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Clarke was still mad at him. Like entire, total, all- encompassing angry with the man in front of her. Somehow she was able to ignore his messy curls and chocolate brown eyes that attempted the puppy look at her as he sat on the hospital bed in front of her. His medical chart dangled limply in her hands as she stared at him incredulously. The chart attributed the deep slice on his arm to dropping a knife while cooking, but the Bellamy she knew was never clumsy with anything, much less anything that could serve as a weapon.
"Excuse me?" She watched him close his eyes and wince at her tone that arguably said you really aren't that fucking stupid to have said that are you, Bellamy?
"I said, it's been six months." He forced the words out, knowing even as he said them that he was saying entirely the wrong thing. "You can't still be mad at me."
Clarke watched him closely for a moment, taking in the deep purple rings under his eyes and tired lines around his mouth. His freckles stood out against his dark skin that seemed extremely pale under the fluorescent hospital lights. He looked like hell, and it wasn't just due to the six-inch gash that graced his left forearm. He looked like he hadn't slept or had anything of substance to eat since she saw him last.
Granted, the last time she saw him had been at Octavia's house two months after they found out he was alive. At the time, he had been full of smirks and hugs, only slightly terrified of Clarke's glare and stinging words. Octavia had begged her to please just forgive him, he was just doing his job and Clarke you know how much he missed you, you were the first person he went to. But despite everything her almost- sister- in- law had said or pleaded, Clarke couldn't bring herself to do anything but glare and glower at any of the partygoers that dared approach her, especially the guest of honor.
Now, with her white lab coat and scrubs acting as security blankets, she continued to glare. Clarke knew that her mouth was set in a firm, unyielding line; that her brows were set so deep in a scowl that the skin at her forehead was starting to hurt. But she wouldn't bend in her vow to be angry, to be indifferent, to be furious at the man who had completely shattered her heart three years ago.
She wouldn't admit that what she really wanted to do was to gather him in her arms and hold him tight. To run her hands through his hair and feel his breath against her neck, proof that he was there, whole, alive. She wanted nothing more than to invite him back into her heart, arms and bed.
But she couldn't.
Instead she barely bit back a growl and said, "I can be as angry as I want. You don't own me, or my emotions. You're not my husband."
Bellamy's wince turned into a glare of his own. "Good God, Clarke. Can you stop pouting and acting like a child for ten goddamn minutes and just sew up my arm." His voice was deep, low, rough and tauntingly familiar, sending shivers up her back. "Do your job and I'll leave you alone, just like you want."
Clarke let out a huff of breath as she wordlessly snapped her gloves into place. She readied her instruments without looking at Bellamy, even though she could feel his gaze like a physical caress on her skin. The nurse had already numbed his arm before she had arrived, so she was able to start stitching him immediately.
Silence reigned for a moment, and Clarke reveled at the way Bellamy cleared his throat in what she would call a nervous fashion if she didn't know any better. She was mostly finished with the stitches when he took a deep breath.
"They're good." Clarke clenched her jaw at his voice and looked at him with a single raised eyebrow, "Your stitches, I mean. They're, uh, neater than they used to be."
That was bullshit. Her stitches had always been flawless and straight, a sure sign of her perfectionist traits. She hadn't changed the way she stitched, and she knew Bellamy was aware of that.
He knew a lot of things about her. Or used to know. He might have known her favorite color three years ago, but he didn't know how she now only drank her coffee black, without any embellishments or cream. That particular change in habit was from the first year and a half of nightmares that she tried to avoid with caffeine. She had become accustomed to the bitter taste of black coffee, along with the long nights that she stayed awake so she wouldn't have to sleep in their bed alone. He used to know that she liked to paint her nails only on special occasions, but he wasn't aware that she could now only listen to classical, instrumental music, without any words, because inevitably almost every song would remind her of him, of them, so she was safer just avoiding most music all together. He might have known that she used to love nothing more than to cuddle on the couch with a bowl of ice cream and watching old reruns, but he didn't know that she hadn't been to a movie theater in three years and had cancelled her Netflix subscription, because too many movies and shows had romance elements in them and she couldn't stand it.
At her silence, Bellamy sighed. "You can't be angry at me forever, Clarke." He muttered. But she heard him and her control snapped.
"Seriously, Bellamy? I can't be angry?" She got in his face, nose only inches from his, so she could see every fleck of golden brown in his eyes. "Who wouldn't be angry? You faked your death for three goddamn years and ate all my cereal when you came back without a word." She poked him in the chest with a gloved forefinger, her voice rising. "I'm so fucking angry with you I could scream. I had policemen, fake policemen mind you, come to my door in the middle of the night and tell me that you were dead. For three long years I wallowed in misery and sorrow, believing my fiancé was dead because of a fucking car accident. Then suddenly, you reappear like a freaking ghost in my house, eating my food and saying you missed me."
"Clarke-"
"No, you don't get to interrupt me. You come to inform me that not only were you conveniently not dead, but that you were an employee of the CIA and that the death was necessary for a covert op. You lied to me, Bellamy, for years." He couldn't pretend not to notice the tears in her eyes. They made her eyes look even bluer, even as they streaked down her cheeks. "You were dead and I was trying to move on and you show up at my house like nothing happened, expecting everything to go back to normal? That's complete and utter bullshit, Bellamy, and you know it."
He closed his eyes against her wounded expression. "Clarke, I was an agent. That was my job. I-"
"Your job made you leave the woman you claimed to love and your family for three years? I don't think so."
"It was a covert op, Clarke. I didn’t have a choice. It- it wasn't supposed to take three years."
"Oh, like that makes it any better?"
"But I came back, just like I always promised I would." Bellamy gritted his teeth. "I made sure you were always protected, always safe, even if you didn't know it."
"You promised that when I thought you were in the Marines, not the freaking CIA." She spat at him.
"Where I was doesn’t matter. It matters that I kept my promise. I lo-"
She backed away from him, shaking her head and peeling off her gloves. "No, it doesn't. Nothing you ever said matters to me now." She turned her back to him and pulled back the curtain that separated him from the rest of the emergency room. "I'll have another doctor discharge you. Goodbye, Bellamy."
He watched his former fiancé walk away with tears on her cheeks and I love you lingering on his lips.
--
Bellamy jerked from sleep on the couch in his bare living room to ferocious knocking on his door. He sighed as he got up and stepped around the empty pizza boxes on the floor in front of the TV. Octavia would kill him if she knew that he lived in such squalor. Or she would come rouse his ass out of bed to make him clean it up. He didn't want her to know that he lived in a pigsty. That the years of living undercover by himself had let him pick up some particularly messy habits.
Bellamy knew that he should clean, that he should do anything really. But since he had officially quit working for the grand US of A after months of debriefing and itching to get back to his family, he didn't actually know what he wanted to do. For the first time since he left active duty in the Marines, he didn't have a plan or a direction. His original plan had been to return home to the loving arms of his sister, fiancé, and friends. But obviously that hadn't turned out as he had hoped. Instead, he had an overbearing Octavia who checked on him just about every hour, wondering where he was and if he was okay, or more accurately, alive. He had a few friends who were too scared of him and his past to ask him about anything more trivial than the weather. And he had a blonde fury of an apparently- ex- fiancé who couldn't stand the sight of him.
Clarke .
His heart hurt just thinking about her and the pain he had put her through. According to Octavia, she had put a self- imposed quarantine around herself for the first few months after he had "died", and barely talked to anyone or slept in the years after. O said she had practically become a ghost, only interacting with Octavia because she knew how much his sister had been suffering alongside her.
Bellamy had expected some anger and frustration at his return and truth of his whereabouts, but he hadn't expected the vigil of fury to last so long after his return, especially in light of his apologizing and literal begging he had attempted in the days and weeks following it.
He opened the door to a stinging slap on the cheek and said blonde fury barging into his apartment, shaking the hand that had met his face.
"Clarke?" He shook his head and brought a hand to cover his stinging face. "What are you doing here? How do you know where-"
"No, you shut up for a second. Octavia gave me your address, probably hoping I was coming to forgive you." She paced around his living room, skirting the food boxes and cartons and newspapers hat littered the floor. He regretted not cleaning up more than ever.
When she didn't continue, he took a cautious step toward her. "Are you here to forgive me?"
Clarke finally stopped and looked at him. "No. Yes. No. I don't know." She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing the wild blonde curls out of her eyes.
"Clarke, I-"
"No, shh. Stop talking." Clarke held a hand up and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and opened them again. "Bellamy, I mourned you. I grieved you. For three years, I woke up everyday thinking, hoping, that that was the day my heart stopped because I didn't want to live in a world without you in it. And I was finally getting over you, Bellamy. You were my best friend and the love of my life, but I finally realized that you wouldn't have wanted me to waste my life away missing you." His swallow was audible, but he didn't say anything. "I was ready to start my life over, with the knowledge that I would love you forever and that somewhere, I had a guardian angel looking down on me. I was ready to do as Octavia kept telling me and to start living again, because I had become no better than a ghost." Her eyes welled up. "I'm so mad at you, Bellamy. So angry that you left me. But today, at the hospital, being so close to you, it- it reminded me that you're here and alive and that life obviously doesn’t go the way you plan it, so you should make the best of what you have. And we have you. We have you back, and I don't think I'm strong enough to let you go a second time."
As Clarke's tears fell down her face and her shoulders began to shake, Bellamy took a step forward. And then another. And another. Until he was right in front of her, closer than he had been in months. He could feel the heat of her body and could smell the hand sanitizer she kept in her pocket because his girl was a registered germ freak, and hello a doctor, and he loved that about her. She didn't say anything when he got close to her. She also didn’t say anything when he put his hands tentatively on her shoulders and pulled her cautiously into his waiting, aching arms.
He knew his sigh was as audible as hers as she pressed her nose into his chest. He didn't want to get his hopes up, but this was as closed to dreaming as he'd gotten in the last six months. As he gently ran his fingers through her hair, he could feel her arms lightly at first, then more securely, wrap around his waist. She was the perfect fit in his arms, short enough that he could rest his chin on her head and delicate in all the places he was rigid. When he was in her arms, he felt at home, like nowhere else ever could.
"I'm sorry," Bellamy whispered, still carding his fingers through her curls. "I'm so sorry, Clarke. I'm sorry." He kept muttering the words in her ear until her sobs finally quieted.
He kept expecting her to pull away, and was pleasantly surprised when she didn't. They stood in the silence for a few moments, arms still wrapped around each other.
"They showed me a body." Clarke whispered after a minute. "Burned beyond recognition, but with your dog tags around the neck. That’s how they identified you. Or him." She added as an afterthought.
Bellamy winced. "I can't really talk about it, Clarke, for security reasons. But obviously that wasn't me. The tags were faked too, I've still got mine." He felt her fingers travel up his back to his neck, where evidence of his time in the military lay. "They were able to falsely identify the body with DNA samples taken from me and falsify the records." She stiffened in his arms, but he held on tighter. "I promise, it- it wasn't supposed to go down like that."
Despite his hold on her, she leaned back to look at his face. "What do you mean, it wasn't supposed to go down like that?"
Bellamy grimaced and closed his eyes, even as he tucked her head back under his chin. "Like I said, there are things that I can't really talk about. Security clearance that you don't have. But originally, I was only supposed to be gone for six months." He felt her tensing, and hurried on. "I was supposed to be able to tell you, and Octavia, and you were supposed to be able to go into a protection program of some sort until I was done with the op. But, plans rarely go accordingly and one of the marks moved quicker than we expected. My death was an on- the- spot decision made by higher ups. I had no control over it." He smoothed a hand over her head again in an attempt to soothe her. "If I had my way, we wouldn't have been parted for a minute, I promise."
He felt her relax in his hold and hold his waist tighter. Clarke looked up at him, eyes peering at his features until they reached his mouth. When her gaze heated and didn't waver from his lips, Bellamy knew he was about to finally come home.
Clarke leaned forward and brushed her mouth lightly against Bellamy's. He sighed as she pressed more firmly on his lips and sighed into her curving smile. She tasted like mint and sunshine and goodness and Clarke. She tasted like everything he had missed in the last three years. Bellamy brought his hands up to frame her face and pressed light kisses along her cheeks, temple, forehead, eyes, nose, and jaw until she whimpered at the loss of his lips and he moved back to her mouth. Clarke traced her tongue lightly along his bottom lip, heaving her own sigh into him. She brought her hands up to card through his hair; scratching at his scalp with her fingernails and making his knees nearly buckle at the pure pleasure of her touch.
When they both ran out of air, he rested her forehead against hers; breathing heavily and reveling in the sense of contentment he was experiencing.
"I think," Clarke's voice broke and she swallowed. "I think I was so mad at you because I finally didn't have to be sad anymore. Like now that I knew you were alive, I could be angry that you left me, instead of so sad."
Bellamy tightened his grip on her and kissed her until they were both breathless again.
"You can be as mad as you want, Clarke, as long as you know that I will always come back to you. I will always come back and I will always love you."
He watched her tongue come out and wet her bottom lip. "I love you, too, Bellamy. I never stopped."
Bellamy pulled Clarke back into his arms until she was flush against his chest. He buried his face into her neck and smiled against her skin.
Thank God he was finally home.