Archive of Our Own

"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel."

-Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

1. May 2015

Clarke gets to L’Arche early this year. Some English-speaking researchers call it “The Ark,” but Clarke likes to stick with the French name. It is in France, after all.

L’Arche is one of the more recently discovered Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe, and it is Clarke’s domain. She’s a biological anthropologist, studying human remains found at L’Arche to pursue the mysteries of human evolution. She’s also the lead researcher—well, one of the lead researchers—and everything that happens here during the busy field season is, at the end of the day, her responsibility.

She needs it, the early arrival. She needs time there by herself before the chaos descends, the buzz of the research teams for each specialization tripping over each other and the summer field school students learning how to not break things, before her life becomes a constant stream of troubleshooting and problem-solving. This is her eighth summer at L’Arche, and she knows that, if she wants any moment of quiet at all, she has to seek it out early on.

She also knows that this is the only way to get time at the site before he arrives.

The only other person there so far, besides the local crew that helps them run the site, is her graduate student and research assistant, Octavia Blake. Octavia doesn’t mention him, which is no small feat given that he is Octavia’s brother, but Octavia wouldn’t be Clarke’s grad student if she wasn’t smart, and she’s smart enough to know not to mention him. She knows how to keep the peace.

L’Arche is a large site, a combination of a former farm field that happens to be filled with artifacts that are tens of thousands of years old, and a cave system filled with more artifacts, burial sites, and cave paintings. Every field season, a camp pops up around the old farmhouse and outbuildings. There are a few small cabins that have been built over the years to house the more senior researchers, but most people live in the small village of tents. There’s a mess hall in the old barn, and a fire pit where everyone gathers in the evenings. It’s a nice place, their remote research hub in the middle of France.  

The farmhouse is where they set up the lab. Clarke cleans it repeatedly and sets up her equipment. She settles into her cabin and walks every inch of the site, forcing herself to remember why she does this, why she loves this work, why she works tirelessly on site every field season and why she continues to work tirelessly in her office back in Vancouver for the rest of the year.

She needs the reminder now, and will need to constantly remind herself this season, of why she does this. Because being here with him is going to be pure hell, and if she’s going to live through hell, she needs to remember why it’s worth the suffering.

“Clarke!” Octavia says as she pokes her head in the door of the lab. “We’re heading into the village for a supply run. Do you want to come?”

Clarke continues to scrub down the countertop. “No thanks.”

“Okay, well… We’ll be back after dinner. Are you sure you’ll be okay here by yourself?”

Of course she’ll be okay. Clarke is a survivor. If anyone will be okay, it’s her. She needs the silence anyway.

“I’ll be fine.”

May 2012

They hated each other at first site. Well, if Clarke was being fair, she hated him before first sight. The Ark was her dig, it had been since her masters degree. She wasn’t going to let some hotshot Paleolithic archaeologist with a focus on cave art waltz in like he owned the place.

“Try to be nice, Clarke,” her graduate supervisor had said on the phone. “He comes with grant money.”

Bellamy Blake. Ph.D. candidate from the University of Pennsylvania. Recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation grant that was contributing a nice chunk of change to the running of the site for the summer. When he showed up a day late, jumping out of a Jeep on a warm morning in late May, she stared him down with her iciest fake smile and false words of welcome.

He was tall and dark and full of the kind of male academic ego that she despised. “I don’t care how much grant money you’re bringing in,” she said as she shook his hand with enough force to make him raise his brows. “If your Paleo idiots get in the way of my bio team, I’ll kill you.”

His hand tightened enough to cause a moment of pain before he let go, brown eyes flashing. “My ‘paleo idiots’ will be too busy making this site relevant again to get in the way of your bio nerds, Princess.”

“Excuse me? What did you just call me?” she fumed.

“You heard me,” he said, and then he hitched his duffel onto his shoulder and walked past her towards the tents with a swagger that made her blood boil.

It was a long field season.

2. May 2015

She knows when he arrives, because it’s impossible not to hear Jasper’s excited voice shouting “What up, boss!” across the camp and the general shuffle that follows of people going to greet him. Bellamy is popular with everyone in camp, unlike Clarke, who prefers getting work done over making friends.

She keeps busy in her cabin until the fuss dies down. She hears his footsteps coming and knows when he gets to his own cabin, which stands right next to hers, by the sound of his boots on the wooden floor. He throws his things around, settles in, and she ignores the fact that she can hear it all, can envision exactly what he’s doing right now—situating his favorite pillow, stacking up a pile of books next to his bed.

They’ve been in touch via email, because as co-leaders of the dig they’ve had to be, to make plans for the summer field season. Email is safe, impersonal, an effective means to an end. Thanks to it, they haven’t had a real conversation in nine months.

She hears him knock something over and curse to himself. He knows she’s in here, she’s sure of that. He always knows where she is, somehow, and it drives her crazy.

She wonders if he’ll stop by to greet her, or if he’ll just ignore her. She focuses on the book in front of her and pretends she isn’t waiting to see what he’ll do.

After fifteen minutes that feel like hours, she hears him walking down the path away from the cabins, away from her.

June 2012

He settled into camp easily, much to Clarke’s annoyance. He took over half of her lab space overnight and by mid-season had a steady flow of artifacts and data coming through, making good on the promises he made in his grant proposal.

Everyone loved him, even Raven, the lab tech who keeps the sophisticated scientific equipment going in addition to keeping the remote camp’s old wiring intact. Raven, who hated everyone, somehow didn’t hate Bellamy Blake.

“He’s not the worst,” she said to Clarke one night in late June as they took apart an old piece of equipment from the bio anth lab. It was always Clarke’s lab equipment that was breaking, of course. Bellamy’s equipment was all brand new.

Clarke stared at Raven. She always counted on Raven to be misanthropic with her, and she felt betrayed.

“He’s fucked half the girls in camp already and it’s barely mid-summer,” she said bitterly.

“So?” Raven replied, reaching for a screwdriver. “Fieldwork is always a fuckfest.”

It was. That’s what happened when you put a bunch of college kids and grad students together in Bumfuck Nowhere, France with plenty of good French alcohol and time to kill in the evenings. Archaeologists knew how to have a good time.

“He’s just…” Clarke said, jaw clenched, unable to finish the sentence.

“Hot as hell?” Raven suggested. “I’d hit that.”

“He’s a smug asshole,” Clarke spat, “and I’m sick of his shit.”

Raven chuckled as Clarke stormed out, muttering something about needing to check on the dig.

3. May 2015

They can’t avoid each other forever. This is unfortunate for Clarke, because she would love nothing more. She toys with the idea of staying in her cabin for the rest of the summer before taking a deep breath and going to the lab, where she needs to get set up if she’s going to be ready before the field school students arrive.

She and Octavia are running through the logistics of how they’re going to excavate the burials they discovered the previous summer when Bellamy walks into the lab carrying a box of books and lab supplies.

“Hey Bell,” Octavia says before turning to Clarke to assess her reaction.

“Hey,” Bellamy grunts, his voice a low rumble and his eyes focused on something in the box.

This is safer, Clarke thinks, having this encounter with Octavia to act as a buffer between them.

There’s an awkward silence that goes on long enough for Octavia to feel the need to stand up. “Well! This has been fun, guys, but I hear a campfire calling my name. So if it’s okay with you, Clarke, I think I’m gonna head out.”

“That’s fine, Octavia,” Clarke replies, shuffling the stack of notes they’ve been working on.

Octavia stops to kiss her brother on the cheek and whisper something in his ear that Clarke can’t hear before vanishing through the door.

“Hi,” Clarke says, forcing herself to talk because more silence might kill her.

“Hi,” he replies, dropping the box heavily onto one of the lab benches and causing some equipment to move.

“Careful, you’ll knock the total station onto the floor,” Clarke says.

“Whatever,” he growls back. He begins to pull things out of the box and toss them haphazardly onto the bench.

She looks down at her notes. “Octavia and I were just going over the excavation plan for the northwestern corner of the new cavern. Part of it depends on what your team is planning for the western wall, so if you could give us your schedule when you have it ready, that would be great.”

He sets a small box of sample bags down and gives it a nudge so it slides toward the total station before he turns to look at her for the first time. “Business as usual, is that the plan?”

Clarke sighs. “We have an excavation to manage, Bellamy. We don’t have time for hurt teenager feelings.”

His eyes flash and she knows he’s taking that last remark personally. “So we’ll just be assholes to each other like usual and pretend we didn’t spend most of last summer screwing each other’s brains out?”

His voice sends a chill down her spine and she digs the tip of her pen into the doodle she’s sketching at the corner of her notepad until the paper starts to tear. “Works for me.”

Bellamy shoves the now-empty box against the wall with more force than necessary. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what’s best for everyone,” she says, and goes back to work on her notes, pretending he’s not there.

July 2012

They settled into a pattern of fighting over the course of the summer, and by the end of the season they were well-practiced.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me, Clarke!” Bellamy yelled out the lab door through which Clarke had just emerged.

“I’m not the joke here, Blake,” she yelled back as she stormed across the open area between the lab and the tent village, toward the trail that leads to the dig.

He followed her to make sure she didn’t sabotage his team’s part of the site, an act he wouldn’t put past her. “We haven’t finished this conversation, and you’re running away like a child.”

“You’re calling me a child? You and your goon squad nearly destroyed a month’s worth of my samples with your carelessness just now. I can’t believe a respectable degree-granting institution let you through its doors with the way you run your lab.”

“Oh, this shit again? We both know you think I’m not good enough for your precious Ivy League, Princess, but you’ll just have to deal with the fact that I earned my way here,” he said with a sneer.

Never mind that she was the one at a large public institution now and he was the one at Penn. He’d never let her forget the price tag on her undergraduate degree from Yale. She spun around to face him. “I told you to never. Fucking. Call. Me. That. Again.”

He got right in her face. “I’ll call you whatever the hell I want.”

Screw being mature. She shoved him as hard as she could and he stumbled back, his face betraying a flash of surprise before assuming his typical mask of derision.

She met his derision with her own. “You will treat me with respect. You think you’re such hot shit strutting in here with your NSF money, screwing all the camp bimbos, acting like you’re God’s gift to women and archaeology. Well guess what, Blake. I was here before you, and I’m going to be here long after you’re gone. I don’t need your incompetent ass getting in the way of my field season. So back the fuck off and stay out of my way for the rest of the summer.”

He scoffed at her. “You don’t own this place, Clarke. Or did your grandparents buy it for you like they bought the new wing of that museum at Yale?”

“Leave my family out of this,” she spat back.

He then had the audacity to laugh. “We share a lab. And unless you find us another old farmhouse to repurpose, it’s going to stay that way. So why don’t you stop being such an entitled bitch and we can all just relax and finish the season on a good note.”

She slapped him before she realized what she was doing and was immediately filled with an overwhelming sense of satisfaction. She should have done that weeks ago, she thought as he stared at her in shock, rubbing his reddening cheek.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “I hate you. So much more than I ever thought I could hate someone. But I have to work with you. So, if you want to not get murdered before the season ends, it’s probably best that you steer clear of my half of the lab, and of me in general, after that shit you pulled today.”

He recovered his balance and stood with his arms across his chest. “I’m not afraid of you, Griffin,” he said.

She jerked her knee up quickly as if to nail him in the balls and laughed as he flinched in anticipation of the contact. “Yeah right,” she said, and then she strolled back to camp with a smirk on her face.

They barely spoke the rest of the summer.

4. May 2015

They’ve been fighting like cats all week. Clarke finds that the only time she can handle making eye contact with him is when they’re screaming at each other, so she uses that as a mechanism for getting any necessary communication with her co-leader taken care of that she can’t pass off to Octavia.

She’s working with several field school students on the northwestern corner burials when there’s a fumbling noise and one of them cries out in pain.

“Oh my gosh, Hannah, are you okay?” Clarke asks in alarm.

The girl is rubbing the top of her head. “Something fell on me. It’s not bad but… where did it come from?”

It came from Jasper, Bellamy’s team member, who is standing on some scaffolding nearby with a guilty look on his face. “Sorry!” he says. “I just had to grab something. We’re trying to get the lighting system in place before we start work on the western wall, and I dropped a piece.”

Clarke’s blood begins to boil.

“Wait here,” she says to her students. “Octavia, grab the med kit and check Hannah’s head.”

“Sure,” Octavia says, watching Clarke warily. She knows where Clarke is going.

Clarke marches out of the caves and spots him immediately, across the outdoor dig area, standing with Monty over a new pit their team is excavating this summer. She ignores the way the sweltering heat makes his shirt stick to his chest.

“What the actual fuck, Bellamy?”

“Well hello, Clarke,” he says, the sneer on his face a familiar one.

“Why do you have your idiots crawling all over the western wall scaffolding? Jasper nearly killed one of our field school students just now when he dropped something on her head.”

Concern flashes across Bellamy’s face but Clarke keeps going.

“Did you even look at the schedule I put on your desk? You know we’re working in the northwestern corner in the afternoons all week, and that means nobody on the scaffolding!”

Monty looks between them like he’s about to watch a UFC match.

Bellamy crosses his hands over his chest. “I sent him up there to grab something. We need to fix it before we can start work up there. Nobody is actually working up there yet, so you can cool your jets.”

“It doesn’t matter whether he’s actually doing archaeology or not, Bellamy. Nobody on the scaffolding while people are working below. That’s the rule and you know it!”

“Oh, so you’d rather I just leave the broken piece up there instead of taking advantage of some down time when Raven can actually fix it? Because you seem to think you own all of her time! And if I didn’t get this taken care of now, we might never get anything done on that goddamn wall! So excuse me for working around you, Clarke!”

“How dare you accuse me of commandeering Raven’s time like that?”

“Because that’s exactly what you do!”

“I do not do that!”

“Yes, you do! You act like you own Raven, and you act like you own the entire Ark site, but you don’t. We are equals here, Clarke. This place is mine as much as it’s yours. And I’ll do what I have to do to get things done around here.”

Clarke is so angry she can’t form words, and a growling noise comes out of her mouth that has Monty’s eyebrows rising as he jumps back. “This is about safety, Bellamy! Not about your inferiority complex.”

“My what?”

“Every time you screw up you try to cover your ass with your ‘we’re equals here’ bullshit when it has nothing to do with the matter at hand. It’s like you feel the need to remind me, constantly, of what a big, important, male academic you are. Which doesn’t matter at all when members of your team are dropping things onto our students’ heads!”

Bellamy’s eyes are wide. “I can’t believe the shit coming out of your mouth right now!”

“I can’t believe the shit you think you’re entitled to, you asshole!”

“Oh, you want to talk entitlement? Bring it on,” he seethes.

Clarke stamps her foot. She’s over this. “Keep your goons off the scaffolding when people are working on the burials underneath!”

“I’d consider it if you weren’t being such a massive bitch right now, Clarke!”

“Fuck you, Bellamy! Fuck you and your inflated ego and your blatant disregard for everything that keeps things running smoothly around here! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and make sure our student isn’t dead thanks to you.”

She spins on her heel and storms away, her adrenaline pumping and her ears ringing with his insults.

“Whoa,” she hears Monty say as she walks away. “I hope the kid’s okay.”

“Can it, Green,” Bellamy snaps back.

Clarke lets an angry smile crawl across her face, because it’s the only thing that will keep the tears from flowing.

May 2013

He was back again the next summer with more grant money and more attitude. Thanks to her supervisor, Clarke knew he had defended his dissertation and finished his Ph.D. around the same time she finished hers. Clarke had applied for a job in the department where she did her Ph.D., and thanks to her strong publishing record and teaching experience, she’d been hired as an assistant professor.

And because the universe seemed to conspire against her, Bellamy had also been hired as an assistant professor, not in her department—thank the heavens—but by the university on the other side of the city from Clarke’s university.

It wasn’t like she spent much time in that part of town, but now she had an extra reason to avoid it. Dealing with him during the summer was enough. She didn’t need the antagonism to spread throughout the school year, too.

Beyond that, she’d been able to forget his existence. For the most part. Once planning for the field season started, she’d had to concede a bit of brain space, but she’d made sure to only refer to him as “That Asshole.”

When he rolled into camp with his goofball entourage in tow, Clarke was busy settling into the small cabin she now got to occupy as the lead biological anthropologist on site. Her graduate supervisor had retired from that position, finally, and Clarke was now officially in charge.

With That Asshole.

She heard him banging around in his own small cabin nearby, which he now got to occupy as the lead Paleotlithic archaeologist on site, and kept her head down when she heard his footsteps crunching on the dirt and then walking on her small porch.

“Hey,” he said, standing in the doorway, his face blank and unreadable.

She pretended to be very focused on a journal article on her desk. “Blake,” she said.

He sighed. This was off to a bad start. “Look. We have to make this work.”

She looked up at him, finally. “I know.”

He looked momentarily surprised that she agreed with him before he kept going. “Between running the field school and running our own research teams, this is all going to go much more smoothly if we’re not at each other’s throats.”

She stood up and walked toward him, and he eyed her warily. “Fine,” she said, hand on hip, waiting for him to continue.

“It’s no secret that we dislike each other—“

“Ha!” Clarke said. “That’s an understatement.”

Bellamy shook his head, the exasperation starting to slip in. “Can we just have a truce or something? We’re both done with school now, we have jobs; it’s not like we’re competing with each other anymore. We both need this dig to succeed for the good of our careers. Are you willing to work together with me on this?”

She stared at him, wanting to stare him down until she could see him squirm, but he was just a big, imposing hulk of already-tanned muscle, wearing his tough guy face.

She hated him, but she also heard him. He wasn’t wrong, and she hated him even more for that. She stuck her hand out to shake his. He looked down at it and then back up at her, eyebrows raised, and then gripped her hand in his.

“I’ll work with you, for the good of the students and the research,” she said. “But piss me off and you’re dead, Blake.”

He met her scowl with a genuine smile that shocked her, not because she’d never seen Bellamy smile before, but because he’d never smiled at her before, not like that. She dropped his hand.

“Also, if you could bear in mind that our non-soundproof cabins are close together when you embark on your womanizing this summer, I’d really appreciate it,” she added.

“What’s the matter, Clarke? Jealous you haven’t had your turn yet?” he replied, his expression reverting back to the typical sneer he used when talking to her.

“Fuck off, Blake,” she said as she shoved him out the door without true force. After the previous summer, she knew she could push him around a bit to make her point.

“Hey,” he said, turning back after walking off her porch. “Congratulations on finishing your Ph.D., Doctor Griffin.”

She stared at him and then shrugged. “Thanks. Um, you too, Doctor Blake.”

And then she shut the door so she could get back to ignoring him. It didn’t occur to her until much later, when she was falling asleep in her cabin, that he hadn’t called her Princess even once. She smiled.

They were back at each other’s throats within 24 hours, screaming over lab space.

Nobody was surprised.

5. June 2015

Octavia manages to hold out on mentioning the blockbuster fight over the scaffolding until one day in June when she and Clarke are working at the northwestern burial site together. It’s quiet, because the field school students have been given two days off to go explore the area. Apparently some people want to play tourist when they come to France instead of just digging up 30,000 year old bones in a cave the entire time, so the schedule gives them some freedom.

As a grad student, Octavia isn’t afforded this luxury, but she makes up for it on either end of the season by spending time with her French boyfriend, Lincoln, at his family’s vineyard. Clarke has known Lincoln for years. She’s met his family. She definitely approves. She thinks the romance is cute, for the most part, when it isn’t overly nauseating.

“Can you pass me a smaller trowel?” Clarke asks Octavia, who has been suspiciously quiet that morning.

Octavia reaches into the box of tools and locates the trowel, then looks at Clarke.

“Are you going to pass it to me or just hold onto it while making a face?” Clarke asks after a moment.

“Have you guys talked since your big fight last week?” Octavia asks.

Clarke sits back. “You want talk about this now?”

“Have you?”

Clarke thinks. They’ve interacted when necessary, but they’re good at minimizing that. “It depends on what you mean by ‘talk.’”

“I don’t know, maybe you guys could try… apologizing to each other?”

Clarke laughs, and it comes out bitter. “It’ll be a cold day in hell when I apologize to him.”

“Clarke,” Octavia says earnestly. “It would make everyone’s lives so much easier if you two would make some kind of effort to be civil to one another.”

Clarke settles into her familiar defensive mode when it comes to Bellamy. “It’s not my fault that—“

“It is both your faults! You guys fight over every tiny thing and I’m sick of it.”

The tone in Octavia’s voice makes Clarke pause. As much as this is a strange conversation to have with someone who is her student, she knows that her relationship with Octavia goes beyond the typical grad student-supervisor mold. She cares about Octavia, and when Octavia is emotional about something, Clarke responds.

“Bellamy and I have been fighting forever. It’s just how we do things,” Clarke says.

“I just thought that, after last summer, things might be different this time around,” Octavia responds.

Clarke freezes. She knows that Octavia is aware, to some extent, that she and Bellamy were sleeping together last summer, but it’s not a subject they have ever discussed before. That was definitely over the grad student-supervisor relationship line. 

“Last summer was… it was… not anything that is going to change how your brother and I treat each other. We’re colleagues. We butt heads sometimes, and I’m sorry if that’s stressful for you, but it’s just the way we are. We tolerate each other and we make this field site work, and that’s what matters.”

Octavia shakes her head in sad frustration. “You know, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my brother.”

Clarke nods. “I know. It’s a good thing he got involved with L’Arche when he did and there was a field school you could come to. Not many siblings get to work together like that.”

“No, you don’t get it, Clarke. I wouldn’t be here, as your grad student, if it wasn’t for Bellamy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that during my senior year of undergrad, when I was freaking out about what to do with my life, and weighing all kinds of different options, Bellamy was the only person who kept me sane. Lincoln was in France and I was just—losing my mind with indecision. It’s so hard, trying to pick a path to go down, you know?”

Clarke nods, although she doesn’t quite follow.

“I was thinking through all of my options, and grad school was one of them, but that was stressing me out more than anything because I had no idea how to decide where to apply. I had this whole list of programs, potential supervisors, all of that, and it was just overwhelming. So one night, when I was practically tearing my hair out in frustration, Bellamy called me on Skype, and he said to me, ‘O, if you want to go to grad school, you should apply to be Clarke’s student. She’s the best at what she does, she’s an incredible teacher, and I know you want to be like her when you grow up, so you should just do it.’ I didn’t have you on my list because I wasn’t sure if you were even taking grad students since you were just starting out your job, but once Bellamy said that to me, it was like the answer was crystal clear. All that confusion just went away. And here I am.”

Clarke feels her mind spinning as she absorbs what she’s hearing, but she has no idea how to respond to what Octavia has just told her, so she says nothing.

Octavia finally hands her the trowel. “I know you guys have been fighting forever, but… he respects you, Clarke. A lot. And I’m guessing he’s never told you that, given the look on your face right now, so I’m telling you, because it drives me crazy to see you two tearing each other down all the time.”

Clarke looks down at the trowel that now rests in her hands. “Okay,” she finally mumbles. “I don’t really know what to say.”

Octavia gives her a sad smile. “You don’t have to say anything. I just needed to get that off my chest. We can keep working, like we always do.”

Clarke nods, and they do just that.

June 2013

One of the biggest surprises of that summer, for Clarke, was Bellamy’s sister Octavia. It turned out one reason Bellamy was so concerned with the field school going well was that his sister was enrolled as one of the students. She was going into her senior year of college and wanted to be a biological anthropologist, just like Clarke.

“How did you know you wanted to do this?” Octavia asked Clarke one day while they were at the dig, slowly uncovering a human skeleton the crew had found recently. It was the latest in a series of burials they’d found at L’Arche that year. It had been a good season so far for the bio anth team.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the human body,” Clarke said as she used a brush to slowly remove dirt from bone. “My mom wanted me to go to med school and be a doctor like her, but I wanted to dig deeper into human evolution, to figure out what people were like then, what they were eating and how they were living, and how all of that makes us what we are today.”

“You wanted answers,” Octavia said, and Clarke nodded.

“Exactly. I took a biological anthropology class my first year of college and that was it. That was the way to find the answers, for me. I did a field school and the rest is history. My mom’s even kind of okay with it now.”

Octavia looked surprised. “You got your Ph.D. before you turned thirty and you have a job in one of the best departments in North America.  Your mom is just okay with that?” 

“She’s a hard woman to please,” Clarke said.

She bent her head back down to focus on her work, and Octavia knew that that part of the conversation was over.

So instead she steered it back to Clarke’s other least favorite topic: Bellamy.

“You know my brother is moving to Vancouver at the end of the summer, right?”

Clarke grunted in acknowledgement.

“That excited, huh?” Octavia asked jokingly.

Clarke shrugged. “It’s a good department. He’s lucky to get that job.”

Octavia looked offended. “He’s more than lucky. He earned that job, just like you earned yours.”

Clarke was taken aback, but she knew by now about the loyalty between the Blake siblings, the strength of their bond. Everybody knew from watching them laugh and fight together.

“You’re right,” Clarke said. “He did earn it. But he’s still a pain in my ass, so don’t expect me to like it.”

Octavia just smirked and went back to digging.

7. June 2015

Given that they live in the same city and work in departments at their respective universities with almost exactly the same focus, Clarke and Bellamy manage to do an incredible job of avoiding each other during the regular school year. After their latest blow-up Clarke wishes, during the waning days of May, that it was as easy to do so here.

After the way they'd left things the previous summer, she’d been afraid that she would run into him in Vancouver and they'd be forced to interact. Mercifully, this never happened. The only exception was when Clarke gave a colloquium talk in her own department in late January about her research findings from the summer before.

She had already begun her talk when she saw him duck into the filled room and stand at the back. She wasn't surprised to see him there, given that their departments always advertised their colloquium talks to one another due to the crossover of research interests between faculty and students at both institutions. They shared a field site. In the eyes of their colleagues, it would be weird if he didn't come.

She mentioned him once, early on in the talk, while giving an overview of L'Arche and the work that was being done there.

"In addition to our team's research on the human remains at L'Arche, there is extensive ongoing archaeological work being carried out by Dr. Bellamy Blake and his Paleolithic team," she said in her most serious professor voice, in front of a slide portraying a map of the site with the various excavations labeled.

She thought she saw him give her a slight nod from his position in the back, but she could just as well have imagined it.

During the Q&A period at the end, one of the older professors in Clarke's department raised a question.

"Very interesting work you're carrying out, Dr. Griffin. I'm curious, though. You mentioned Dr. Blake's work at the site. Given that the human remains you are studying are likely the same humans who crafted the stone tools and other artifacts Dr. Blake's team is finding—not to mention the incredible new cave paintings discovered there last summer—are the two of you planning on co-authoring any papers together in the near future?"

She cleared her throat. "We've been busy getting organized just excavating, given the vast amount of new material we found when the new cavern was opened last season, but—"

"It's up for consideration," Bellamy said from the back of the room, causing everyone to turn their heads. "Dr. Griffin is right that we have a lot of other things to work through first, but we will write together eventually. Let us get our joint funding application submitted and then we can talk co-authorship."

This earned a chuckle from the room. If academics can relate to anything, it’s the pain of constantly applying for funding. And if anyone could make a room full of serious academics laugh, it was Bellamy. Clarke suppressed her ire at him cutting her off, because the last thing she wanted to do in a room full of colleagues was have a knock-down-drag-out fight with the person everyone saw as her charismatic co-researcher. She nodded and gave her best professional smile, and the Q&A carried on.

When the talk ended, he was gone from the room before the final applause finished.

July 2013

Octavia fell in love with one of the locals who helped them maintain the site, and Bellamy was beyond furious. He’d managed to warn off all the field school and grad students from his sister, but he hadn’t taken the locals into consideration.

Clarke thought it was hilarious, watching Bellamy get so angry over something he couldn’t control.

“She’s an adult,” she said to Bellamy one night as he raged in the lab while they were processing the day’s artifacts and samples.

“She’s not even done with college,” he yelled back.

“Relax,” Clarke said. “Lincoln’s a good guy. His family owns a vineyard a few hours from here. If Octavia plays her cards right, she could marry into a very old French wine-making family. You should see the old farmhouse, it’s an architectural—“

Bellamy was in her face immediately, backing her up against a lab bench. She was used to him using his body to dominate a conversation, so she ignored him and remained calm, casually looking over the printout in her hands.

“You think this is funny, Griffin?” he said furiously.

“I think Octavia is free to make her own choices and you should respect that,” she replied, feeling a bizarre urge to brush his hair out of his face where it was falling into his blazingly angry eyes.

She ducked under his arm so she could cross the lab to her computer, where she sat and began to fiddle with a spreadsheet.

Bellamy grew quiet. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said after a while, “to raise a sister on your own.”

Clarke stopped typing and turned to find him leaning against the lab bench, staring down at its surface. Bellamy Blake was showing some vulnerability? She was going to have to settle in and observe this, because she never thought she’d see the day.

He pushed away from the table and turned away to glare out the window. “You don’t understand what it’s like to worry, constantly, about another person.”

You don’t know anything about me, she wanted to say, but she held her tongue because, for once, she didn’t want to cause him pain. Not when his face looked like that, with a mix of agony and exhaustion around the eyes.

“I’ve worked my ass off to make a life for her with the same opportunities as other kids,” he said.

“You’ve clearly done well,” Clarke said, causing Bellamy’s head to jerk up in surprise. “Really, Bellamy. She’s a senior in college, her grades are amazing, she’s smart and capable enough to get into any graduate program she wants. The world is her oyster, and I’m guessing a lot of that is because of you. What more could you want for her?”

Bellamy stared at her for a few seconds before shaking his head and letting out a long sigh. “For her not to get knocked up by some farmer in the middle of France?”

Clarke stood up. “Okay. First of all, Lincoln isn’t ‘some farmer.’ He has a masters degree in archaeology and has been managing this site for years, so you can stop being so condescending. And second of all, Octavia refilled her birth control prescription last week when we were in the village getting supplies, so you can rest assured she’s not going to get knocked up.”

Bellamy’s eyes widened, but she knew she’d given him some measure of relief in the way his shoulders relaxed slightly.

“I may not be able to understand what it’s like to raise a sister, but as a woman, I know what independence and self-sufficiency look like, and she has that. Just… trust her to make her own decisions, Bellamy.”

Her hand had somehow made its way onto his forearm during the last part of her speech, and they both stared at it for several seconds before she snatched it away and stomped back over to her computer.

“Are you going to mope in here all night or are you actually going to get some data management done?” she asked.

Bellamy tore his eyes away from her, finally, and grumbled as he slumped down onto the stool in front of his own computer. He was finished complaining and instead fell into a moody, contemplative silence.

6. June 2015

The paper they’d mentioned co-authoring back at Clarke’s colloquium talk in January may still be hypothetical, but the grant application they’re writing together isn’t. It’s real, complete with a very real deadline smack in the middle of June.

There’s no way to get around the direct interaction required for the completion of this task, so Clarke sucks it up and decides to try being relatively civil. Octavia’s words have had more of an effect on her than she likes to admit.

The meet after dinner in neutral territory—the lab—with their laptops ready to go. Clarke had partially drafted her section of the application before the field season started, and it turns out Bellamy had done the same, so they begin by exchanging what they’ve written so far.

They read in silence for the most part, which surprises Clarke. She’s read his work before, and she knows he’s read hers, but they’ve never engaged in the act of writing together. She expected it to be similar to their usual interactions, with them picking at each other’s mistakes, but it’s not. She finds herself falling into the prose, looking for ways to integrate it with her own material.

“I think if we start with some intro text about the two-pronged approach and build on the publication record already associated with L’Arche, your section would fit really well after that,” Bellamy says once they’re done reading.

Clarke looks up from the screen in front of her and nods. “Yeah, that could work.”

Bellamy sits sideways on his stool and looks at her. “I have some ideas about how to frame it so it makes sense how the research questions are tied together, but I’m sure you do to, so this will probably work best if we just hammer it out together over the next few hours.”

He’s also being more civil than usual too, and she wonders if Octavia gave him a piece of her mind as well.

“Okay. Should we type on your computer or mine?”

It goes surprisingly well. They bounce ideas off each other and suggest lines of text, making sure the wording is just right. Maybe it’s the deadline and the fact that there’s no time for arguing, maybe it’s Octavia; whatever it is, Clarke is amazed by how productive they are when they put their minds together like this.

It’s nearly midnight when her finger hovers over the track pad on her laptop, ready to click the “submit” button on the funding agency’s website.

“Ready?” she asks, the smile on her face fueled by the crazy energy she gets when she’s been writing for hours.

“As I’ll ever be,” he replies.

She presses her finger down, and they both sigh in relief when the “Thank you for submitting your application!” screen pops up.

“All we have to do now is wait,” she says.

“If they don’t fund this, they’re complete morons,” he says.

She laughs. “Hey now, let’s try and avoid hubris if we can. You never know with these funding agencies.”

“I know that what we just wrote is the best proposal they’re going to see all year,” he says back, smiling.

“It must be nice, having an ego like that,” Clarke says, her voice more teasing than malicious.

“I’m serious, Clarke,” Bellamy says, and she feels it in the timbre of his voice. “You and I, we’re good together. At this,” he adds on at the end, gesturing at his computer to clarify that he means in an academic capacity, not a personal one.

His clarification can’t stop her mind from tripping backwards to another summer night, working late in the lab, that ended with her on the lab bench with no pants on and his head between her legs. She knows by the way he is staring at the bench that his mind is on a similarly dangerous trajectory.

He looks back at her, but instead of making eye contact, his gaze is on her mouth, and it’s almost like he’s touching her, the way her lips tingle. He forces his eyes upward and she sees a tentative challenge there.

Her eyes fall then to his mouth, which she thinks is ridiculous for so many reasons—for the infuriating things that come out of it, for the cocky grins and derisive sneers, for the distracting fullness of his lower lip, for the things she knows he can do with it, to her.

Her mind is going haywire—Start a fight! Run away! Throw a book or something at him! Any of the above!—but her body stays still. Still until she leans forward a fraction of an inch and she is aware of him doing the same thing, because their bodies remember how easy this is, how easy it could be if they just gave in.

She feels the sway forward and then she jumps up from her stool, shaking her head out of its trance. Bellamy leans back, his hands fisting at his sides.

“I should go to sleep,” she says, her voice rough.

He nods. His eyes looks like he could write a novel with all the words he is holding back, but she doesn’t let herself swim in them like she wants to. She tamps down that feeling, pushing it deep until it vanishes.

She needs to get away before she does something stupid.

“Goodnight,” she says after she’s folded up her computer and headed for the door.

He just nods again, like he doesn’t trust himself to speak, and his expression shutters.

They don’t look at each other again before she walks out.

August 2013

“What do you mean the wall of pit C-74 has caved in?” Bellamy yelled at Jasper, one of the younger archaeologists on his team, who had come running to find him in his cabin late at night.

Clarke was already up and throwing on her jeans when he called for her.

“Clarke! Jasper said—“

“I heard him,” she replied as she came out the door, shoving her feet into her boots.

Bellamy looked distraught. “Those idiots, what the hell are they doing out there this time of night?”

“Being college kids?” she responded unhelpfully.

They turned on their headlamps and ran through the dark to the dig, where a small group of people gathered around a hole in the ground, the opening to pit C-74. The group parted to make way for Clarke and Bellamy as they arrived on the scene.

Monty, another young archaeologist from Bellamy’s team, lay at the bottom of the pit, clutching his ankle.

“What the hell happened here?” Bellamy called out. The crowd included a defiant-looking Raven and a guilty-looking Octavia.

Jasper cleared his throat. “It’s my fault. We were having a fire in the woods to celebrate the full moon when—“

“When you managed to move your party onto a 30,000 year old archaeological site?” Bellamy roared.

“Just calm down, Bell,” Octavia said.

Clarke was leaning over the hole, speaking calmly to Monty, reassuring him that everything was going to be okay.

“We didn’t do it on purpose, I swear,” Jasper continued. “We were just playing a game of truth or dare and Monty had to go out here to retrieve something he left earlier today and suddenly we heard him yelling and—“

“The wall collapsed and he fell into the pit,” Raven said from at least ten feet away, “and if you all know what’s good for you you’ll stop tramping around the unstable ground nearby.”

The group backed away, except for Bellamy, who was watching Clarke as she leaned over the edge of the pit talking to Monty. She looked up and locked her eyes on his. “We have to get him out of here. I think his ankle is broken.”

Bellamy nodded. “Jasper, Raven, I need you to go get the ropes and harnesses from the caving gear and bring it back here ASAP.”

They scurried off and he turned back to Clarke. “You look like you have a plan.”

She reached her hand out. “Lower me down?”

He stared at the pit. “Down there? Hell no. Then we’ll have two people stuck in pit C-74 and we’re doubly fucked.”

“How else do you propose we get him out? He’s in pain, he’s scared. Once they get the gear, he won’t be able to put on the harness and clip himself in. He needs help, and I’ll fit down there better than you.”

She was right, but she could tell by his face that he didn’t like it. Her hand was still reaching out, and he took it finally, gripping her tightly. She backed towards the edge of the pit and looked at him. “Slowly, okay?”

He swallowed and held on tightly as she eased herself over the edge, using the wood frame shoring up one of the sturdier walls to control her descent. Her fingers dug into his arm, until she called up to tell him he could let go.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s just a few more feet, I’ve got it.”

He released her hand and she fell the remaining few feet, absorbing the impact with her knees. “Okay! I’m good!” she called up, and began tending to Monty, her hand burning where he’d gripped it.

Hours later, after the group effort had safely gotten Monty and Clarke back out of the pit, they were driving the camp truck to the nearest hospital, over an hour away. He looked over at her where she was sitting in the passenger seat, eyes gazing at the full moon.

“You did good tonight, Clarke,” he said.

She shrugged. “We do what we have to do, to keep everyone in one piece. There are a lot of things that can go wrong on an arch dig.”

That was for sure. They’d spent this, their first full season as leaders, solving any number of minor catastrophes, and when they weren’t troubleshooting to prevent further catastrophes, they sometimes actually got some work done.

He nodded at her in understanding—a part of the silent communication that had developed between them—and returned his eyes to the road.

8. June 2015

After they submit the grant application, they fall into a grudging truce where they avoid each other like usual, but when they have to interact, they manage to do so without ripping each other’s heads off. Clarke supposes Octavia must be pleased.  

Clarke is in her cabin one sweltering evening, wearing nothing but a light dress because it’s too hot for anything else. She’s reading, like she always does in the evenings when she has free time, and finds herself so sucked into the book that she jumps in surprise when a Skype call comes through on her computer. 

It’s her mother.

“Shit,” she mutters under her breath, but she knows she should take it. Her mother never calls, so it must be something important. 

She works her face into a pleasant mask and accepts the call.

“Hi mom,” she says as Abby Griffin’s pixelated face appears on the screen.

“Clarke,” her mother says. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Wrangling a bunch of college kids and dead bodies in rural France, like I do every summer.”

Her mother makes a face. “Dead bodies?”

“Yeah, the 30,000 year old kind? That I study for a living? Nevermind. What’s up?”

Abby takes a breath and by her serious expression Clarke knows this is going to be good. “Clarke, I just got off the phone with Thelonius.”

Clarke’s stomach flips upside down and her heart clenches in her chest at the mention of that name. 

“Okay…?”

“As I’m sure you’re aware, this September is the five year anniversary of… since we lost Wells.”

Wells. Her best friend from childhood who had become more, who had died just as they were falling in love. It has been almost five years, but the pain of losing him still slices through Clarke like a knife. She wants to scream, to drown this out. Her fingers clench at her chair as she fights to remain calm. 

“I know,” she says quietly, since her mother is clearly waiting for some kind of reaction. “Did you call to… remind me of that fact?”

Abby shakes her head. “Thelonius and the Jaha Foundation have made a generous donation to the medical school, helping us renovate one of the buildings. We’ve decided to rename the building in Wells’ honor. It’s only appropriate, given that the donation is from Thelonius and Wells was a student here when he passed away.”

“When he was murdered,” Clarke says flatly, her voice rising. She doesn’t like to talk pretty about this subject. 

“Clarke,” her mother chastises, always so aware of appearances, even on a Skype call. "There's going to be an official opening reception on September 5th, and Thelonius wanted me to ask if you could be there, perhaps say a few words about Wells..."

Clarke's head is pounding, her blood is rushing in her ears.

"Let me get this straight," she says, her voice crawling dangerously high towards breakage. "You want me to speak at some med school wine and cheese party about my dead ex-boyfriend on the anniversary of the day he was murdered by a drunk driver?"

"Clarke," Abby says wearily. This is not new territory for them. “Do you have to use the word ‘murder’?”

"Yes!" Clarke shouts. "Yes, mom, I do! Don’t even start with the ‘manslaughter’ thing. I don’t care how much money got paid out in the settlement, that drunk piece of shit murdered Wells!”

“Clarke? Is everything alright?” a voice calls from the open door of her cabin. Clarke spins around and finds Bellamy standing there, looking concerned.

She has no idea how long he’s been there, how much he’s overheard.

“Who is that?” her mother’s voice asks from the computer.

Clarke sighs. “It’s Bellamy Blake, the other professor who runs the field site with me.”

“Oh,” her mother says. 

Clarke feels a wave of exhaustion wash over her. “Mom, can we finish this conversation later please?”

Abby nods. “Sure, honey. That’s probably a good idea. I guess it’s night time in France, so, have a good night.”

Clarke simply leans over and clicks to end the Skype call. Then she sighs and turns to face Bellamy. Her face is blotchy with threatening tears, and her dress is crooked, so she straightens it and wipes at her still-dry cheek, not wanting to look like a complete mess.

“Are you okay?” Bellamy asks, his voice quiet with worry. He usually reserves this tone for Octavia, she thinks.

Clarke shrugs, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Just a casual Skype fight with my mother about my dead ex-boyfriend. I’ll be fine.”

Bellamy watches her, unsure of what she’ll do next. “Do you want some wine?” he says suddenly.

“What?” Clarke chokes out on a laugh. She’s happy her body chooses laughing over crying.

“Lincoln and Octavia brought a case of pinot gris back from his family’s vineyard and stashed a few bottles in my mini fridge. White wine isn’t exactly my thing, but given that it’s hot as hell out and you seem like you could use a drink, I’ll make an exception.”

“That would be… great, actually,” Clarke says.

“Okay,” Bellamy says. “I’ll be right back.”

Clarke slips her sandals on and walks out to the porch of her cabin just as Bellamy is walking out of his own. He’s changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and he’s carrying a bottle of wine and two chipped coffee mugs.

They sit on her porch steps. “Nice mugs. Are those from the mess hall?” she asks as he pours them each some wine.

The corner of his mouth curves up as he chuckles. “I have a bad habit of carrying my coffee back to my cabin in the mornings before I head over to the dig. Don’t worry, I washed them out first.”

Clarke takes a sip of the cool, golden liquid and lets it run over her tongue before she swallows. “This is delicious,” she says before taking another sip.

Bellamy sips his and lets out a breath. “It really is. Don’t tell anyone I said that,” he jokes.

Clarke rolls her eyes. “We’re in France, Bellamy. Nobody here associates white whine with emasculation. Your reputation is safe, don’t worry.”

“Good,” he says jokingly, and takes another sip.

They drink in silence for a while, looking up at the stars, and Clarke appreciates the light breeze that’s blowing through the clearing, giving them some relief from the heat.

“So how much did you overhear?” she asks eventually.

Bellamy looks over at her. “I caught something about med school, murder, and a dead ex-boyfriend. Are your conversations with your mother always so upbeat?”

Clarke laughs slightly into her mug. The wine has relaxed her, and she’s grateful.

“My mother and I have a complicated relationship,” she says. “She’s the dean of the very prestigious medical school in the town where I grew up, and she’s always been disappointed that I didn’t follow in her footsteps. So any conversation we have that involves med school is automatically going to be a shit show.”  

“She wanted you to be a doctor,” Bellamy says.

“She wanted me to be a medical doctor. Nevermind that I am a doctor, and my knowledge of human anatomy is just as good as hers, because I’m the wrong kind of doctor. A Ph.D. isn’t good enough for her. The bodies I work with are too dead and old.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “She doesn’t get it.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Clarke says, unfolding her legs. “But I’m fine with that. I’ve worked my ass off to be the best at what I do, and even if she isn’t satisfied, I seem to impress her snobby friends. So she still wants to parade me around in front of her cronies when she can, which is what the call was about.”

Bellamy lifts the bottle of wine and gestures to her mug, which she moves under the bottle so he can pour her another glass.

“You’ve made enough snide comments in the past about my family that I don’t need to explain to you the kind of wealthy circles my mother runs in,” she continues.

Bellamy looks out at the clearing and nods slightly. She’s glad he doesn’t deny it, because it’s always been a sticking point between them, and she doesn’t think she can handle him pretending otherwise just because she’s having a rough night.

“My family has always been close with another family, the Jahas. My mom’s side of the family has serious money, I won’t pretend otherwise. But what the Jahas have makes that money look like peanuts. Money like that turns most people who have it into monsters, but the Jahas… they’re good people. They give most of it away through their foundation.”

Clarke takes a long sip of her wine, bracing herself for the next part.

“Their son Wells died five years ago. He was hit by a drunk driver when he was walking back to his apartment from the library one night. He was a student at the medical school. He was… we were…”

She falls silent for a moment and looks up at the sky, at the stars, for some reassurance. She doesn’t talk about Wells. Ever. Except now she is.

“We grew up together. We were best friends from infancy, practically. But things changed when we got older and we—we had just started dating that summer. He was in med school and I was in grad school and we were just… ready to be together, I guess.”

Clarke drains her mug of wine and sets it down with a clatter on the wooden boards of the porch.

“But he died. And now they’re naming a building after him, and they want me to show up in a nice dress and pearls and give a speech. And they can go fuck themselves.”

Bellamy watches her, his expression unreadable. “I’m sorry,” he says eventually, his voice gruff. “I didn’t know.”

Clarke takes the bottle from him and pours herself another splash of wine. “It’s not exactly something I talk I about. With anyone. Ever. But you walked in on my murder rant, so I at least owe you an explanation.”

Bellamy takes the wine from her and tops up his own mug. “You don’t owe me anything, Clarke. But... thank you for telling me. I know it’s not easy to talk about that kind of thing.”

Clarke shakes her head as she plays with the hem of her dress. “It’s impossible. I thought I had it all figured out, after my dad died, but it turns out losing someone you love isn’t like riding a bike. It’s not something you can be prepared for or remember how to do. It just guts you every time.”

Bellamy takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Octavia has probably told you this, but we lost our mom. I was in college, Octavia was still a kid. Every loss, it’s different. So I’m not trying to say I know exactly what you’re feeling right now, Clarke, because I don’t. At all. But that feeling of being gutted, when you lose someone you love… I know what you mean.”

Clarke looks over at him. She knew this fact about him and Octavia, that their mother had died, but she’d certainly never spoken with him about it. She’s never seen the look in his eyes when he talks about his mother, the shadow of the boy he would have still been when it happened.

“Judith Butler had a point, I guess,” she says.

Bellamy makes a bemused face. “You’re bringing Judith Butler into this?”

“Come on, you have a Ph.D. in anthropology, I’m sure you had to read Undoing Gender at some point. You know that line she has, about humans and grief…”

“’Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something,’” he says into his mug.

“Exactly! Wow, you just quoted Judith Butler, verbatim.”

“It’s like the wine. Don’t tell anyone. We archaeologists aren’t supposed to admit we drink white wine or pay attention in theory class,” he says, but she knows he’s joking, his freckles carrying a rosy hue and the muscles in his cheeks threatening a smile.

“We are undone by each other,” she says, weighing the words slowly as she stares up at the sky. “Isn’t that the truth. I always get to the point where I think I have everything all sorted out and arranged in just the right way so I can deal, so I can pack all the tragedy away and be a functioning adult. And my mother says three words over goddamn Skype, of all things, and I lose it.”

“You’re human,” Bellamy says, leaning back so he is propped against his arms on the porch, and Clarke is amazed by how comforting she finds the words.

They’re quiet again for a little while. Clarke finds herself gazing up at the sky.

“I’ve been a scientist my whole life,” Bellamy says eventually. “We’re talking hardcore science nerd from preschool onward. Just ask O. So I’ve always been too much of a pragmatist to believe in angels or the ‘afterlife,’ things like that.”

Clarke nods in understanding.

“But there’s always been a part of me that wonders if, somewhere out there in the universe, there’s still a piece of her. Of the people we’ve lost.”

He’s looking at the stars as well. Clarke bites her lip and then slowly releases her breath. “Me too.”

They sit in companionable silence as they finish their wine, and Clarke feels sleepiness threatening to over take her. She hands him her mug and they bid each other goodnight and go back to their cabins.

Clarke sleeps better than she has in weeks.

May 2014

Clarke came into this field season ready to take charge and get things done. Her first year of teaching at the university back in Vancouver was finished and she was ready to collect some good data so she could keep publishing—a necessity if she wants to get tenure and keep her job.

She had her own grad student research assistant for the first time, and it was someone familiar. Octavia had applied to the program and requested Clarke as her supervisor, and Clarke had gladly accepted her. They both got to camp early, Clarke to set up and prepare, and Octavia so she had time to visit Lincoln’s family vineyard.

“Have fun eating amazing food and drinking amazing wine without me,” Clarke joked as Octavia got ready to leave.

“I’ll bring you a few bottles from the cellar,” Octavia assured her. “Last time they wanted me to take a whole case.”

“Take them up on it this time,” Clarke said. “Lord knows we’ll need it this summer.”

“You think so?” Octavia asked.

Clarke sighed. “More field school students than ever, and on the brink of a new funding application cycle? I’ll take all the wine I can get to keep myself sane. As an added bonus, wine even makes your ass of a brother more tolerable.”

Clarke had made it clear that accepting Octavia as her student did not mean she and Bellamy were suddenly going to be friends. She knew Octavia was thrilled to be living in the same city at Bellamy again, and that they spent a lot of time together, but she didn’t want to be a part of that.

Octavia laughed, but there was some sadness to it. “I know you two have never had the best relationship, but… He doesn’t hate you, Clarke.”

“That’s too bad, because I hate him.”

“No, you don’t,” Octavia insisted.

Clarke glared at her. “Your brother has been a thorn on my side since the day he set foot at L’Arche, and everyone here knows it.”

“Everyone here has had to listen to it, many times,” Octavia replied. “Don’t get me wrong, your screaming matches are great entertainment. But this is your third field season working together. You guys run this place now. Maybe you could… I don’t know… back off each other a bit?”

Clarke turned around and to head back towards the lab, changing the subject as she went. “Have a good time, Octavia. Say bonjour to Lincoln’s family for me. I’ll see you when you get back.”

Denial would remain her best friend.

9. June 2015

Clarke is old enough to know that blaming the wine for her sudden willingness to open up to Bellamy is a feeble excuse. So she doesn’t really know what to blame, and instead piles the guilt over all the weird vulnerability she feels after their conversation onto herself.

Their interactions are strange. The animosity is gone, but they aren’t exactly friends, either. Bellamy looks at her differently now and she finds it unsettling. Fortunately, the field season is in full swing and she has little time to actually think about and process anything outside of keeping everything running smoothly.

It’s late June when a car pulls up to L’Arche and a man in an expensive but casual outfit steps out and starts asking around for Dr. Clarke Griffin. Clarke is in the cave when she gets word of the stranger’s arrival. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, but the name jogs her memory and suddenly she’s rushing off in a hurry.

He’s found Bellamy first, she discovers as she walks up to the dirt driveway near the lab. They’re across from each other, sizing each other up. He is Dr. Finn Collins, an archaeologist more famous for his television appearances than his publications, but given the way the university system operates these days—charismatic faculty are marketable to online students—he is likely making more money already than either Clarke or Bellamy can hope for in their entire careers.

“Dr. Griffin, hi,” he says, ending his staring match with Bellamy and walking over to her. He beams at her like she’s wearing a ball gown instead of steel-toed boots, beat up jeans and a dirt-covered t-shirt. “It’s been years. I feel like we’ve been emailing for so long, it’s nice to finally see you in person again.”

She shakes his hand and ignores the accusatory glare Bellamy is giving from behind him that screams what the fuck is this clown doing here?

It was true, she and Collins had met at a conference years ago and emailed periodically in the time since then. He was interested in L’Arche and thought that, if he happened to be in Europe over the summer, he might stop by for a tour of the site. It wasn’t uncommon for other archaeologists to visit the site, or even work with them for a time. There was more than enough research to be done, and collaboration was good. So when he’d asked her about it, she’d said he was welcome anytime.

She just didn’t realize that time would be right now.

 “Your colleague here seems to think I’m stopping by uninvited, but I told him you and I had arranged this ages ago,” Collins said, tossing his trademark shoulder-length hair. It was no wonder that he was so popular with women in their field.

“I guess I didn’t realize exactly when you’d be coming so I may have, uh, neglected to mention it to Dr. Blake,” she replies, trying to convey an I’m sorry, I had no idea he was coming to Bellamy with her eyes.

She doesn’t know if he gets the message or not, because he storms off.

“Charming man,” Collins says, watching him go.

Clarke smiles, flustered, not sure who she wants to punch more. “He’s unique.”

Collins turns back to her.  “So. Can I have a tour?”

**

He ends up staying for the entire day. He has a million questions for Clarke and the other researchers, and he manages to charm almost everyone on site, enough so that when they invite him to stay for dinner, it’s almost like having everyone’s favorite fun relative come over for a meal.

Jasper is particularly star struck, being a big fan of Collins’ work on the History Channel. “Did you really have that confrontation with those locals when you were exploring that temple in Myanmar?” he asks, barely able to eat his dinner, he’s so excited.

“Oh yeah,” Collins says. “It was incredible. You wouldn’t believe how it actually went down.”

He launches into a story then, mesmerizing the crowd around him.

Clarke has been around him all day, and is therefore immune to the effects of his mesmerization, so she gets up to clear her tray. Monty happily steals her seat.

Bellamy is standing at the back of the hall, watching the crowd, when she walks by after depositing her tray.

“I can’t believe they buy into his bullshit,” he says as Clarke stands beside him. “Finn Collins is a complete moron.”

Clarke shrugs. “He sells a lot of books.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not a moron. You’ve read his stuff, it’s garbage. So why is he here, Clarke?”

“He asked a while ago if he could come visit L’Arche sometime, and I said sure, just like I say to everyone who wants to visit.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “He wants to bring a film crew in here.”

“What?” she asks, surprised.

“He didn’t tell you? He wants to bring a film crew into the new cavern and shoot the cave paintings for his stupid History Channel show. Like hell I’m going to let some tv jerkoff profit off of this site.”

“No,” she says. “He can’t.”

“That’s what I told him before you walked up this morning.”

“Why wouldn’t he have said something to me about it?”

“Because he’s trying to sleep with you and he knows asking about filming the site will piss you off?”

Clarke’s jaw drops. “He does not want to sleep with me.”

Bellamy scoffs. “Of course he does.”

“What makes you say that?”

Bellamy looks at her and she feels his gaze raking over her. “Because you’re Dr. Clarke Griffin and your work is brilliant. And you’re a babe. And he’s a straight guy with a pulse.”

Clarke is taken aback. “Geez, Bellamy,” she says. “He doesn’t want to sleep with me. Him being here has nothing to do with me. He’s here for the site. And we’ll tell him no.”

“Good.”

**

Clarke walks Collins back to his car after dinner. He has a room at a hotel in a town about an hour away. She declines his invitation to come join him for a drink.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “I’m a very safe driver. And the wine list is superb.”

“I’m sure it is, but no thanks. And thanks for coming, I hope you enjoyed your visit.”

“I did,” he says. “I know your, uh, partner isn’t too keen on the idea of us filming here, but I really think you should consider it. Remember, the offer still stands, in case you change your mind…”

“Thanks, Finn, but no thanks. Really. I wish you the best of luck in finding another site to film, though.”

He makes a tragic face, then pulls her in for a hug. “It was great to see you again, Clarke,” he whispers when he’s close.

She pulls away when she feels him attempting to linger. She smiles and waves as he drives away.

She can’t get Bellamy’s voice saying you’re a babe out of her head.

June 2014

It was a typical evening in camp when the unthinkable happened. Something had gone wrong at the site that day, as usual, and Clarke and Bellamy had worked into the evening to solve the problem. This meant they’d been arguing for hours. They’d realized over the past three seasons that they couldn’t really solve a problem until they’d argued their way through it.

It was after 9 and Clarke had finished the leftovers Raven brought them from the mess hall. She was exhausted, leaning back in her chair in the lab. The issue at hand—access to a new part of the cave system they wanted to excavate had been delayed yet again—was nearly resolved. They just needed to decide which route to take. If only Bellamy would shut up and agree that her method was correct, they could be done with their endless day.

“Continuing the course along the main tunnel is the only way to go,” she said, and he shook his head.

“We know from our geologists that the chamber we’re trying to get to is on the other side of that wall,” he said, closing in on her chair. “We need to take advantage of the weak point we know is there to see if we can get through. Otherwise we’ll spend the rest of the summer digging our way to nowhere.”

“We can’t risk damaging the wall,” Clarke insisted, standing up to face him so he wasn’t towering over her, using his body to intimidate her. “We don’t know what’s on the other side. If we try to get through we could destroy any number of things. A burial, one of your precious cave paintings… you name it, you know it’s stupid to risk it.”

He leaned closer, his eyes dead serious. “If we don’t risk it—if we can’t show that this cave system goes deeper, our grant money is gone, Clarke. This place will shut down.”

She shook her head, her heart sinking because she knew he had a point, but she wasn’t ready to give in. “We can’t just blast through that wall, Bellamy!” she said, her voice rising.

“We wouldn’t be ‘blasting through, we’d be carefully excavating—“

“You think you can go in there with a sledgehammer and just—“

His mouth crashed down on hers, then, and instead of yelling they were suddenly kissing, a reversal so fast it made her head spin. Bellamy’s lips were warm and soft and pliant, and his hands reached up to cradle her face, holding her in place in a way that was good because she was so dumbfounded that she felt like a light breeze could blow her over. Alarm bells were going off inside her head but her brain seemed to be disconnected from her body, which wanted nothing more than to kiss him right back.

Her lips parted under his and he let out a growl of satisfaction before deepening the kiss, a growl that reconnected her brain to her body. She pushed against his chest and broke the kiss, pulling back with a look of shock on her face.

Bellamy’s expression was a mix of shock and something else she couldn’t place. They stared at each other across the lab in silence.

Clarke’s lips and cheeks burned where he had touched her. She was so angry with him and so—so something she couldn’t put her finger on—she could barely find her voice. “What the hell was that?”

Bellamy cleared his throat. “Clarke—“

She shook her head and pushed past him toward the door.

“Clarke, wait,” he said, but she kept walking.

10. July 2015

By early July they’re already behind schedule. It’s not anyone’s fault, really. They just had an ambitious plan for the season, perhaps a little too ambitious. The thing about fieldwork, though, is that the limited amount of time to get things done means anything not finished by August would get pushed back to the next season. And there are certain things Clarke can’t afford to delay.

She doesn’t want to push her students too hard, since they’re already working long hours thanks to her and Bellamy’s assignments. Also, certain tasks get completed much faster when one experienced person does them alone rather than a group of people learning how to do them.

So Clarke decides one evening that she’s going to stake out and prep a section past the northernwestern corner, a section that could likely lead to another cavern according to their geological maps. Actually breaking through to that section is a larger task that she and Bellamy will have to decide about eventually, but for now, Clarke knows there is a burial in the vicinity that she wants to get to sooner rather than later.

She tells Octavia where she’s going and Octavia presses a radio into her hand. “Required for safety, remember?”

Clarke gathers her things and makes her way to the caves. She doesn’t mind working there at night. Caves are dark all the time anyway, so time of day doesn’t really affect their ability to get work done. Raven’s lighting system is pretty ingenious.

She fires up the lights and gets the music on the work stereo going, too, and soon she’s in her working zone, equipment out and tackling the task at hand. The section is a narrow passageway about thirty feet long, and the burial is located roughly in the middle. She knows it’s good to get to this burial so the passageway will be open later when they need to use it to get into the potential new chamber. She loves this cave system, loves the complexity, loves the ingenuity it would have taken the people who were here 30,000 years before to make their lives here.

She’s been working for about an hour when she hears something fall out in the main chamber.

Her head snaps up. “Hello? Is someone there?”

She hears another crash, and then another, and then a deep sense of fear takes over, because she sees it is rocks and dirt, falling down at an increasingly fast rate from the top of the passageway in which she is currently working.

She ducks under a ledge on the side of the cave, hoping to take shelter in case the whole ceiling begins to cave in. She’s terrified—this is worst case scenario, something that the geo people had assured them was a very minimal risk. Rocks continue to fall and dust flies in the air, and Clarke huddles into a ball, tucking her face into the space between her knees to avoid breathing in the dust. A small rock knocks against her leg and she feels its rough edge biting into her skin through her jeans.

The noise and the falling feels like it goes on for hours and then finally starts to peter out. When Clarke looks at her watch, she sees that not even three minutes have passed. The last piece crumbles down. Clarke unfolds herself from beneath the ledge and beams her headlamp around to assess the damage.

She comes away with two conclusions: her leg is bleeding, and she is completely sealed into the passageway.

Her heart is racing, her mind scrambling for a solution to her predicament, when she remembers the radio Octavia gave her before she left. She scrambles for her pack and pulls it out.

“L’Arche station, this is Clarke Griffin, do you read me?” she calls into the radio.

No response.

She tries again.

“L’Arche station, this is Clarke Griffin. There’s been a cave-in in the northwestern passageway off of cavern three. Do you read me?”

No answer.

It’s dinner time, she knows, and everyone is in the mess hall right now. It’s someone’s responsibility to be manning the main radio, but maybe they can't hear it over the noise of mealtime?

Clarke wills herself to remain calm. She continues to call in. Deep breaths, call in, wait, repeat. 

Panic creeps in around ten minutes with no response, and she starts to think about plan B. Octavia knows she was working out here, she'll notice when she's not back. But that might not be until the morning when Clarke doesn’t show up at breakfast. The idea of having to spend an entire night in here with nobody knowing her whereabouts makes her stomach clench and her eyes tear up. 

She clutches the radio and tries again. 

"L'Arche station, this is Clarke Griffin. There's been a cave-in in the northwestern passageway off of cavern three. Do you read me?"

"Clarke?" the radio crackles.

A wave of relief washes over her when she hears his voice. "Bellamy?" 

"Clarke, what happened? Where are you?”

She takes a breath, sniffling slightly. "I’m in the northwestern passageway off of cavern three. I was staking out a new spot to dig and there was a cave-in."

His voice comes back on and she hears the tail end of him swearing. "Are you okay?"

Clarke looks at her leg. "I'm fine. But I’m stuck. The debris has blocked off the passageway."

"Is it completely blocked?"

Clarke walks over to walled pile of rock and dirt. It looks unstable, so as much as she wants to push against it and try to claw her way out, she doesn't.

"I can kind of hear the music playing on the other side, but I can't see anything. There's no light coming through. I think it's completely blocked off."

"Do you have a light with you?"

"My headlamp."

"Extra batteries?"

"Yes, for headlamp and radio. I've got my pack with me, with my tools, and a bit of food and water."

There's a pause on the other end, and she knows he's problem-solving.

"Listen, here's what we're going to do. Lincoln and I are getting a team together to come over and assess the damage and clear the debris. I don't know how long it's going to take because I haven't seen the cave-in yet, but Clarke?"

"Yeah?"

"I will get you out of there. I promise."

"Thank you," she replies.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can. Just sit tight, and stay away from the unstable part.”

“Got it.”

It's cold in the cave. She has a sweatshirt with her, but it's old and worn thin, and she shivers because of both the temperature and the stress of the situation. A pain in her leg reminds her to look down at her injury. The bleeding seems to have stopped, but she knows it will need a thorough cleaning and dressing once she's free. 

She sits down on her pack to wait. The more she looks at the rock fall, the more she realizes how lucky she is that it fell in a relatively narrow area and not on top of her, too. It’s terrifying to know that that amount could come down. She’s thankful that this didn’t happen while students were in here. She’d always been nervous about things like this in caves, the risk. They’d thought everything was safe.

“Clarke, do you read me?” Bellamy’s voice comes back on the radio.

“Yes,” she replies.

“We’re on our way. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

She looks down at her thin sweatshirt. “I’m as good as I can be, trapped inside a cave. I guess it is a bit chilly in here.”

“I know, I wish I could—we’ll be there soon,” he replies.

She can hear the tension in his voice through the radio. “I know.”

Less than ten minutes later, she hears muffled voices on the other side of the rock pile, but she can’t make out any words.

“Clarke, can you hear us?” Bellamy says through the radio.

“I can hear some noise, but it’s really muffled,” she replies.

“Okay, we’ll stick with the radio for communication. We’re just getting a look at the fall, hang on a second.”

There’s a pause while they survey the damage. Clarke looks it over from her end.

“Clarke, how much room do you have between the debris on your side and the back of the passageway?

“About twenty feet. Why?”

“We’re not sure how the debris might fall as we try to pull it out. I want to make sure you don’t get hurt if anything falls inward. Can you stay towards the back?”

She walks backwards towards the small outcrop she’d hovered under before. “Yes, I’m back about fifteen feet.”

“Okay, stay put.

It doesn’t happen quickly. A lot of debris fell and they need to make sure they clear it safely so none of them get hurt.

Bellamy checks in with her frequently on the radio, making sure she’s okay and updating her on their progress. She finds herself pacing at the back of the passageway to keep warm, because she gets too chilled if she sits still. She runs through mundane to-do lists in her head to keep herself occupied.

She knows they’re almost through when the rocks towards the top of the blockage begin to move. Finally, a chink opens up and light from the main cavern shines through.

“Clarke!” she hears Bellamy shout through the opening.

“Bellamy!” she shouts back.

There’s another shift and she hears the sound of rocks tumbling down the other side. There’s some shouting, and some debris moving on her side too. She watches nervously, but soon it settles down, leaving an opening at the top that she thinks she can fit her body through.

She knows Bellamy has climbed up the debris pile from the other side when she sees the silhouette of his unruly curls backlit by the light from the other chamber.

“Clarke,” he says when he sees her there, his voice a mix of exhaustion and relief, and reaches his hand through the opening. “Come on.”

She pulls on her backpack and rushes for the opening, ignoring the limp caused by her injured leg. She scrambles up as far as she can towards the light and reaches for his hand.

He grasps it in his firm grip. “I’m going to pull you up and through. Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” she says.

She scrabbles with her hands and feet to help as he hoists her upwards, and soon his other hand is encircling her shoulder and she feels herself sliding through the opening at the top until she’s finally free.

 July 2014

She avoided him after that kiss, as much as she could in a small field camp, and he let her do it, which was fine with her because really, what was she supposed to say? He kissed her in a moment of temporary insanity (obviously), and if she kissed him back for a second, well, she was temporarily insane as well. She had too much to deal with and no time to dissect the incident in her brain.

Bellamy won the debate about how to access the new chamber. Clarke didn’t like to admit defeat, but the moment she entered the cavern for the first time and saw the paintings on the cave walls, she was filled with an overwhelming joy. This was it. Another cavern, possibly leading to more caverns, filled with Paleolithic human history for them to discover. There were years more work contained in that cavern alone. Bellamy was right. They needed this to keep the funders interested and the site going.

She found him later that night, after dinner, typing away on his laptop in his cabin. She vaguely remembered him saying something about a deadline for a journal article he was co-authoring with his old supervisor.

She knocked lightly on the open doorframe and realized this would be their first time alone together in days.

“Hey.”

He looked up, eyes bleary from looking at the computer screen. “Hey,” he said back. “What’s up?”

She just stared at him, unsure of what to say now that she was there. She was nervous around him for the first time… ever, it seemed, and she hated that.

He picked up on her nervousness and stood. “You can come in if you want, Clarke.”

She chose to remain in the doorframe. “You were right,” she said.

His jaw dropped a little, and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “What do you mean?”

“I saw the new cavern. You were right, we needed to get in there, sooner rather than later. It’s… it’s incredible in there.”

His smile grew into a wide grin. “It’s amazing, right? Did you see the paintings on the western wall?”

She nodded, thinking of the human figures dancing together around the spoils of a hunt, painted with such grace they seemed to come to life in the lights and shadows. “They’re beautiful.”

“Jasper and Monty have already done a quick survey of the place. They think the northwestern corner has multiple burials, so you guys will have plenty of—“

She cut him off when she crossed the room swiftly and crashed her mouth into his. She didn’t know what made her do it, but she needed him in that moment, needed to taste him again.

He froze in surprise at first, and then his arms slowly encircled her and pulled her tightly to his body, molding her against him so she could feel the muscles of his arms and the planes of his chest against her own. His lips were warm and he nipped at her bottom lip as the kiss intensified, her hands sliding down to his pectorals. A moan escaped her as one of his hands slid down to squeeze her ass and she pulled back, seeing that the desire in his eyes matched that in her own.

She quickly tried to mask that desire with a well-practiced scowl, but knew she wasn’t doing a very good job when Bellamy chuckled and tightened his arms around her so she couldn’t escape.

“What are we doing?” she asked, her voice husky.

“I have no idea,” he replied, his fingers teasing her shirt up at the small of her back and curling against her skin.

She shivered at the contact. “We hate each other.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do we?”

She sighed, “You know what I mean.”

Bellamy shook his head, his eyes on her mouth. “I don’t know left from right when it comes to you these days, Griffin.”

“What—“

He cut her off when he kissed her again, this time with an urgency that went like a flame through her veins, and she met him in the kiss, her hands rising until her fingers were diving into his hair. She relished the texture against her hands—she’d wondered for a long time what it would feel like to touch his hair, she hated to admit—as his mouth plundered hers.

He bunched the hem of her shirt in his fist and his knuckles ran over her skin from the small of her back upward. His other hand held her waist, pulling her hips towards his, and as soon as she felt the pressure of being pressed against him she moaned again, a deep, wanting sound from the back of her throat that surprised them both.

They broke apart for air and stared at each other again before Clarke glanced toward the open door.

“Lock it,” she said.

Bellamy’s eyes widened and a knowing smile spread across his face as he walked over and shoved the door closed, twisting the lock with a click.

“Get that shit-eating grin off your face,” she said as he walked back to her.

“Only if you get the shit-eating grin off your face,” he replied, his hands almost frantic to touch her again.

She tried forcing the scowl again, and failed, again, so she grabbed him and started kissing him so she didn’t have to talk anymore.

Neither one did much talking as they proceeded to tear each other’s clothes off.

It was a fight for dominance as they made their way to the bed, a push and pull as one raised the stakes and the other met them, over and over until they made eye contact as he hovered over her, one of his hands pinning her wrists over her head.

“Last chance,” he said.

“Fuck me now, Blake, or I’ll punch you in that ridiculous mouth of yours," she said.

He obliged her.

Afterward, they lay breathless together on his narrow bed, with him on his side so they could both fit. After a short respite, Clarke swung her legs over the edge and sat up, scanning the room for her underwear.

“Jesus Christ,” she said under her breath. What the hell was that? she thought to herself.

“Clarke,” Bellamy said.

“No talking,” she said as she got dressed.

Bellamy watched her cautiously, unsure of her next move.

“This,” she said, gesturing between them, “didn’t happen.”

His expression hardened back into its usual stubborn mold, but he nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

“And it’s never going to happen again,” she continued. She needed to get out, get away from him, away from the smell of sex and the voices in her head screaming that she was full of shit.

She looked at him for a few seconds before heading for the door, unable to break away from his gaze, which was trying to communicate something to her that she just couldn’t interpret.

She turned and left without another word.

**

It happened again, less than a week later.

They were in the lab late at night. One minute she was going over a data set and the next he had her backed up against the lab bench, his lips on her neck as her rebellious head tilted to the side to give him access.

They made good use of the lab bench. She bit down on his hand to muffle her scream as she came because the rest of the camp was hanging out by the fire pit not too far away. She didn’t need to get caught in a compromising position with Bellamy by anyone.

She watched him as he dressed, pulling up his worn Carhartts and buckling his old leather belt. It was unfair how good he looked. She hated to admit it, but she could easily become addicted to Bellamy Blake’s body. She hadn’t been fucked like that in… well, ever, if she was being honest.

She knew they should stop. They worked together. They didn’t even like each other. This would only lead to disaster. But she also knew deep in her gut that she didn’t really want it to stop.

“You ogling me, Griffin?” he said.

“Just observing my spoils,” she replied.

“Your spoils? Of what war?” he asked, the corner of his lip quirking up.

She sighed as she tugged her leggings back into place. “My personal war with the irrational side of myself that thinks it’s a good idea to sleep with you. Clearly my rational side is losing. Both sides of me get the spoils, though, so at least I get that benefit.”

He stood close to her, his shirt still in his hand, and she gazed distractedly at his bare chest.

“You’re rambling,” he said.

“This is the last time,” she said to his chest.

He tilted her head up with a finger on her chin so their eyes met and she jolted at the tenderness of his touch. He looked like he was about to say something, and she waited, but after a moment he shook his head slightly and backed away.

“Whatever you want, Clarke,” he said, and she could hear the stiffness seeping back into his tone.

**

The third time it happened—not even two days later—they were in the woods by the river. A comment and touch in the shadow of the cavern led to them taking a detour on the way back from the dig site, and within a matter of minutes they were on the ground.

She rode astride him this time, twisting her top over her head as his hands climbed upwards to palm her breasts. They were far enough off the beaten path that this time she allowed herself to be vocal, and so did he, coaxing her along with filthy suggestions that made her blood rush even faster to her core.

For the first time since they started this… arrangement… they climaxed at the same time, her walls fluttering and him tumbling into the abyss with her. The sensation was nearly too much for Clarke.

“I think I almost blacked out,” she said as she rolled off his chest into the moss.

Bellamy laughed out loud and she hated how much she loved the sound. He turned to smile at her with an openness that made the bottom of her stomach drop out.

“I know I’m good, but that good…” he said.

She slugged his arm. “Don’t let it get to your head. Somehow, against all odds, we’re obviously really… really sexually compatible. I get at least fifty percent of the credit,” she said, staring up at the trees.

His hand wandered over to brush a stray piece of moss off of her abdomen and lingered there.  “Clarke,” he said, “I know you’re going to say that this isn’t going to happen again, but… I could keep doing this.”

Her body had a visceral reaction to his words, which she felt as she lifted her hips to pull her panties back up. She rolled onto her side, her hair flowing over her shoulders and skimming the tops of her still-bare breasts, and she could feel how sexy she looked, wearing nothing but a pair of black cotton panties. She got confirmation of this in his expression as his gaze skimmed along her body.

“Let’s make a deal,” she said.

He propped himself up onto one elbow. “I’m listening.”

“We can be available to each other in this capacity for the rest of the season, but only on the down low. Nobody knows about this but us. Okay?” she asked.

His hand slid to caress her waist, her hip, and her skin got goose bumps under his touch. “I can live with that,” he replied.

She smiled in relief—she was afraid he would say no, would deny the mutually beneficial situation they found themselves in, or—even worse—bring up feelings. Clarke didn’t do feelings. She’d shut off that part of her brain right around the time Wells died. Feelings were not up for discussion.

Bellamy gazed up at her as she finished getting dressed, and she was thankful, in that moment, that this man was both the perfect fit for her body in every possible way and possessed the ability to satisfy them both with no strings attached. She was so happy she actually leaned down and kissed him again on the lips.

“That settles it, then.”

He smacked her ass as she stood up and she cried out, “Hey! Don’t push your luck.”

He just smirked at her as she walked away.

11. July 2015

She tumbles through the hole and into his arms as he works to keep them both balanced, and then he pulls back as Clarke looks around the room and squints at the light.

He guides her down the pile of rocks until they are standing on the ground in the main cavern. He pulls her to him suddenly until they are tangled up like vines, her arms around his torso and him with one arm around her waist and another up higher so he can cradle her head with his large palm.

“You’re okay,” he whispers, his mouth close to her ear, seeming to reassure himself as much as her. “I got you.”

She lets herself bury her face against his chest for a moment and then turns her head to the side so she can breathe, which she does fully and gratefully, happy to be out of the enclosed space.

Octavia is standing near them, watching the scene unfold with a mix of relief and something else, and then a look of alarm covers her face. “Clarke, are you bleeding?” she asks, kneeling down to get a closer look at Clarke’s leg.

She pulls away from Bellamy, who is looking at her in surprise. “I thought you said you weren’t injured.”

“I said I was fine, and I am,” she replies, but Octavia continues to fuss.

“This isn’t nothing, Clarke,” she says as she rolls up the leg of Clarke’s jeans.

“It’s a gash from a rock,” she replies. Having a medical doctor for a mother was useful for some things. “The bleeding has stopped, it doesn’t need to be stitched up. It can’t be, really, not a blunt injury like that. The most important thing is to clean it out and dress it properly.”

Bellamy insists on helping her back to her cabin, and they limp along through the dark, her hand clutching his forearm for support. The group around them chatters about what to do now, how to clean up the site so they can keep working.

It’s nearly 2AM by the time they get back to the camp. Octavia takes Clarke from Bellamy and guides her to her cabin, where she insists on cleaning out her cut.

“And don’t say you can do this yourself,” she says as she helps Clarke out of her jeans, easing the fabric away from the injury. “You were trapped in a cave all night. Let someone else take care of you for once.”

Clarke lets her do it. She remembers Octavia saying something about a wilderness first aid certification, which is clearly coming in handy here.

Bellamy knocks on the door and enters the cabin as Octavia is applying the last of the tape to the dressing.

“How’s the damage?” he asks.

Clarke sighs, stifling a yawn. “I’ll live. Octavia, thank you. You did a great job bandaging me up and getting me into my PJ’s.”

Octavia smiles. “I’m glad you’re okay, Clarke,” she says. “I was really worried. We all were.”

“Everything ended up alright,” she replies. “I’m thankful for that. It’s late, you guys have been up all night rescuing me. You should get some sleep.”

Octavia zips up the first aid kit. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

Bellamy clears his throat. “I think we should give the students a couple days off. I don’t want them running around the caves while we’re figuring out what’s stable and what’s not.”

Clarke nods. “Good idea.”

“I’ll go let Jasper and Monty know so we can make the announcement at breakfast,” Octavia says.

“Thanks, O,” Bellamy says, and then she’s gone, leaving the two of them.

“So,” Clarke says as she gets up from the edge of her bed and hobbles over to her desk, reaching for a notepad and pen. “This will change the schedule for the rest of the summer. We should talk about what we’re going to do.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “Clarke, it’s late. And you just—you were stuck in there for hours. Logistics can wait until the morning.”

“So what are you doing here?”

He looks at her in disbelief. “I’m… I need to make sure that you’re okay.”

“Bellamy, I’m fine.”

He walks over until he’s standing close, and her awareness of him skyrockets. “You’re in one piece, and you’re relatively uninjured, thank God. But Clarke… you know how serious that was.”

She nods. She’d been keeping it together, remaining calm because she needs to be a leader, to ensure her team that everything is going to be fine, but he’s right.

“If you’d been in the front of the passageway when those rocks fell, or if more of it had come down, you could have been—you could be—“ He stops when his voice breaks. 

“I know,” she says. “But it didn’t. It happened, and it could have been really bad, but I’m okay. We just need to—”

He cuts her off by reaching up, cradling her face gently with his hands, and capturing her lips with his.

Clarke freezes at first, paralyzed by the familiarity and the longing and the desire that he conveys with his mouth. It slams into her like a wave, the reminder of the poetry this man can make without saying a word. A thought bubbles up in her mind. If only we could communicate like this all the time, everything would be so much easier.

She allows her lips to soften for a brief moment—she can’t resist his bottom lip, which has been taunting her all summer—before she pulls back.

“Bellamy,” she says, her voice heavy with the weight of everything that’s transpired between them.

The expression on his face is heartbreaking. He’s exhausted, with smudges under his eyes and a pallor to his skin even under his midsummer tan. The freckles across the bridge of his nose make him look like a boy, an incongruous thing on his fully grown, masculine body.

“I told myself I’d do that if we got you out,” he says, his voice a low, husky rumble.

She bites her lip and fights back tears, and she knows she looks exhausted, too. Together they’re a fully broken-down sight.

“I can’t do this anymore Clarke,” he says.

“Can’t do what?” she asks, but she knows what he means because she can’t do it either. The jagged space between them, the pushing and the denial. It has worked for her for so long to box her emotions away, because they make her weak where she needs to be strong. It’s been that way since she lost her dad, and especially since she lost Wells. She needs it to keep working, in order to function. She needs the box to stay intact, but somewhere along the line this summer, it broke.

She has no idea what to do, what she wants. Her body is coming down from the adrenaline high of the night’s events and begs for sleep, for comfort, for promises she can’t make. He looks at her forever, it seems, and she looks right back until he shakes his head.

“I need some air. Goodnight, Clarke.”

And he’s gone.

Clarke collapses into her bed and lets the tears fall freely.

August 2014

They couldn’t get enough of each other, but the fighting didn’t stop, either. If Clarke was being honest with herself, it wasn’t really fighting anymore, but rather a kind of spirited debate during which they sometimes raised their voices and swore at each other. She also had to admit that the old saying about makeup sex being the best kind had some truth to it.

By the time the field season drew to a close, Bellamy and Clarke had their system down. Fight it out, and then devour each other until they were both sated, and then implement their decision. They’d always been able to communicate with their facial expressions, but by that point they’d developed a look that meant one very specific thing: you, me, clothes off, now.

While they certainly made use of his cabin, they made more use of hers, because her bed was slightly larger than his (a fact he had complained about since the day she claimed that cabin before him). The first time they fell asleep together after sex, she woke up in the middle of the night in a panic—too intimate, her mind screamed. He woke partially at her restlessness and caressed his hand over her tense back, sleepily mumbling “shhhhh, s’alright. Just sleep, Clarke,” and the feel of his fingers and palm soothed her until she was lulled back under. To her relief, though, he was gone before sunrise.

She noticed that he was acting strange a few nights before they all flew home. Instead of the usually enthusiastic romp, he instead worked his way over her body slowly, ignoring her impatient pleas for more and faster. He kissed her everywhere, like he was trying to memorize her, and she knew things were heading in a bad direction, but he made her come with his hands and mouth before she could lodge a coherent protest. Her body was soft and pliant as he slid inside her and she closed her eyes and let him transport her to a different universe, a place where it was just the two of them making each other feel good, blocking everything else out.

“We’re going home soon,” he said afterwards.

Clarke felt like mush at the moment, but she blinked her eyes slowly to stay awake. “Mmmhmm,” she mumbled.

“Where in town do you live?” he asked.

Her eyes snapped open. “What?”

“Where in town do you live? You know, in Vancouver, the city we reside in? The life we live nine months of the year that we never discuss?”

Emphasis on we, thought Clarke.

“It doesn’t matter where I live,” she said.

“Clarke,” he said back. She could hear the change in his voice that indicated he was gearing up to argue with her. He was too smart for his own good.

“It doesn’t matter, because this is over as soon as we’re out of here. You know what the kids say. What happens at L’Arche stays at L’Arche,” she said, hating the sound of the words as they came out of her mouth but she didn’t know what else to do.

Bellamy stared at her, storm clouds gathering in his eyes. Clarke stared at a patch of moonlight on the wall.

“So I’m just your summer fuck buddy, is that it? You really want it that way?” he asked, rising from the bed.

She threw his underwear at him. “Yeah. I do. That was our agreement when this all started. Nothing has changed on my end.”

His eyes flashed and she knew he was livid at the challenge she just threw at him, the implication that his end might be different from hers. Which was ridiculous, on her part, because the last thing she wanted was to know that this had become something more to him than just sex.

He yanked on his boxer-briefs. “I thought I discovered a different side of you this season. Something softer, more human behind that ice-cold exterior of yours. But I was wrong, wasn’t I,” he said, more of a statement than a question.

“If that’s what you want to tell yourself,” she replied.

“What is it, Clarke? What is it that makes you so afraid?” 

She rose too, with nothing covering her but a sheet. “I’m not afraid of shit, Bellamy Blake. Now get the hell out of my cabin before I have to physically shove you out the door.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? I’m only available to you in this capacity for another thirty-six hours or so, you might want to capitalize on your deal before it ends,” he spat at her, throwing her own words from earlier in the summer back in her face. 

“You,” she said, walking over to him and pushing him towards the door. She was so angry she could see red. “Get out. Now.”

He gathered up the last of his clothes and stormed out of her cabin wearing nothing but his underwear and his boots, and topped it all off by flipping her the bird as he headed for his own cabin.

She saw Jasper, Raven, Lincoln, and Octavia standing outside, staring at the scene in complete shock. Well, Raven was smiling like she’s not surprised, and Octavia’s eyes looked like they might fall out of her head, but Clarke can yell at them both about that later.

Guess the secret’s out now, she thought as she flipped the bird back in his general direction before slamming the door. Oh fucking well.

12. July 2015

She wakes the next morning to Octavia, who has come to see how she's feeling and deliver a message from Bellamy.

"He says they're going to be clearing the site all day and it's going to be pretty hard labour, so you should stay back here and get some rest."

Clarke looks down at her leg. It feels better today, but she knows it's probably smart to stay off it, so she nods.

She manages to find things to keep her busy around camp—there's never a shortage of grading or writing or data analysis to be done. But by late afternoon she's restless, and she's dying to know what the inside of the cave looks like at this point.

She's about to pull her boots on and head out to find some answers when Lincoln knocks on her door, his skin gleaming with the sweat and dirt of the day’s work.

“Hey Clarke,” he says. “How’s the leg?”

“It’s fine,” she replies. “How’s the damage in the cave?”

“It’s not as bad as it could have been, thankfully,” he says. “We were able to clear it to the sides enough that it’s out of the way of the excavations. Bellamy wanted me to tell you that a team of cave experts are coming tomorrow to look at the structural issues and assess potential future risk.”

She nods. Bellamy wanted you to tell me, she thinks, because Bellamy is avoiding me. A message in the morning and a message in the afternoon. It’s so easy to avoid one another when they put their minds to it.

After the way they left things the night before, she’s not surprised. But this is different from all the other times they’ve played the avoiding game over the years that they’ve known each other. Something has shifted inside of her. Something has been cracked open, and she needs to be face to face with him to fix that.

“Where is he?” she asks Lincoln.

He pauses—he’s been caught in the middle of enough of their fights over the years that he knows to choose his words wisely. “He went for a swim in the river on his way back to camp,” he answers eventually.

Clarke yanks on her boot laces.  

“Thanks Lincoln,” she says.

Lincoln heads off to find Octavia and Clarke heads for the trail between the camp and the dig, thankful to finally be moving again. She passes a few people coming back for dinner and waves, but doesn’t let any of them stop her for a conversation as much as they want to talk to her about what happened. That can all wait for later.

She finds him in the clearing by the swimming hole, his back to her, staring out at the water. She can tell by the wetness clinging to his hair that he’s already gone swimming, and is in the process of getting dressed again. He’s got his pants back on already, but that’s it. His shirt is spread out on a rock, drying in the late afternoon sun. 

“Hey,” she says, and he spins around. He looks surprised to see her, like he doesn’t expect her to be in the woods, but rather back in her cabin, comfortable in their pattern of avoidance.  

“You’re supposed to be taking it easy,” he says.

She walks over to join him on the bank. “I took it easy all day. If I didn’t get out and do something I was going to go crazy.”

He nods because he gets it. They are similar in their need to be constantly moving, solving, doing.

“Lincoln delivered your message,” she says.

Bellamy looks down, knows he’s been busted. “I knew you’d want to be updated on what we got done today.”

“You just didn’t want to update me yourself.”

He looks at her, finally. “Not really.”

She tries to tamp down the hurt. “I guess we’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding each other over the years.”

Bellamy’s gaze is intense as he weighs his next words. “I don’t know how to be around you right now, Clarke. I just don’t.”

Her heart drops. They turn and watch the water together.

“And yet here we are,” he says, his voice almost a whisper.

Clarke takes a deep breath and braces herself. “Bellamy, look. I know we—we push each other’s buttons. And we push each other away.”

He chokes out a short laugh. “At the end of last summer you pushed me away so hard I almost got injured in the landing. In my underwear outside your cabin, if I remember correctly. You have quite the pushing strength.”

“You asked me what I was afraid of,” she says quietly.

He pauses. “What?”

“That fight we had, at the end of last summer. You asked me what made me so afraid.”

He looks surprised, but nods slightly. “I did ask you that. Do you remember your answer?”

She laughs, and it has a sad tinge to it. “I vehemently denied fearing anything, like I always do.”

“Is that still true?” he asks.

Clarke watches the river water swirl into an eddy and longs to dive in. “It was never true,” she admits. “You know that.”

Bellamy turns to her, frustrated. “Actually, I don’t know that. As much as I wish I could read your mind sometimes, I don’t know anything when it comes to you. Figuring you out is like trying to read hieroglyphics without a fucking Rosetta stone.”

She is taken aback by the emotion in his voice. It’s becoming clear to her, finally, how much he has been holding back.

“I’m afraid of a lot of things,” she says.

“Really.”

“I’m afraid of failure, and I’m afraid of not being enough, but I’m the most afraid of losing people.”

Bellamy picks up a handful of small rocks and begins chucking them into the river, and she watches the muscles in his arms and chest stretch and flex with the movement.

“After my dad died, I shut down for a while,” Clarke continues. “I became numb. My mother and my friends, my therapist, everyone told me that I needed to let go of my grief and open up to people again, to embrace life and all that bullshit. It wasn’t easy, and it took a really long time, but I did it. I opened up to people. I opened up to Wells, and then I lost him, too. And ever since then…”

“You push everyone away,” he says.

“Yeah. I push everyone away.”

“That’s a lonely way to live your life, Clarke.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she says, picturing her solitary life back in Vancouver.

“I’m sure you know that. You’re the smartest person I know. But you know what? It’s really fucking lonely for me, too.” He chucks the last rock into the water with extra force.

She stares at him.

He turns to face her full on.

“You crushed me last summer, Clarke,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

“I thought things were—I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t expect you to just shut me out like you did. Which was stupid on my part, clearly.”

Clarke digs into the moss at her feet with the toe of her boot. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “So I did what I’ve always done.”

Bellamy laughs sadly. “I try to tell myself, sometimes, that it would have been easier if we had just never gone down that road. But I don’t really believe that. And I hate it, because now I know exactly what I can never have. And it is killing me.”

Clarke feels the crack inside of her widening even more.  

“I thought, coming back here this summer, that I could handle being around you again. Because we’re both adults, we’re both professionals. We have a lot of things at stake here, and we need each other to keep this place going. We are so good together in that way, you know?”

She nods. He’s right. They have a balance when they work together that has been in place since that first season. A trust that grew between them, against all odds, that started back when they could barely stand to be in the same room as one another. She is grateful every day for it, because she knows she couldn’t do this without him.

“We’re partners,” she says.

“We are,” he says. Bellamy takes a deep breath, and there’s an expression in his eyes that she has never seen before. “But you getting trapped inside that cavern—seeing you in there and pulling you out—it made me realize that it doesn’t matter how hard you push me away, or how hard I try to stay away because that’s what you want, and I will always want to give you what you want—it doesn’t matter. I am always going to need more of you.”

Her heart swells and she hears that word, need, over and over again in her mind.

“This,” he says, gesturing between them. “If we keep doing this, I am going to lose my fucking mind. Because I have been in love with you for years, Clarke, and as much as it would make my life easier if it did, I don’t think that feeling is going anywhere.”

It’s like they’re frozen in time, all of a sudden, the golden sunlight swirling around them, the summer heat enveloping them, and Clarke’s eyes spike with tears because he loves her. He loves her in spite of her being terrible to him, in spite of her attempts to shove everything good away when it became too much.

“And I have no idea what we’re going to do about it,” Bellamy continues, “because we have to keep the work at L’Arche going. It’s not like either of us can walk away. So if you have any brilliant ideas for how to solve the problem of having to be around each other for the next, oh, decade at least, I’m all ears.”

She cracks all the way open inside, the box finally shatters. She feels the terror, the exposure, the vulnerability of being poised on the edge of a cliff, staring down at what her life could be. And, finally, she chooses to stop pushing.

She marches over to him, reaches up to grab his face with her hands, and pulls his mouth down to hers.

Bellamy chokes on what sounds like a sob as he meets her kiss, his arms pulling her to him until her chest is flush with his and she can feel the heat of his bare skin through her thin shirt, the beat of his heart. Thank God, her body seems to say with a sigh as they sink into the kiss. She nibbles on his lower lip, he kisses the corner of her mouth, they dive back in, and Clarke thinks that she could do this forever.

When they do break apart, Bellamy is watching her with both desire and fear in his eyes. She realizes she hasn’t said anything since he admitted his feelings.

“I’ve been in love with you for years, too,” she says, her voice breaking slightly as she admits that out loud, uses that word she thought she’d sworn off forever. She shivers in his arms.

He sighs with relief, and he bites his lip, looking up at the sky and then back at her. She sees the lingering pain in his open expression. “Then why have we been doing this to each other for so long?”

“Because I wasn’t ready,” she says. “And because that’s just the kind of person I am. Bellamy, I’m angry. I have a lot of baggage. Part of me pushing you away was me holding back because I wanted to protect you. From me. You’re—I thought you deserved more than just a husk of a person.”

He pulls her to him with urgency, cradling her head to his chest, kissing her hair until his mouth is by her ear. “You are not a husk of a person. You are the most complete person in the world, in my eyes. You were it for me, Clarke, from the first day I met you. Every angry, complicated, brilliant inch of you.”

She lets the tears fall then, against his chest. “I thought you hated me when you first met me.”

She feels a laugh rumble in his chest. “I didn’t say you didn’t infuriate the hell out of me.”

She laughs too. “We were so awful to each other. And you were such a player that first summer.”

He tilts her head back. “Only because I couldn’t have you,” he said. “You have no idea, the things I used to imagine doing to you when we were in the middle of one of our fights.”

She shakes her head. “I guess you’ll have to show me, then.”  

He pulls her close again. “I mean it, Clarke. You are it for me. I know that’s crazy and ultimatum-like, but I don’t want to mess around anymore. I’m sick of wasting time with you. I need you—all of you—in my life.”

She hugs him close to her. “How can you have such faith in me?”

“Because I’m angry and messed up, too. You have baggage, well, so do I. But together, we work past that. You make me want to be a better person,” he says, and he captures her lips with his again.

“You’re already the best person,” she says the next time they come up for air. “For me,” she continues as he nuzzles her neck, “you are.”

His hands slide under her shirt and she suddenly wants nothing more than to feel her skin against his. She untangles her hands from his hair and pulls her shirt up and off. His hands slide down to cup her breasts through her bra and he groans, his thumbs brushing over her lace-covered nipples before his fingers work their way around to the clasp at the back.

“Did I mention that I love every inch of your body, too?” he says against her lips, and she smiles and blushes.

She realizes that this is different from before, because she isn’t working to suppress the emotional side of being with him. It’s so freeing and so scary, and she lets herself feel every moment of it, ever facet.

He slides off her bra and gazes at her hungrily while she unfastens her jeans and kicks off her boots. His hands fall to his own belt buckle and it’s a race, suddenly, to see who can get naked first. His hand snakes around her waist when she’s finally free of everything and he pulls her down onto the heap of their clothing on the mossy bank.

She lays back and feels both the summer breeze and the lick of his gaze over her body before he kisses her again. Their hands roam everywhere and she knows they could explore each other for hours. But right now she wants one thing, and she knows he does to, to just be one with each other. Again. Finally.

She reaches down to guide him and he gazes at her, the intensity in his eyes making her heart swell. “I’ve missed you so much,” he says.

“I’ve missed you too,” she whispers, and then he thrusts into her, her breasts bouncing and her back arching, and she cries out his name. It’s like they never forgot the rhythm, and they fall into it effortlessly and carry each other into oblivion.

**

Clarke is fairly certain she could spend the entire night in the woods with Bellamy and they could keep each other warm just fine, but after another round of sex—it turns out they’ve really, really missed each other—the moon is starting to rise and their stomachs are starting to growl.

As they get dressed, they’re surrounded by fireflies—lucioles, as they say in French—and Clarke looks around at the evening with a relief deep in her bones that she hasn’t felt, well, ever.  

“We’re doing this,” she says to him, part question, part declaration.

He reaches for her hand and twines their fingers together, tugging her toward the trail.

“We’re doing this,” he says back.

Clarke smiles at him, and he smiles in return, open and full of love and free of walls, the barriers between them undone at last.

And they head down the path back to camp, towards their future, together.

Fin