a/n Thank you to those of you who reviewed the last chapter! We're approaching the end of this story now, with only a couple of chapters to go. Happy reading!

It had been, all things considered, a pretty damn positive week so far. Bellamy was speaking to her, and although texting had not made a repeat appearance, he had continued to sit next to her in Maths. She had even gone so far as to smile at him in Chemistry, but the response she'd got had looked more like a sort of pained grimace so she wondered if maybe she ought to hold off on that one for a bit longer. And the highlight of the past few days had certainly been the heartfelt and very Blake hug she'd received from Octavia in the middle of the corridor on the way between lessons. It hadn't just been the embrace itself, either, but also the gabbled sentence about how much happier Bellamy had seemed over the weekend and how the book had been a great idea.

Things were, broadly speaking, looking up.

She couldn't help feeling that it was all too good to be true, in some way or another. Perhaps he was now playing a trick on her. No, she thought he was probably too decent a person, these days, for that. Perhaps it was all just an accident, perhaps he was only being civil and she was reading too much into it?

Perhaps she should stop panicking and just enjoy it while it lasted.

The school biology journal was at least no longer the bane of her existence, these days. No, she had been so busy being fun and then becoming very suddenly not fun that the minor annoyance of wasting her Wednesday afternoon seemed almost to pale into insignificance by comparison. So it was that, as she walked into the common room after the meeting that week, she was already writing her Art History homework in her head rather than concentrating on her surroundings.

"Hey, Clarke." Bellamy was occupying a sofa, muddy rugby kit still clinging to his frame, book in hand. She was struck by a rather sudden onslaught of nostalgic deja-vu.

"Hey." She decided on impulse to walk towards the chair next to him, rather than her locker. "How's the book?"

"Nearly finished." He put it to one side. Well then. Apparently they were to have an actual conversation. "Hopefully I'll be done tonight so I can take it back tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Isn't Thursday night library night?"

"So – so you're thinking of coming to the library tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I thought it was about time I started coming to library night again. If – if that's OK with you, of course."

"Yeah. Of course it is. I'm sorry I made you give it up."

"You didn't make me give it up, Clarke. I gave it up because I was being all hurt and immature."

"But it was the one who made you feel that way." She pointed out stubbornly.

"I think probably there's no point us arguing over who gets the bigger share of the blame." He suggested, tone surprisingly light.

"You might be right." She conceded. After all, she wanted to get on with fixing this, not row over who had broken it. She knew full well that the answer was her, anyway. "All the same, I'm sorry I hurt you."

"I know you are. I'm sorry I reacted so badly, for what it's worth. I just – I thought I'd finally found someone who actually liked me for me and – and it hurt a lot, to feel like that was taken away again."

"I get that. For the record, I did like you for you."

"I know. I get that now."

There was a beat of silence, and she wondered whether she was supposed to fill it. Wondered, too, how on Earth she was supposed to go about doing so. How did one follow up on a conversation that was at once so heartbreaking and so positive?

"I've missed you." He murmured, and – well – after that, she was only too clear on what she was supposed to say next.

"I've missed you, too. I'm looking forward to having company at the library again tomorrow."

"I'm looking forward to it too. Do you think that, maybe... I know it might be difficult but – but could we maybe have a go at being friends?"

"Yes." She didn't have to consider her answer at all. "I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

…...

Clarke was rather startled to find Bellamy standing at her locker when lessons ended that Thursday. Sure, he had said he would be going to the library, but that didn't mean she absolutely believed it would actually happen. And, yes, they'd agreed to have a go at being friends, but that didn't mean she was expecting him to be standing there waiting for her.

"You OK?" He asked brightly. "Excited for the library? How was Art History?"

Hmm. Perhaps a little too brightly.

"Hey." She said, bemused. "Which question would you like me to answer first?"

He gave an awkward chuckle at that. "Yes. Well. Shall we get going?"

"Can I maybe get my bag first?" She gestured to the locker she had scarcely had time to open.

"Yes. Yes. Of course. Sorry."

"Bellamy." Something in the tone of her voice seemed to cut through his borderline hysteria, as he straightened a little and looked her in the eye with visible effort. "Shall we try not making this weird? We went to the library loads before we started dating, and that wasn't awkward. Can we pleased just enjoy hanging out?"

He smiled at that, a rather less panicked look in his eyes. "That sounds like a plan."

After some moments she finished faffing with her assorted belongings and hefted her backpack over her shoulders. He didn't offer to carry anything for her, and she was strangely grateful. It was much easier to pretend they were politely platonic friends when he didn't go around making ridiculously kind gestures every five minutes.

It was still, however, a distinctly odd experience, to walk out of the school gates by his side but with a careful foot of space between them. It might as well have been a careful mile, she thought, it felt so insurmountable. And she knew she should be grateful to have him back in her life in any sense at all, but all the same, this was pretty damn bittersweet. She wasn't quite sure whether it was the happiest day of her year, to have his company again, or the saddest, to see what she had lost thrown into such sharp relief.

She brushed such thoughts aside, and resolved to make the most of it. This must be difficult for both of them, she realised, but she was determined to be a good friend to him. And she knew that, logically speaking, being his friend had to be a whole lot better than being treated like chewing gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. But if he was going to want to continue this friendship, she was going to have to make some attempt at being entertaining company, rather than walking the whole way to the library in silence.

"How was your afternoon?" She asked. That seemed an uncontroversial place to start.

"History was alright. The Tudors may not be as exciting as the Romans, but they're not bad."

"Wow. High praise indeed. What did you learn about the Tudors today?"

"A bunch of finance policy stuff. I don't think you'd be interested." He told her firmly.

"I might be." She said, attempting to sound encouraging.

"Trust me, you wouldn't." She repressed with some effort the urge to slap him. Was he serious about this friendship thing, or not?

"I could try to be interested. I hear that's how friendship works, I'm supposed to show an interest in your life."

He looked at her with a strangely distressed expression, and she couldn't really see any grounds for that. "Sorry. Thank you for trying to be interested in my afternoon."

"You're welcome." She said, at least a little sourly, and noted that, despite his apology, he had still actually shared nothing further about his History lesson.

A silence grew, and she let it. She was already exhausted and the library was not yet in sight.

"Octavia says hi." He said suddenly, as if the idea that they might have some conversation had only just occurred to him. "She misses you, I think."

"Tell her I say hi, back." She jumped to follow his lead before realising it was a bit pointless. "Actually, scratch that. I'll text her myself."

"You will?"

"Yeah. We don't talk much but – yeah. We text a little."

"Oh." He frowned for a moment, and she rather wondered why she had ever agreed to this scheme. If such a thing as a world record for the most awkward library visit in human history existed, she certainly knew what the winning entry would be.

Just when she was beginning to contemplate feigning a headache and fleeing to her home, he spoke again.

"I might have made that bit up." He mumbled quietly. "About Octavia saying hi. I – I haven't even told her we're hanging out because I knew she'd get over-excited and take it the wrong way. I was just trying to think of something to talk about, and Octavia seemed like an uncontroversial topic."

"I don't think Tudor finance policies are particularly emotionally sensitive, either." It seemed like a safer thing to say, than to hang around wondering why he was overthinking this just as much as she was. Why he seemed at least as anxious as she was, if not even more so.

He gave a nervous laugh at that, and took an audible breath, and tried again. "Are you looking forward to going to the library?"

"Yes." She said carefully. "I read a very good novel last week set in revolutionary France. I might borrow something else by the same author."

"Still not quit your historical fiction habit?"

"Well, without your careful guidance, there's been no one to steer me away from it." She allowed herself to engage in a spot of sarcastic teasing.

"We'll have to put that right. Maybe they'll even have something fascinating about the economy of Tudor England."

"Pretty sure that's an oxymoron."

She could swear they both gave a sigh of relief as the library came into sight at last. They would be fine, she knew, once they got inside. They would have things to talk about, rather than only awkward silences to dwell on. They made brisk work of the last few metres to the door, and headed straight to the desk to return their books.

"Bellamy." Juliet greeted him with enthusiasm, even while he looked somewhat taken aback. "It's so good to see you looking better. Clarke seemed so worried about you while you were ill. I hope you enjoyed the book?"

"Erm, yeah, thanks." He was, evidently and unsurprisingly, very confused. "It – it really cheered me up."

"Good, good. Isn't that what books are for?" She finished processing their returns and waved them on their way.

Clarke counted down the seconds in her head, wondering how long it would take him to explode at this new evidence of her habit of lying, how long it would take him to storm out of the doors and never speak to her again – for good this time. She should have told him, she knew, should have been more honest about how she'd borrowed Augustus, but now it was all too late and -

"Clarke?" He seemed to have a hand on her shoulder, but that couldn't be right. "You doing alright?"

"I'm so sorry." She got out in a rush. "I know that you think I'm a liar and – and I know that this has just confirmed it. I swear, I didn't mean any harm, but I know I should have been more honest and -"

"Hey." Yes, his hand definitely was on her shoulder, because now it was squeezing gently. "It's OK. The balance of good and bad, remember? You did something that obviously made you really uncomfortable to do a nice thing for me. Why would I be annoyed about that?"

"It's OK?" She echoed, disbelieving.

"It's OK. It's more than OK. We're still practising being friends?"

"I hope so."

"Good. Me too."

With that, he released her shoulder, and she resisted the urge to sigh. She forced herself instead to adopt a bright smile as she followed him to the History section, to laugh out loud when he told her she had to read a decent book about the French Revolution instead of that fictionalised crap. And as the minutes passed, she found that her joyful reactions were no longer entirely forced. No, by the time they moved to Art History, she was giggling at least a little hysterically at his impression of a Picasso painting, and he was grinning down at her in return.

Maybe they really could do this, she wondered. Maybe they really could be friends.

…...

That optimism lasted all of sixteen hours. By the time their Maths lesson rolled round the following morning, hot on the heels of a series of inconsequential texts about their latest reading material, she was very much aware that being friends with Bellamy was going to be extremely challenging. Because this one day of friendship had been quite long enough for her to realise that friends was not all she wanted them to be. She missed the warmth of his arms, and the touch of his lips, and all of the physical side of their old relationship, of course. But more than anything else, she missed him looking at her like she was someone special and at least a little bit beautiful. It was strange, she thought, to have all of these frivolous jovial texts but with quite such a platonic tone.

It was even stranger to sit by his side in Maths that morning with a careful six inches of space between them. She could well remember how they used to sit together, scarcely a hair's breadth apart, feet intertwining under the desk when they thought Mrs Kane wasn't looking. There was something more than the chilliness of the day outside that had her feeling distinctly cold, this morning.

"Statistics." He said, with an incongruously victorious tone, as he began leafing through the stack of books on his desk.

"You say that like it's a good thing." She whispered back. "I can't imagine a worse way to start a Friday."

"I can." He said in a surprisingly matter-of-fact manner. "Finding out the girlfriend I adored had been lying to me for months, that was a worse way to start a Friday."

She was aware that her mouth was gaping open in a most unflattering way, but she seemed powerless to do anything about it. Had he really just said that? How could he have said that? And after all the progress they'd made in the last couple of days, as well.

So much for friendship.

She opened her textbook with more force than was, perhaps, strictly necessary, and got on with a spot of hypothesis testing. Admittedly, she didn't get a great deal of hypothesis testing done. She was rather busy dwelling on the verbal slap across the face Bellamy had just delivered so casually. But she was determined, if nothing else, to pretend that she was getting on with the task at hand despite his hurtful words.

"Clarke?" He asked after some minutes. "A little help with question five, part C?"

She ignored him. She was just so fed up of expending so much emotional energy on this boy, being so exhausted in the name of showing him she was doing better, when he seemed so determined to throw her attempts back in her face at every opportunity.

"Clarke?" He tried again.

She maintained her stony silence.

"Look, Clarke. I wasn't saying that to upset you. I was – I was honestly just making conversation. We're not going to get very far if we never talk about it, are we? If we just keep sending each other stupid texts about Picasso and avoid mentioning anything to do with what happened?"

"I guess you might be right." She acknowledged reluctantly.

"I'm sorry for making a mess of it." He muttered, making a show of typing something into his calculator for Mrs Kane's benefit. "I've never really been in this situation before."

"Me neither." She kept her eyes fixed on the page for a moment, desperately trying to repress the question that was threatening to burst out of her.

She couldn't ask him, she mustn't. It would just embarrass the both of them. And it didn't matter any more, anyway. And, besides which -

"Adored?" She admitted defeat at last. "You said adored."

"I must have been reading too many of your terrible historical novels." He tried to pass it off with a light tone and a shrug of his shoulders, but she fixed him with a glare. "OK. Yes. I said adored."

She knew she ought to say something constructive, something that would help to build the peace between them. Something about how much she had valued him, too, and how much she continued to value him as a friend. How grateful she was for this chance to show him she still deserved a place in his life, in whatever capacity.

"I'm a fucking idiot." She told him, instead.

And the worst thing of all, somehow, yet also the best, the most impossible thing about these two impossible days, was that he knew exactly what she meant. She could read it in the sympathetic sorrow in his eyes, in the wry twisting of his lips, that he understood her perfectly. That he understood exactly what she was trying to say.

Only a fucking idiot could have thrown that away.

…...

Clarke did not make a habit of receiving phone calls at three o'clock on a Sunday morning. It took her a while, therefore, to work out quite what was going on when she awoke in the middle of the night to a persistent buzzing sound, and to Bellamy's name flashing across the screen of her phone.

Why in the name of sanity could her ex-boyfriend – and, admittedly, current friend – possibly be phoning her at three o'clock on a Sunday morning?

Without stopping to wonder for too long whether the world had actually gone mad, she picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Clarke. Thank God." Those three words were enough for her to establish that something was very much not right.

"Bellamy? Are you OK?"

"Yeah – yeah. I'm OK." Then why on Earth was he phoning her at three AM? And, more to the point, why did he sound the opposite of OK?

"You sure?"

"Yeah – have you – have you got a minute? Just a minute to talk?"

"Yes. Of course. But you need to tell me what's going on, Bellamy." She hesitated a moment before speaking her mind. "I'm a bit worried about you."

"It's not me." He rushed to assure her, but at his tone she felt her heart drop to her heels. Octavia, then? Or - "It's my mum."

"What's happened?" She asked, forcing herself to remain calm. After all, future doctors shouldn't panic.

"She's going to be OK. It's just that – we just got back from the hospital. I had to take her to the hospital, Clarke. She was working and – and one of her clients basically beat her up."

"Oh my God. I'm so sorry to hear that, Bellamy. How is she?"

"She was lucky, apparently." His tone made it clear that he did not agree with the assessment. "Bruised ribs, a concussion, and a broken wrist."

"OK. That sounds like a horrible experience, but she'll heal fine from those injuries." She tried to find a balance between sounding soothing, but not belittling the issue.

"Yeah. I knew you'd say that. That's partly why I called you. I just – she's really shaken and pretending not to be. And I'm worried about her."

"Of course you are. That's a perfectly normal reaction, Bellamy."

"And she's insisting we don't tell O but that's pointless. She'll work it out. And – and she's worried about what she'll do for work while her wrist's healing, but I keep telling her we'll be fine. I've asked her not to – not to go back to that line of work, but she won't listen to me." She could hear his worries running away with him and rather wished she could reach out and give him a hug.

"Maybe you can try to have the conversation again when she's healed and a bit calmer."

"Yeah. Maybe. Thanks. Thanks for picking the phone up. How pathetic am I, phoning my ex in the middle of the night like this?"

"Not pathetic at all, Bellamy." She was quick to reassure him. "You know you only have to let me know if I can do anything to help."

"You already did help. I – there's no one else I could really talk to about this."

"I get that."

"Can we – could we talk about something else for a bit? I'm so sorry, I know it's the middle of the night but – I could use a distraction."

"Sure. Can I tell you about this book I read last month? You'd have liked it. It was about the differences between Greek and Roman art."

"That sounds great." He said, sounding a little too grateful. "So what are the differences?"

"OK, so, of course there are different periods of Greek -"

"Clarke?"

"Yeah." She tried not to sound too frustrated at the interruption. Did he want to know about Greek and Roman art, or not?

"I think – I think I might have been a bit of a fucking idiot, too."

a/n Thanks for reading!