BELLAMY:
"You've been coming to me for three months and you haven't told me why you have these urges, just that you want them to stop," Echo said and Bellamy breathed, it's suppressed, but not so much as he'd thought… wanted to think it was.
"I don't want to talk about that."
"Bellamy, you keep talking about your princess, about how she wants you to be with her in the moment. Whatever this memory is that keeps you from her, talking about it will help. That's why you come here."
"I don't want to talk about that."
"Was it your step-father?"
"I can walk out of here any time I want! I don't want to talk about him!" Bellamy yelled at Echo. She didn't deserve it.
"That is why you are here, to better yourself, become the better version of you. Your words from our first session."
"I—" he sighed.
"We can sit here again for the next thirty-five minutes or we can talk about what you need to talk about."
"My father died when I was three. I don't remember him, I wish I did, I feel like I'd understand some things about myself more. My mother met Cage when I was four, he… he didn't care for me. My mom tried to include me in the things they did but he gave her drugs, I don't really know what but she was an addict by the time Octavia was born. I was in charge of my baby sister since I was seven and I don't regret it, but I also wish I had a childhood."
"Do you blame Cage for getting your mom addicted and making you raise your sister when you were just a child yourself?"
"To an extent. She was a recovering addict before I was born, she tried to better herself for me, for my father, she knew she couldn't have a family and have an addiction that took money away from us. I blame him for bringing alcohol back into the house, not caring about her over indulgence."
Echo nodded, writing her notes, which drove Bellamy crazy. "What did he do to you specifically?" she asked, leaning forward, elbows on her clipboard clad knees.
"I'm not talking about that."
"Bellamy, it's the only way. You came to me for help, to become a better version of yourself but you won't let me in. I know you've been having a sexual relationship with your assistant and you claim to be in love with her and she doesn't believe you due to the aspects of your relationship, though that hasn't been touched upon either. You're overbearing towards your sister and her boyfriend who's clearly been wanting to propose for a while, but respects or fears you too much to do anything about that."
"He doesn't fear me."
"Respect then. You won't expand on any of it, you've complained about your job and stress, but you haven't gone past skin deep. If you don't tell me what Cage did to you, then at least tell your princess."
"She can't know!"
"Could we have her at a session? Help her understand your side?"
"You want Princess to come here? So she can mock me?"
"If she cares for you as I've been lead to believe she does, she wouldn't mock you. We could also get a better view of her perspective."
"Like marriage counselling?"
"Sure, but I'm a sex therapist first and foremost."
"You're serious?"
"Yes, we could add an extra hour on after this one with her here if you'd like."
"Two hours of therapy?"
Echo nodded, "If that's what you'd like."
"No, just the one with her and I'll ask her. I don't want you calling her and having her worrying about something as minute as therapy."
"That is why you're not letting this work, you don't believe it will."
"You really want to know what Cage did to me? He sold me to his friends to buy drugs for my mother so she wouldn't know he was cheating on her with some twat upstairs because she's too out of it. I was raped by forty year old men from the age of eight until I was thirteen. I couldn't do anything about it because who the hell would believe me and mostly, who would take care of Octavia?"
"You were a child, why would you lie about that?"
"I didn't think like that as a child. My nose was shoved in books, I didn't learn of CPS until I was thirteen and I threatened Cage, he believed me. He was out within the week and my mother lost her drug supply and she tried being a mother again, she got clean, went to NA meetings, got a job that barely paid the rent so she got another one, she worked eighty hours a week until I was eighteen and we found out she contracted HIV from one of the used needles Cage supplied her with and by the time we found out it was full blown AIDS. I was twenty when she died and O was thrown into my custody because Cage was incarcerated."
"He—" Echo shook her head, she'd probably never imagined his childhood as such a horrible one, the pain he endured, the torture. She probably regrets asking. "He did horrible things to you. Things you didn't deserve."
"Selling a child to men so they could rape him," Bellamy swallowed. Saying it, admitting it, it wears on a person.
"It's never going to be easy to say, but the weight will lift ever so slightly every time you say it out loud."
"I don't want to say it, I don't want to think about my childhood and what that man put me through."
"And so you escaped through books, which you turned into a career. You turned the worst part of your life into something you can be proud of."
"I wanted to publish books that told a story, held a message for the kids out there who have it just as bad as I did. Get them out of their reality and into a fantasy or be inspired by real people, ordinary people who were hurting, who had bad lives and worked their asses off to make something of themselves. I've lost track of that, I've gotten too consumed by the money and prestige, that I've strayed off course. The original goal was to pay for Octavia's college, but she's been out for three years, she's a paralegal and absolutely loving it. I should get back to what my plan was, be the man that Princess heard about from her college roommate."
"Your Princess was your sister's college roommate?"
"Yeah, and Octavia has no idea, or maybe she does and is just letting us figure it out."
"Bellamy, this girl is seven years younger than you, she's twenty-four, you're certain she's serious about being in a relationship with you?"
"She's not like other twenty-four year olds, she doesn't go to the bar and get wasted on the weekends, she plays Boggle and occasionally Cards Against Humanity with her friends while drinking wine and discussing politics. I didn't do that when I was twenty-four, I was at the bar, drinking my childhood memories away, finding that night's girl. I was an asshole that needed to have sex that didn't give me flashbacks of old men riding me bareback, I found that with her."
"And yet you keep leaving her. That's what you wrote down on your form, you're absentminded during sex and you're worried that she'll say no and you won't hear her."
"I don't know where I go, it gets to be too much and I space out, coming back when I'm coming on her back," he smirked.
"Bellamy, this is serious. Do you remember doing that with other women or just Princess?"
"Stop calling her that, her name is Clarke."
"Clarke, okay." Echo looked at the clock behind Bellamy and grimaced, "Our time is up, but this is some really great progress. Bring Clarke with you on Friday."
"If I can, we haven't really talked since I started coming here."
Echo grimaced, "We can discuss that on Friday."
Bellamy nodded and stood, "Thanks, Doc."
CLARKE:
"I just found this out two weeks ago because Bell's been acting strange when I see him and I figured out why, he's seeing a therapist."
Clarke nearly spit her whiskey across the bar. "What?"
Octavia grimaced at her, "I thought you knew his schedule like it were your own."
"I haven't been his secretary for six months. He's seeing a therapist?"
"Yeah, she's apparently been helping him see things differently, like how they really are instead of how he interpreted it. His childhood wasn't great, mine wasn't either but I didn't go through half of what he did. I just didn't think he'd need a therapist to figure it all out."
"When did he start going?"
"It's Friday afternoons so whenever he began leaving work early on Fridays."
"Three months. It's been three months, we had lunch the morning after Harper's party and he said he was going to be leaving early on Fridays and he was telling me in case I had to ask him something. I guess it makes sense, Lincoln says he has been calmer at the Monday morning meetings."
"You haven't been going to the meetings?"
"It's for department heads, I'm not a department head so I don't go."
"Clarke, I don't know what happened between you two but you both have been acting weird for months and you're avoiding each other."
"We're not, we're both busy with different schedules."
"Clarke, did you fall for him?"
"It's not like that, O, I… I didn't want this promotion and he forced me to take it."
"You're an amazing artist, Clarke, why hide that?"
"I'm not trying to hide it, O, I just wanted to have an actual gallery opening and now I can't because my hand is exhausted by the end of the work day and I have a ton of errands to do on the weekends that I don't have time then either."
"I didn't know, did you tell him that?"
"Yes, he just… he thinks this is good for me and it is, it's fun and challenging, but also not what I want to be working on."
Octavia sighed and downed the rest of her martini. "I really don't know what to tell you, I thought this job would be for a few months until you find the job you want, not become your life like it has. What's keeping you there really?"
"Nothing, I mean, I like everyone, and they're all nice. The only person that's relatively unkind is Bellamy and that's because he's stressed."
"I don't think he's had sex in a while, there are no girls or hint of girls in his apartment like there used to be. He's… different."
"I've noticed. He's distant at work and less angry, I don't think he's yelled at or humiliated anyone since therapy started."
"Huh, that's interesting," Octavia grimaced before ordering another drink from Gina.
To: CGriffinAAD
From: BBlakeCEO
Sent: 8:37am Monday, October 16, 2017
Subject: Friday, October 20, 2017
Miss Griffin,
Please clear your schedule and come with me this Friday afternoon.
Bellamy Blake CEO
Blake Publishing
Clarke sighed, he wants her to go to therapy with him on Friday? Why would he want that? Maybe it's his therapist's idea? She didn't know what to do with him sometimes. She opened inner office messenger and pulled up his name.
CGriffinAAD: May I come talk to you?
BBlakeCEO: Concerning?
CGriffinAAD: Your email, I'd rather talk to you in person.
BBlakeCEO: Lunch?
CGriffinAAD: I don't have time for lunch but I can spare 10 minutes right now.
BBlakeCEO: Fine, come up, you know it's going to be longer than 10 minutes, the people up here miss you.
CGriffinAAD: I miss them too, I don't mind. I'll be up in 5.
She logged off her computer and let Lincoln know where she was going before taking the elevator up to the thirtieth floor. She walked in and said hello to Mel at the front desk and heading into the bullpen with the gang of delinquents commonly known as Miller's delinquent editors.
"Clarke!" Miller called from across the room of cubicles. "What are you doing here?"
"Mr. Blake called me up to his office. I'm just doing what the boss asks," she lied.
"You know where it is. We miss you up here, you joined in on the ruckus. Your replacement doesn't."
"Niylah, she's good at her job, very meticulous, I heard."
"Not as fun as you though."
"I appreciate that, Miller, but I really do have to get in there."
"Go ahead, we'll catch up later," he nodded towards Bellamy's office.
Clarke looked at Niylah who just nodded at her before she knocked on Bellamy's frosted door.
"Come in, Griffin," his deep voice boomed, sending an all too familiar shiver down her spine.
She pushed open the door and walked into his office, the room hadn't changed, why did she expect it to be any different than before?
The one thing that was different; Bellamy was sitting on the couch with a manuscript in his hands instead of at his desk typing away at his computer, she often wondered if he were one of their authors with the amount of time he spent typing away on his computer. "Come sit," he said, closing the manuscript and sitting up more, giving Clarke all of his attention.
"I'd rather stand. I don't think it'd be appropriate of me to go with you on Friday."
Bellamy grimaced, "Octavia told you."
"She found out and thought I could use it as ammunition because she doesn't know that I already have plenty."
"Clarke, Echo wants to meet you, she wants to see our interactions for herself."
"After three months?"
"I told my side, I told her more than I thought I would tell anyone. It's not that I trust her more than I trust you, I just never want you to look at me differently."
"Shows how little you know me, I would never judge you for what you've been through. What you've suffered."
"Clarke, I—I need you to know that I am sorry and I want to be with you. I don't think that will ever change. I'm getting help so I can be with you and not do what I've done in the past. I want you to come with me on Friday so you can see how far I've come while also seeing that this is a process. I don't know how long it's going to take."
"You can't be doing this for me, Bellamy, it has to be for yourself."
"Why can't it be both? I didn't see it until you, I do need help, I wasn't deluding myself into believing that I was okay, I thought I could ignore it but I was angry over everything without even knowing it.
"We don't need a moderator, but I think she'll get a better understanding of what we're like and—and she could help me help myself more."
"I'm always going to help you, but I can't read your mind. You have to tell me. I'm—I'll be there, Bellamy."
Clarke stood and leaned over him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "I should get back to work, my boss is somewhat tyrannical."
Bellamy chuckled, "I miss you up here."
Clarke turned at the door and smiled at him. "I miss being up here," she admitted before walking out of his office and back into the large room of cubicles.
"I heard you were up here," she heard behind her and turned to find Harper smiling, walking close behind.
"Hey," Clarke smiled. "Mr. Blake needed to discuss something on the Emerson cover art. An Easter egg."
"An Easter egg?"
"Have you read the book?"
"Not my flavor of reading."
"Yes, well, not mine either, but I read it and there were key facts that I couldn't get out of my head while designing the cover so… Easter eggs."
"He's worried or—"
"No, no, he thought that removing a rather obvious one would be prudent, less apparent."
They arrived at the elevator and Clarke pressed the down button. "We really do miss you up here," Harper smiled.
"Why don't we do lunch sometime next week? We can get back into the swing of things, I know I've been distant since your party, it's just been a rough time for me and I've been throwing myself into work, I sometimes haven't left until nine or ten at night. Lincoln has to find me things to work on, things that aren't due for publishing for months, that are still in the process of editing and he's almost forced me to take a vacation if I didn't slow down. I've been bringing personal art to work and work on it because I have nothing else to do. Lincoln doesn't either, he's about to ask Bellamy to ask other publications for work for us."
The elevator dinged, warning them of it opening momentarily.
"Clarke, you could call me. You could call any of us for company, talk about whatever it is you need to talk about. I know we met here, but work friends can turn into real friends."
The elevator doors opened and a man Clarke didn't recognize, who nodded to Harper stepped out of the elevator, towards the bullpen. "Who was that?"
"New guy, Riley. He's not fun, too serious and not that great at his job."
"Who really is though?" Clarke shrugged, stepping into the elevator. "Thank you, Harper, I'm serious about lunch next week though, maybe that Thai place we went to a few months back."
"Sounds great," Harper smiled when Clarke pressed the button for the twenty-fifth floor. "I'll email you."
"Okay. Later, Harper," Clarke smiled as the doors closed and Clarke sighed, falling back against the mirrored wall.
Therapy. She's going to therapy with Bellamy—for Bellamy. Why is it that every time he asks her to do something, she jumps at the chance to be with him? Even when she knows she shouldn't, even when it's not in her best interest. He said he wanted to fuck her, she said yes. He asked her out after she finally put her foot down, she said yes. He told her his therapist wants to know their dynamic, even though they haven't spent much time together in four months and the two before that weren't that great either. Since their date they've barely spoken and that was early May, it's nearly Thanksgiving. Why bring it up now?
Clarke stepped out of the elevator Friday at one and Bellamy was in the lobby waiting for her.
"Ready?" he asked, causing her to jump slightly.
"I guess. I don't—" she knows how therapy works, she went after her father died and… Wells, but that was for grief. This, with Bellamy, it's completely different.
"We'll go, she'll ask questions and we'll answer honestly, that's all there is to it," he said touching Clarke's shoulder, as to lead her to his awaiting town car.
Clarke got in the car, Bellamy followed and when the driver closed the door, Clarke sighed, "What did you tell her about me?"
"Her name is Echo and I told her that we had a work relationship that turned physical. I needed you for sex and that was not acceptable for you and I tried stepping back and respecting that but I'd fallen in love with you without ever realizing it. I used that against you, coercing a date, a real date out of you as though we were two people who hadn't had any relations before." Bellamy placed his hand on top of hers in the middle of the leather seat between them, "I told her everything about us."
"And she wants to meet me?"
"She's a sex therapist, Clarke. She specializes in fetishes and BDSM, she started out in anger management, which is why I chose her. My compulsions and actions are not healthy."
Clarke nodded, "We haven't spoken in months, Bellamy. How do you call that love?"
"I was giving you space like you wanted. I wanted to work on myself, see how therapy fared before trying to get you back."
You never lost me, Clarke's brain screamed at her unhealthily, urging her to tell him, to turn her hand over and interlock their fingers and not pull away like she knew she should, Her logic and her heart at war, fighting between what was right and good for her and what she wanted, not caring that it was bad for her and ultimately her psyche.
"We shouldn't talk about this, we should wait. The meeting's at two and it's a twenty minute drive with no traffic, but this is LA, there's nothing but traffic so it'll probably take around fifty minutes, did you bring any work with you?"
"To a therapist's office? No."
Their ride was quiet and slow and by the end, Clarke was craving an iced latte.
"Do we have time to get coffee?"
"Of course."
"Cool."
"What do you want? I'll have Marty stop and get it."
"Seriously? I can go in and get it myself, I'm not living an elitist life, Bellamy. We're not going to be those assholes!"
"We?"
Clarke swallowed, why does she shove her foot in her mouth all the time? "Yeah, well, you shouldn't act elitist either."
"Because I don't want to get out and deal with people in Starbucks?" he grimaced.
"Because you're having your driver do it because you don't want to."
"He knows he can get whatever he wants."
Clarke rolled her eyes, "That's not the point, Bellamy."
"We'll go in."
"We?"
"Yes, Clarke. You're doing this for me, I'll buy you coffee."
"Am I getting paid for a full day?"
"Yes."
"I can buy my own coffee."
"I know you can, but you shouldn't because you're doing this for me."
"And I have no idea why. We haven't spoken in months."
"She—Echo told me I should back off for a while, even though it's not what I wanted, it's what you wanted."
Clarke didn't say anything to that, what could she say without starting a fight and she doesn't want that, not when they're about to go talk with his therapist.
Ten minutes later, they're sitting together on the sofa, Echo adjacent them in an arm chair, clipboard in hand and Clarke couldn't stop wondering if they've ever fucked. She wouldn't put it past Bellamy and sex therapy usually involves sex, right?
"Clarke, you must have some questions for me, why don't we start there?" Echo offered.
"Where did you study sex therapy?"
"That's a certification. I got my bachelor's degree from Cambridge, then got my Masters from Harvard and PhD from Stanford. After a year of practicing I applied to AASECT, and got my certification through them in the state of California. AASECT is the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists."
Clarke nodded, "Did you go into psychology with the intent of becoming a sex therapist?"
"No, after being a psychologist, I thought I'd want to go into a more specific field and sex therapy was largely needed at the time wit Charlie Sheen and Jesse James coming out about their sex addiction and going into rehab, I had a lot of clients that wanted to talk about their sexuality but I wasn't certified so I got my certification and here we are."
"So if I typed in 'sex therapy LA' into Google, you'll be at the top of the list?"
"Possibly."
"You don't Google yourself to see your online reputation?"
"I do my job and I feel I do it well so I hope that I don't have any bad reviews but I'm not going out and searching for bad reviews."
"Have you exploited any of your clients for publicity?"
"No, I'm not in this for the money or publicity, if I have a celebrity in my office, I'm not going to go around and tell people that I spend fifty minutes a day with whomever it may be. It's no one's business but their own and it's not going to change how I help them."
"Have you ever had sex with a client?"
"No."
"Never?" Clarke grimaced.
"Code of Ethics," Echo countered and Clarke nodded, med school training was the same.
"Okay, then. Why am I here?"
"Part of sex therapy—well, my sex therapy, because a lot of the time it's psychological, there's a reason people have the fetishes or desires that they do, a past trauma, perhaps. Anyway, you are here because Bellamy has some things to deal with for both his mental and sexual health, and I was hoping that you would be willing to be with him through it all."
"I—I don't know what that means, I—Bellamy and I haven't spoken outside of work in months. We haven't had a relationship ever."
Echo crinkled her brow and looked to Bellamy. "How do you feel towards Bellamy?"
"He's my boss."
"Clarke," Bellamy sighed. She saw his jaw tick, how he was holding himself back and she wondered if that was something Echo taught him. Something that calms him when he's frustrated and wanted to lash out because what he usually did was bend her over his desk and fuck her and right now… right now that was preferable over this.
Clarke licked her lips, she knew what the honest truth was but saying it here, saying that she was in love with him too, felt like admitting there was nothing wrong with their old dynamic, the dynamic she pointedly walked away from. "I'm… I—don't make me say it. Not here, not for this."
"At least tell me you care for him."
She sighed, she can do that, she can admit that, and nodded, "Yes, I care for him."
"And you want him to get better?"
"He's not broken!"
"Clarke, stop," Bellamy's hand landed on her knee and Clarke's eyes landed on it, watching until he realized what he'd done—fairly quickly. "She's only trying to help, don't yell at her. And I am broken, Echo will never say that, but it's the reality."
"The reality? Bellamy, I didn't want this. I said I wanted you to stop disappearing on me when we have sex, I didn't think that would cause you to go to seek out a sex therapist!"
"This wasn't a rash decision, Clarke. I was frustrated with you and what you want because it changes all the time and I just can't keep up. I was so frustrated and angry I threw my phone at Miller's head. Miller. He's never done anything! He worked for me when I first started the company and practically worked six months for free. Who am I to throw my phone at him?"
"Isn't that anger issues?"
"Yes," Echo said. "But when the underlying cause of the anger is sexual frustration, it's different, sexual. My expertise."
"Is this what you want? Psychoanalysis of your childhood?"
"Considering this started when I was eight, yes."
"What?" Clarke grimaced at him, not knowing what that meant.
"Bellamy, today isn't for that," Echo informed.
"How else is she supposed to understand?"
"She wants to see progress with you but she hasn't given you the opportunity to see that you're trying. That's the point of today, for you two to be on the same page, if that's what you both want because from what I've been hearing, the communication between the two of you is horrendous."
"Just because we don't use words doesn't mean we don't talk," Clarke scowled.
"For example," Bellamy smirked and Clarke squared her shoulders, awaiting his inappropriate remark. "Just from her posture alone, I know she's horny as all hell right now while trying to maintain composure for your sake."
"Bellamy!" Clarke's eyes widened as she scolded him. He just smiled, proudly and she shook her head. "He loves hearing me say his name. I never have until six months ago when I put my foot down, it infuriated him but now he can't stop hearing me say Bellamy."
"Mm," Bellamy growled softly, only for Clarke.
"His favorite is still 'sir' and I don't think that will ever change."
"A fetish?" Echo's glare landed on Bellamy.
"A preference," Clarke corrected.
Bellamy smirked, "It's neither, I just like what it does to her. She gets this glint in her eyes that's entirely her own when she says it and I can feel her getting slicker and—"
"And—?" Echo pressed.
"I thought this was supposed to be about Bellamy, not me."
"It's about both of you. Bellamy, continue."
"And seeing how turned on she gets with saying it, gets me going. I can't stop myself when I'm around her, these last six months have been killing me."
Clarke licked her lips and looked out the window, avoiding Echo's eyes and feeling Bellamy's words. Does he think she wants this? Does he believe she wants to keep her distance from him and not have the best sex of her life? She just wants him there with her while they're doing it, not for any of it to change.
She's apparently said all that out loud and Bellamy's hand was on her thigh, trying (not very hard) to have her look at him and not at the window.
"Okay," Echo said. "You two are practically on the same page, it's just a matter of Bellamy talking through what he told me last week."
"That has nothing to do with this," he spat at her.
"Not true. Clarke wants you present and you can't be because of it. Talking about it helps ease the pain and mental beatings you give yourself over it. It's what you do, it's why you disappear on her, lock yourself away, you have a flash, a brief moment of that time in your life and you shut your brain down, seeking the pleasure and nothing else from the act."
"I don't!"
"We can discuss this with or without Miss Griffin here, but if she stays, you're telling her."
Clarke stood in the elevator, her eyes on the ground as she tried to grasp all the information Bellamy and Echo just threw at her. She walked into the session with a green monster on her back, lashing out at Echo at every opportunity because Bellamy was spending time with her instead of Clarke and Clarke wasn't okay with that.
"Clarke…" he said softly.
"Were you ever going to tell me?" she asked looking at the ground, she really didn't know what she would do if they made eye contact when she's this angry. She wasn't angry at him, she was angry at his step-father and she really wished he were alive just for her to kill him, even though it meant killing O's father. She didn't care, she had all this rage and nothing to hate, a dead man wasn't good enough.
"I wasn't going to tell anyone, I thought I could live my life like it never happened but it tore you away from me."
"Because I didn't know. Bellamy, if I knew—"
"If you knew nothing would have happened between us. We wouldn't be here and I'd still be the asshole that slept around and left women in the middle of the night."
"Because you didn't do that to me?" she scoffed. "Bellamy, there was one time you didn't leave me in the middle of the night. The one night you stayed was the first time I got to call you Bellamy, when you jumped in the bath with me and made the night about me and not you. It's always been about what you wanted and that's not a relationship."
"I know that, and I would like you to give me a chance to show you that I can be a good boyfriend, that I can be what you want, what you need. I'm working on myself, I'm not going to be a completely different person, Clarke, I'm still going to be me, just less angry, more in the moment, less disappearing. I know you hate when I do that, I hadn't even known I was doing it when I was. We can start slow, just dates, or coffee, if you want. It's whatever you want, Clarke."
"Bellamy," she shook her head and finally looked over at him, he was worried about her, which was strange, he never worried unless it was about Octavia.
"Please."
"She asked me how I felt about you and I didn't want to answer in there because telling her before telling you… how is that fair? And learning this, understanding you better, doesn't change how I feel because it's still you."
"Do I get to know how you feel?"
Clarke turned her whole body towards Bellamy and licked her lips. "I love you."
