When he wakes, it's to the sound of a shower running. His half asleep mind thinks nothing of the high-pitched stream of water hitting the tiled shower floor. The sound stops, replaced by the whine of the shower handle being turned. He hears the rustling of his shower curtain and bare, dripping feet hitting the bathroom floor and he remembers that he lives alone.
He's up on his feet in seconds, heart beating like an aggressive drumline. Dodging the Chinese takeout cartons and packets of soy sauce littering his floor, his hungover mind tries to piece together the events of last night.
Logic still hasn't really booted up for him yet, so he grabs chopsticks for protection against the apartment invader who has decided to take a shower so hot that steam rises from the crack under the bathroom door.
He opens the door, chopsticks raised. Clarke yelps, and it brings him back to perfect clarity.
He remembers the bar, Roan's casually mentioned secret, holding hands with Clarke, and falling asleep with her in his bed.
He remembers all of this while staring at Clarke, who's wearing nothing but one of his shirts. Droplets of water are landing on the floor, sliding from the ends of her hair like a slow, easy rain.
"Bellamy?" she says, confused. "What the hell is going on? Why do you have chopsticks?"
Looking down at the chopsticks still in his hands, he chucks them in the trash. "I kind of thought you were a robber or something."
She laughs. "So your first choice for a weapon is…chopsticks?"
He wants to laugh with her, but he can't. His eyes trail up her bare legs for a second before he realizes he's staring, and he blinks, looking away and clearing his throat.
"Sorry about stealing your shirt," she smiles, completely unapologetic. "I would have just run over to my apartment and grabbed some clothes but—Raven texted me at like three in the morning telling me that it'd be better if I didn't stop by until the afternoon. It's funny, because Roan texted me the same thing." Her voice becomes uneven. "It's about time. They've been dancing around each other since they met."
Stepping closer, he reaches around her to grab his toothbrush. His hand brushes against her hip. Voice gruff from sleep, he says, "Really?"
She swallows, leaning back into him the smallest bit, and he's painfully aware of the fact. "Uh, yeah. It was pretty obvious to everyone but them."
He moves to stand beside her, brushing his teeth. Her eyes meet his in the mirror, and there's something tempting, something dangerous in the way she's looking at him.
"I'm going to…I'm going to make breakfast," she breathes, stepping around him towards the kitchen.
He finds her in the kitchen. She's on her tiptoes, reaching for a box of pancake mix on the top shelf of his cupboards. The shirt she's wearing rides up, offering Bellamy a short glimpse of the black, lacy underwear she's wearing.
Drawing in a breath, Bellamy steps behind her, reaching up and grabbing the box for her. She turns around to face him and he sets the box down, his arm boxing her in against the counter.
"I was going to make pancakes," she says, her smoky voice catching when he reaches up and moves a strand of stray hair from her cheek. She curls her fingers around his wrist reflexively, her thumb coming to rest on his thundering pulse. "Bellamy…" her eyes drop to his lips.
He lets himself imagine, for a half a second, what it would be like to kiss her. He bets she would taste sweet, wicked against his tongue. He wonders if she would grip his hips or curl her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck, if she would moan in his mouth or leave possessive marks down the column of his throat.
She's looking up at him like she's wondering the same thing, like she wants to find out for herself.
"Clarke…" he says, giving her an out, giving her a chance to clear her throat and reach for a bowl and forget that they ever got this close to crossing a line he knows they'll never be able to redraw.
Instead, she tilts her head up, pulls him down by his shirt, and takes a definitive step over the line by kissing him.
The kiss is softer than he thought it would be, gentler, like she's worried they'll both shatter if she's not careful enough. It's tentative and filled with such an innocent, pure sense of hope. His heart aches with what feels like an ancient longing. Bellamy cradles her face with his hands, stroking escaped tears away from her cheeks with his thumbs. He deepens the kiss and she pulls him closer to her, so that her back is flush against the counter.
The kiss ignites, searing through them with a slow, excited energy, one that's been building for far too long. He kisses her and he can taste the foundation behind it, the long nights and open talks and unbounded trust all evident in the way their lips move against each other.
It's all suddenly not enough.
There's too much space between them, and he lifts Clarke on the kitchen counter in one smooth action. Her legs wrap around his waist and she pulls him closer because he's so close and still not close enough and they both need more.
He finds that she does dig her fingernails into his shoulders, leaving a glorious array of crescent moons in his skin. She does run her fingers through his hair, pulling on the ends just enough to make him groan.
He finds that he's the one who has the urge to leave marks under the spot just beneath her ear. And it's him who runs soft lines against her bare thighs.
Between desperate, hungry kisses Clarke just has the time to breathe a confession.
"I'm in love with you," she says, and his lungs are burning with want for air, but he kisses her again anyway, this time slow and smooth and steady. "I love you," she repeats when they part, like the words are begging to come out of her mouth.
"I love you, Clarke," he breathes, and it feels so good to say that he does it again.
She laughs, bright and beautiful and brilliant. They're both so stupidly happy that they can't kiss without their mouths stretching into lopsided grins and they have to take a moment to just look at each other with ridiculous smiles on their faces.
Their smiles turn soft, and in this moment fear does not have a place to stand. The words lost and farewell and death are unintelligible here; here in this world they've created with their bleeding hearts.
It's eleven in the morning and a box of pancake mix sits on the counter, forgotten.
Clarke's soft, light laughter rings like music in his ears. Bellamy presses soft, slow kisses across her collarbone, darting his tongue out every now and then at the spots he's learned she's most ticklish at.
She runs her fingers through his hair, intimate and easy. His fingertips ghost across the bare skin of her hips, warm against his own.
Kissing his shoulder with swollen lips, she lets out a soft sigh. Her cheeks are still flushed with a healthy, rosy tinge that brings out the bluest blues of her eyes.
"So," she asks, grazing her fingertips up and down his arms, "does this mean we're dating?"
Looking down at her, he considers the question. "You don't think we're moving too fast?"
She raises an eyebrow, gripping his biceps. "You're joking, right?"
Bellamy presses a chaste kiss to her forehead. "I'm joking."
"Good," she breathes, pulling him down and kissing him again. She rolls them over, sitting up to straddle his hips. "Because I have a good feeling about this," she trails a finger down his jaw, "about us."
"Yeah?" he asks, a familiar feeling of hope blooming in his chest. He grips her hips and pulls her closer.
"Yeah," she says, kissing him with eagerness, nipping on his bottom lip lightly. "Yeah, I do."
On his nightstand, his phone vibrates incessantly. Later, after their minds and bodies are done humming with pleasure, they'll find four missed calls and twelve text messages from their friends, inviting them to lunch and not-so-subtly wondering where they both could be.
A few days after, Bellamy sits in his kitchen. He's rereading the Odyssey, scribbling notes in the margins and underlining his favorite phrases. He keeps having to reread passages, his thoughts drifting back to Clarke.
It seems unreal to him, still. The past few days feel like a strange dream, a new reality. A reality where Clarke's fingers tangle with his own while they wait for dinner to cook, a reality where he whispers I love you's into her hair when they're sitting together on his couch.
A fear hidden deep within him threatens to emerge every once in a while, whispering cruel reminders that he wasn't meant to have a happy ending, that this happiness of theirs can only last so long.
But then Clarke will kiss the underside of his jaw, or leave sketches of him on his fridge, or text him the link to a cool article she found online, and the fear quiets. She'll hug him until the fear is smothered beneath the weight of her love, and he'll breathe a sigh of relief.
Sometimes, he'll wonder if the same fear is rooted in her heart, too.
He can hear her singing, again. The sound of her voice is as familiar to him as his own, the light melody of her art bleeding through the thin wall between their apartments. He taps his pencil along with the music she creates, the swelling and sinking of the song escaping her lips smoothly.
He stops tapping his pencil and he lifts his head. Furrowing his brows, he listens more carefully to her singing. It's different than before. There's no heartbreak in it, but there isn't any carefree excitement in it, either.
It's gentle. The words are blanketed with the sounds of tenderness, of soft, unabashed joy, and a quiet confidence. He can only catch a few words, but one sticks out above all the others.
Love.
She's singing a love song, he realizes, with an exhale of a laugh. It's a love song.
Before he knows it, tears are stinging his eyes and he puts his book down, remembering the first time he heard her singing. He remembers the way she sang until she cried, until he could hear her heartbreaking from this side of the wall.
And now, now she's singing a love song.
Her voice sways with the emotion, rich and full and bold, and all Bellamy can think of is how it sounds like there's a smile shaping her words.
Bellamy grabs his keys and heads over to her apartment.
He can still hear her singing when he knocks on her door, and it doesn't stop, even though he can hear her steps moving towards the door.
She opens it, and stops singing at the sight of him. Smiling, she tackles him in a tight hug.
"What are you doing here?"
"I was in the neighborhood," he says, pulling back to kiss her.
She rests her forehead against his. "What was that for?"
"I'm just—Clarke, I'm so in love with you," he confesses, with a smile and a shake of his head, like he can't quite believe he's lucky enough to tell her. "And just I wish there was some way for me to let you know how ridiculously in love with you I am."
Her smile grows brighter. She grabs his hand, pulls him inside the apartment.
"You can show me," she offers, biting her lip.
She guides him to her bedroom, and they spend an hour loving and loving and loving until their bodies ache with love and their minds swim with it and their hearts overflow with it. Moans leave her lips instead of songs, but it still sounds like music to him.
After she's left marks down the column of his throat, and he's pressed soft kisses down the valley of her spine, they lay together in hazy, gold-tinged bliss.
Without fear, they make plans for a future. They don't listen to the taunting what if's or you never know's or it could happen's. Instead, they listen to the smokiness of her voice when she plans for a shared apartment, and to his gruff voice when he offers the idea of adopting a dog from the animal shelter.
They make all sorts of plans, trips to Rome and holiday weekends with Clarke's family. With each plan they make, they feel a little like they're daring fate. At the same time, it feels like they're standing up to fate, boldly declaring We're going to tell our own story.
Gentle rain taps against Clarke's bedroom window. The earthy smell of rain and wet concrete filters through the window, lulling them into a soft sleep. Their legs are tangled together, their fingers curled in each other's clothes, their lips on each other's skin, and they sleep easily, peacefully.
They dream of a soft, calm future.
A/N- one more little epilogue and we're done! thanks to everyone who have taken the time to leave comments and who have followed the story! You're awesome.
