Clarke remembered the first time she met him. She was eleven, visiting her father at work, and he was her father's intern, tasked with entertaining her while Jake was in a meeting. She knew her father had an important job, contracted with the government, but she was supposed to follow him around for a school project, not his intern that had little to no clearance in the lab.
The intern, Clarke didn't like him, he was mean and often forgot about her on the tour to flirt with secretaries and receptionists. Clarke rolled her eyes as she drew the ladies he talked to, rolling her eyes or scoffing at a bad line he fed them that they so obviously fell for.
There was a bond that Clarke didn't know about after that day between her father and the intern. A secret they shared that had her father paying for the intern's college at Harvard. Majoring in something that has nothing to do with Jake's company at all, something like history and classics instead of business or engineering.
After every semester the intern would spend a week at their house, spending all his time talking with Jake and goading Clarke nicknaming her "Princess" and insisted on using it in that teasing and somewhat condescending tone that he absolutely loved to use.
They went to his graduation, even Abby showed up to it, Clarke didn't see her mother in over a month and she showed up to Jake's protégé's graduation. After graduating Bellamy spent two weeks with them, locked in Jake's office, having a screaming match muffled through the thick oak doors.
Clarke was graduating early, only had one class left to take to graduate high school and it was one semester-long but for attendance, she had to be in school for three periods which collectively added up to two and a half hours a day and was taking classes at the community college two towns over. She was set to go to Columbia University in the spring semester, but she didn't like how her father and Bellamy were always arguing.
"The funeral took all my savings! It's a loan, Jake, I'll pay you back!"
"My daughter is going to college now, I have this big project I'm trying to get funded I can't do it right now, Bellamy. I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't get her into college!"
The door swung open and Bellamy stormed out, the door slamming shut behind him and he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Clarke standing in the hall just outside the door.
"You always hated me," he spat. "But I am done. Are you happy? You never have to see me again," he grimaced, pushing past her towards the foyer.
"Bellamy..."
"How much did he talk about me? The last seven years?"
"I—I have two workaholic parents. The only time I've seen them for longer than ten minutes are the weeks you're here."
"I can't do this anymore, Princess," he shook his head. "At least you have parents who look after you."
"Bellamy, please, I—I know we always argue and I'm a pain in your ass but… I need you."
"So does my sister. Now more than ever."
Sister? Clarke didn't know he had a sister. "I didn't know."
"You mean he didn't tell you."
"You didn't tell me either."
"So you'd have more ammo? I don't think so, Princess. Have a good life, okay? Make him proud."
With that Bellamy Blake walked out of Clarke's life and she didn't know how much she'd miss him until a month later when Jake Griffin was killed, jumping in front of a bullet to save his best friend, Thelonius Jaha. Her mother worked through her grief, like always, Clarke thought she was a robot when she was a kid. Clarke was alone and just wished she had someone to be there with her, even to argue with, she was that desperate.
Clarke blamed Jaha, slamming the door in her best friend's face because his father was the cause of Jake's death and she couldn't even look at him. A month went by and she was living in an empty house with a maid that cleaned the nothing mess that Clarke left in her wake when she left her room for food (frozen casseroles people send mourning families. She's never had a family).
She was headed back up the stairs when she heard the doorbell ring behind her and Clarke grimaced, placing the microwaved tuna casserole on a step before heading back down to the door.
Bellamy Blake stood nervously, his long inky hair yanked every which way, which was one of his (adorable) tells. Another was biting the left corner of his upper lip, his canine tooth lined up with the scar perfectly and Clarke always wanted to know the story behind it but that wasn't why he was here.
"Princess," he sighed. "If I knew... shit, I... I didn't know, no one told me and then I got a call from a lawyer saying my inheritance came in and I was confused. I actually hung up on him thinking it was a sick prank but I thought about it and looked Jake up online and it was real. I'm so sorry, Princess."
Clarke defrosted and slammed into him, crying into his neck. He's the only one, the one she wanted to hear those words from, they meant something from him. She didn't know how strong a hold he had on her until that moment and it frightened her, letting him in.
"I'll pay for Octavia's schooling," she said once she'd calmed down and looked up at him, their faces so close. "He left me money, my mom doesn't know about it. So she'll pay for me and I'll pay for Octavia."
"Clarke—"
"I'm not pitying you or her, I just know how important family is."
"He gave me the company," Bellamy said softly.
"Oh," Clarke said and was about to say something about it but Bellamy continued while stepping back from her.
"He left a letter for me too. Asking me to take care of you if anything were to happen. He wrote it in December, I thought... I don't know," he shook his head.
"He loved you, Bellamy. You were like a son to him. He called you my brother once and I punched him. If he thinks you should own the company, I agree. I'm sure Kane won't be pleased to work for someone half his age but he's a bigger douche bag than you ever were. There's no board of trustees to vote for it so it's yours, if you want it."
"I'm not an engineer or a business major."
"Take business classes at night. You think I'm not going to college this semester? I have two and a half hours of high school and five hours at the community college. You can do this."
"Not from New York, I'd have to move here."
"So move headquarters to New York. Make everything how you need it to be. You can't spend your sister her senior year so it has to be there, it has to work for you. Hell, get rid of Kane and put Sinclair in as CEO, Dad liked him best anyway." Clarke looked to the ground before adding, "It's what I'd do."
Bellamy searched her face for a moment, he's always been good at reading her. "What aren't you telling me?"
"You—you don't own the company. Only fifty-one percent. In October I get the remaining forty-nine."
"Oh, so then why—?"
"I'm going to need a proxy for when I'm at school, someone to help you make the tough decisions like firing Kane."
"I hate the guy too, but he's good at his job," Bellamy countered.
"You need someone next to you who knows what they're talking about, someone who knows engineering better than the back of their hand so—"
"Replace Kane with Sinclair and promote Raven?"
"Raven's your choice if you choose to make it."
"I can't do this without you, Clarke. He picked us both for a reason."
"I need you to be honest with me, Bellamy. Did my dad have an affair?"
"What?"
"Why would he help you if you weren't his son?"
"Clarke…" Bellamy breathed, reaching for her before thinking better of it and his arm fell back to his side and she glared at him pointedly. "They were high school sweethearts. Your dad went to MIT and my mom… she stayed in Chicago, moved to the south side and fucked a Filipino while high on something, it doesn't matter. Nine months later I was born and my father—asshole—threw my mom in rehab and shipped me over to the Philippines for his mother to raise, she taught me about the stars and I came back when I was five and my mother was clean and dating this rich lawyer from Lincoln Park. I was six when she told him she was pregnant and we never saw him again. Octavia was born and once that happened, she was drinking and always said 'your sister, your responsibility.' It's instilled in my brain, she wasn't the best mother, but she was a hell of a lot better than our fathers so Aurora didn't give them credit, giving us the Blake name. David Miller is my best friend's dad and got me the internship and I apparently look like my mom and your father instantly knew, even after eighteen years."
"I didn't know any of that. I knew my parents met in Boston, but that was it, I thought my dad was a nerd in high school."
"He was, but he was also the captain of the basketball team, taking them to state three years in a row, catching the eye of my cheerleader mom."
"Wow, why didn't I know any of that?"
"Jake's past…. it's not squeaky clean and he didn't want you to know the dirty details. Abby's been all about becoming a doctor since she was a kid so she's squeaky clean and he got her dirty—don't picture what I just pictured—so her parents bailed them out."
Clarke shivered at the image he invoked in her head. "I will take business classes at Columbia, I will spend every spare moment I have running the company with you. I'm in this."
"Together," Bellamy nodded.
"Together."
2019:
Clarke smiled as she stepped out of the elevator, her baby blue gown in the crook of her arm. As she turned the corner to her apartment, she stopped short at the sight of Bellamy Blake in a suit, waiting at her door with a pizza in his hands.
"Sorry I missed it," he said while Clarke unlocked her door, ignoring him, breaking his promise. She froze.
Sorry I missed it meant something came up that I'm not going to tell you about, something with Griffin Steel.
"Double major," Clarke grimaced. "I did that for you, for us, and you're cutting me out. I thought I meant more than forty-nine percent to you."
"You do and that's why I'm here."
"With pizza," she noted opening the door.
"Vegan pizza."
She spun on her heels and glared at his smirk. "Four years you've dodged me, ran my father's company without consulting me on anything and you expect me to invite you into my apartment with a fifteen dollar pizza that I could have purchased myself?"
"I wanted you to focus on your studies."
"What did his letter say?"
Bellamy sighed, his gaze dropping to the ground, "Clarke—"
"I'm his daughter and I didn't get a damn letter! You're the son of his high school sweetheart and you get his company and a letter! You expect me to not want to read what made you more important to him?"
"Invite me in, offer me a beer and eat this crappy pizza with me, because it's your ideal pizza and we will discuss whatever you want, but I am not doing it in the middle of the hallway like a cheating ex-boyfriend trying to win you back when I never had you in the first place."
"This has nothing to do with Finn."
"It has everything to do with Finn," he spat.
Clarke grimaced. The first five months of their arrangement were smooth sailing—well, as much as it could be with them taking over a company that rightly thought they knew nothing about running a company. Moving the headquarters was a mistake but a needed change, Raleigh wasn't cutting it anymore and they want to grow, not shrink—Bellamy would email Clarke twice a day, keeping her updated on everything going on while she went to class and he'd text her about his business class while riding the subway home every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They became friends, texting memes and stupid jokes and watching Suits at the same time, texting jokes from that night's episode and Bellamy explaining the Star Trek references, geeking out over Game of Thrones, those texts were a mile long and Clarke loved reading Bellamy's theories and when Jon Snow died, they swore they weren't going to watch season six, but of course the next spring came along and Winter is Coming and they did, overjoyed with the end of episode 2. Suffice to say, there is no Game of Thrones without Daenerys Targaryen or Jon Snow.
Then she moved to New York in January and everything changed. Clarke was there to help and Bellamy didn't want her there and certainly didn't want her help running their company. He's been distant and hostile and she felt heartbroken, which wasn't something she expected, neither was him showing up on her doorstep an hour after she graduated from Columbia with a double major.
"Would you like to come in and have a beer?" she asked, turning around and walked into her apartment leaving the door wide open.
Walking into the kitchen, she turned on the coffee maker, always needing a pot brewing. She opened the fridge and pulled out a Stella, they're Octavia's, they became friends when Octavia started at Columbia. They didn't talk about Bellamy, made it a rule, so Clarke talked about the other half of her life with Wells and Raven, both of which were over two hundred miles away so their friendships were mostly virtual.
"Stella?" he asked, placing the pizza box on the island.
"Octavia."
"Nice apartment."
"Don't," she spat whipping around glaring at him. "We are not friends, you made that perfectly clear. I don't know what you've done to my company, but you better be aware that I'm not going to put up with it now that I have a business degree, unlike you."
"You asked what your father's letter said and I will tell you after you eat. So eat."
He opened the box, revealing a vegan bell pepper, red onion, mushrooms, zucchini, olives, garlic, fresh basil, and vegan parmesan and Clarke got all that within one second. She also concluded that Octavia told him her favorite pizza, the traitor.
"Octavia isn't going to hear the end of this," she grimaced, taking a slice.
"She's well aware."
"What did you bribe her with?"
"I agreed to give Lincoln a chance."
"Holy shit," Clarke breathed. He means business.
"Eat, Princess, and then I'll tell you everything."
The problem was that Clarke wasn't hungry. Clarke loved this pizza and ate a slice because it was the best vegan pizza in New York and when she was done with it, she stared at Bellamy awaiting his "everything."
"That's all?"
"I ate."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
Bellamy smirked, reaching in his suit jacket pocket and passed her a folded piece of paper.
"What's that?"
"Everything."
Clarke scoffed, "Before I read that I have to tell you something. When you walked out, and you told me I hated you and I told you that I didn't. I lied. I hated you, then I envied you. Then I loved you and you stabbed me in the back. How is a piece of paper supposed to change that?"
"Jake—read the letter."
Clarke scoffed and unfolded the paper.
Bellamy,
I see how you look at her. I looked at your mother like that. I need you to protect her. Everything I've done has been for her and I need you to do anything to help her succeed. She won't understand and she will hate you, but she will understand once you show her this because the way you look at her is the reason why I'm trusting you with this, with Clarke.
In January, Clarke is going to Columbia and she needs to focus on that. If something happens to me and you take control of Griffin Steel, both of you, I need you to make sure that she goes to Columbia and gets her degree. Art, medicine, business, whichever major she chooses, she has to be focused on it.
Don't distract her. Bring her back into the fold when she graduates, don't you dare hurt her after that point, and you can't take any of that back. I'm telling you to hurt her, something I know you don't want to do, for the greater good. You both need her at the top of her game and cutting her out while she's in school is exactly what she needs, but she will think you're trying to run her out if you talk to her about it.
I'm sorry for asking you to do this to her. I'm sorry you have to hurt her, but you're doing it for her and if you love her like I know you do, you will do this for her…
Clarke couldn't continue reading, she couldn't read her father's words in his nearly chicken scratch handwriting because every word hurt. Her father had Bellamy push her away, had him put aside his feelings for four years knowing he'd hurt her.
"Business and pleasure don't mix," she said quietly, staring at the cup of coffee in front of her.
"Clarke…"
"Don't say my name right now, I can't even finish reading this."
"Where'd you leave off?"
"'If you love her like I know you do, you will do this for her.'"
He looked away, "Oh."
"How long?"
"What?"
"You pushed me away because my dead father told you to all while you were in love with me. So when the hell did it start?"
"You were sixteen."
Clarke deflated, faltering back against the counter behind her as the letter drifted to the floor. "He knew for two years?"
"Octavia wasn't the only thing we were fighting over after I graduated. You were nearly eighteen and going to college in same city I lived in. I'd be the only person you'd know and you'd call me for advice on pizza and I wouldn't know because I didn't know anything about Morningside Heights, so I would have tested it out with you because it'd give me an hour of your time. I'd take whatever you'd give me."
"V&T on Amsterdam, you went to Café Viva, which was on your way from Tribeca. He's right, by the way, I do understand now but it still hurts."
Bellamy nodded, "You were so invested in Raleigh, I—I kept my promise to you because I thought Jake could be wrong. I thought that working with you and keeping you in the know would be good but then I was taking night classes like you suggested and if it was difficult for me to concentrate, I couldn't do that to you."
"You should have told me that he wrote it in the letter, I would have believed you."
"No, you would have asked to read it. You were still seventeen, I…" he shook his head and stood. "I was twenty-three and in love with my mother's high school sweetheart's seventeen-year-old daughter. I couldn't show you that letter."
"Because I would have known how you felt?"
"You're the same age as my sister, Princess, no matter how I felt, I couldn't just get over that."
"People change."
"You're saying you're not stubborn?" He asked with a smirk.
"I'm not stubborn."
Bellamy chuckled, "Yes, Princess, you are."
"People change," she said, trying to think that maybe they changed too much and the feelings she was choking down were just because of him letting her back into the fold, not love.
"I know, and we both probably have but Octavia kept me updated on your life. Finn, Lexa, Niylah. You're talking to Wells again," he smiled. "I still love you."
"What about Gina?"
Bellamy grimaced. "How do you know about that?"
"The Mt. Weather charity gala. It was in the paper and people tend to follow the new owners of companies for a few years looking for consistencies and screw-ups. Gina Martin is also a Victoria's Secret model, she can't be out in public without paparazzi following her every move."
"I didn't… she was just a—"
"I don't need an explanation. You needed a date to the gala and she was available. Also a good pick publicity-wise, she has no bad press and isn't a diva."
"I'm not with her. I was never with her."
"You could have been."
He shook his head and somehow Clarke knew that he couldn't. "She was a fling, but my heart has always been yours."
"Bellamy—"
"Think about it, okay? Come to work on Monday, your office will be ready for you and I'll show you everything Sinclair and I have done. There are no secrets now."
"Bellamy—"
He looked up at her and waited for her to say something.
"Thank you."
"Of course."
She smiled, "You still should have told me."
"Probably, but your dad didn't want that. I also didn't want you to find out from him but I didn't know how to tell you."
"I trusted you to know what was best for the company, we can work on trusting each other if you want."
"Yeah, I'd like that."
"Good. We're a partnership, Bellamy. You and I are in this together and we have to trust each other outside of the company to trust each other inside too."
"I do trust you, you've been good to O, took care of her."
"So have you, but she's not my sister so I can't use that as a gauge."
"You definitely can."
"My father trusted you to follow his orders and you did. I can trust that."
"Clarke…" he sighed, looking to the floor and she grimaced. "You should finish the letter but let me leave first."
"Okay?"
"Bring it to work in the morning. Our offices are next to each other and Jasper will show you around," he said and pressed a kiss to her forehead and suddenly he was gone. Half his Stella on the island and Clarke heard the door of her apartment click close.
Clarke sighed and picked up the letter, moving to the living room and sat on her couch before picking up where she left off in her father's letter.
I'm sorry for asking you to do this to her. I'm sorry you have to hurt her, but you're doing it for her and if you love her like I know you do, you will do this for her. I know you want her to have everything and want her to be happy and if hating you would make her happy you would let her hate you because you love her.
I know what you're thinking, "how does he know?" "How could he possibly know how I feel about her?" I know because I know you and I saw how you looked at her when she came down those steps in that blue sundress that summer day. You saw her as a woman, you saw her as more than the little girl that followed you around the office and I want you to be happy, I want the both of you to be happy. I want nothing more than that. So because you do love her and want her to be happy, you need to do what I'm asking because she needs a college education. She needs to know she can walk away from Griffin Steel and still be able to get a job. Protect her. Do what I can't. Love her, care for her, and push her away when she's at Columbia.
I am so sorry, Bellamy. I hate asking you to do that because I can see how she looks at you too. I don't know if it's love, but I know that she cares immensely about you. That might change when you push her away, no, that will change when you push her away and I know that you know that it needs to be done whether you want it to or not.
Selfishly I hope you don't read this. Mostly because I hope nothing happens to me, but I also hope you tell her yourself. You're a good man, Bellamy. You're like a son to me and one day I wouldn't mind calling you my son-in-law, I'd like nothing more.
Now, I want you both to work together the moment she graduates, but it's also her choice. I can't help you with your sister, I know you're going to ask that in June and I am sorry that I can't. If this happens, if I'm gone and you're running Griffin Steel like I want you to, then you will be able to pay for Octavia's college.
Take care of the people you love, Bellamy, whoever they may be. And don't forget yourself.
Best Wishes,
Jacob Griffin
Clarke sighed, her father saw her and Bellamy as two halves of a whole and Clarke didn't know if it could be true, now or ever. She folded the letter back up and placed it in the center of the island and called Wells, asking him what the hell she should do, already knowing what to do and what he was going to say.
2023:
Clarke knocked on the door and waited for it to open. She should have done this three years ago. She should have done this forever ago but she's stubborn and currently tipsy which is giving her the strength she needed to do this. Of course she's wanted to. She's wanted to for eight god damn years, maybe more, but she went to the bar with Wells and Raven and Octavia and she realized that she needs Bellamy more than sitting ten yards from each other with a wall separating them. She wants to be in the same space as him, wants to share her life with him.
The door flew open and Clarke gasped at the sight of Bellamy shirtless and wet.
"Clarke? What are you doing here?"
"I've never been here before," she grimaced, partly in realization and partly because it wasn't how she wanted to start this.
"You could have."
"Could I have?"
"What are you doing here?"
"The letter. I've thought about it every day for eight years. Obviously the first four I was wondering what the hell it said and the last four I spent wondering if it was all still true."
"Clarke—"
"Please, Bellamy, we've been dancing around each other since I started working at the company, and the seven years before my dad died."
"You were eleven."
"And now I'm twenty-five and I—"
"You what?"
"I'm tired, Bellamy. If I—" fuck this. Clarke stepped into Bellamy, leaned up and kissed him. Bellamy sighed and pulled her waist closer to him and deepened the kiss. Clarke's fingers carded in his hair and tugging him impossibly closer.
"Clarke—" he breathed, cupping her jaw, wanting nothing more but to kiss her.
Clarke groaned, pulling his mouth back to hers and sucked on his bottom lip, needing far more than his mouth.
He pushed away and groaned, "I'm seeing Echo."
"So it's changed."
"No, it hasn't changed, but I had to at least try to move on."
"Gina and now Echo? Jesus, Bellamy, I—I don't even compare to them."
"No, they don't compare to you. You are smart and beautiful and morbidly funny which no one gets at the monthly meetings except for me and I want to laugh every damn time you make a joke. Fuck, you're not smart, you're brilliant."
"So then why do you keep going to them instead of me?"
"Because loving you kills me."
Clarke shook her head, "Not having me is what kills you. You could have had me at any point during the last eight years."
"No, I couldn't have. I had to push you away for forty-two grueling months."
"And I get that and you came clean so why have we been walking on eggshells? Why are you with Echo?"
"She doesn't remind me of you."
"I hate her."
"Yeah, that's a plus too," he smirked. "It's over."
"It's over?"
"Yeah. I can tell you're drunk, by the way," he smirked and Clarke somehow knew that they were going to be okay.
"I had some drinks with O, Raven and Wells."
"Ugh, Wells? That guys hates me."
"He hates that you broke my heart time and time again."
"And you're still here?" he asked skeptically, though he was really happy about it.
"Yeah, I'm still here."
"And you're sure?"
"I still love you."
"You just needed some liquid courage."
"Tastes better than liquid luck."
"Felix Felicis," he smirked, bending down and kissing her again. "I'm going to call her. I need you."
Clarke chuckled, dropping her head to his shoulder. "I'm a little drunk."
"Too drunk to make decisions?"
"If you're talking about sex, I'm down. If you're talking about Boggle, I'm going to wipe the floor with you."
"You want to play Boggle?" He smirked.
"I want to play Boggle while drunk, I think it'll be a train wreck, but maybe another time. I have a guy to make out with the possibility of more so right now, I want to do that."
"We have eight years to make up for," he smiled, pulling her in impossibly closer.
"Echo," Clarke reminded him and he released her.
"Right, we're not starting like that asshole."
Clarke smiled, following him into his apartment, it's humble, he's humble, and she knew that they were going to be okay.
2027:
"God, you'd think we'd be better at this," he groaned, dropping his head on the mattress.
"Naming children?" Clarke grimaced, thoroughly confused. "It's our first, it has to be right."
"It's the whole honor thy father thing that's really getting me. I love Jake, I really do, but he made us miss out on eight years of baby-making so I'm not too keen on naming our firstborn after him at the moment."
"Middle name," Clarke offered.
"No, weird Greek god names are the best middle names."
"True."
"What about Kronos, God of time?"
"You sentimental bastard. If you choose the middle name, you can't complain about the name I choose for his first name."
"Just make it a good one and I won't complain."
"Well it's a good thing I think ahead better than you because I planned on Kronos being your choice and have a good name for him."
"You do?" Bellamy asked skeptically.
Clarke nodded, "Hayden."
"Hayden Kronos Blake. I like it."
"We're not giving all our children Greek names, I'm just warning you."
"As long as there are derivatives, we're okay," he smiled, kissing her fiercely. "I'm going to tell them what we decided."
"They're not going to believe Kronos," she laughed as he rolled his eyes before walking out to the nurse's desk.
They have three more children within the next four years and with names like Violet Aurora, Oliver Ignatius, and Lydia Verona, Clarke has nothing to worry about. They're going to be just fine.