Work Text:
"Everyday makeup… morning routine… daytime glam… night routine… skincare routine… workout routine..."
Bellamy snorts. "Your fans are big on routines, huh?"
Clarke sighs—not even bothering to correct his use of 'fans' instead of 'subscribers', which tells him exactly how frustrated she is—and looks up from her phone, where she'd been scrolling through video requests in the comments section of her last upload.
"They keep requesting all this stuff I've already done, like, three times over," she says, tossing the device onto the couch. "And then they get mad when I repeat video ideas, and I get like five hundred comments telling me how boring and unoriginal I am. I can't even give them exactly what they're asking for without being yelled at."
Throughout the four years of their friendship, Bellamy usually stayed well away from all this beauty vlogger stuff, but ever since he and Clarke moved in together a year ago, he's found himself getting sucked into the vortex of YouTube view counts and thumbs up and Instagram comments more than he'd ever anticipated. It started with him appearing briefly in one of Clarke's videos ('NEW APARTMENT TOUR!') and then helping her out with filming a couple more (including 'I BOUGHT A FULL FACE OF MAKEUP BLINDFOLDED').
It took Clarke a few weeks of wheedling, but he eventually caved and did two more videos with her— 'ROOMMATE DOES MY VOICEOVER' and 'ROOMMATE DOES MY MAKEUP', both of which got over a million views within a week for some unfathomable reason he still doesn't quite understand. Probably something to do with how he'd panicked midway through smearing foundation all over Clarke's face because he'd suddenly realised that he'd forgotten to apply primer first. Or the way he'd griped at her for not providing him with a lip liner to go under her lipstick.
(According to her, as a non-makeup-wearer, he's not supposed to know any of that. Well, he can't exactly help picking stuff up when he fucking lives with someone who wears makeup for a living, can he?)
Whatever. If he's gonna do something, he's gonna do it right. Makeup included.
He frowns at Clarke's despairing expression. It's not a look he's seen on her often, which unsettles him perhaps more deeply than he'd like to admit.
"Come on, there's gotta be at least one good idea in here," he says, sitting down on the couch next to her and grabbing her phone to take over scrolling through comments. "Uh. 'Sweat-proof makeup for summer'?"
"Done," she says morosely.
"'Beach essentials.'"
"Done."
"Bronzy glow'?"
"Done, done, and done." She heaves another long-suffering sigh, hands flopping down to her sides listlessly. "I've done it all, Bellamy. This is it. My career as a beauty vlogger is over, at the ripe old age of twenty-three."
"You're not done," he says, stern but affectionate. "Look, there's over a thousand comments here. All we need is one with a decent idea."
"I've been through, like, hundreds of them," she says. "If there was one, I think I would have found it by now."
He scrolls past an extra long comment with way too many emojis and capitalised letters, and stops at the next one: 'Hi clarke, i love ur videos so much!! So i LOVE summer, but all that hot sun def means a huge wardrobe overhaul, which is kind of a prob now bcos...'
He grins, and looks at her. "I just found your next video."
She cracks an eye open, her one-eyed gaze sliding to him. "What?"
Wordlessly, he hands her phone back to her. He watches as she reads through the comment, her brows furrowed. After a long beat, she sits up, her spine ramrod straight as she reads through the comment again.
"'I love spaghetti straps and off-shoulder tops but I can't wear them in the summer without...' " She looks up. "Oh my God. Bellamy, this is genius. This is exactly what I need!"
He tells himself that warm glow in his chest is pride for his own resourcefulness, not a ridiculous happiness at seeing her smile like that. "You're welcome, princess." He shrugs, still feigning nonchalance. "Now all you need is a hickey to cover up."
Her face falls instantly.
"Oh, well," she says, slumping back down into the couch. "Way to kill that idea."
He frowns in alarm. "What? Why can't you do it?"
She slants a disbelieving look at him. "In case you haven't noticed, Bellamy, it's been kind of a dry spell for me."
Not that he's going to say so, but he has noticed. It's been at least six months since Clarke's gone out with anybody, even as a casual hook-up. She's been claiming to want to focus on creating content for her YouTube channel, but from what he's seen, plenty of beauty vloggers date people or have steady partners while running their platforms.
"And I can't exactly give myself a hickey," she continues, pulling him out of his thoughts with a caustic laugh. "So, I mean, unless you're offering, this video probably isn't happening for a while."
He swallows, his throat suddenly dry as sandpaper.
He shouldn't.
"I guess I could do it," he hears himself say.
What the fuck?!
Clarke's gaze snaps to him, one brow arching high. "You what?"
He shrugs, struggling to steady the tone of his voice through the thundering sound of blood rushing in his ears. "I'm just saying. It's not like I haven't helped you out with this stuff before. Your channel, I mean," he says quickly. Hopefully not too quickly. Jesus. "Not— uh. Just, you know. If you need help, I'm here."
He pauses. "To help," he adds.
Please, his brain tells him calmly, just shut up. Right now.
Thankfully, Clarke doesn't seem to notice his sudden awkwardness. "Oh my God, yes," she breathes, springing upright. "That would be amazing. You're sure it's okay?"
"Yeah," he manages, and then he's cut off by an armful of Clarke, his hands automatically going around her to return her impulsive embrace.
"You're the best, Bellamy," she says, her breath warm on his ear. Before he can respond, she pulls back and, with one last grin, bounds off the couch and down the hallway, no doubt heading to her beauty-room-slash-office to prepare.
"The best," he echoes under his breath, dropping back against the couch.
Here's the thing: Bellamy and Clarke are not in love.
They're not.
Sure, there have been questions and comments from their friends over the last few years, along with a few outright disbelieving scoffs from Raven and Miller. He's been privately interrogated by Monty and Jasper, and he's pretty sure that Clarke's undergone her fair share of one-on-one questioning, too. He gets those silent nods from Emori and Harper that are a lot less 'I understand' and more 'Uh huh, sure, buddy' in tone (but they probably don't mean to be that patronising, so he lets those slide).
It doesn't matter. They're not in love with each other.
If he's being honest, though… there was a time he did think that he might have been. It wasn't Finn or Lexa that convinced him otherwise. It wasn't Gina, and it definitely wasn't Echo.
It was just that… well, nothing ever happened.
The one thing he can trust about his relationship with Clarke is that they're always on the same page, on the exact same level. There's no imbalance with them. They give each other as good as they each get, whether they're fighting or looking out for each other.
If what he feels for Clarke really is love, then… well, isn't there a chance Clarke would have thought so, too?
It took him years and years of holding his breath, but eventually, he realised that this particular brand of devotion and respect and intimacy was just, well, Bellamy and Clarke. It didn't have to mean romantic love. Hell, maybe it never even was. He just never knew how to classify their relationship, and it took him all that time to understand that it couldn't be classified. It just was.
So, yeah. He and Clarke are not in love. He and Clarke are just… he and Clarke.
So… why is he so goddamn nervous about this?
"Hey, you ready?"
He looks up from the TV to the sight of his roommate in a black tank top with the thinnest straps he's ever seen, and the tiniest pair of baby blue cotton shorts.
All right, fine, it's not tiny. It's actually the exact same pair she's been sleeping in for several weeks now, but it shows enough of her legs that his heart rate spikes just a little. It's what she usually wears to bed in the warmer months, and he's certainly seen her in far less, but for some reason, he feels extra guilty for the stab of sexual interest in his gut.
"Yeah, sure," he says, flipping the TV off and getting off the couch. He's a perfectly healthy young man in his sexual prime, and she's a perfectly healthy young woman in hers. Sexual interest is completely and absolutely natural and normal, even between two people who have only ever strictly been friends. It's no big deal at all.
All the same, he makes extra, extra effort to keep his eyes off her ass as he follows her down the hallway and into her—
"Bedroom?" he blurts out, hovering awkwardly in the threshold as she turns around, one of her brows quirking expectantly. "Aren't we— I mean, shouldn't we do this in—"
Her nose wrinkles. "What? I'm not gonna film this. My video's about covering up hickeys, Bellamy, not making them." She snorts. "That'd be a very, very different kind of video."
"Right," he mutters, stepping slowly into the room and making sure to leave the door wide open. It doesn't actually make any difference either way, seeing as they're the only two occupants of their apartment, but it does make him feel marginally better about himself. He clears his throat as Clarke pads over to her speakers, where her phone's already docked in and playing some kind of soft music he doesn't recognise, but it's breathy and airy and atmospheric. "So, uh. Kind of late to get started filming, isn't it?"
Clarke usually takes at least an hour or two to film her videos, even the deceptively simple ones that end up running five or so minutes in length after final edits. Also, she usually prefers working by daylight, so for her to start filming something new mere minutes before they usually head to bed is definitely out of the ordinary.
"Oh, I'm not filming now," she says, tapping a couple buttons on her phone.
He freezes.
"What?" he says, and then shakes his head. "I mean, uh. If you're not filming right now, why are we..." He trails off, uncertain how to explain his concern that giving his roommate a hickey for business purposes would feel a lot easier if they were drenched in the stark glare of morning sunlight instead of bathed in the delicate warmth of Clarke's fairy lights set-up. Maybe he should ask her if they can turn on the fluorescent ceiling light? (Not that… not that it matters very much.)
She shoots him a look, both perplexed and amused. "The hickey needs to be fully formed, Bellamy. I can't just cover up some redness and call it a day. I need a proper bruise, which means I've gotta let it sit overnight."
"Right," he says, trying not to think about how his tongue feels like it's gone numb. "Of course, yeah.”
"Sorry, just getting my bedtime playlist set up," she says, finishing with one last tap to her phone "All done." She walks back over to him, stopping an arm's length away and planting her hands on her hips. "Okay, let's do this."
He blinks at her.
Clarke's expression of confidence slips ever so slightly, and her arms cross loosely over her middle. "Hey. Are you still okay to do this?" A flash of something inscrutable crosses her face, and then it's gone, painted over with concern. "It's fine if you don't want to."
"No, it's not—" He shakes his head, and forces himself to get a fucking grip. This is Clarke, for crying out loud. His roommate. Probably his best friend in the world (second best, if Miller has anything to say about it). This is his friend and his roommate, who's asking for, like, two minutes' worth of his help.
"It's fine," he says. "I want to. Help," he adds quickly.
She studies him for a brief moment, her blue eyes sharp on his brown ones, and then she shrugs, her brows softening from their hard arch and her arms dropping to her sides. "Okay. Ready when you are."
He stares at her carefully neutral expression, the relaxed set of her shoulders. She's letting him take full control of the situation, he realises.
"Okay," he mutters, more to himself than her, and takes a small step forward.
She looks at him expectantly.
He takes another step forward, bringing them close enough that he could sway forward and bump into her. She tilts her head back slightly to maintain eye contact, her face still impressively impassive, which he finds minutely reassuring.
Moving more steadily than he expects of himself, he lifts both hands and settles them lightly on her waist, his heart thudding harder when he realises he's touching skin instead of cotton where her tank top's ridden up. She flinches slightly, and he immediately freezes. "Sorry. Cold?"
"No, it's—" She gives a small shake of her head, and smiles. "Your fingers are just a lot warmer than I thought. It's nothing; keep going."
He gives her a tentative grin, and focuses back on the task at hand. "Okay. Good. Just, uh—hold still."
She does exactly as he asks as he moves his left hand up to her neck, his fingertips brushing lightly over the exposed skin as he slowly sweeps her hair back over her shoulder. For a flash, he could swear he feels the slightest tremble of her body under his hands, but it's gone before he can be quite sure.
He bends towards her, brushing his nose lightly over the juncture where her neck meets her shoulder before letting his lips do the same. He's acutely aware of her breath fanning warmly over the side of his own neck, the growing warmth of her skin under his fingertips. Her chest is lightly pressed up against his with the proximity, the rounded softness of her breasts leaning into his hardness.
He grazes his lips carefully over her neck, darts his tongue out to wet them, and then does it again. Her breathing's distinctly quicker now, her chest rising a little faster and harder against his with the force of it.
He noses up a few inches to her ear. "This okay?" he whispers, drawing her even closer by the waist.
There's a shuddering breath against his neck, and then—
"Yeah."
Shoving aside the urge to analyse her breathily delivered response for signs of any reciprocated sexual arousal, he brings his right hand up from her waist, trailing it up her body in a light caress. The backs of his fingers make light contact with a curve that is definitely the side of a breast, and holy Christ she's not wearing a—
Focus, he silently orders himself, and his hand keeps moving upwards until it finds her shoulder. He lets his palm smooth over the expanse of skin, down over the top of her bare arm and back up over the slope of her shoulder to find her neck. He slips his hand higher, fingers stealing into her hair to curve around the nape of her neck. As gently as he can, he angles her head so that the right side of her neck is even more exposed to him.
Shit. He can practically feel her heartbeat against his chest.
And… it just might be as fervent as his.
A surge of boldness swells up in him, and he lowers his head to that same spot on her skin, right where her neck and shoulder meet, and, as lightly and slowly as he can, presses his lips to her skin in a chaste kiss.
There it is. It's soft and slight against his ear, but there's no mistaking it.
She gasps.
Suddenly gripped with an overwhelming urge to see just how much more he can get out of her, he pulls back a little, just to throw her off-rhythm, and then drops another kiss on her neck, his mouth parted slightly so the warmth of his breath washes over her skin.
Something tugs at the hem of his T-shirt—her right hand, no longer hanging limply at her side, but pulling him even closer so they're now flush against each other, so close that not even a piece of paper could have edged between them.
He's going to take that as a good sign.
One hand tightening around her waist and the other in her hair, he pulls her impossibly closer and seals his mouth over that spot on his neck— his spot. When his tongue slips out to taste her, a deep moan vibrates through his chest, and for a split second, he thinks she's going to push him away for enjoying this so blatantly—and then he realises, holy fuck, he's not the one moaning.
Buoyed by the encouragement, he slides his tongue along her skin. She tastes sweet and salty all at the same time, and it's so much more of her than he thought he would ever get to have. He mouths along the column of her neck, greedily drinking in every inch of her he can get his lips on. He nips lightly at the hollow just under her jaw, the skin tender and soft right where her pulse throbs, and damn if the heady sigh that falls from her lips doesn't get him a little dizzy.
He never even notices her left hand moving from her side, but suddenly it's burying itself in his hair, which he definitely notices. Her fingers tangle themselves in his inky curls, holding him to her like she's afraid he's going to run away or stop. Which he couldn't, even if he wanted to.
The thought is almost too much to handle.
"Clarke," he breathes, revelling in the feel of a shiver running down her spine and under his fingertips before diving back down to fasten his lips over the spot he's marked out for himself on her skin.
He's always relatively enjoyed hickeys, both the giving and receiving of, but shit, this just might be the best hickey he's ever experienced in his life. It blows every other love-bite he's ever participated in creating out of the water, and he's not sure if it's the way Clarke's skin tastes or Clarke's urgent gasps and moans or Clarke's fingers tugging in his hair or Clarke's body writhing against his like she can't get close enough or Clarke's hand stealing under his shirt to spread over the heated skin of his waist—Clarke, Clarke, Clarke—but the one thing he is sure of is that he never, ever wants this to end.
Once he's sure the mark is nice and fully formed, he takes as much time as he thinks he can get away with to slow it down, his hand slipping from her hair to smooth over her shoulder and down her arm to soothe them both. Nevertheless, he can't help lingering over her skin, pressing a couple last kisses to her neck before pulling back reluctantly, his eyes taking an extra beat to focus properly on hers.
"Okay," he says, his voice low and ragged. "I think—"
Before he can so much as blink, both her hands are curving around his face and her lips are firmly on his, moving with an eager pressure that has his blood heating up again within milliseconds, his arms winding automatically around her waist to anchor them against each other.
Oh my God, he manages to think in his last vestiges of self-control.
He's really doing it. He's kissing her. She's kissing him.
They're… kissing.
Giving up on all attempts at conscious thought, he surrenders completely to the moment and lets himself get lost in Clarke, in kissing her, touching her, exploring as much of her as she's giving him with his mouth, his tongue, his hands, all as she explores him right back.
By the time they come up for air, her tank top is completely askew, his right hand is on her ass, fingers dipped under the short hem to find skin, and his shirt has somehow evacuated his body without his notice.
But she doesn't pull away, and, well, he's certainly not going to be the first one to do so.
They just stay there, wrapped in each other's arms, foreheads pressed together and breathing each other in like nothing else in the world matters.
Finally, Clarke stirs, tipping her head back to look up at him. "Bellamy?" Her voice is even huskier than usual.
He resists the urge to clear his throat. "Yeah?"
Her eyes flick down to his lips—like she can actually see traces of herself on him—and then back up to meet his gaze. "We're not just friends, are we?"
He swallows. "Probably not, no."
To his utter relief, she sighs and slumps into him, her forehead dropping to his shoulder. "Oh, thank God. I've wanted to do that for years."
"Wow," he says. "That's pathetic."
And then he laughs, taking the offended punch she deals to his shoulder with a big grin. Catching hold of her wrist, he tugs her back into his arms, sliding his arms around her waist and locking his fingers behind her back. "Kidding, princess. Me too."
"Wow, that's pathetic," she echoes back, smiling despite herself as she leans up to kiss him again. She hums happily against his lips, the light vibration turning his insides all soft and warm, and then pulls back, a spark of amusement dancing in her eyes. "So is it my turn to give you a hickey?"
He smirks. "I thought you'd never ask."