Chapter Text
“What do you want to watch tonight?” Bellamy asked Raven as he sat down heavily on the couch in the penthouse apartment she shared with Clarke.
“Whatever,” came her mumbled reply as she worked the cork out of a bottle of wine with her teeth..
“You know, they have these things called wine openers, they use a corkscrew mechanism. Seems like something a mechanic like yourself might be aware of.”
His one-time fling and long-time friend narrowed her eyes at him, but continued to pull at the cork until, with a loud squelch, she pulled it out, spitting it in his direction, a triumphant smile on her face as she held the proffered bottle up.
“I brought beer,” he said cracking the bottle cap off his IPA.
“This isn’t for you, ass,” she replied her words clear again, “Clarke texted, she’ll be home any minute, her work trip with Roan ended early.”
Bellamy had to work hard to swallow the sip of beer he’d taken and not cough it up like an idiot.
“Thought that would shut him up,” Murphy said falling onto the couch beside him, and deftly stealing one of his beers from the case.
“Shut up Murphy,” he growled, leaning back against the back of the couch, “start the game.”
He watched Raven smirk as she poured two glasses, setting one of the stems out on the corner of the island in the kitchen. She carried her own glass to the chair and settled in and Bellamy tried to relax as they traded friendly barbs.
He told himself he wasn’t listening for heels on marble, or the elevator to the penthouse to ding outside the door. That he didn’t glance at his phone to see if she’d texted him. Normally, they texted back and forth all the time. But things hadn’t really been normal for them lately. They’d been odd, strained since the incident as Raven called it. He hadn’t made it better since, trying to tamp down any sign of his crush had made him unusually short with her, and he hated seeing the hurt flash across those blue eyes. He couldn’t help it. Call it self-preservation.
Finally, the door creaked open and he heard a pop in his neck as his head snapped over in the same direction.
“Clarke!” Raven said joyfully, setting her glass on the table and clambering over Bellamy and Murphy’s legs to reach her.
“Hey,” she said, laughing at the exuberance as she set down bags, suitcases and a purse to fling her own arms around her neck, “it’s only been four days but love the greeting.”
“It’s been four days of talking to these animals. They grunt more than they speak,” Raven said.
“Bellamy’s a professor, I’m sure he told you all about another obscure Roman conquest since I’ve been gone,” he heard Clarke say lightly. His heart fell a bit at the description. Clarke’s friend the Professor. Boring, predictable. While she was Clarke. Brilliant Clarke. An in-demand doctor pulling double shifts at the poorly funded hospital downtown, while still making time to paint, and be a friend to him and the rest of her affectionately-called delinquents. Not to mention, the other job. The reason why things had gone all wrong.
“Raven doesn’t listen, she thinks she’s smarter than me,” Bellamy said back, hoping he sounded normal, taking a sip of beer to steady himself while Murphy eyed him. She was still mostly hidden by Raven, but he could see her small feet step out of the heels and flex on the cold floor. He pulled his face back to the TV, willing himself to get a grip.
“I am smarter than you,” Raven said, turning finally, and heading back to couch, “there are leftovers in the fridge from that Thai place you like on first ave.”
Bellamy looked up in time to catch Clarke grinning at him, and he couldn’t help but smile back, his anxiety lifting a little. This felt, right. Normal. Maybe it wouldn’t have to be some long, painful drawn out discussion. Maybe they could just forget about what the other had said, and go back to being just Bellamy and Clarke.
“Thanks Raven,” she said, turning on her bare feet toward the kitchen, and grabbing the glass of wine from the table. “Come on Bell, keep me company while the food warms up, I’m not as smart as Raven so I’ll still be impressed by your stories,” she said winking at him and he was pretty sure he heart did an actual flutter.
He was so screwed.
“Yeah Bell,” seduce her with talk of the varied medical uses of Roman urine,” Murphy said as Bellamy hopped up to follow Clarke into the kitchen. Bellamy glared at him, but saw the move for what it was. Murphy had his own terribly pathetic crush on Raven. It was the only saving grace he had in this situation. Needless to say, it made for a salty stalemate.
But he was happy to walk away from them and into Clarke’s kitchen, following the light halo of blond hair, leaning against the marble countertops as she took the leftovers out of the fridge and threw it into the microwave, adding a few minutes to the timer before turning back around to face him, her mouth quirked up in a small smile as she took sips of wine.
The hum of the microwave was the only backdrop. They were both testing the waters, seeing if it was safe to dive back in. The fight, a bruise that was slow to heal for both of them. Mostly because they kept prodding the wound. He studied her over the rim of the beer bottle. She looked great, always did. But there were circles under her eyes, her face paler than normal as she picked at the skirt and blazer. Her uniform when she traveled with Roan.
“How was the trip?” He asked, trying to sound neutral. She looked at him, smiling softly. He was trying to stay in neutral territory. The remnants of the fight just on the other side of the question.
“Same old, same old. Lots of money to sit around and wait for injuries that don’t happen,” she said. “I saw some pretty scenery though through a window though, so better than last time.”
He nodded lightly, “well, that’s good, with all of us freeloaders hanging off you,” he said, motioning around the room. She rolled her eyes at him, turning back to the cupboards to get a bowl out. She didn’t give his words any weight. Clarke’s home was an old fight of theirs, one that actually had helped turn their animosity towards each other into kinder feelings.
Clarke’s penthouse apartment was a relic of her past life. Of a trust fund that bought it in full in the ritzier part of the city. It was Jake Griffin’s good sense to put it in Clarke’s name before he died. Because Abby’s addiction after his death and subsequent lawsuits for malpractice had drained the Griffin family fortune to pennies, leaving Clarke to manage the rehab bills for her mother and Co-Op fees on her own.
While he had once despised that some rich girl had somehow befriended his friends so quickly, the apartment had quickly become home-base to all their friends, and a prime example of Clarke’s innate generosity even after the funds that earned her the moniker “Princess” from Bellamy had become nonexistent a few months later. Now she too lived paycheck to paycheck. The apartment the last thing from her past she actually seemed loyal too, apart from Roan that was.
Raven lived there full-time, and he knew Clarke only accepted money for food and the parking for Raven’s motorcycle. Nearly everyone, himself included, had spent a few months or more living there when they ran into rent or roommate trouble. Octavia had needed it the most often, hiding out from bad decisions when she wouldn’t go to Bellamy for help. He could never make it up to her, the feeling of knowing that if he couldn’t save his sister, Clarke could.
Now, without her trust fund, Clarke managed the expenses with her meager salary at the public hospital, but supplemented it with a very strange deal with an old family friend, Roan Azgeda. Every so often when there was a gap of days off from her shifts in the ER, she joined his private security detail. Ice Nation Security was well known for handling security for celebrities and well-to-do’s in town, but she had explained that every so often they took a trip away, following VIPs to events in areas more... unpredictable.
Since they were a privately held company they couldn’t just drop in at a local or military hospital, and their clients wouldn’t want that publicity. So, Clarke served in that capacity, able to handle most any medical situation they’d run up against. She didn’t talk about it much, but from the moment Roan had joined them for drinks at their favorite bar Bellamy had disliked the intensity of the man, the way he hovered around Clarke, the jokes they seemed to share from their time together, from the time when Clarke ran in circles he couldn’t even imagine.
He considered Clarke’s working relationship with Roan Abby’s fault too. Needing to pay off round after round of private, expensive rehabs and settle the lawsuits she had asked Roan to give Clarke work. The wildly high income from Roan’s company for just a few days of each month made it possible to keep the Griffin women afloat. Bellamy had once insinuated that Abby had pimped out Clarke for a job Abby could have done. That had been a week of silent treatment.
“How was class?” She asked, snapping him out of his meandering thoughts, “you started that unit on Hadrian’s Wall right?”
“Yeah,” he said, surprised she remembered him mentioning that a month prior, “it’s fun to talk about, hopefully one day I’ll get to see the ruins in real-life.”
“Well, when you do count me in,” she said, and his heart nearly stopped as she reached forward and grasped his hand, her fingers small and cool in his own.
He was so close to opening his mouth and telling her there was no one else he’d rather see it with, but the ding of the microwave saved him. He wondered if he imagined her face falling slightly as she spun around to retrieve her food.
“Are you home for awhile?” He asked, “you’ve been working too much Clarke, the delinquents miss you.”
She laughed, “they miss me organizing the fun stuff,” she replied. “But yeah, apparently there’s a big fish Ice Nation is about to win the contract for so he won’t need me until that’s settled.”
“What about you?” She asked, twirling a fork into the mess of spicy noodles, leaning one foot against the drawers behind her, he made a point not to look at the skirt riding up her slim legs.
“What?” He asked dumbly.
“Did you miss me too?” She asked, and for a moment he thought her voice sounded almost shy. He stared at her but she refused to meet his eyes, turning away to take another sip of her wine. He tracked the darkening stain on her lips.
He would hate himself later for what he said. “Of course, Octavia won’t leave me alone when you’re out of town, I need you for the 30% of her that’s unmanageable,” he said flippantly.
Her smile was a little steelier when she looked back up at him, “Well, I’ll keep that in mind before heading off to places I shouldn't be again, yeah?” She said, the sarcasm dripping off her tongue.
“Wouldn’t want Roan to have to stitch his own paper cuts up,” he shot back, gripping the beer bottle harder. Why did he do this?
Her mouth stretched into a thin line. She walked over and threw her half-eaten meal in the trash and grabbed her glass back up, tossing the remaining wine down in one swallow. “I’m going to bed, tired from all those paper cuts,” she said icily, “have a great night Bellamy. So pleased to see your attitude has improved.”
He clenched his jaw as she padded away on the cool tile of the floors. He tried to call out, but the words got stuck in his throat. Waiting until he heard the soft click of her bedroom door close, he swallowed the last dregs of beer and grabbed another from the fridge.
He couldn’t go back into the living room and watch the game with Raven and Murphy, pretending that he was fine. He couldn’t go up the stairs to explain to Clarke why he was being such an asshole. So instead, he popped the cap on the beer and sat down at the table, pulling the half-finished puzzle of the acropolis toward him. He’d gotten Clarke the puzzle a few months ago, a Secret Santa gift she’d laughed about but to his delight had immediately started that afternoon as everyone else sat down and began to watch The Santa Clause for the hundredth time. They’d worked on it together for hours, the peacefulness of that afternoon had stayed with him. He’d ruined it just a few weeks later at the bar.
He could tell she hadn’t worked on it since. It sat unfinished, the picture of what it would be barely assembled. It was waiting for them to fix themselves, so they could put the picture back together.
He had a feeling it would be gathering dust for awhile.
***
Clarke had been on shift for sixteen hours when Roan’s call came in and she was in a bad, bad mood. Two interns had called in sick. Harper, her friend and head nurse was currently throwing up every five minutes from morning sickness so she was keeping an eye on her people as well. Not to mention the fact that she had already lost two patients. So when Roan’s name came up on the caller ID she didn’t see another pile of work, she saw an escape.
“Griffin,” Roan said instead of any kind of greeting a normal person might employ.
“Talk fast iceman,” she said, nodding to Harper, as the slightly green around the mouth woman made her way back to the front desk.
“We got em,” he said, “what are the odds you can be at the airfield with your supplies at 22:00?”
“Roan, you can say 10pm,” she said, pointing a nurse to the third exam room for a kid with a dislocated shoulder.
“That’s not a yes.”
Clarke sighed, closing her eyes briefly and doing a mental checklist of reasons not to sign on to this one. Her shift was over in two hours. She could get a respectable nap in, shower, and easily make it to the airfield. The only problem was if she was gone past Friday.
“How long will this take?” She asked, chewing on her lip. She could hear the slow, frustrated breath of air leave Roan’s lungs.
“I’m looking at your work schedule now Doc, you’re off for three days. You got something more lucrative going on?” He asked, his voice light but she could sense the tension there. Roan was stressed out. That rarely happened, even when she was sure the situation called for it. This client must be important to him.
“No,” she said slowly, “not lucrative, just promised my friends I’d make it to something on Friday. Will we be back by then?”
She was met with silence.
“Roan?”
“I need your head in the game on this one Griffin, you promise me that, I’ll promise to return you before you turn into a pumpkin.”
She huffed, “listen you ass, if i’m such a hassle put someone else on the payroll.”
“But then I wouldn’t have these lovely conversations,” he replied tersely, “and I need someone I trust. I’ll make it worth your time.”
“Yeah?” She asked her mind racing with what a large check from Roan could do to put a dentin the compounding interest for her mother’s third round of rehab.
“Just be at the airfield on time Clarke,” he said softly, and she let out a deep breath. Roan treated her more than fairly for what amounted to usually just putting a shoulder back in a socket or stitching up a shallow stab wound on his men.
“Alright Roan, where are we going?” She asked brightly, the thought of an adventure already getting the wheels turning in her mind. One they’d gone to Paris and she’d gotten an afternoon off to meander in the Louvre while the asset sat securely in a bullet proof apartment.
“Nowhere I can say over this phone line,” he said succinctly, “see you at 10pm.”
“Okay, 22:00 it is,” she replied, smiling to herself as the line clicked off. Bellamy would have laughed at that she thought, before her mood shot right back down again. She hated how they left things when she’d gotten back a few weeks ago.
For a brief moment, it had felt like they’d just swept the fight under the rug. But then he just had to act like he didn’t miss her, just had to remind her what he thought of her going off on these trips with Roan. As though she really had a choice. She thought he’d be able to understand that. He’d given up half his life because there’d been no one else for Octavia. Did he expect her to let her Mother wallow on the street?
She groaned, every time she started to think maybe she should take most of the blame for the fight she’d remember a line he’d spit back at her typical princess, always thinking you’ll get rescued out of situations, that’s not the real world Clarke! Then, she’d get all angry again, confident he should apologize first.
She almost broke her resolve that night he’d followed her into the kitchen. Had grabbed his hand and for a wild moment thought about just curling into his arms and telling him she didn’t want to be angry anymore. But she hadn’t. There was always just something that felt too delicate, too on the edge of-
“Clarke! I need you in here,” came Harper’s desperate call down the hall. Clarke sighed, she needed to snap out of it. She slipped her phone back in the lab coat and set off down the hall. Shivering as the ER bay doors slammed open again and the bitter February weather flew in.
She hoped Roan was taking her somewhere warm.
****
The next twelve hours were a blur. She got home, told Raven she’d be out of town, reminding her to water the plants instead of getting sucked into an “impossible” problem only she could solve. Then, in between throwing clothes in her bag and organizing her medical case she opened and closed the text message screen for Bellamy about ten times. Finally, while waiting for her Lyft she gave herself a stern talking to, finally tapped in the message, hitting send before she could chicken out.
Hey, I’ll be gone for a few days, don’t let Raven kill all the plants okay?
Immediately dots began to rise and fall as he texted a reply, making her both anxious and relieved after the odd silent treatment they’d been giving each other.
Fine.
One word. She almost stamped her foot in frustration. She was tapping a reply out but a second message came through right before she hit send.
She sucked in a breath, slowly deleting the angry reply in the text box as the Lyft rolled up.
She let driver put her stuff in the trunk and was settled in before she replied, knowing she needed to shut her phone off once they hit the airfield. Roan’s policy. Now she was the one writing and deleting her reply. She could joke like they normally did, always tilting into flirting. She could be cool and reserved, it would serve him right. But she didn’t want either of those things. That was the problem. She wanted the third option.
When I get back, can we talk? please?
She sucked in a breath, holding it in fear as his reply flashed across the screen moments later.
You have the best ideas Princess.
She laughed shakily. Sent a thumbs up before pressing the button down and stowing the phone in her purse as the car sped it’s way to the airfield. Five minutes early in fact, she thought smugly. This was good. This job might be what finally got her out of the hole of the bill collectors, she might not have to take another for awhile, and once she was back in three days maybe she and Bellamy could really...talk.
It was the last settling thought she had before the world literally blew up around her.
***
“Clarke! Clarke open your eyes!”
Someone was yelling at her, she thought. But it was a familiar voice and she felt like she should try to do what was being asked. Opening her eyes didn’t seem like an insurmountable task.
But it seemed harder now. They felt gritty with sand and she could feel something wet on them too. She reached up to wipe away whatever was on her face and that’s when the pain exploded through her body.
“Ahhh,” she shrieked, immediately hunching over on her side, the wrist exploding in pain.
“That’s it, take it easy,” Roan said gruffly. Roan, Roan was here, was with her. Something had gone very wrong, but at least Roan was here.
“What. The fuck.” She managed to get out as she looked down at her wrist. It was in a splint, good work actually. Probably because it was her work. Her splint. She blinked. The memories filtering through the shock as she looked up at Roan. They were back on the plane.
“Oh my god,” she said, resting her head back down on the airplane floor with a thunk, “we’re alive.”
Roan sunk down next to her. Her head was pounding but she managed to track him, and if she felt like shit, she was pretty sure Roan felt like the whole manure pile. His long hair was streaked with blood and the right side of his face was just one massive bruise, the skin swollen and purpling in front of her eyes. She looked lower, burns wrapped around his arm and she knew they went across his torso. Knew because she’d wrapped them herself before the kidnappers had stormed their position. She had been putting him and Davis back together, talking calmly to the asset in the panic room that everything would be fine when the explosion had rocked them.
For a moment they simply sat in the silence of the jet, the wheezes from both of them made clear there were a few broken ribs between them.
“What happened?” She finally asked, the shock wearing off and panic setting in.
Roan stared at his hands as he spoke, “the Asset, they have him.”
“No shit Roan,” Clarke spit out, “what happened to the team? Last thing I remember was telling that kid everything was going to be alright, I promised him we’d get him out and then they blew up the panic room. I didn’t even know that was a possibility. You told me it was safe in there!” She knew she was screaming. But she also knew the pilot wasn’t paid enough to step into this shit storm.
“Anything is possible with enough firepower,” Roan said gruffly, “we lost Andrews, Davis, and Carol. Echo and Ash have gone to ground. They’ll stay alive until we can get them back out.”
“We?” Clarke hissed, reaching up and pulling his chin toward her with her good hand, “you almost got me killed. There’s no ‘we’ in this anymore.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Roan snapped, slapping her hand away, “there’s obviously a mole in the agency. I can’t trust anyone else now, and the second people get a whiff that we can’t take care of our charges-”
“Obviously true!” She shrieked, wincing as pain lanced its away across her torso.
“Then it all falls apart. My company. Your checks. And if these people are inside they know who you are too, your friends Clarke, your people, your goody-two-shoes job. You want to save your life, and everything that entails we both have to go back in.”
Clarke squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to look Roan, and the truth of what he was saying in the face. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This job was supposed to be a bit of fun, but mostly boring. She had wanted to believe the amount of money was just an extravagance that Roan could afford. Now she realized what he’d meant when he’d told her it included the potential for hazards.
She sighed, slowly, painfully, crawling to her medical bag, the contents strewn about on the plane floor. The result of her trying to fix Roan and herself up enough before she’d passed out. She returned with an antibacterial spray. Lighting dabbing it on the worst of Roan’s burns.
“Okay,” she said finally, “what happens next?”
“Next we land back home,” he said gruffly, “we’ll go to your place and get ourselves right, make a plan for getting back in, finding the asset, and getting back out.”
“Do you think the kid is okay?” Clarke asked quietly, the memory of the young genius’ wide, scared eyes. A head full of black scruffy hair and goggles a top it. She could feel herself losing it a little and snapped the door shut. She could compartmentalize a little longer. Until home.
Roan pursed his lips together and looked away from her. Clarke dropped the soiled bandage off his arm and wound a bright white clean one around his arm. “Thank you for getting me back to the plane alive Roan,” she said.
“Believe it or not Clarke,” Roan said, reaching down to take her hand, “you’re actually the only member of this seriously disturbed family worth talking to. Christmas and Thanksgiving without you would have been a drag.” He smiled but she could see the fear in it. His hand held hers, but it shook slightly. He was rattled. Clarke was pretty sure that terrified her more than anything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
***
Bellamy let himself into Clarke’s apartment with his own key, one she’d given to him years ago. As expected, Raven had taken off on an impromptu work trip, leaving Bellamy the task to make sure all the plants in the apartment didn’t die. Besides, going by their last text message exchange before her trip it sounded like she wanted to talk, and Bellamy wasn’t going to let a dead fern stand between him and...what? Would he finally fess up? Tell her the reason he’d said all those things to her that night? Explain that being in love with her was making him an idiot? Or, would he just go back to being her best friend? Settle for what he knew, instead of the unknown?
He was lost in his own thoughts, so he didn’t hear the elevator ding outside the penthouse door. But when the slide of the key in the lock came through he hurried into the entryway, wondering if Raven had forgotten something.
It wasn’t Raven. But what he was seeing also didn’t make sense.
“Clarke?” He said, and her face snapped up, and for a moment he thought he was having a heart attack because she was covered in blood.
“Bellamy?” She whispered, “what are you-” but she didn’t get a chance to finish before she was sliding out of Roan’s grasp. The man tilting back against the door frame. Bellamy dropped the watering can and caught her before she could fall to the floor, swinging her up in her arms.
“Clarke? What happened?”
“She’s fine,” Roan said, slamming the door behind him, “shallow head wound, and a sprained wrist.”
“Don’t let me bleed on the carpet,” Clarke mumbled into his arms, “it’s Persian.”
Bellamy gaped at them both as Roan slid down the door to rest on the floor of the entryway, his baleful stare at Bellamy giving nothing away. “What did you do to her?” He asked, knowing if he was less confused the question would have had some anger behind it.
“It wasn’t him it was the Grimaldi Brothers,” Clarke said into his shirtsleeves. “They blew us up, took the kid.”
“Shut up Griffin,” Roan growled at her and that’s when Bellamy snapped.
“Don’t fucking talk to her like that,” he yelled, knowing the only reason he wasn’t shoving his fists into Roan’s face for bringing Clarke back to him bleeding and broken was that he wasn’t about to set her down on the floor.
“Oh fuck off Professor,” Roan said, rising up with some difficulty to his feet, swaying slightly when he reached his full height. “Clarke, I’m taking a room. Wake me up when you think I might be dead.”
“S’fine,” Clarke said dreamily, staring up at Bellamy now. “Oh Bell, you’re so pretty, I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
“Find out what Princess?” He asked, his voice shaking as he pulled some bloodied hair out of her face.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed, “Roan’s kinda a spy, and I guess now I am too.”
She passed out then, and Bellamy was left in the entryway with an unconscious Clarke, a staggering Roan leaving bloody footprints on the white carpeted stairs and no idea of what the hell had just happened.