Here we have the next update! And there is a moodboard for this piece across on both my tumblr and twitter. I hope you enjoy :) The title for this installment comes from I Found by Amber Run.
Triggers/Tags: Substance Abuse | Mentions of Various Mental Health Problems | Brief Discussions of Eating Disorders | Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms | Getting Together | Mentions of Clarke/OC
The first time that Bellamy Blake properly saw Clarke Griffin was when she was nineteen years old and he was twenty-three. She was completely drunk off her face, her skirt was hitched up so high that the bottom of her ass was showing and she had her tongue buried down the throat of a pretty brunette who Bellamy later found out was named Lexa Woods. Bellamy also realized later that Clarke hadn't just been drunk, she'd also taken pills, he guessed ecstasy, although she didn't remember exactly what it had been.
If he hadn't been so worried about getting Clarke out of the crowded apartment, he would've been pissed at the fact that the people around them were just letting a complete stranger come in and carry the unconscious blonde out. But Clarke was his priority, and so he had just left, with Clarke in his arms.
He got her into his car, put the seat belt on, closed the door, and then went around to the drivers side. He knew where she lived from the address he had been given previously, and it only took them about twenty minutes to get there, driving across town quickly. At least—as quickly as he could drive, given New York traffic was absolutely horrendous. When Bellamy got back to her apartment building, he rummaged around in the tiny purse that Clarke had slung over her shoulder and found a key card, and he used it for the parking garage, thankful that it worked even though he knew that she didn't have a car.
At first, Bellamy tried to wake Clarke up after he had undone her seat belt, tapping his fingers on her collarbone and cheekbones, but other than just mumbling and twisting her body to the side to try and roll away from him, he got no other response. Bellamy sighed and picked her up, a little awkwardly, getting her out of the car and locking it with the fob on his key ring.
Bellamy got up to her room, using her key card again in the lift, and tried to find her keys in her purse but they weren't there.
"Clarke?" Bellamy whispered, trying to wake the blonde again, but she was now snoring, her face buried in his neck, and her breath smelt ridiculously sweet, like the sugary alcoholic drinks she had undoubtedly been throwing back. The lock on the apartment door was a simple one, easy for him to break, and he was in the apartment within a few minutes, finding her bedroom and laying her down on the bed. He took off the high-heeled shoes she had strapped on and the clips out of her long hair, leaving all of her clothes on before tucking her under the blankets and sighing.
He had seen Clarke from a distance a couple of times over the past few years since she was fifteen. They had had a doctor on their payroll for years, one that had been working for James Blake for nearly twenty years, but then he had died of an overdose. Turned out he had been hitting the coke that the Blake household had been supplying him a little too hard, which had meant that they needed another doctor on their payroll. James had asked his second, Marcus Kane, to find someone that they could trust, which generally just meant someone that needed their money enough to do a few jobs, and then once they had done a few things, they were already in too deep to get out. Marcus had found Abby Griffin's, whose husband had been killed in a car accident a year before, was drowning under her mortgage, the debts of her husband and her own student loans, and she also had a fifteen-year-old daughter that she was supporting. Abby had been resistant at first—like most people were when becoming involved with any household, but she had ended up agreeing, and a few years later, she had even fallen into bed with Marcus.
Bellamy had heard of Clarke through Marcus and even Octavia Blake, who ended up meeting the girl a few times first and it sounded as though they had been friendly. Then Bellamy heard a few more things when Marcus and Abby became more serious, and he knew that she was smart, she had always been at the top of her class, but Abby had been worried about her going into her senior year because she had been 'going off the rails'. She had been going out to parties and not coming home for days on end, and her grades were crashing down. She had hung around with a crowd who had been caught vandalizing a few places and she ended up with a few DUI's on her record before she was eighteen.
She wanted to be a nurse though, apparently, she always had been, and she had applied to go anywhere but at home. New York, Washington, Boston, Ithaca, Chicago—she made it very clear that she didn't want to be in Los Angeles. She'd been accepted into almost all of the universities that she applied in, since she had a good record at school other than her senior year, and she chose to go to New York. A month before she had left, she had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and had been put on some pretty strong medication.
Clarke made it very clear that she wanted her space, from her mother and the friends that she had back in Los Angeles, although it seemed as though she replaced them with people who were just as bad once she got to university. She threw herself into her school work and Abby managed to learn enough from her that she was doing well in class, but she also threw herself into the partying scene.
Drinking while on her medication wasn't always the best idea, and when Clarke was pushing herself, she didn't do anything half-assed, and she started mixing diet pills in with the rest of her daily regime as well. A girl that she had been seeing on and off, who was doing a photography degree, had an eating disorder, which meant she wasn't helping Clarke see what she was doing was wrong, which just kept the cycle going.
Bellamy had to go to New York to try and soothe some things over with their business partners, and Marcus had asked Bellamy as a favour to check in on Clarke.
He had been busy, and really hadn't been able to do much other than drop by her apartment twice and knock, find out she wasn't there, and use his semi-okay hacking skills to get into the university system to have a look at her test scores and comments from her professors and doctors. They all seemed to like her, and said that she was smart, but that she could do even better if she just applied herself even more.
Bellamy smirked when he saw those comments, because that reminded him a lot of what he got told from teachers when he had been in school.
Then he had stopped by the university to talk to her directly, and he frowned, because she was a waif of the girl that he had seen pictures of on her Facebook page, and caught a few glimpses of over the year. Her hair looked like it hadn't been brushed in a few days, her clothes showed how skinny she was, and there were bags under her eyes. After that, he had called up their IT guy, the one before Jasper Jordan and nowhere near as effective, and asked him to do some deeper looking into her computer history and any other background that he could find on her. And to keep that from Marcus.
And that was when he had found out about all the anti-depressants, and the anti-anxiety medication. The diet pills and the sleeping tablets and then the uppers and the downers that definitely weren't over the counter.
Bellamy hadn't been too sure what he was walking into, the night that he had gone to find her at the party, because all he had known was that he had to finally face her. He had been in New York for nearly a month and he had promised Marcus and Abby that he would properly look after her, and it was clear that just glancing his eyes over her really wasn't going to cut it. So he had read her Facebook messages, which was a handy thing that their guy had installed onto his phone, seen the address of the party that she was going to, and had showed up.
Which lead to him looking after her and falling into an uncomfortable sleep on the barely padded couch in her lounge.
Clarke didn't come out of her room until nearly twelve in the afternoon, and that was after he had heard her throwing up in the bathroom and taking a shower. He didn't have anywhere that he needed to be—there was a girl that Bellamy had flirted with at a bar around the corner from the apartment he was staying in, and she had asked for his number and then text him asking if he had plans today—but he was stubbornly remaining in the lounge, waiting for Clarke to come out and notice him.
She jumped when she saw him, eyes wide and teeth gritted together, before she drew in a deep breath and then released it through her teeth.
"You're Bellamy Blake," Clarke stated.
"I am," Bellamy nodded, not moving from the armchair he had moved to a few hours ago, when he had woken up with a pretty bad crick in his back from sleeping on the couch.
"You're Octavia's brother," she continued.
"Yes," Bellamy confirmed.
"You're...My mums boss," she added, and it was clear that she didn't like the way that the words tasted in her mouth.
"I wouldn't exactly call it that," Bellamy tilted his head to the side, blinking slowly.
"What would you call it then?" Clarke asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Maybe it would have been a bit more intimidating if she didn't have dark circles under her eyes and her arms were so skinny across her chest.
"A working relationship," he said with an easy shrug of his shoulder. Clarke didn't look happy with that, eyebrows pulling together in a frown. Her blue eyes looked beautiful and stormy underneath the angry eyebrows, but Bellamy was guessing that they would probably look better if the colour wasn't quite as dull, and the bags underneath weren't as heavy. "Look, I'm not here to pick a fight. I'm here because I just wanted to drop in a check-in on you."
"Because my mum asked you too," Clarke surmised.
"And Marcus," Bellamy said, finally getting up from the armchair and walking over to her. Clarke didn't seem to like the fact she had to tilt her head back to continue meeting his eyes, but she did, and she held her position strong, planting her feet and not moving, even as he got into her personal space. It was just something he did, because he was used to being the one with the upper hand, the one with power, and he liked it when people were off balance because it was always interesting to see them react.
It seemed as though Clarke wasn't going to move an inch.
"And Vee misses you as well," he added and Clarke's eyes finally softened, although her lips were still pursed.
"How long have you been watching me?" Clarke asked, as though it was just a given. Bellamy really hadn't been planning on bringing that up, especially right now, when they had barely exchanged names, but if she already knew, then he wasn't going to lie to her.
"A few weeks," he replied. "Just...Checking in."
"You said that already," Clarke stated.
"Must be true then."
"Just because someone keeps saying something, doesn't make it true."
"You're not very trusting, are you?" Bellamy tilted his head to the side again, and there was an amused smile on his face. Clarke didn't seem to like that, because the corners of her lips turned downward.
"Look—you've done what you told them you would do, okay?" She finally moved, but it was to shoulder past him purposefully with a shove, and walk into her kitchen. "So, you can just leave me alone now, and run on back to them and tell them that everything is fine." Bellamy turned and watched as she moved around the kitchen, opening the fridge and taking out a bottle of orange juice, putting that on the bench and then going to the cupboard to get out a glass. There weren't many first-year university students who lived in apartments by themselves, who could afford that, and so Clarke had to know that it was because of the money that Abby was making working for Bellamy's father. He wondered how much more she knew, but now wasn't the time.
"You're not fine," he told her. "You were throwing up just half an hour ago." He finally saw her falter, as she saw undoing the lid of the orange juice, but then she resumed what she was doing, and didn't look up.
"I'm hungover. People throw up. It happens," she muttered as she lifted the glass to her lips and took a drink.
"Maybe this time, but I've seen your web history. I know you're on diet pills. I have a feeling—do you have a problem with eating?" He asked bluntly, getting right to the point. She spat out her mouthful of orange juice and glared at him.
"No!" She snapped.
She wasn't okay with them talking at first, even though he showed up with coffee made the way she liked it and her favourite croissants. She didn't ask how he knew that it was her favourite, she just snatched the bag off him and slammed her front door and went about her day. He was busy and he didn't have time for much of a social life, but whatever time he had, it all of a sudden became dedicated to Clarke. He easily learned what her schedule was, where she worked two days a week even though her mother deposited enough for her not to need to work, who her friends were, what she drank when she went into town with her fake ID and how many times she threw up in a week.
She clearly didn't want his help, but she also clearly needed it.
Bellamy spoke with Marcus and said that Clarke was fine, that she was okay, and Marcus had obviously sensed that was more, but he hadn't asked, just moved on and switched the conversation to business.
Clarke didn't seem to care that Bellamy was clearly hacking her phone, and computer, and all of her messaging apps, and knew all of her schedule like an obsessed person, and that he was watching her. That was something that she seemed to have just accepted, and after five or six weeks, when he brought her coffee and croissants, she started leaving the door open instead of slamming it in his face, and he started going inside. She didn't talk to him all that much, studying while he watched stuff on her tiny TV, and then he would say goodbye, brushing his fingers over her shoulder before he left.
Then he started showing up for dinner, asked for her phone and put his number into her contact list. Clarke was a good cook, but she didn't eat much, pushing it around her plate and talking quickly to cover up the fact that she wasn't eating. Bellamy wondered if she wasn't eating because she knew that he knew that she was just going to throw the food back up again if she ate more than she deemed appropriate. They watched TV together, although sometimes Clarke would have her laptop balanced on her knees, or on the coffee table so that she could study while watching TV. She didn't go out drinking as much, which was something that Bellamy was happy about, because it seemed as though that had been something she was doing four to five times a week, which wasn't healthy, especially with the medication that she was on. She'd also stopped seeing Lexa, which Bellamy had been happy about, although he hadn't told her that. He told himself that it was because Lexa had an eating disorder as well, and her and Clarke weren't a good match, but he knew that there was something more.
Clarke kissed him about three months after he had found her at that party.
Her eyes had been unsure as she had stepped closer to him in the doorway of her apartment as he was getting ready to leave for the evening, but when her lips pressed to his, they were firm and certain and so, so soft.
Bellamy kissed her back, one of his hands coming up to cup her face, his thumb pressed to her cheekbone, his fingers hooked underneath her jaw, gently massaging her face. She melted against him, her body soft and smelling like peaches and apples from her shampoo, and he felt her lips underneath his, but that was when he stopped. She blinked her eyes up at him, a little hazy from arousal and also from being tired, given she had gotten up at five that morning, and it was now close to midnight.
"I'll see you tomorrow, princess," Bellamy murmured, giving her another kiss, a soft one, this time to the tip of her nose before leaving.
Bellamy had been trying to get Clarke to go back into therapy for the past few months, pretty much since she had stopped slamming the door in his face. He knew from Abby and Octavia that Clarke had gone a few times when she was in school, after her father had passed away, and then Abby had made her go again in her senior year, when she started acting out and her grades had started spiraling. Bellamy had never been to therapy, it wasn't something that would work for him given he really didn't talk about his emotions, but he hoped that it would work for Clarke. She hadn't been particularly receptive to it, though, but Bellamy didn't know what else to do.
He wasn't qualified to help her with the problems that she had.
He could help with the symptoms and the after-effects, but unless she had someone to help with the actual cause of the problem, she was never going to be able to get better, to be able to heal, to move forward and grow in the way that she deserved.
It took another two months before she went, a month after Christmas when she had gone home to Los Angeles for the first time since she had gone off to college. Bellamy had done his research, and he had gone to see Doctor Lorelei Tsing first, check the place out and make sure that it was safe and that Clarke was going to be in good hands, and then pay for ten sessions upfront in cash, so that Clarke didn't have to go through the hassle of insurance paperwork.
The first few sessions didn't really seem to make much of a difference, but three weeks in, after her fourth session, Clarke had arrived back at her apartment looking shaky and pale-faced. She didn't want to talk about it, which Bellamy was okay with, because he really wasn't sure what he could have done to help her, so they had just hugged on her couch, and then she had asked him to come to bed with her.
"Not...Like that. Just...To sleep with me. Please, Bellamy?" Clarke had asked softly, blinking red-rimmed eyes up at him. And so he had, holding her in her bed, arms wrapped tightly around her.
She began talking easier, and she didn't look quite as haunted as she had before. Her grades started doing better as well, that was clear just from the way she was talking about her classes, Bellamy didn't need to check her computer to know that. He never did anymore, actually, that was something that they had come to an agreement on, she hadn't been angry about it, it was something she had just accepted, but he had said that he wouldn't do it anymore and she had given him a wide smile. The ones that made her whole face glow that he had been getting a lot of recently. She started putting on weight, her cheeks filling out beautifully, and those beautiful blue eyes of hers got brighter over the next few months. Even her hair seemed to get a kind of shine to it that it was lacking before, and Bellamy only realized when they were in the middle of a movie and Clarke was curled up under his arm and she let out a loud laugh, that he had never heard her laugh before. There had been smiles and even a few grins, but he had never heard her laugh.
It was beautiful.
She was beautiful.
"Is there a reason that you haven't taken me out on a date yet?" Clarke asked one Sunday morning when she was frying bacon and Bellamy was tossing up between them watching Shaun of the Dead and Kick-Ass. He blinked and looked up in surprise, at how casually she had asked that. They hadn't even kissed again since that first time, although he had begun staying over a lot more regularly now, always sleeping with at least one layer of clothes between them, but sharing a bed all the same. Bellamy had never had a proper relationship before—at least not a healthy one—but he knew that what they had going on was something of a relationship. But there were boundaries that they weren't crossing yet, things that he was worried about because she was only just finally finding her footing again and he didn't want to throw back her process.
"I...I didn't realize that you wanted to go out on a date," Bellamy said carefully, focusing back on the DVD's in his hands, deciding to go with Kick-Ass because Clarke had mentioned more than once how much she loved Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and kneeling down in front of the TV to slip it into the DVD player.
"Well, I thought that maybe you were just waiting for me to..." Clarke broke off, going quiet as she flipped the bacon and moved the frying pan on the stovetop. "For me to eat, or whatever, before you took me out somewhere." Bellamy blinked at the conclusion that she came to, and then he smiled, because at least this meant that she was now feeling comfortable enough to go out and eat in public. She had been eating a lot more now, nowhere near as much as Bellamy, or what Octavia would eat, but at least two meals a day, so he was happy.
But going out on a date was something different.
Bellamy waited until she had finished dishing up their breakfast, and they were sitting down in front of the TV, eating off the little coffee table, for when he brought it up.
She knew a lot of what he did.
Or, maybe she didn't know exactly what he did, but she had a fair idea, which Bellamy had always been aware of, given her lack of surprise at his knowledge of anything and everything about her and the cash that he always had in thick stacks in his wallet and the calls he sometimes got at two in the morning. Her mother was their nurse, and probably hadn't kept everything from her, and the Blake household had a well-known reputation, especially in Los Angeles.
However, she clearly hadn't thought about what actually dating him would mean.
So Bellamy told her.
He told her about the threats that came in daily toward people in his household, toward their families and loved ones. About the need for twenty-four-hour security, bodyguards and weapons. About the dangerous people that they dealt with every day who held grudges that they wanted to be paid for in blood. About the general reputation of people who were associated with the Blake household, and how it had every chance of damaging her own reputation, and possibly future job opportunities.
It was a lot to take in, but Clarke was smart, and Bellamy knew that she could handle it.
Afterward, she cleaned up their dishes, and she went to shower without saying a word to him. He heard her come out of the bathroom, given he had turned off the TV and was listening for her, but instead of hearing her footsteps go toward the bedroom, they came back toward the lounge, and then she was standing in front of him. The sun was coming in through the windows behind Bellamy, lighting the room up with a golden glow, and it made her glow, her blonde hair damp and sticking to her face and neck, a few droplets of water running down her shoulders, the towel wrapped around her middle.
"I don't know if I can deal with all of that...All of that stuff about being in the public," she admitted quietly. "But I want you. I want us. It might be dangerous anyway, but...I want that." Bellamy stared at her for a long moment, before a half-smile stretched across one side of his face.
"Brave princess," he hummed and Clarke gave him a small smile, before loosening the knot of her towel and letting it fall to the ground, so that she was completely naked in front of him. Bellamy's eyes widened as he took her in, from the blue paint on her toenails and up to the way that her hair was a little tangled from where she had towel-dried it. Clarke approached him slowly, as though waiting to hear him stop her, but he didn't, and when she reached the couch, and let her legs separate so that her knees were on either side of his. She sat down on his lap, her bare body against his clothed ones, and their mouths came together and things flowed naturally.
Her body was soft and smooth and fitted together with his beautifully. Her breaths filled his mouth and his ears as his hands explored her body, her smaller hands working to remove him of his clothes slowly, none of their movements rushed.
When Bellamy slid inside her, there was a tear that slid down the side of Clarke's face, and Bellamy wiped it away with his thumb, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth, their eyes locked together, even as she blinked rapidly. Once the tears cleared from her eyes, he started moving again, rocking into her, and Clarke moved to meet him, her hips meeting his, their soft sounds filling the room.
He couldn't stay in New York forever, not when his whole life was in Los Angeles. There was never any question about him staying, and Clarke knew that, even though it was hard.
He stayed longer than he was meant to, nearly nine months, but then he had to go home.
It was difficult, having a long-distance relationship, especially one that hardly anyone knew about and had to be kept secret from the public. So Bellamy had told her that it didn't need to be monogamous. He knew that she had needs, that she needed connection, and he didn't want to deprive her of that. Clarke had said that she didn't want that, that she only wanted him, but she was also smart. She knew that she needed connection as well, she couldn't just stay in her apartment through the weekends, she needed to be able to kiss and love, to be kissed and loved.
So they came to an agreement, that while she was in New York, which was most of the time for the first five years of their relationship, going from when they first began, she did what she wanted. Sometimes that meant that she went out on dates. Sometimes that meant that she reconnected with Lexa, who was in a healthier spot in her life once they graduated from university. Sometimes that meant that she had too many drinks with some of the other nurses at the hospital where she had started working straight out of university, and she went home and rang Bellamy with her hand between her legs.
When Clarke was twenty-four, two years after she had graduated university and been working at one of the hospitals in New York, she moved back to Los Angeles to work with her mother.
Bellamy knew that it wasn't a move that she took lightly, because the relationship between Clarke and Abby still wasn't a solid one. But Clarke had lived her whole life in Los Angeles, and she had told Bellamy that it was time for her to come home.
And now...Now they were five years on, and Clarke had finally told him that she was ready to officially be his, no matter what that might mean.
Let me know what you think xx
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