#kingkingmae

[chasholidays]

Hey Chash! Just a silent follower from Australia, thought I'd finally break the wall to say hi and I really fkn love your work. Here's my prompt: clarke starts wearing bellamy's glasses by accident and he doesnt know how to ask for it back because it's clarke wearing his glasses Looking forward to reading ur fics like always! Thanks!! 😀😀

It really is an honest mistake, at least to begin with.

Here’s the thing: Clarke is incapable of holding onto sunglasses. It’s like some sort of weird disease; she’ll buy sunglasses, wear them once or twice, and then lose them. It’s not a purposeful thing, they’re just somehow very hard for her to keep up with. She has the same issue with chapstick, which is why she ended up leaving one at home and one at her desk at work and asking Bellamy if she can borrow his when they’re out in public.

Which is not how she ends up stealing his sunglasses. It’s just a coincidence.

What actually happens is that she’s in a hurry to get to work, and when she finds a pair of sunglasses, she just assumes they’re hers. After all, she’s had so many sunglasses over the course of her life that it’s hard to remember what all of them look like. They do seem nicer than her usual ones, and a little big, but it doesn’t seem particularly suspicious. She’s bought a lot of last-minute sunglasses just to have some.

And, she has to say, they look good on her. They’re a flattering style.

She’s still wearing them when she gets home, and Bellamy raises his eyebrows at her.

“What?” she asks.

“New sunglasses?”

She rolls her eyes, which he definitely can’t see. “You act like that’s a surprise. Do you know how much money I’ve wasted on sunglasses over the years? If I could just stop losing them I could buy a boat or something.”

“Which would be great, because you have so much to do with a boat. Also, you’d waste less money if you didn’t buy nice sunglasses.”

She takes them off, examining them. They really are nice. “Or maybe I’ll actually keep this pair.”

“That would be a miracle,” he says.

It feels like their standard shit-talking, so Clarke doesn’t think much of it. It’s not even unwarranted; she does lose sunglasses like it’s her job. But she likes this pair, and Bellamy actually keeps asking about them, which gives her incentive to keep them, because he just seems to be smugly waiting for her to lose track of them.

And, to be fair, at least twice his reminding her is the only reason she doesn’t forget them, so maybe she’d lose fewer sunglasses if he was constantly checking in.

When he buys her one of the chains like librarians have, that’s a little much, but she still wears it, about half to fuck with him and half because, like Bellamy’s check-ins, they actually do help her keep track of things.

It’s been about a month of that when she, Raven, and Octavia grab lunch one Saturday and Octavia asks, “Are those Bell’s sunglasses?”

Of course, her immediate reaction is to say no, but the answer dies on her tongue before she can voice it. Bellamy does have sunglasses of his own, and he generally gets nicer ones than she does. He has a few in rotation, but Clarke doesn’t pay a ton of attention to them. Sunglasses are sunglasses, and Bellamy looks good in all of them. She’s never noticed much about the specific style, except when he’s wearing aviators or something. Mostly, she just doesn’t know a ton about sunglasses.

But it would explain a lot.

“Are they?” she asks, casual. “I must have grabbed them by mistake.”

“Yeah, those are like his favorite ones. I can’t believe he left them out. You better not lose them.”

Raven snorts. “Good luck with that.”

It’s tempting to point out that she’s had these for a month and not lost them yet, but then Raven and Octavia will know both that she didn’t notice she had Bellamy’s sunglasses for a month and that Bellamy didn’t tell her, which will doubtless raise many questions she doesn’t want to deal with. Not with Raven and Octavia anyway.

“I’m not that bad,” she says, and lets them tell her how she really is that bad instead of saying anything more.

When she gets home, she doesn’t bring it up with Bellamy either.

“Still have my sunglasses,” she says, holding them up, and he snorts and shakes his head.

“Congratulations.”

*

“If I stole your sunglasses, would you tell me?”

Wells frowns. “How would I know? I assume you’d lose them before I saw them again. Is this your way of telling me you lost my sunglasses?”

“No, I didn’t lose your sunglasses. I don’t have your sunglasses. This is an actual hypothetical.” He makes a face, and she sighs. “These are Bellamy’s,” she says, tapping the glasses she’s wearing. “I took them by mistake last month.”

“And you still have them?” he asks.

“That’s your takeaway?”

“Remember when we were in high school and you lost a pair of sunglasses on the roller coaster at Six Flags and bought a new pair and lost that one before we got back to the bus? Because I do.”

“I’ve been working really hard to keep up with them.”

“Because they’re Bellamy’s?”

“No, I only found that out a couple days ago. But he’d been asking me if I’d lost them like ten times a day, which made it easier to not lose them and also should have tipped me off.”

“So, your question is if I would have just let you wear my sunglasses for a month without telling you.”

“Pretty much.”

“Definitely not.”

She sighs. “Yeah, I thought not. It’s weird, right? Why wouldn’t he just ask for them back? I would have given them to him.”

“Except now you know and you aren’t.”

“Because he didn’t tell me!”

“So he needs to be punished?”

“No, but–if he doesn’t want them back, why should I give them back? They’re the only sunglasses I’ve ever managed to hold onto, maybe it’s fate.”

“Uh huh.”

“Seriously, why wouldn’t he tell me? They’re nice.”

Wells sighs. “Look, you know I don’t like offering opinions on whatever the deal is with you and Bellamy,” he says. “But I would assume this was yet another step in your weird flirtation.”

“How is taking someone’s sunglasses a flirting thing?”

“I’m not saying I understand it, just that it’s the only explanation I’ve got. I wouldn’t do that, but I don’t have a thing for you. There’s the difference.”

“I don’t think that’s the only difference between you and Bellamy.”

“Seriously, I don’t have an explanation here. Maybe he thinks they look good on you.”

Clarke thinks it over. “If it was flirting,” she says, slow, “what would I do? Like–what’s the next step of flirting here?”

“Actually flirting with him like a normal person? I don’t know how to glasses flirt. That’s not a thing.”

“You’re not helpful.”

“Hey, I told you like three useful things. But yeah, there’s only so much I can do with this.”

“Yeah, okay,” she grants. “I’m on my own. Thanks anyway.”

“Good luck. And I do like the sunglasses,” he adds, making her smile.

“Yeah. Me too.”

*

“Do you think I should get glasses?” she asks Bellamy that night. He has a prescription, but his eyesight isn’t actually that bad, so he doesn’t wear his all the time.

Which means it’s easy for her to try them on.

He glances away from his grading, frowning. “It’s not really something you do just for fun. Do you think you need glasses?”

“Some people do them as a fashion statement now.”

“You want to get ironic hipster glasses?”

“I’m just wondering if I look good in glasses.”

“Everyone looks good in glasses,” he says, like this is a well-known fact.

“Really?”

“Maybe not everyone. But I like glasses, yeah.”

“What about sunglasses?”

There’s an unmistakable tensing of his shoulders, but he keeps his voice steady. “What about them?”

“I really like how I look in those sunglasses I’ve got.”

“And you’re worried about inevitably losing them, so you want to replace them with ironic hipster frames?”

“I feel like I should give them back to you.”

He takes a second and then he asks, “How long have you known?”

“That I stole your sunglasses? About week. Octavia recognized them. And it did make sense. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You held onto them for a whole day, I wanted to see how long it could last. You should just always steal my stuff, if it helps you not lose it.“

“So, what, you think I subconsciously wasn’t losing those because deep down I knew they were yours?”

He shrugs. “It makes as much sense as anything. Will you take those off?” he adds, making a grab for his glasses, but she ducks out of the way.

“You weren’t even using them.”

“You can’t steal my actual glasses, Clarke.”

“Just your sunglasses.”

“They aren’t prescription.”

“Octavia said they were your favorites. The sunglasses.”

He wets his lips, watching her carefully. “They look good on you,” he finally says.

“Yeah?” she asks, grinning. “What about these? Do these look good on me too?”

“Clarke.”

“What?”

“You always look good. Take off my glasses before you permanently damage your eyes.”

She has to laugh. “Wow. Wells might be right, we really suck at flirting.”

"That wasn’t flirting, that was genuine concern.” He clears his throat. “Were you flirting?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t figure out what the next step from you apparently being into me wearing your sunglasses was.”

“Seriously, how did you come up with that?”

“Wells, like I said. I had to call in a consultation because I didn’t know what was going on.” For the first time, she realizes he hasn’t really confirmed anything, and her confidence wavers. Not that much, but–she does need to hear it. “He wasn’t wrong, right?”

His face breaks out in a grin, and he leans in, presses his mouth against hers, just a whisper of a kiss, but enough for a start. “I wasn’t really trying to flirt, honestly,” he says. “But, uh, you looked cute. And I kind of liked–I don’t know. It’s not like you’re wearing my shirts or anything, but it was cool that you actually managed to hang onto them.”

“So, just kind of a weird fetish for you,” she teases.

“You’re a weird fetish for me,” he shoots back, reflexive, and she snorts.

“Great burn.”

“It’s kind of true.” He pauses, scrubs his face. “So, this is the worst love confession ever, right?”

“Definitely,” she says, and tugs him back in for another kiss. “But it worked.”

He smiles, pressing her back onto the couch. “Well, as long as it worked.”

*

Two days later, she comes home wearing a pair of ironic hipster glasses with a new pair of sunglasses for Bellamy.

“Does this mean you lost mine?” he asks, wary.

“No. It means I’m planning to keep yours and you need a new pair.”

“These are a lot shittier than the ones you stole.”

“It’s symbolic.”

“Uh huh.” His eyes flick over her in a way that makes heat coil in her belly. “What about the other glasses?”

“For your weird fetish,” she says, with a shrug of one shoulder. “Assuming you’re interested.”

He grins, puts his papers aside and tugs her into his lap. “You know you don’t need to be wearing glasses to seduce me, right? I don’t mind, but all you have to do is exist and I’m sold.”

“You’re worth the effort.” She straightens her glasses with a smile. “Besides, I’m kind of starting to like them.”