OMG YES!!! YES TO BOTH!
also on AO3
There’s this feeling that comes with twenty one pilots concerts. Clarke can’t put her finger on it but they just make her feel good. They make her feel like she’s more and at the end, she can reconcile all her ugly parts with all her beautiful parts - and she doesn’t feel like a shitty excuse for a human.
So when Octavia has to cancel at the last minute because of a work situation, she decides to go alone. Because it’s twenty one pilots and she’ll be damned if she misses it.
At first, it’s really fucking scary. There’s all these people with their friends, humming with restless energy as they wait for the guys to show up. And then - when the music starts - the whole atmosphere changes.
She isn’t alone anymore. No, they are all together in this and there’s probably enough love in the stadium to stop wars.
A smile replaces her frown when they finish Car Radio and start singing Ride, but something really odd happens when the intro to Tear in my Heart starts playing.
There’s a guy that’s been standing next to her for a while, as if the two of them - both on their own - simply gravitated to each other. He’d sung along to previous songs but it wasn’t like this.
No - now he turns to her and, with a smile and dimpled cheeks peppered with stars, starts singing.
For the first few seconds, she doesn’t know what to do. He’s just smiling in a very nice kind of soft way, not threatening, not like some creep. Just like he wants to do this and hopes she’ll like it.
So by the time he gets to ‘my taste in music is your face’, pointing at her face, Clarke throws her head back in laughter and takes his hand, dances and sings along to the beat. The world feels alright, hyped with the euphoric sort of happy and the guy is pretty.
“I’m sorry, that was probably weird,” he tells her, out of breath, when the song ends. There’s a moment of quiet that catches Clarke with her cheeks red, shirt sweaty and happy, happy, happy.
“No, it was - “ she struggles to find the right words as he looks at her expectantly, her hand still in his - “ it was appropriate, actually.”
His surprised laugh makes her smile and so they stay like that, singing at each other like a pair of best friends, even hugging when slower songs start playing. It’s magical, it’s -
Clarke doesn’t want the night to end. She doesn’t want it with a raw passion of trying to keep it going, cheering on with the rest of the audience so the band comes back to the stage, the guy going so far as to raise her on his shoulders. He muffles his laughter into her thigh when she screams “Please come back! I need to stay with this cute guy!” and his warm cheek scorches her skin.
It’s only a cruel trick of the universe that the crowd marching towards the exit an hour later separates them, disappointment as hard and as clear in the guy’s eyes as it feels in Clarke’s heart.
Octavia is half-passed out on the couch but she squints at Clarke. “What’s his name?”
Clarke shoves at her, makes more room on the couch. “He sang Tear in my Heart at me and we held hands and - “
She ends with a squeal that prompts Octavia to press a hand to her forehead. “You sick or something?”
“No, but I might be in love.”
They joke about it for a lot longer than they should and Clarke can’t fall asleep because she keeps seeing the guy whenever she closes her eyelids. There’s still static humming in her ears because they’d been standing too close to a speaker, and she remembers him laughing when she told him that she didn’t want to come alone.
“Good thing you did, otherwise we wouldn’t have met.”
But now she doesn’t even know his name or his number and sleep pulls her in with a bittersweet thought - this kind of good can only exist for a moment.
“Bell’s coming over for dinner today.”
Clarke frowns at Octavia. “Your brother?”
She knows three things about Bellamy Blake: he’s a nerd (according to Octavia), he’s a mother hen (according to Octavia) and he tries really hard to be an asshole (according to Octavia and Lincoln).
Somehow, Clarke’s never met him but she doesn’t really want to. Sure, from what she’s heard, he also practically single-handedly raised Octavia, but he doesn’t seem like a fun kind of person.
“Yeah, he was at the concert last night, too, so he’ll probably fangirl or some shit,” she clarifies, rolling her eyes as she checks the cupboards for chocolate.
“He can’t be an asshole if he likes twenty one pilots, O.”
Octavia shoots her a glare. “There are assholes who like the band. Bell’s not one of them. I just said he actively tries to be an asshole.”
They leave it at that, Clarke going to work and Octavia lounging in front of the TV because it’s her day off. By the time she has to get home, Clarke has forgotten all about Bellamy coming over for dinner so she nearly screams when she sees a stranger coming out of their bathroom just as she’s taking off her pants.
(So she takes off her pants as soon as she comes home, sue her.)
And then he steps into the dim yellow light of the hallway and he’s not a stranger anymore. No, Clarke knows those freckles.
“You,” he whispers, shock written clear in his feature. “What - “
Clarke shakes her head, but can’t shake her smile. “Wait, you’re Bellamy?”
He rolls his eyes, fond. “And you’re Clarke.”
She nods, smiles. “What are the chances?”
And Bellamy ducks his head to hide a small smile, the kind that still has the intensity of a thousand suns shining in their shoebox apartment. It’s endearing and she steps closer, pants-less and all.
It takes him just a second to catch up and then he’s sliding his hand into her hair, the other pulling her in closer by the skin of her waist. Their noses brush when he says, “I should have done this last night.”
They aren’t at the concert anymore, there’s no loud music, but it still feels like it when he licks into her mouth, wet and dirty and honest in a way that makes her heart flip and flip and never stop flipping.
They part only when Octavia clears her throat and says, “I’m sleeping over at Lincoln’s. I don’t want to know.”
Clarke shouts after her, “He’s the concert guy, Octavia!” and Bellamy laughs into her hair.
He sounds proud when he shoots back, “Damn right I did.”
And maybe the universe isn’t such an asshole after all.
