i.

Having grown up with Octavia for a younger sister, Bellamy was sure he'd seen it all: undue stress over grades, boy drama, girl drama, general teenager angst. And naturally, with all this experience, he could handle absolutely anything that came his way. Or so he thought.

Then he found himself rather at a loss when Clarke Griffin showed up on their doorstep in the middle of the night. She was wearing ratty old sweatpants and one of her father's old Ark University hoodies; her eyes were red and her nose and makeup were running. His little sister's best friend was one of the toughest, most stoic girls he'd ever known — he had no idea what could possibly have reduced her to such a state, and frankly the possibilities scared him.

He cleared his throat. "You — um, you okay?" Immediately he berated himself for asking such a stupid question when the answer was so damn obvious. Anyone could tell that Clarke was most definitely not okay.

Her thoughts clearly following the same track, she managed a watery glare. Abruptly her expression crumpled and she let out a little gasping sob.

Instinctively Bellamy reached out to pull her close the way he had Octavia on so many occasions. He wrapped his arms around her tightly — I'm here and I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, he tried to convey with the solidarity of the physical contact — and rested his chin lightly atop her head, noting vaguely how well they fit together. "Hey, princess, what's wrong?"

"Is Octavia home?" she mumbled into his shirt, avoiding the question.

"She's on that marine bio trip, remember?" He noticed that she was barefoot and guessed that she'd been too distracted to grab shoes on her way over. Thank goodness she hadn't had far to go. "Do you want to come in?"

She nodded against his shoulder and let him lead her into the kitchen, where she heaved herself onto the counter, taking shaky slow breaths and swiping determinedly at her tears.

"You want to talk about it?" Bellamy asked as he reached for the hot chocolate mix. (It did always help calm Octavia down, he reasoned, and he knew for a fact that Clarke liked the stuff too. If nothing else, the warm drink in her hands would hopefully ground her in the face of whatever disaster she was dealing with.)

"It's —" She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head once, sharply. "My dad, he —"

Aurora poked her head around the corner, phone pressed to her ear. Her tense expression relaxed when she saw Clarke. "No, Abby, she's fine, she's right here in fact. I'm looking right at her." She made eye contact with Clarke. You want to talk to your mom?

Clarke shook her head again, and Aurora nodded sympathetically. After exchanging a loaded glance with her son, she withdrew.

Sensing that the moment had passed, Bellamy didn't pry as he handed Clarke the steaming mug. After all, he knew, she'd talk when she was ready.

There was silence for a few minutes. Finally Clarke blurted, wanting to get it over with, "My dad's in the hospital. Hit-and-run drunk driver."

Bellamy froze. He knew Clarke and her father were close — hell, he himself was pretty close to Clarke's father. Jake Griffin was just that kind of guy, universally respected and beloved. "How bad is it?" he asked cautiously.

"I don't know." Eyes downcast, Clarke traced the rim of her mug. "Mom won't tell me anything." She looked up hesitantly, and Bellamy could see in her eyes how small and lost she was feeling. He decided immediately that

"Hey, it's going to be okay. Your dad's a fighter — he's going to pull through, I just know it. You're going to —" In his back pocket, his phone chimed with a text, and he pulled it out to check in case it was important.

Abby: I know Clarke doesn't want to hear from me right now, but Jake just got out of surgery, and it seems he's going to be just fine. Tell her please?

With pleasure, Bellamy texted back.

When he passed on the news, Clarke's face lit up as tears of joyful relief welled up in those big blue eyes. Bellamy hugged her, and she blotted them on his shirt.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"Anytime, princess."

ii.

It was a November afternoon, and Clarke was surrounded by stacks of papers and books as she tried to compose an admission-worthy application essay. (At this point, three hours in and having made hardly any progress, she'd have settled for just coherence.)

Unable to find the fact she'd been looking for, Clarke slammed the book shut and groaned. Picking up another, she began flipping pages without much hope or interest.

At that moment her phone rang. Grateful as she was for the diversion, she was about to reject the call — she really did need to focus — when she saw the caller ID. "Bellamy? Don't you have class or something?"

"Hello to you too, princess. O wanted me to check that you weren't killing yourself over college applications while she was out. Why didn't you go with her, anyway?"

"Wanted to get a headstart on my essays." Her laugh was slightly hysterical. "We've gone out most weekends this past month, so I really needed to get something done because I've already missed a whole bunch of the checkpoints I set. And I can't reuse early admissions essays because they're different prompts and different requirements, and —"

"Clarke. Slow down, take a deep breath. Relax — remember, it's not the end of the world if you don't finish your essays right now."

She did as he instructed, though her racing thoughts had begun to calm as soon as he said her name. There had always been something so steady about Bellamy, something that grounded her even when she got completely carried away. "Thanks. I think I needed that."

"Yeah." He chuckled dryly. "I could tell."

"Why are you so good at this — saving me from myself?"

"Well, it's a tough job, but someone has to do it."

She ducked her head even though he couldn't see her, and her laugh was much calmer this time. "But seriously, thank you."

"Of course, princess."

iii.

The Blakes' house wasn't as cramped and stuffy as most teenage parties tended to be, but it was unarguably filled. Aurora and Abby had taken off to a spa for the weekend, having cited a need to de-stress after suffering through college applications with the girls, and Octavia had promptly invited the gang over. Her fellow high school seniors — Clarke, Monty, Jasper, and Murphy — were of course more than happy to celebrate the college acceptances that had already arrived, and the older part of the set — Bellamy, Miller, Raven, and Wick — were home on spring break and down to celebrate with them.

It was a fairly casual gathering, just these close friends in nice-but-not-dressy clothes, hanging out and chatting over assorted junk food and alcohol.

One might think that having her big brother in the house might discourage Octavia from drinking, or at least doing it so conspicuously. Naturally, that meant she had to be the first to grab a beer and chug it, tossing an I dare you to say something glare his way. (Bellamy just laughed — he trusted everyone here, and really, if his baby sister was going to get drunk, he'd rather she did it on his watch.)

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Bellamy grinned as he watched Miller and Monty talk circles around each other and their feelings. (With those two, it was really just a matter of time.)

When he looked up, Clarke was making her unsteady way over to him. She'd ditched her heels somewhere, but her bare feet weren't all that incongruous with her sundress and her messy half-updo. She smiled. "Heya, Bell."

He raised an eyebrow, amused. "Does anyone actually say 'heya' anymore?"

She pouted, shoving at his arm and throwing herself off balance in the process. Automatically he caught her by the shoulder. Once she was out of (immediate) danger of falling, his hand slipped down to her waist. "Princess, how drunk are you right now?"

She shrugged sloppily.

"You're going to have a killer hangover in the morning, you know."

She ignored this, leaning in to whisper in his ear. "Wanna know a secret?"

With her warm breath drifting across his neck, Bellamy's thoughts went from she's so cute like this to something much less expressable in two seconds flat. "S-sure."

"I kind of want to kiss you right now."

Fuck. What on earth was he supposed to say to that?

"But," she continued, pulling back so that he could think again, "you're Octavia's brother. And I've known you forever. And you've known me forever. Is that weird? It's probably weird, right? I shouldn't want to kiss someone who watched me go through puberty. But you're really hot and you have since you were, like, sixteen. But you're three years older than me, and —"

"Hey, hey." He pressed a finger to her lips. "Princess, you must be seriously drunk if you're rambling like this. Let's not do something you'll regret in the morning, okay?" Sure, it made his heart stutter to have to say the words, but this was Clarke, the one girl (besides Octavia) who Bellamy would absolutely never take advantage of. "I think it's about time you went to bed."

Smirking knowingly, Octavia — where had she come from? — passed him the aspirin. "She can sleep it off in my room. Easier than getting her home, especially since Abby's gone too. Not that you'd want Abby to know that you let her daughter get so wasted."

"Oh, shut up." He shook his head, fondly exasperated. "Don't stay up too late, okay?"

"Sure, let's pretend I'll do that." She kissed his cheek. "Don't worry about me. 'Night, big brother."

"'Night, O."

iv.

Clarke groaned and threw an arm over her eyes in an attempt to block out the morning sunlight.

"Morning, sleepyhead!"

"Go away, Octavia."

"Come on, Bell's making breakfast."

Deciding that Bellamy's cooking was worth the effort of getting out of bed, Clarke dragged herself out from under the covers and into the bathroom.

After closing the waffle iron carefully, Bellamy flipped the sand timer and turned from the counter to grin at her. "Morning, princess."

She mumbled something unintelligible.

"Yes, I did add blueberries," he teased, laughing at the way her eyes lit up. (Dully — she wasn't quite awake yet — but visibly.) "There's coffee, too."

She managed to heave herself onto the counter. Once she was balanced, Bellamy slid her favorite mug over as she reached for the pot. Her tangled, unwashed hair flopped over her face, and she sighed impatiently, setting the coffee down to pull it up into a sloppy bun.

"Wait a minute, is that my sweatshirt?"

Clarke glanced down at the clothes she'd thrown on — namely, the Polis State hoodie. "I guess so. I wasn't exactly awake; I think I grabbed it off the sofa."

"Not a very sanitary practice, is it, doc?"

"That's even worse than 'princess.' Don't call me that." She wrinkled her nose and reached out to punch him in the shoulder, wincing as her head pounded. "Ugh."

"Hangover?" He refilled her mug, smiling sympathetically. "I hate to say I told you so, but, well —"

"Don't," she groaned, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead. "I can't even deal with you right now, Bell."

"You should be more grateful, he's the one who made you go to bed." Octavia tossed her the aspirin bottle, which Clarke almost dropped. Bellamy's hand shot out to cup the bottom of hers, keeping it from hitting the tiled kitchen floor.

"Thanks," she mumbled as he steadied her grip around it, pretending the skin-on-skin contact wasn't having any effect on either of them. "Wow, I'm really out of it today."

He patted her on the head comfortingly. "You'll live."

v.

Hearing something thud against the floor, Bellamy hastily shut the apartment door and hurried into the living room.

Clarke looked up sheepishly as he came in. "It's nothing — knocked my brushes off the table is all." She indicated the overturned cup and the brushes that were scattered across the floor.

As he bent to help her pick them up — that had always been something she'd loved about him, that he never needed prompting to lend someone a hand, he just did it — he noticed the drying paint covering her hands and her favorite old overalls. A smile quirked his mouth as he noticed that it had gotten onto her face, too. Really, she was splattered all over — messy yet charming.

"What?" she said, noticing his staring.

His affectionate grin widened as he brushed his thumb across a sky-blue patch near the corner of her mouth. (Okay, so maybe he just wanted an excuse to touch her. Not that he'd ever admit that.)

"Oh." She smiled ruefully as her own hand rose to rub at it. Their fingers brushed, and she pulled away. "I should probably—"

Bellamy took a reluctant step back. "Yeah. I'll, um — O said she'll meet us at the café, but I figured you'd need a ride, since Monty would probably never forgive either of us if we were late today, and… Yeah, I'll just wait here."

"Okay, yeah. You do that, and I'll just —" Shaking her head to try and clear it, Clarke shot him one last smiling glance before disappearing into her room.

+1.

There was no telltale clicking of heels as so often preceded one of Octavia's showy entrances, but then again Clarke had never had a flair for the dramatic the way his sister had. Still, some warning would have been nice, Bellamy thought as he glanced up from his book and promptly forgot how to breathe.

Clarke stood in the doorway to the living room, sliding a last bobby pin into her hair. She'd twisted the front strands back like she used to in middle school, so it was no longer falling in her face. Her dress was a pale blue that didn't quite match her eyes, but definitely brought out their color, making them stand out amidst her minimal makeup.

"You look nice," he managed. "New dress?"

"Had this one a while, actually." Smiling faintly, she smoothed the skirt self-consciously. "I just never really had a chance to wear it; I'd almost forgotten it was in my closet. Then Octavia and I were going through my clothes last night, trying to find something to wear, and… well, yeah." She looked up at him, and her eyes took on a mischievous sparkle as she noticed his slacks, button-down, and slicked-back hair. "You clean up nicely too."

"Thanks," he said, bemused.

She shrugged, then winced. "My hair's caught in the zipper — help me out?"

"Oh, um, sure." He got to his feet and crossed the room to her. Carefully he detangled the blond locks, then rezipped the dress for her. (And if his fingers brushed the back of her neck unnecessarily but definitely intentionally, well, no one needed to know.) "There you go."

She spun around, deliberately moving forward so her face was centimeters below his. "Thanks," she breathed.

Bellamy was finding it hard to concentrate, what with her being so close and looking so nice and just being Clarke. "Um, yeah, anytime."

"Hey, Bellamy?"

"Yeah, princess?"

"You're an idiot," she said softly, then rose up on tiptoe to kiss him.

When they finally broke apart, he grinned dazedly. "Yeah, but I'm your idiot."

"That you are." Smiling, she looped her arms around his waist and tucked her head under his chin. (And oh, every cliché about fitting together perfectly suddenly seemed less cliché and more sentimentally romantic.) "You're stuck with me now."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he murmured affectionately, dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

They did end up being late to the party, but their friends took one look at their joined hands, smirked, and said nothing. (Until later, when they cornered each of the two separately.)

But for the moment, there was no place either Bellamy or Clarke would have wanted to be besides here, surrounded by their closest friends in the world, cuddled up to each other.