Work Text:
Clarke gets into a fight about Friendly Enmity within ten minutes of finding out it exists, which will, in retrospect, seem exactly right.
She'd like to say that it's a rare occurrence for her to start fights about books that she's never read on the internet, but in this new age of ideology-based media consumption, Clarke ends up having to fight people on the internet a lot. Usually, it's about LGBT books, and she very rarely manages anything like a victory. Obviously, she thinks she's right, but her opponents tend to remain stubbornly unconvinced, and there is, unfortunately, no greater arbiter of internet fights who can declare a winner in these things. So Clarke just keeps on fighting the good fight and hopes that she gets through to at least someone, even if it's not the person she's arguing with.
Everyone needs a hobby, right?
This fight starts when she finds Friendly Enmity on a list of new bi-focused YA books on tumblr, and all that gives her is that the protagonist is a bisexual girl, and that's really all she needs to want to check it out. But when she clicks through to the Amazon page, the top review is one-star, and the title is NOT LGBT, DON'T BE FOOLED!!
Clarke wants to believe that the actual review won't raise her blood pressure to dangerous levels. It could be a legitimate complaint. There are all sorts of ways you can write a shitty book that's masquerading as LGBT fiction while actually, secretly, being about someone learning to not be LGBT.
But the protagonist is bisexual, and this isn't her first rodeo.
NOT LGBT, DON'T BE FOOLED!!
By Anna on April 28, 2017
I bought this book because it's filed under LGBT fiction, and I'm always looking for more YA LGBT stuff, so I was really excited! And everything was going so well for a while. Hitting all my buttons: bisexual girl struggling with her identity, friendly rival who was doing the same, and I was soooooo ready for her to find a cute gf. And then she just--didn't. Girl hooks up with her friendly rival, and I would have LOVED it, if he was just, you know. A GIRL. But nope. Total waste of my time, just another boring het romance trying to cash in on having "LGBT rep" without following through. Good thing I got the physical book because I would have been pissed if I threw my kindle across the room in frustration. Do not engage.
There was a time in Clarke's life when she would have let the comment go, a time when she would have given it the most charitable reading. This is, after all, a person who read this book hoping for a female/female high-school romance, and didn't get what she wanted. Clarke can relate to that.
And if that's what the review said, she could let it slide.
She's halfway through an indignant reply when it occurs to her that she should actually check what the book summary says. Her argument is stronger if it's accurate; even if the summary is misleading, it's possible to highlight that without being gross and biphobic.
As it turns out, Friendly Enmity is Augusta Miller's first novel, and it's pretty upfront about itself. The protagonist is Elena, a high-school junior who just got cast in Twelfth Night opposite a guy she doesn't know how to stop fighting with, even though she wants to. She thinks she might not be straight but also knows she isn't gay and is having trouble navigating it, not sure about the right vocabulary, not sure how queer is queer enough. And on top of that, she's dealing with her stepfather's recent death and her mother's declining health, and an annoying little sister who's suddenly her responsibility, when all she really wants to do is pass AP calculus.
It sounds, in all honesty, really good, and Clarke sees absolutely no reason it shouldn't be called LGBT fiction, regardless of how the main character's love life shakes out, so she's absolutely going to fight that fucking reviewer.
She buys the book first, just so she can be honest when she replies, Wow, thanks for this! I wasn't sure about picking this one up, but your review totally won me over. I'm always here for more bisexuals in fiction, and, unlike you, I recognize that bisexual romances are never het! Seriously, it's fine if you're just interested in reading f/f content, I get that, but please recognize that trying to say a book about a BISEXUAL GIRL shouldn't count as LGBT fiction is both harmful and totally untrue. Can't wait to read the book!
As she unfortunately expected, the comment is somehow controversial, and she ends up in a minor but vitriolic flamewar about how making bisexual characters get together with partners of a different gender reinforces heteronormativity and doesn't count as representation and a bunch of other bullshit, but some other people join her side, and she thinks she makes a lot of really good points.
And the review gets a bunch of downvotes and stops being the top one. That's a nice bonus.
Plus, she has a new book to read, and she's even pretty excited about it. She was a junior when she figured out she was bi herself, and she did some theater. Granted, she's an only child, so the family side of it is going to be new, but she definitely had some weird, antagonistic relationships that she wishes had turned romantic, so it's mostly familiar.
In fact, the more she reads it, the more familiar it feels. To an extent that's actually a little bit disconcerting. It would be one thing if she just felt her own insecurities in Elena's story; she was expecting that. But for all she likes Elena as a protagonist, the character she actually sees herself in is Ian, Elena's friendly rival and love interest. Like Elena, he's navigating his bisexuality, but he's a single child of privilege, with a mother in local politics and a father who works for a software company. His relationship with Elena is familiar too, these two people who got off on the wrong foot and want to get on the right one, but are just a little bit too awkward to figure it out.
Which is also how she figures out Elena, because as soon as she starts thinking of Elena as Bellamy Blake, the whole book becomes, very clearly, a retelling of her actual life. She remembers when Bellamy's stepfather died, remembers how he got more and more tired with no explanation. She'd taken him aside and told him that if she was going to be valedictorian, she wanted to earn it, not get the title just because he gave up, and he'd smiled with half his mouth and told her about his stepdad, about his little sister.
It had been the start of their real, actual friendship, a turning point, and it's right there, at the end of the sixth chapter of the book.
Which means that she's definitely reading a young adult book by her high-school crush, a book that's about the two of them. It's not even subtle about it. Granted, she's not sure anyone but her would be able to tell, but, well, for her, it's obvious.
Except when it happened to her, it didn't end with the two of them together. In the real story, she hadn't thought he was interested, failed to make a move, and got a girlfriend over the summer. When they came back for senior year, they were friends, but only friends. His mother had passed away around Christmas, she'd helped make sure he graduated, and that was it. They went off to two different lives.
She makes herself finish the book before anything else, just to make sure there's nothing that makes her doubt, but there isn't. It's not like it's her exact life, but it's full of moments she knows, times when the two of them stayed late after school talking, the awkward car ride when her mother dropped him off and he'd clearly been a little embarrassed about his house. There are other parts she imagines are just as true and she didn't know about, things about his sister and his mother, and when it all comes together, it's not really her life in broad strokes, just in details.
And she loves it, which is nice. It's the book she wishes she had when she was a confused teenager, and it must have been the book Bellamy wished he had too. Because the author is, without a doubt, Bellamy, and as soon as she's finished with the book, she turn her attention to finding him.
It doesn't seem like it should be that hard. After all, she knows Bellamy. She's still in contact with plenty of people she knows from high school, so it's not unreasonable to think she can get back in touch with him. But she's never seen him on Facebook, and the last time she was back in San Diego, she found out he moved. She hasn't seen hide or hair of him since graduation, when he gave her a warm hug and told her to kick ass at college. She'd wanted to cling to him, but she hadn't.
She'd just let go, and that was the last time she saw him. The last she heard from him.
At the back of the book, there's a basic and not very helpful author profile: Augusta Miller is a prematurely grumpy old cat lady who wants you kids to get off her lawn. She lives in California and enjoys classics, history, yelling at the TV, and board games. This is her first novel.
Based on the minimal information, this is definitely Bellamy, and it's kind of awesome that he's apparently still in California. It's a large state, so it's hard to be sure he's near her, but he's a lot nearer than he would be if he was in New York or something. And he could be a lot closer than San Diego.
She can hope.
Her google search for Bellamy Blake doesn't do much good either; there are hits, but none of them give her any useful information about him now. There's an article about their production of As You Like It junior year, which makes her smile, but everything is about that old, and about as much help.
But the google search for Augusta Miller does a little better. Apparently she has a Twitter, which she uses to promote her book, ineptly interact with fans, and occasionally post random historical trivia facts. So Bellamy definitely runs his pseudonym's social media himself. That is 100% and without a doubt him.
Clarke has a Twitter of her own that she mostly uses to yell at politicians and stalk Chrissy Teigen, which is about the maximum level of Twitter interaction she's interested in on an average day, but she could probably make an exception to fuck with Bellamy. After all, he's worth it.
Rosalind Orsino @slyther-griffin
@augusta-miller Just finished Friendly Enmity, loved it!! What was the inspiration?
Augusta Miller @augusta-miller-writes
Replying to @slyther-griffin
I'm glad you liked it! I feel like the inspiration isn't that exciting. I was an awkward bisexual theater kid. I wrote what I know.
Rosalind Orsino @slyther-griffin
Replying to @augusta-miller-writes
Yeah, I got that feeling. It definitely felt very true to life. Kind of scarily so.
Augusta Miller @augusta-miller-writes
Replying to @slyther-griffin
That's what I go for. Mildly freaking out my audience with memories of high school. Mission accomplished.
Rosalind Orsino @slyther-griffin
Replying to @augusta-miller-writes
Seriously, I definitely once spent twenty minutes playing "toss a Skittle into my crush's mouth backstage" junior year
Rosalind Orsino @slyther-griffin
Replying to @augusta-miller-writes
But they were M&Ms, the play was As You Like It, and my crush was playing Orlando
Rosalind Orsino @slyther-griffin
Replying to @augusta-miller-writes
Other than that, really spot on. Perfectly captured my high school experience
Augusta Miller @augusta-miller-writes
Replying to @slyther-griffin
Cool
It only takes a minute for Augusta Miller to follow her after that, and then one more for the direct message to show up. Clarke bites back on a grin as she opens it, and gives up entirely on hiding her glee when she sees the actual message.
Augusta: Well, fuck
I was kind of wondering if you were going to read it
Rosalind: Come on, Bellamy, it's a YA novel about bisexual theater kids
That's like catnip for me
Augusta: How long did it take you to figure it out?
Rosalind: The valedictorian conversation was when I knew for sure
Before that I was willing to buy that it was just an eerie coincidence
Augusta: Yeah I thought about cutting that
And some of the more obvious stuff
But nothing I left was that identifiable to anyone but you
Well, Octavia and Miller
But they already knew about the book
Rosalind: Did you and Miller get married or did you just take his last name in a platonic way?
Augusta: I wanted a generic last name
Miller has a really generic one
His boyfriend thinks it's hilarious
Rosalind: And Augusta is just your weird Emperor Augustus boner?
Augusta: I'm good at exactly one kind of name, Clarke.
Rosalind: That sounds right, yeah
Actually that was the most surprising part of the book. Elena and Ian are really normal
I would have expected Atalanta and Hyperion
Augusta: It turns out editors talk you out of stuff like that
Rosalind: What were their names in the first draft?
Be honest
Augusta: Helena and Claudius
Shut up
Rosalind: Preemptive shut up?
Augusta: Just to be safe
Helena was actually a Shakespeare reference
Claudius was because Octavia dared me
Rosalind: Helena seems fine, honestly
Augusta: Yeah, my editor changed it to Elena because it read as more obviously non-white
Which made a lot of sense to me
And Ian is just a name a teenage boy wouldn't have to be embarrassed about
I hope you like it
Rosalind: Yeah definitely
I'm completely cool with teenage boy me being named Ian
Although Clarke is pretty unisex
Augusta: Yeah, there's unsubtle and then there's keeping our real names and just switching our genders
I figured that one was going a little too far
Rosalind: That would cross the line into writing AU fanfic of your own life, yeah
Augusta: I think I already crossed that line
But I filed the serial numbers off, so yeah
Sorry?
Rosalind: Sorry?
Augusta: I'm having trouble telling how pissed you are
I could see it going either way
Rosalind: Not pissed
I love the book
Most of it's about you and Octavia
And you and your sexuality
And if people figure out I'm Ian, that's cool
He's pretty great
Augusta: Cool
I'm glad you liked it
I'm glad you read it
I was trying to figure out how to tell you about it without feeling weird
Rosalind: "Hey we haven't talked in ten years but I wrote a book about my junior year of high school and you're in it"
Augusta: That was basically what I had
I was trying to figure out what emoji to add
Rosalind: I actually got in a fight about it
Augusta: The book?
Rosalind: Yeah, someone on Amazon was saying it didn't count as LGBT fiction because it ended with a m/f romance
Augusta: Oh yeah, I saw that one
I nearly fought them but it's kind of weird to do that yourself
As an author
Rosalind: I've got your back
Why did you switch the genders like you did?
Augusta: I wanted a female protagonist
But I also wanted a bisexual male character because they're under-represented
And, honestly, I get so fucking tired of seeing that there's no point in telling bi stories if the bi characters don't end up in same-sex relationships, so I was just kind of pissed
I was trying to pick a fight
I'm working on a statement about it
Rosalind: I knew you were my favorite for a good reason
Augusta: Can I get your email for a proofread before I post it?
Rosalind: Wow, that was so smooth
Very natural request for my contact information
Augusta: That's me
Very smooth
Rosalind: Are you really in California?
Augusta: Yeah
San Jose
Rosalind: Really?
Holy shit
I'm at Stanford
Augusta: Seriously?
Rosalind: Yeah
I'm at grad school, becoming a Physician Assistant
So I could just come proofread in person
Augusta: Yeah
That would be great
What are you doing Saturday?
Rosalind: Nothing so far
I'm all yours
They agree to get lunch on Saturday, which is great, apart from it being Tuesday when she talks to him, which makes the whole rest of the week drag. She's finishing up with classes for the semester, so she has plenty to do, but she keeps idly thinking about Bellamy, wondering what he's doing now. She doubts he's making his living as an author, so he must have something else going on, and she wants to know what. She wants to know how his sister is doing, how Miller is, if they live close to each other or just talk online, if he really has a bunch of cats or that's just part of his author persona.
She wants to know everything. It's probably kind of sad.
She has an annoying day on Thursday, including an asshole new response to her Amazon fight about his book, so it just makes sense to text him about that, and he has his own complaints about his life, and once she starts it's easy to just keep chatting with him on the side, as she studies and goes to class. It's strange, to feel like she's falling back into familiar patterns, when she and Bellamy were never exactly like this in school, but it still feels right.
Even before she liked him, she liked him. It's impossible to not feel giddy about getting him back. And it's even more impossible to not think about how he wrote a fucking book about the two of them getting together in high school. It doesn't mean anything for now, of course, but no matter how much she tells herself that, she can't stop thinking it.
"Don't get your hopes up," Raven advises on Friday. Clarke might be freaking out a little. "I went to my ten-year high school reunion last year and all the hot guys let me down. None of them aged well."
"He was kind of a nerd, though," Clarke points out. "Cute, but awkward and gangly. They grow up better."
"Oh, yeah." Raven smirks. "So your big high-school crush was an awkward, gangly, bisexual nerd who grew up to write young adult novels?"
"Apparently."
"So, you've got a type."
Clarke laughs. "Yeah, I've got a type."
"What's the plan for tomorrow?"
"We're getting lunch at some place he likes in San Jose." She takes a sip of beer, considering. "And I didn't make any other plans, in case he wants to keep hanging out."
"You want to get laid."
"I don't want to rule out getting laid," says Clarke. "It might not happen, but if I've got the chance--"
Raven shakes her head. "Send me a link for the book, by the way. I definitely want to read all about your inept high-school flirtation."
"It's pretty awesome," Clarke says, unable to keep the pride out of her voice. Bellamy wrote a book. An awesome book. She's already rec'd it all over tumblr. "You should buy like five copies."
She wakes up an hour earlier than planned on Saturday, which means that she has another hour of being awake and nervous before she goes to meet Bellamy. She manages to get some work in on her final papers, and even makes herself work out at the gym in her apartment building, just to get rid of some of her excess energy. It's a fairly pathetic morning, she'll admit, even before she pulls up Friendly Enmity on her iPad and rereads the scene where Elena admits to her crush. It's just--even if nothing happens now, it's nice to know her crush was returned back then. It wouldn't have lasted if they had dated, between his family circumstances and her going to college, so she can't regret too much, but it's nice to know that she hadn't been misreading singals.
And if this is a second chance, she's planning to not fuck it up.
She's not very worried about traffic on a Saturday, but she still leaves fifteen minutes early, just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately, traffic's even less bad than she expected, so she arrives at the restaurant a full twenty minutes early. It's a hole-in-the-wall Thai place, small enough she can be sure that Bellamy hasn't beaten her there, so she gets a table and frets for a few minutes about texting him. In the end, she decides if she tells him she's early, he'll feel guilty and rush over, so she just settles in to wait. It's only 11:45, early for the lunch rush, so she doesn't have to deal with the door opening and closing often, getting her hopes up.
Instead, the first time the bells over the door jangle and she looks up, it's him, and her breath actually catches.
As she thought it might, Bellamy's awkward cuteness at eighteen has grown into genuine, undeniable handsomeness. His hair is just as curly and messy as ever, his face just as freckled, but he's grown into his nose and jawline. The scar on his lip from a fall he had freshman year is still there, and she's never gotten the whole scars are hot thing more. He's wearing a pair of black glasses that give him a kind of hot professor vibe, and his shoulders and arms are straining against the fabric of his blue t-shirt.
In short, he's hot. Beyond hot. There needs to be a stronger word than hot.
He spots her instantly, and when she waves, his face breaks out in a huge grin. Like everything about him, it's familiar and new all at once, an expression she's seen before, but not the same on this strange, older Bellamy.
She stands as he comes over, and there's an awkward second of hesitation on both sides before she lets herself go in for the hug. He's broad and so firm, and his arms around her are warm and solid. He smells clean and fresh, like it hasn't been too long since he showered, and Clarke thinks she could happily hold onto him for hours.
That would be weird, though, so she lets go after a normal amount of time, and he just looks at her, still smiling hugely. She's sure she looks just as happy.
"Hey," he says. His voice has gotten rougher too, sounds a little deeper. It's kind of a disaster for her, honestly.
"Hi. Good to see you."
"Yeah, you too." He laughs a little, disbelieving. "I can't believe you were half an hour away. How long have you been at Stanford?"
"Since last August. But I was in San Francisco before, so I wasn't that much farther. How did you end up here?"
"Octavia went to UC Berkeley for college," he says. "She didn't want me to move there, but San Jose was far enough she couldn't object. And then I just stayed."
"So, stalking your sister?"
"It's not stalking if she knows," he says, grinning, and Clarke can't help grinning back.
Once they're seated again, the waitress bustles over to take drink orders, and Clarke puts a genuine and Herculean effort into not staring at Bellamy. She's not sure how she would have imagined him at twenty-nine, but he absolutely exceeds expectations. It's hard to not get her hopes up about it.
"So, you're a writer," she says, once they're alone again.
"Kind of," he agrees, ducking his head. "It's just one book. Probably just a fluke."
"Yeah, but it's really legit. You have a publisher and everything."
"I know, I'm still in shock."
"Why the female pen name?" she asks, curious.
"Honestly? I'm going to start teaching high school in the fall, and that's my target demographic, but I really don't want them to know who I am. I feel a little bad doing the gender-switch thing, because I feel like I'm taking advantage of people who only read books by female authors, but--" He shrugs. "Maybe I'm tricking some white feminists into reading something by an Asian guy. That's a public service, right?"
"Definitely. You're going to teach high school?"
"That's the plan, yeah. It took me a while to make it through college working part-time and get certified, but--" He ducks his head again, hiding his pride. "Finally made it."
"That's awesome," she says, and means it. "What are you teaching?"
"World history."
"Yeah, that was always the kind of nerd you were."
He laughs. "Hey, I was every kind of nerd."
"You were," she agrees, inescapably fond. It's not like she ever stopped liking him. She just stopped seeing him. "It's really good to see you again."
His grin softens, and his eyes crinkle with fondness. She's fucked. Utterly so. "Yeah, you too."
She asks after his sister and Miller, and he asks after her parents, with whom he had no relationship at all, and when she points that out he rolls his eyes and tells her he was being polite. She tells him how she decided she'd rather be a physician assistant than a doctor, and he tells her about student-teaching, how his hesitance to be out as an educator inspired him to write the book.
It's all great and interesting and fun, but all she really wants to do is ask if he's single, and she hasn't quite figured out that one yet. The book is about the two of them, but it's also about him and Octavia, and all the other stuff he went through junior year. She's the love interest because she makes the best love interest for the narrative. He might have really had a crush on her then, or he might have just thought she worked better than anyone else. She remembered thinking, at the time, that if felt like something out of a teen movie, the two of them learning to get along over the course of the play, acting opposite each other, realizing their real feelings were much closer to what they were playing than they realized.
If she'd been writing a book, she would have hooked them up too. It doesn't have to mean anything about the two of them back then, let alone now.
But he might also just want to date her. That could still be a thing, if Clarke can just figure out how to make it happen.
The conversation moves from Bellamy's book to books in general, and then to TV, hobbies, and the rest of their lives. Two hours pass without Clarke realizing it until her phone buzzes to tell her she needs to feed the meter, and Bellamy flushes.
"We should probably give them their table back," he offers. It's a true, but still disappointing, at least until he adds, "You want to come back to my place and help me out with this statement?"
"Yeah, sounds good."
Bellamy's apartment is only ten minutes away, so he walked, and Clarke gives him a ride back so she can use his parking permit. He's got a nice little place in a decent neighborhood, and apparently his rent is bad, but not fatal. They run into Miller, who looks basically the same as he did in high school except that he's grown a giant beard, and his boyfriend, a cute guy named Monty, on their way out, and do very minimal introductions and catch-up before going their separate ways.
Inside the apartment, everything is neat and clean and full of natural light, and two cats come over to complain at them almost immediately.
"That's Hector and Ajax," Bellamy says, when Clarke crouches down to let them smell her. "They're assholes, but they don't bite. I guess they're also starving to death." He scratches behind the black cat's ears with one big hand. "Yeah, yeah. Sucks to be you guys."
"So the cat lady part of your author bio was accurate, huh?" Clarke teases.
"That whole thing was accurate, aside from the gender." He pauses, watching her, like he's debating with himself. "The whole book was accurate."
It's tempting to play dumb, mostly to protect herself, just in case she's misunderstanding. But she doesn't think she is, and she'd rather talk about it. If this is Bellamy putting himself out there, she doesn't want him thinking she's not interested. "So, you really do wish you'd asked me out junior year?"
"Yeah. Not that I think it would have made a huge difference in my life or whatever, but--looking back, I thought you probably would have said yes."
"I would have."
He smiles, but he's smiling at the cat, not her. He doesn't like looking directly at her when he's happy; she remembers that too. "Good to know."
"It's not like I stopped dating," she offers, and he looks up at her at that, smile a little disbelieving. "I date way more now than I did in high school."
"Yeah? Does that mean you're too busy for more dates?"
"I could fit you in. If you're asking."
"I'm asking," he says. "But help me with this statement first. I want to get it published today."
"And then you buy me dinner?"
He grins. "And then I buy you dinner."
"Dinner and fighting on the internet," Clarke muses. "That's a pretty great first date."
"I was hoping you'd still think so," he says, standing and offering his hand. Once he's pulled her up, she leans up and lets herself press her mouth against his, just a quick, warm contact. The kiss she's been wanting to get all day.
"Just getting that out of the way." His gobsmacked expression fades into a smile, and Clarke smiles back. "So you aren't worried I don't want to."
"Thanks." He slides his hand behind her neck, tugging her in. "That post can wait a little longer," he murmurs, and Clarke's mouth is too busy to respond. But she thinks she makes her agreement clear.
*
Nerds of a Feather
A companion novel to Friendly Enmity
By Augusta Miller
For Clarke
Better late than never.