Bellarke One Shots Book 2

94) Come On Baby, Light Me On Fire

Archive of our own:
By: meremennen
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"Griffin!" Clarke cringes internally and tries to walk faster upon hearing her name.

She would know that voice anywhere. It's Murphy's.

She's not in the mood, today above all, for listening to his whining again. She's on her way to her appointment with her professor, and he doesn't linger around in his office for students in need.

She's already late.

Professor Cage Wallace is a hard person to please. It took her a lot of begging to set up this appointment in the first place, and she's already fucked it up.

Normally, she didn't mind sweet-talking teachers that much, if her future was dependent on it. She's done it before. Like with Professor Sidney last semester, or Professor Pike the one before.

But this is Cage, and he is different. She has to swallow the bile in her mouth whenever she talks to him, let alone sees him. Every single time. He is an asshole. A big one, everyone knows. But his father is the Dean, and well — her life sucks.

She peeks at her watch, 'Already 10 minutes too late.'

"What do you want Murphy?" She stops in her tracks and turns to level Murphy with a gaze. Not that she can really intimidate him, but maybe he will recognise the urgency in her voice and he will stop stalling. "I'm in a bit of a hurry. So spit it out!", she prompts.

"Remember the time you accused me in summer camp of stealing and gutting Dora Perkins' rug doll? "

'Not this again', she sighs.

"It's hard to forget, since you remind me every fucking day we meet. And it was like a decade ago! We were kids. Grow up, get over it!"

"Nice try, Griffin. But I had to clean the toilets, for a week. It scarred me for life —"

Well, he is right.

The real culprit turned out to be Charlotte, one of the younger girls in camp. She was weirdly into dead things, for one.

She liked to see what was inside of inanimate objects, such as dolls and Transformers, among other things. See, there's also that one kid in every group who has that weird interest. In their summer camp, it happened to be little Charlotte  — the one oddball who collected bugs and butterflies like others did with shells or stones.

She admitted her deed a week later, for Murphy, though, it had been already too late. He'd already fulfilled his allotted punishment: latrine duty for 7 full days. Not the best day of Clarke's life, which is an understatement, honestly. Years gone by, and she's still not proud of it, just like she's not proud of the weak 'Ooooops' she mumbled on the spot when Charlotte stepped forward to confess — but hey, she was just a thirteen year old kid herself.

Charlotte's defence was the usual, albeit very sad 'my parents are going through a divorce'.  She would have been too young to carry out cleaning duty, anyway. No wonder Murphy is still a little irritated about that. (No wonder, he never forgets.)

It's not like Clarke doesn't feel bad about it. She still has this nervous flutter in her belly whenever her mind brings it up. But she's learnt her lesson for life: sometimes, it is better to keep her mouth shut.

Murphy is still a massive asshole, for reminding her, again, to top it all she's already very late!

He knows very well she's still feeling guilty about this shit.

Sometimes, though, apart from their shared past at that one summer camp, she feels sorry for him. It's not pity, she truly feels for him being misunderstood.