebrate both the end of the semester and Christmas Eve's Eve.
"So," Octavia asked the table, chewing on a piece of bread. "Have you all been naughty or nice this year?"
Having dropped Octavia off at a friend's, Bellamy and Clarke were driving around aimlessly under the guise of 'taking the long way home.'
Bellamy pulled to a stop in some nondescript residential neighborhood. They were hidden in the shadow between houses, and the cab was shrouded in relative darkness.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and hooked an arm over her shoulders. Clarke unbuckled her own seatbelt and tried to get comfortable.
"So, Clarke Griffin, you refused to answer Octavia earlier. Have you been naughty or nice this year?"
There was a subtly challenge in his voice. Maybe pride. She smirked up at him. "You tell me."
"Well," he pretended to consider his options. "I mean, you are in a car with a juvenile delinquent."
She didn't indulge him, and he grinned at her sideways.
"But then again…you are in a car with a juvenile delinquent."
Clarke turned to face him entirely. She'd kissed him in this truck once already, and it was high time she did it again.
She hooked her leg over both of his and straddled his lap. Bellamy grinned up at her, enjoying the view, so she put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. They kissed until he had a flat hand on her back, until that hand was under her shirt, and until there was no shirt at all. It was reckless and stupid and they did it anyway.
And when he kissed her sweetly through his rolled-down window in front of her parent's lawn, she couldn't help her decision. "I've been both this year," she said, laying soft kisses on Bellamy's lips. "Naughty – " she licked his full lower lip, and breathed into a kiss – "and nice."
"Leaving me now would be neither," he groaned, and Clarke grinned, touching their foreheads together.
"Well then, guess I'll have to try again tomorrow."
He looked up at her, his dark eyes somber and affectionate. There was a promise there, as honest as Bellamy always was.
"Tomorrow."