From anonymous on tumblr: "Clarke's new neighbor is smart, charming, and handsome. Unfortunately she's also pretty sure he works for the local crime ring. Bellamy's falling for Clarke; unfortunately he's an undercover cop investigating her for ties to local crime ring."


Clarke should have sold her parents' house in the oldest, wealthiest suburb of Arkadia as soon as she inherited it. But with her parents both gone, it's all she had left of them, so she decides to keep living in the big old mansion at least until she finishes her residency at Arkadia Memorial.

And by the time she realizes that the Wallaces are moving in next door, it's too late to sell. No one wants to buy the house anymore, or any house in the neighborhood, and that's how Clarke gets stuck living next door to the biggest crime family in Arkadia.

She's mostly convinced herself it's not so bad, now finished with her residency and working as a general practitioner in the smaller clinic across town. In general they're quiet neighbors, and their yard is tidy. She keeps the shades closed at night so she's not an unwilling witness to something that would get her thrown into the witness protection program, or maybe killed. So, not all bad, she tells herself.

Clarke does have to interact with them a little bit, whenever she makes house calls to check on Maya's health. Cage's little sister is in remission, but still needs check-ups; Clarke counts herself grateful that Maya is the only patient Dante has insisted she see. She has no desire to become a mob doctor.

But Maya is sweet, and young, and Clarke is pretty positive that her brother and father keep her far away from any of their less-than-legal proceedings. That means that Clarke is kept away from them too, and the only "employees" of theirs she ever meets are the men who serve as Maya's bodyguards.

The newest one is the bane of her existence. All the others until now have been always older, always stoic, and always utterly unattractive to Clarke.

Bellamy is only a few years older than Clarke, he always has a smirk and a wink ready for her, and from the moment she first met him, Clarke has wanted nothing more than to jump his bones.

"Evening, princess," he greets her when she walks into Maya's room that day. It's time for Maya's monitor, and Clarke ignores him while she greets Maya and starts prepping her arm to draw a blood sample for the lab.

"Bellamy's been wondering where you've been," Maya tells her, not even wincing as Clarke slides the needle into her vein. "You're a little later than normal."

"Oh?" Clarke says, watching her hands and determinedly refusing to look at the devious little smile on Maya's face.

"Thought you might have seen another patient before Maya," Bellamy comments in his stupid, deep voice that never fails to turn Clarke into a tangle of need.

"I've told you before, Bellamy," Clarke says, concealing the waver of her voice with a sigh. "Maya is the only patient I see outside of work."

"You're a bleeding heart, princess," Bellamy drawls. "I find it hard to believe you wouldn't help anyone who needed it."

Reason number four Maya's newest bodyguard is the bane of her existence: he has never, ever called her by her name. It's always been princess, from the very start. You would think that a man who regularly tosses out allusions to classical mythology and can help Maya with her calculus homework would be capable of remembering her single syllable name, Clarke thinks.

"Why don't you ever stick around the house, princess?"

Apparently not. Clarke glances up at Bellamy as she unwraps the tourniquet from Maya's upper arm.

"I have no reason to stick around," she says, raising a brow. "Between Maya and my clinic, I barely have time to sleep, let alone waste time hanging out here when my own house is two minutes away."

She thinks she sees a flash of satisfaction, but his face is back in its usual smirk before she can say for sure.

"It's hardly wasting time if it's time spent with me," he says with a teasing grin, and when Maya giggles Clarke can't help but laugh a little, too.

"Nice try, but I'm pretty sure my pajamas and Netflix offer me a better time," Clarke retorts.

The expression on his face is delighted. "Well, I'll just have to work on changing your mind about that, won't I?"

Before Clarke can respond, his phone buzzes and he pulls it out of his pocket. Whatever the message says, he doesn't like, and his face is the face of a different man when he looks back at Maya.

"You two good for a minute?" he asks. "Your father needs me."

Maya nods and waves him away, and he doesn't spare them a second glance before he's out of the room, door shut behind him.

Clarke swallows, pushes away thoughts of what he's been summoned away by Dante to do, busies herself with wrapping Maya's elbow with a cotton ball and bright purple bandaging tape.

"I think he likes you, Clarke," Maya says with a knowing smile.

Clarke smiles back, though it fades quickly.

It doesn't––can't––matter if he does. It can't matter how much he makes her laugh, or feel, or want; Clarke Griffin could never let herself be with a man who lived the kind of life he does.


Clarke's supposed to check on Maya in two weeks, but she never gets the chance.

Instead, Maya's removed from the Wallaces' household and placed into protective custody until she can testify against her family's crime ring; Dante and Cage and dozens of others are arrested on countless charges; and Bellamy the bodyguard turns out to be Bellamy the undercover cop, not only investigating the Wallaces but investigating her, of all people, because she couldn't help but treat a sixteen-year-old girl.

Clarke was barricaded inside her house until the raid was over and an officer came to her home and explained. For a split second after Officer Miller's explanation, she'd been elated that the man she was halfway in love with wasn't a mobster. And then she had realized that the man she was halfway in love with was apparently a lie, a cover for his investigation.

Now that the street is quiet and all is supposed to be safe, Clarke's not inclined to be polite when she wrenches the door open in response to loud knocks at three in the morning.

"What––Bellamy?" she demands as Bellamy nearly crashes into her.

He just stares at her for a minute, and it's both funny and painful that she still seems to be able to read the relief in his face and the tension in his shoulders.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," he says eventually, eyes still drinking her in.

"I'm fine," she says. "Looks like you are, too. So you can leave now."

He looks stricken, and she ignores the way the guilt pulls at her, deep in her belly. "Princess, just let me––"

"No!" she says, and punches him in the arm. "I don't have to let you do anything. I don't even know you!"

He catches her fist in his when she tries to hit him again, and his hands are gentle as he pries her fingers apart and slips his own between them.

"You do," he says. "You do know me, princess. But if you don't believe me, you should at least give me a chance to prove it."

Clarke draws in a shuddering breath, and doesn't speak.

"My real name's Bellamy Blake," he tells her. "I have a little sister named Octavia, a one-eyed dog named Cyclops, I'm roommates with another cop in a shitty apartment across town, and I want to take you on a date."

Clarke can only stare at him, open-mouthed. "Wh-what?"

"Clarke." He uses his grasp on her hand to tug her closer until she stumbles into him, and she realizes that's the first time he's ever let himself say her name. "I'll tell you everything about me, I swear. Just––just give me a chance."

"You named your one-eyed dog Cyclops?" she asks, and he frowns.

"That's what you got from that?"

Classical mythology and calculus, she remembers, and a tiny bud of hope blossoms in her chest.

"So you really are a huge mythology nerd?" she says, and he lets out a surprised laugh.

"That's what my sister tells me," Bellamy replies. "But you should find out for yourself."

"Okay," she says.

"Okay?" he echoes, face hopeful.

Clarke smiles. "Pick me up at seven."


Bellamy Blake is, in fact, a huge nerd. Even better, she finds out, he's a huge nerd who can kiss her until all she knows is him.