Work Text:
What happens is this: Emori gets a job in Germany, Murphy decides to move with her, Clarke decides she doesn't want to find another realtor to work with for Should I Stay Or Should I Go, and Bellamy realizes, to his shock and horror, that he's going to miss being on TV.
"Fuck," he says, putting his head down on the table.
Clarke pats his shoulder. "You know this isn't a crisis, right? We can stay on TV. The network was begging me to choose a new co-star and keep going."
"And you didn't."
"The only reason they didn't ask me to just do a show with you is that I've told them a billion times that you don't want to be in the spotlight."
He turns his head so he can look at her without actually dragging himself up off the table. "I didn't, did I."
Clarke smiles. "You're allowed to change your mind."
"I didn't think I would."
"What exactly are you worried about?"
"Good question." He drags himself back up, takes a second to think it over for himself before he starts talking. "At first, I didn't want it to fuck stuff up with us. Or to be, like--I didn't want that to be all we did, you know? If we got together on camera, then when the cameras were gone--"
"Yeah, I know." She smiles. "So, you're not worried we're going to fall apart if we're not on TV?"
"Should I be?"
"I don't think so. But we haven't ever been together when we're not on TV."
"Hiatuses," he says. "And we still haven't told the producers. We're not actually together on TV."
It feels like a minor miracle that they've kept it quiet, but Bellamy manages to fly under the radar. He and Clarke are obviously a great team, but no one seems that interested in digging deeper than that. There are, of course, fans who want to see them hook up, but there are fans who want to see Clarke and Murphy do that too, and Murphy and Bellamy, and the ones who ship the OT3. If anyone other than their friends and family know the truth, though, they haven't gone public. Not in a way anyone believes.
"Are you trying to make me think you're going to dump me if we don't get our own show?" he asks. "Is that what's happening?"
"No, I'm just a little surprised. I wasn't expecting you to be thinking you might want to go back to TV."
"I know what you mean. You really think they'd want us on a show together? Even though they don't know?"
"Probably. If we told them it would be a slam dunk, though. They'd throw money at us to do a TV show where we remodel houses and make out with each other."
If the relationship was new and untested, he would feel weird about the whole thing. But they've been together for two years now, and he's never been more sure about someone he's dating. At some point soon, he's going to have the marriage conversation with Clarke, like he did with Gina, but he knows this time, it's going to go well for him. That she'll say yes, and then they'll get married.
"You should ask them," he says. "It could be fun."
"You love being a celebrity," Clarke teases.
"I like being exactly this level of celebrity. Just for people who watch HGTV and are semi-invested, and for actually doing something I'm good at and like. Do you want to?" he can't help asking. "If you're ready to be done--"
She leans in to kiss him, soft. "I'd want to hear what they were interested in. But I'm not ready to be done quite yet. And I think--we can still keep stuff private. We've spent two years not telling the producers everything and just putting what we want on TV. I don't see why we'd stop."
"There's no harm in asking, right?" he finally says. "If we don't like the deal, we can just say no and go back to being normal people."
"Or negotiate."
"Or negotiate." He snorts. "Fuck, I can't believe I'm asking to be on a TV show."
"It's almost like your life is actually fun or something."
"Almost."
*
"You two are together."
Bellamy hasn't dealt much with Charmaine Diyoza, not directly. He wasn't a star of Should I Stay Or Should I Go, not a big enough deal that he was talking to the network directly. He was a fan favorite, but they never needed to promote him, never saw him as anyone they needed to deal with themselves.
Honestly, it was kind of nice.
"Since we were filming season five," Clarke confirms.
"Holy shit," says Diyoza, starting to laugh. "Well. Good job, both of you. That's quite a secret to keep for this long." She leans forward, resting her chin in her hands as she studies them. "So, why are you telling me now?"
Clarke shrugs. "Because I know you want to keep us on the network. I wanted to talk about what that would look like. I think we could come up with something that would do pretty well. But I don't want to spend another two years pretending I'm not dating my boyfriend."
"That wasn't our idea, you could have told us any time. We would have been happy to accommodate you."
It's such an understatement Bellamy nearly laughs, but he covers it clearing his throat. "I wasn't sure I wanted to be in the spotlight. A romance subplot would have taken up some time. But now I've had some time to think about it, I'm good."
"So, your show's over and you need a hook for a new show. Like a relationship."
Clarke rolls her eyes. "No, we don't. If I told you I just wanted a renovation show, you'd jump on it. You already gave Murphy his own European spin-off. You should be grateful, we're giving you the best concept ever. Me and Bellamy going into business together and falling in love? Come on."
"I thought you were already in love."
"Yeah, but we're also TV personalities," says Bellamy. "No one's going to be satisfied if we start up a new show and we reveal we've been together for years in secret. The first season arc has to be us hooking up, and then everyone can argue about whether it's real or not."
Diyoza's mouth twitches. "For someone who wasn't sure he wanted to be on TV, you have a lot of opinions about how you want to be on TV."
"Sorry, do you think I'm wrong?"
"No, I don't. It's not another Should I Stay Or Should I Go?"
"No. Bellamy's not a realtor. It's a renovation show. We can flip the houses for ourselves or for clients, I'm good either way. You know we're good at it, and you know we have a great hook. First season we get together, second season get engaged, third season get married."
"You have a three-year plan for getting married?"
"We have a three-year plan for getting married on TV. What we actually do is our business."
Diyoza laughs. "And you're not worried about keeping track of your real relationship versus your fake one?"
"We've been doing it for two years. I don't see why we'd lose track of it now."
"Fair enough." She taps her jaw. "The two of you are going into business together. Remodeling. People buy shitty houses, the two of you flirt and rework them, with a parallel story about putting together the actual business."
"Is it a real business?" Bellamy asks. "Are we going to have time to run it?"
"We could probably do a store," Clarke says. "Design and make furniture, refinish antiques, stuff like that. I could sell some art."
It actually sounds fun. "We probably could."
"And I assume you'll want something to do when we're not filming." She clucks her tongue. "As for the romance, we'll write something up and run it by you. I'd favor more of an outline than a script, the two of you have never needed us to tell you what to say. The challenge will be capturing the relationship milestones on camera in a satisfying way without seeing staged."
"Mounted cameras in the retail space, maybe," Bellamy says, thoughtful. "Easier to make it feel like we forgot we were being filmed."
"We'll think about what that would look like."
"Perfect." Diyoza offers her hand. "Looking forward to working with the two of you again. We'll be in touch."
"Yeah," Bellamy agrees, with a wry smile. "Can't wait."
*
"They want to give me another love interest," Clarke observes, scanning the email.
"Wow. Did they get anything we told them?"
"Not how you're thinking. They want me to be dating someone at the beginning of the season and you're jealous, and then I break up with them halfway through the season and you confess your love at the end."
"Doesn't really work with the realism vibe they were going for. Do you think they take suggestions?"
"What were you thinking?"
He goes to sit next to her on the couch, frowning at the laptop. "Pining isn't enough for them?"
"Who's pining?"
"Me, probably. You're too stubborn."
"I am not."
"I have good heart eyes."
That makes her smile. "Okay, yeah, you do."
"I should just be reluctant about the whole thing," he says. "Play up the grumpy asshole angle. I was ready to be out, you talked me into a new show, it becomes clear it's because I've been in love with you for a while."
She smiles. "You would have, wouldn't you."
"Probably, yeah. I'm dating you because I like spending time with you." He clears his throat. "What about the marriage thing?"
"What about it?"
"You really have a three-year plan to marry me?"
"I have a plan to marry you. Did you not want me to?"
"No, I really do." He kisses her shoulder. "I don't want them to give you another boyfriend I have to pretend to be jealous of. No deal."
"I think your angle could work," Clarke muses. "Obviously everyone will know you agreed, but if you're acting like you need convincing the whole time while obviously just wanting to spend time with me, it works with your Should I Stay Or Should I Go persona."
"Yeah. People will still think the whole thing is faked for ratings, but if it's a good story and we stay together, it won't really matter."
She laughs, dropping her head onto his shoulder. "This really is absurd, you know that?"
"I know. But it'll be fun. You can fall in love with me all over again."
"I can. Are you going to confess? How does this end with us together?"
"You see me shirtless and you're overcome with lust, obviously."
She laughs. "Obviously."
"That is kind of what happened."
"What happened was that you were single. It was only a matter of time as soon as I found that out."
Obviously, it's true, but it still rocks Bellamy somewhere deep when he thinks about it. Clarke loves him and is going to marry him and he knows it, but there's some part of his brain that still thinks he was pining away for her the whole time, even as he had a girlfriend and she thought he was getting married.
Some part of him still thinks he never had a chance with her, and their whole relationship is a miracle. Which, granted, it is, but a different kind of miracle.
"So I should have another love interest," he teases, and she bumps his shoulder.
"I like the shirtless thing."
"You would."
"It would be such a good reveal, after all those years of you making sure no one knew how ripped you were on Should I Stay Or Should I Go. And then every sweeps week, we can have you shirtless again."
He laughs. "You can suggest it, I don't mind."
She sighs. "It's weird. I feel like in stories, there's always this big moment, and I know we had a moment, but there were a bunch of other moments we didn't have. The actual moment is just when you run out of patience."
"So at some point, I should just kiss you, and we talk about it next episode when the cameras ask."
"That's actually not bad. We could build the sexual tension, flirt. Maybe I could reference just having broken up with someone recently?"
"If you say that, people will say it's Murphy."
"People will say that it's Murphy no matter what. Or I could be pining after you and you just did a breakup, that's more accurate."
It's a little surreal, hashing out a fake storyline for his real relationship, but it's fun too. They decide that Clarke will be the one who's just out of a relationship--largely because the network seems to favor Bellamy being the pursuer--and she's at loose ends between the end of her relationship and the end of the show. She goes to Bellamy, who's taking a break while he figures out the next steps in his career. Clarke talks him into doing a new show, he agrees because he's in love with her, and that's that. Half a season of sexual tension, a kiss after some episode that works for the theme, and then they switch to relationship mode.
"It'll be popular," Clarke decides. "The best parts of my side of Should I Stay Or Should I Go, including you, plus romance. The network is going to let us do this for as long as we want."
"I still can't believe I want to do it at all."
"It'll be fun," she says. "You'll see."
*
Bellamy had thought he basically knew what he was getting into with the new show, that it would basically be the old show just with more time on camera for him, which was probably naive. He was never a focus before, not really, and now he's going to have his own camera crew, his own scenes, and, of course, a romantic storyline. He's gone from being something like an assistant to a lead, and it's like learning a whole new skill set, even before they start filming.
They go back and forth with Diyoza for a bit about where to set the show and how exactly it's going to work and they finally settle on setting the show in Bellamy's hometown in upstate New York, where his best friend and former business partner still lives and works, so he can get involved as on-camera talent.
Which Miller considers pretty fucking weird.
"So you two are dating, but you're making a new TV show where you're not dating, and you need me to be there to ask you why you're not dating. When you are."
It's a fairly accurate summary, and it makes sense to Bellamy, but he can admit that it sounds completely off the wall. Reality TV actively distorts your ability to interact with reality, as it turns out.
"Did you watch the old show?" he asks.
"Not religiously, but yeah. It was cool seeing you on TV. I liked to argue with your construction choices."
"Of course you did. You'd be kind of like--the me of this show, I guess. You'd help me do the actual work, talk to me about problems and, yeah. They think while we're developing the romance with me and Clarke, I need someone to talk to about it."
"And you think this is normal."
"I never said that. It's just what's happening. And it's probably going to be fun."
"Fun for who?"
"You don't think it sounds fun? Plus the money is better for the same work you're already doing, and you get to hang out with me."
"That's supposed to be a selling point?"
Bellamy rolls his eyes. "I'm your favorite, shut up. It's going to be good."
"Yeah?"
"It's fucking ridiculous, but yeah. Best job I've ever had."
"I'm not going to be the gay best friend," he says. "I'm not just there to enable you to hook up with your girlfriend. I'm not saying you'd do that," he adds, before Bellamy can say it. "But I want it in my fucking contract, so the network can't edit it like that or whatever."
"Yeah, good idea. Clarke had some stuff about what bi stuff was and wasn't cool in her last contract that I used for mine, we can probably do that for yours too."
"And I get paid?"
"That's how jobs work, yeah. You don't have to," he adds. "But like I said, it's not a bad gig. And I think we'd have fun."
"How long are we pretending you're not dating your girlfriend?"
"Just the first season. We figure we can get together at the end."
"I still don't get why."
"Make the audience feel like they're involved. Throwback to when I thought she didn't like me."
"But not when she thought you were engaged." He takes a sip of coffee. "Have you told Gina about this, by the way?"
"Yeah, she knows. She thinks it's funny."
"I really don't get you guys."
Bellamy shifts a little, uncomfortable. He doesn't feel bad about Gina, exactly, but in retrospect it's easy to see all the ways they didn't work together, how large parts of their relationship weren't much of a relationship, and how it was his fault, for being gone so much and being a little preoccupied. Neither of them was unhappy, but it still feels like they should have just let it go sooner, and they would have been happier.
Which they are. They got there.
"We're friends now," he tells Miller. "Friends make fun of each other's weird reality shows. I'm literally trying to hire you to do that for me."
"And I'm saying yes," Miller decides.
A smile spreads over his face. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He grins back. "Honestly? I wouldn't miss it."
*
It's actually pretty easy, going back to pining after Clarke on camera. He hadn't exactly been doing that before, but he thinks he kind of came across that way, probably more than Clarke did, largely because all he ever did on camera was talk to her.
In fact, it's so easy that Bellamy's actually starting to worry about how to switch things up. He and Miller do talk about Clarke--and Miller's own made-up love life, mostly so everyone is clear that no one on this show is actually straight--but figuring out how to move naturally from talking about Clarke to doing something about Clarke is tough. Everything feels so inorganic.
She was probably right; the moment just happens when it's been long enough, and it's hard to recognize from within the relationship.
So it's very lucky that their fourth round of applicants does the work for him.
As with Should I Stay Or Should I Go, the new show films episodes in batches of four at a time, and they have a list of applicants for given dates that they review. Unlike on the old show, though, Bellamy actually knows some of the applicants. People have been happy to see him home, excited to support him. In their first round of episodes, they got his high-school Latin teacher and her husband, and they're currently filming with one of Octavia's classmates and her husband.
The next round of episodes will be 113 to 116, assuming they air in filming order, and with an eighteen-episode first season, that's where they're supposed to get the relationship upgrade in there. It's part of why they're looking at the applications themselves, instead of just letting the production company do it. They're hoping for inspiration.
"Here's one who went to high school with you," says Clarke, handing him a file. "That might work. Echo Victor?"
It's not the last name he expected, but it's up there. "My ex," he says, scanning the file. Apparently she's looking for a nice place with a big yard for her dogs. "We broke up when we went to college."
It takes Clarke a second to say anything, and she finally settles on, "Oh."
"If you do that on camera, you'll do half the relationship work for us," he teases. "Don't tell me you're jealous of a girl I dated ten years before we ever met."
"Not jealous, but--she's single, and as far as she knows, you are too. We'd be assholes to bring her in to flirt with you when you're already taken."
"I figured we'd just tell her, like Miller. It's been a long time since high school, Clarke, I doubt she's carrying a torch. And even if she is, she can't have gotten that invested. She hasn't stopped by to see me or anything."
"You think it's a good idea?"
"I think we should meet with her. If it seems like she's trying to hit on me, we can pick someone else, but--we need a hook. My ex is a pretty good hook. We could write a good episode about that. And I bet she'd think it was funny."
"It's a little weird," Clarke admits. "Not bad, just--you know all these people, and I don't. I'm not used to being on the outside."
"So we should figure out how to get ourselves together on the show," he says, leaning in for a kiss. "And then we can start--being a couple. Getting involved in the community. Assuming we want to stay here. I know we just kind of picked it."
"I like it," she says. "More than I was expecting to. But--yeah. I'm ready for it to be our real life."
"I want to apologize, but this was your idea too, so I don't know why I would. Sorry it's harder than you thought?"
"I'm just--I'm ready for everyone to know you're mine, I guess."
He tugs her into his lap. "Okay, so--let's talk to Echo and figure out how we can get that on the record. Unless you changed your mind about--the show is still good, right?"
"It's great." She smiles. "Seriously, I'm not complaining. I guess I just didn't realize how much I didn't like keeping it quiet. It never felt like I was really lying, I guess. There wasn't a ton of us on the last show, it didn't feel like anyone's business, but now--this is our show. I want it to be ours."
"It is. We can do it another way if you want. Fuck, we could reshoot all our scenes and just be together from the start. Or not use Echo. Whatever you want."
She laughs. "No, it's a good idea. I like it. I'm already this grumpy about the whole thing and we haven't even done anything, so--"
"So we'll get coffee, see if she wants to help us out. Otherwise, we can just use some family to kickstart a conversation about how you're supposedly still living in a hotel and I want you to move into my guest room."
"Our lives are so weird."
"Our lives are fine," he says. "We're doing great. It's our job that's fucking weird."
"The weirdest," she agrees. "But it's fun, right?"
"Somehow, yeah. It really is."
*
"You know, I think I would have voted you least likely in the class to become a reality TV personality," Echo observes, by way of greeting.
Bellamy snorts. "Yeah, I wasn't expecting it either." He gives her a hug. "Good to see you. How have you been?"
"Not as successful as you, but I can't complain. My brother and his wife just had their first kid, so I thought it would be nice to move back here, be a little closer. I work remotely, so it's not hard to relocate. And if I was moving anyway, I thought I could try for my fifteen minutes of fame."
"Yeah, about that."
Her eyebrows go up. "Is this you telling me in person that you don't want me on your show?"
"No, it's so much weirder than that. You want coffee?"
"Sure, that sounds nice."
He leads her into the living room, where Clarke is waiting, trying and failing to look casual. She stands, offers her hand, and Echo shakes with only a slight frown.
"Clarke," she says, which clears Echo's expression.
"I have seen the show. Echo. Nice to meet you."
"What do you take in your coffee?" Bellamy asks.
"Just black, thanks."
He pours the coffee and hands her the mug, trying to figure out what to say. With Miller, it was pretty easy, because all Miller does is make fun of him for his weird life. Which, to be fair, Echo probably would too, but he hasn't talked to her since midway through college, on some spring break. Even if she does still want to make fun of him, he doesn't know how this one is going to land.
"So, we'd be happy to renovate a house for you," Clarke says, sipping her own coffee, when the silence has stretched too long. "But we have a weird favor to ask in exchange."
"I thought I would be paying you."
"That too." Clarke glances at Bellamy, and he leans forward.
"So, Clarke and I have been dating for about two-and-a-half years now," he says, with a somewhat rueful smile. "And we're, uh--we're ready to tell people, but we figured we should make it a storyline on the show. We were hoping you wouldn't mind if we used you as a catalyst to get us together."
There's a long pause, and finally she says, "Define catalyst. What am I doing?"
"Existing," says Clarke. "As his ex-girlfriend. You don't need to flirt or even talk about your relationship, but we felt like it was wrong to use you like that without telling you what we were planning."
"Which is for you to be jealous of me?"
Clarke shrugs. "I know it's cliched, but we need something. And I think we could build a decent storyline about me feeling insecure about this being Bellamy's hometown and me feeling like I don't fit in. It's mostly been Bellamy pining for me so far, so--"
"That makes sense." She considers. "How much hate do you think I'd get? Online?"
"One episode, and Bellamy and I will be together by the end of it," Clarke says, slow, like she's doing math in her head. "So--you've been a woman on the internet, you know someone will be an asshole. But it's not like you're going to have an extended arc. I don't think it's going to be too bad."
"Will I get a discount?"
"Sure," says Bellamy. "And you can complain to Miller about how fucked up the whole thing is, if you want."
She shakes her head, but Bellamy can see a smile playing on her face, so she's definitely in. Echo would think the whole thing was hilarious. "I did think there might be something going on with you two. When I watched your last show."
"Not Clarke and Murphy?" he asks. "They got that all the time."
"I was paying more attention to you, and your poker face has always been shitty." She takes another sip of coffee. "So, how much of a discount can I get?"
*
"I brought you coffee."
Clarke smiles, her on-camera smile that's more for the audience's benefit than for his, and she holds it for a second before the suspicion takes over. "Wait, why did you get me coffee?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"You usually make coffee. What happened?"
The audience already knows; Bellamy got the request from Miller on Echo's behalf, and now he's feeling weird about telling Clarke. It all feels more than a little silly, but not unrealistic. He would feel weird about the whole thing.
He still feels weird about the whole thing.
"I got us a job, so I figured you could use the coffee on the go."
"What job?"
"My ex needs a new place."
Clarke's hand freezes with her coffee halfway to her mouth. "Your ex?"
"Yeah. High-school girlfriend. Her brother just had his first kid, so she wants to move back to spend more time with her family. She's looking for a cheap place we can redo for her."
"I didn't know you had exes who were still local."
"Neither did I. But she wasn't that local. She's moving back."
Clarke's drink of coffee now is deliberate, careful. "Just her?"
"And two dogs, so she wants a big yard. I told her we could probably give her a deal."
"We probably can." She stands and stretches. "We're meeting her now?"
"No time like the present, right?"
Her smile is tight, and everyone will notice. "Yeah, let's get this over with."
As they promised Echo, it's mostly a normal episode, at least from her perspective. She introduces him and Clarke to her dogs and tells them what she needs, and they all go to the park and throw a ball around, but the cameras make sure to get some footage of Bellamy and Echo with the dogs without Clarke, and her watching them. Clarke helps Echo pick a house, asks Bellamy some overly casual questions about his and Echo's history, and Miller tells Bellamy that Clarke is totally jealous.
"Jealous of what?" Bellamy asks. He and Miller are doing demo without Clarke, which is their standard time for gossiping. It's actually kind of a nice tradition; they should keep it for Miller's love life once he and Clarke are resolved.
"Come on," says Miller, handing him a light fixture to hang. "Echo. It's so obvious."
"Why would Clarke be jealous of Echo? We dated like fifteen years ago. And I'm not--it's not like that. Any of it."
"I know you're convinced you haven't got a chance, but I'll bet you money that Clarke is worrying you're going to hook back up with your ex."
"Yeah? How much?"
They bet twenty bucks, but make no overt mention of Clarke's potential jealousy after that. Bellamy stays alert, and Miller sometimes shoots him looks, but by the time they're done with Echo's new place, neither of them has figured out anything conclusive. Miller gives him twenty bucks, under duress, and that's when Bellamy goes to the new store to find Clarke.
As they suggested, there are no cameras except for the mounted camera in the corner of the ceiling, and they tested it yesterday, figuring out where they needed to stand, how to position themselves so the audience would see their faces but think they were witnessing a spontaneous, unrehearsed event.
His palms are sweating for no good reason, too. Like this really is a confession.
"Hey," says Clarke, looking up from the rack she's restocking. "What are you doing here? I thought we were done for the night."
Bellamy finds his mark on the floor. "I needed you to settle a bet for me and Miller."
Clarke stands, frowning a little. "What bet?"
He takes a single step forward, nearly into Clarke's personal space. "He thought you were jealous of Echo."
"Jealous?" Clarke asks, her voice giving nothing away. "Why would I be jealous?"
"Honestly? I have no idea." He wets his lips, swallows, counts to three in his head. "You're the one I'm in love with."
He slides his hand into her hair but doesn't lean in, not until she nods a little, and then he kisses her, long and slow and sweet.
It's a really nice moment right up until she bites his bottom lip, hard. "No one's going to call cut, remember?"
"Sorry, do you not like making out?" He bumps his nose against hers. "Or were we not making out enough?"
"I wanted to make sure we didn't need another take."
"I think we nailed it."
She grins, bright and beautiful, the actual love of his life. "Yeah. I think so too."
*
#TheyreStaying: Moving On Up's Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin Talk Love, Life, and Season Two
SqueeTV: Congratulations on wrapping up your first season. Did you guys see the numbers on the finale?
Clarke Griffin: We're still in shock, yeah. I can't believe it was such a big draw.
Bellamy Blake: Yeah, who knew the cliffhanger where I kissed you and we faded to black would make people want to tune in for the finale?
CG: Yeah, total surprise.
Squee: So, obviously, the romance was a big question mark going into the finale, but there was also the question of whether or not Bellamy really wanted to be on the show and Clarke was okay leaving behind the big city for upstate New York. Was that ever really a question, or were you two always sure that you'd want to keep going?
BB: Everything on our show is completely real, obviously.
CG: Obviously.
BB: We really weren't sure if we were staying in New York for the second season. Should I Stay Or Should I Go, we moved around, and we thought for this one we should put down roots, but the first season really was an experiment in a lot of ways.
CG: Yeah. We were kind of finding our feet, so we relied a little more on interpersonal drama. We hadn't figured out what our vibe was going to be when it was just the two of us. Next season, it's going to be a lot less "is this going to work?" and more "here's how we're operating in this community as partners."
Squee: I assume you know there are a lot of conspiracy theories about your actual relationship.
BB: Yeah, sometimes I go on the subreddit. Which I don't recommend anyone ever do, by the way.
CG: I tell him not to go on the subreddit.
BB: You search your name on Twitter, that might be worse.
CG: So we both have poor impulse control.
BB: Anyway, yeah. We know people think the whole relationship is fake, which is great because there are also people who have an elaborate theory of how we got married between seasons three and four of Should I Stay Or Should I Go and we're hiding several children, and both groups have about the same amount of evidence to support their claims.
CG: It's tough because, yeah, what you see on the show isn't exactly what happened. We're telling a story, it has to have some kind of narrative arc, and life doesn't always have that. And of course sometimes stuff happens off-camera that needs to be on camera so we have to redo it, or something like that. But we're not going to pretend to be dating or moving in together just to get ratings.
BB: Honestly, sexual tension might have gotten better ratings.
Squee: There were actually arguments about that in the office. Some of my colleagues thought it was going to be Should I Stay Or Should I Go version two, with all this flirting that never went anywhere. My editor couldn't believe it when you just kissed her, she was sure it wasn't going to happen.
CG: Did you guys miss every interview Murphy ever gave where he mentioned his wife? That was never happening.
BB: Hey, a reality TV show host divorcing his wife to hook up with his co-star is pretty plausible. Just because that's not how you and Murphy are doesn't mean it couldn't have happened.
CG: Still, sometimes two coworkers are just two coworkers. Me and Murphy? Friends. Me and Bellamy? Partners.
Squee: I've heard fans have showed up at the store to make sure you're really there and together.
BB: Which we are.
CG: Well, not always. We have people who work in the retail space, but we also run an actual renovation company, Miller really works for us, and we're really dating. But if you make the trip out, you might not actually see us, we're on site a lot even in the off season.
BB: Clarke really likes flipping houses.
CG: It's fun!
Squee: Did anything in the first season surprise you, when it went to air?
CG: We came up with some drinking games. Bellamy says "you guys's" a lot. As soon as you notice, you can't stop noticing.
BB: Not as much as Clarke says "shiplap."
CG: That's a technical term!
BB: That you say a lot.
CG: Mostly it was what we expected. It's not like we're new to this. Having more of our personal lives in there was weird, but that was just what made sense, once we started filming. It's a show about us in a way that Should I Stay Or Should I Go was never a show about Murphy and me.
BB: You know, I get why people think the two of you were a couple, but I'm not even convinced you know his first name.
CG: James, but he prefers Jim.
BB: I stand corrected.
Squee: So, second season. Any hints you can give us? What's on the horizon?
CG: I think--well, I hope it's going to be less relationship-focused. The first season, we were figuring out our groove, and now we're in it. So, like I said, it's more of us--we've figured out our dynamic, and now it's just doing our thing. The storefront still needs some work, and we're thinking about getting our own place, since Bellamy's apartment is--
BB: Don't say anything you can't take back.
CG: Small.
BB: Okay, yeah, it is small.
CG: The thing with this show is that we actually don't know a ton of what's coming. We get applications for people who want renovations and we pick them. As for our real lives, it kind of depends on what happens in our real lives.
BB: If we break up it's going to be awkward. We'll have to figure out how to deal with that, and if it happens, you're not likely to see much of it on camera. We would keep that private.
CG: Imagine if we did actually have an unplanned argument and break up on camera.
BB: I don't think you're supposed to say our arguments are planned.
CG: We don't really have arguments. We have discussions. And when we have discussions on camera, we've usually already had those conversations. It doesn't mean they're not real, it just means you get a distilled, more efficient version of what we actually said.
BB: You wouldn't actually want to watch every minute of our lives, honestly. it's mostly pretty boring. We're giving you the most exciting parts. So it's hard to preview next season, because we don't know what exciting stuff is coming.
CG: If we got a new house, we could maybe get a dog.
BB: There you go. Moving On Up season two: maybe they get a dog.
CG: Perfect. I'd watch that.
BB: Cool. Let's get on making it.