Chapter Text
The first time Bellamy Blake lays eyes on Clarke Griffin, she’s standing above the biggest rapid on the Green River, a class V waterfall called Gorilla, and he thinks to himself, no way that one’s going to run it.
He and Miller, one of his closest friends and whitewater kayaking buddies, have just pulled their kayaks into the eddy above the rapid, also referred to as a “drop.” They’re locals. They run this river, situated about thirty minutes outside of their hometown of Arkville, North Carolina, several times a week, all year round, so they don’t have to get out to scout the drop. But most people do. They scout to decide what line they’ll take, or if they decide they don’t want to run it, they’ll portage their kayaks around it and get back in the river below the waterfall.
The small blonde woman and her crew of two others are scouting the drop. Gorilla is some serious shit. Class V is rated as such because the risk factor is so high. To successfully paddle a class V rapid, one must be technically precise, and if one is not, the consequences are high. A lot of people paddle the Green River for years and portage around Gorilla every time, because it’s that much of a risk.
So he doesn’t expect her to run it. Very few women run Gorilla. Normally he and Miller would continue on and keep paddling, but as the blonde and her companions start heading back to their boats, he decides to stay and make sure they portage safely.
Clarke Griffin has been kayaking since she was eleven years old, and she feels like every second of her time on the water has led her to this moment. She takes one last look at Gorilla before nodding to her crew. Wells Jaha and Raven Reyes are two of her closest paddling companions and friends, and they had driven down to the southeast together with some other people from their college’s kayaking club to spend their spring break paddling some of the best whitewater in the country.
The Green is the most infamous of the rivers they’re paddling. It’s a steep creek, which means that it has a high gradient and a relatively low volume of water flowing through it. The fact that the Green’s flow is regulated by a hydroelectric dam upstream that releases consistent levels of water throughout the year makes it a favorite for kayakers because consistent levels mean it runs on a regular basis and is of predictable difficulty. In other words, it’s a great training ground for technical class V kayaking. Its proximity to the Green is one of the reasons Arkville is home to some of the best kayakers in the world.
Clarke and her friends have all dreamed of running the Green since they started kayaking, and she wouldn’t want to be out there with anyone else—besides her Dad, of course. But he’s back in California, cheering her on from afar. Wells and Raven aren’t going to run Gorilla. It’s significantly harder than the rest of the rapids on the river and they’re happy to walk rather than take the risk. Clarke, who has been paddling much longer than the others and is capable of running more difficult stuff, had been waiting to scout the drop before deciding whether or not she’d run it. It’s been the plan all along, and after scouting, she feels good, ready.
She notices as they walk back to their boats that the eddy above Gorilla is now occupied by two guys who look like Arkville locals. Arkville is something of a whitewater city, with the concentration of people who participate in extreme sports being quite high due to the city’s location on the edge of the Smoky Mountains, making it an ideal place for kayaking, rock climbing, and mountain biking, among other sports. These are the kinds of guys who run the Green all the time, who use it as a training run. She can tell by their gear, which is well loved and of the best quality, made mostly by local companies, and by their attitudes. Because Green River locals are known for of policing their backyard run, she thinks as she gets close enough to see the facial expression on one of the guys, which falls very much under the category of “bad cop.”
Bellamy sizes them up as they approach. “Out of towners,” he remarks to Miller, stating what they both already know.
“They’re a group from a college up north,” Miller says. “They’ve been paddling around the area for a week or so, on their spring break.”
Bellamy raises an eyebrow. “And you know this how?”
Miller shrugs. “Ran into them at a party the other night. They seem pretty cool.”
The crunch of rocks next to the eddy signals their arrival, and Bellamy turns back to face them, fully expecting them to hitch their boats onto their shoulders and walk around the drop. So he can’t hide the surprise on his face when the blonde slides her kayak—a lime green creek boat that’s a smaller version of the one he’s in—to the edge of the eddy, gets back inside, and tugs her spray skirt around the rim of the cockpit, all with a look of fierce determination on her face.
He realizes two things: she is beautiful—her sparkly green helmet and light purple life jacket bring out a piercing shade of blue in her eyes—and she is young. He’s twenty-four, so it’s not like he’s super old or anything, but this one doesn’t look a day over eighteen.
Clarke is running the drop in her mind already, plotting out her moves stroke by stroke, and she is irritated by the look on this guy’s face that she catches as she yanks her spray skirt into place. He’s looking at her the way bone-headed, macho kayaker men always look at her before she runs something like this, like she’s too small and too female to handle it. Like she can’t possibly be serious.
She can barely keep her eyes from rolling. This shit, again. This was nothing new to her, being underestimated by men. As a woman in a male-dominated extreme sport, you got used to it early on. Clarke’s not intimidated by it. She’s been proving them wrong for years.
“You going for it?” the jerk asks, not even trying to hide the incredulity in his voice.
Clarke skewers him with a look. “Do I need your permission?” she bites out, daring him to give her more grief.
He shakes his head, and his look calms down a little. He looks vaguely familiar. The whitewater world is a small one and she figures she probably met him at a party or on a river somewhere. There was a saying about the gender imbalance and the chances a girl in the sport had of finding a guy: The odds are good, but the goods are odd. Because kayaker dudes were a type. A scruffy, macho, dirt-baggy type with a love for whitewater that comes above pretty much everything. Clarke’s used to being surrounded by them, from her dad’s friends when she was a kid to her kayaking friends in college. So sue her if they all kind of blend together in her head at times.
“Not if you can handle it,” he says, his voice gruff, and she notices for the first time how intense his eyes are.
She holds his gaze, her eyes becoming flinty in response. “I can handle it. Now, are you going to run it? Or are you going to chat all day and hold up the line?”
The guy’s friend smirks, holding back a laugh, and Clarke decides she likes that kayaker boy better than his grumpy companion. She does remember meeting this one at a party they went to in Arkville just the other night. Nathan is his name, she thinks. He’s okay in her book, because he clearly sees through the other guy’s shit.
“We’re going to set safety at the bottom, Clarke,” Wells says, giving a small wave as he starts to walk around the rapid.
“Thanks, Wells,” Clarke replies.
“You’re gonna crush it, Clarke,” he says, grinning as he gives a thumbs up.
“You got this, Clarke,” Raven says, stopping to pound her fist against Clarke’s before she turns to follow Wells.
Clarke smiles, appreciating their support—especially the dirty look Raven fires at the overprotective local before she goes, although he doesn’t seem to notice because he’s still glaring at Clarke. She loves her crew. She gives them a little wave and then gets back to focusing, not caring that this idiot is still staring at her. She doesn’t have time to worry about him. She needs to get in the right headspace to run a clean line, and she takes a deep breath and begins to fully prepare.
Bellamy watches the blonde prepare and knows she’s tuned him out. He decides he’s ready to go, but he’s still wary about this young girl about to run one of the hardest rapids in the southeast. She looks like she’s thought it through and is getting her game-face on, which is a good sign, but he’s still worried enough that he makes a plan.
“Miller, I’ll see you in the eddy at the bottom?” he says, sticking his paddle in the water and heading for the eddy-line.
“Sounds good,” Miller replies. They usually run it straight through and keep paddling afterwards, on to the next set of rapids immediately below Gorilla, but this time Bellamy wants to stop. He wants to be sure that, if something happens when this girl runs the drop, they’re there to assist with the rescue.
After one last glance at the blonde, who is concentrating so hard on a spot in the water of the eddy that he thinks she might turn it into vapor, Bellamy peels out and feels the rush he always gets when he runs this drop. There are a few smaller entrance rapids above it, and he lets the current take him until it’s time to make his move. He plants his strokes the way he has for years, with just the right amount of pull at the right time. At the lip of the drop, he plants his paddle near his right knee and uses his core strength to keep the bow of the boat up, and he’s airborne.
The roar of the water around him rushes in his ears and the feeling of flying is like nothing else in the world, and he lands in the spray at the bottom with a surge of satisfaction over another solid line. Fuck, he loves kayaking. The only thing that feels better is sex, he’s sure.
He eddies out below and soon Miller is flying over the lip as well, letting out a “whoop!” as he lands and paddles over to Bellamy.
“I just want to make sure this chick’s okay,” Bellamy says, nodding back towards Gorilla.
“Yeah, I get you,” Miller replies. “From what I’ve heard, she’s legit.”
“Clarke’s a badass,” someone says, and they turn to find her companions standing there, one of them holding a throw-rope. Bellamy is happy to see they’re practicing river safety. Not everybody out here does, and it can lead to trouble.
“Yeah, she’s been kayaking since she was a kid,” the brunette with the surly face adds.
“How old are you guys?” Bellamy asks, not caring how rude he sounds.
“We’re sophomores in college,” the guy says. “Twenty.”
“Hmm,” Bellamy says, thinking how they’re not much older than his little sister, who is definitely too young to be out paddling the Green, even though she would kill to do it (he’d first paddled the Green at age seventeen, she always reminds him, and he has to find yet another way to tell her “do as I say, not as I do”).
Just then there’s a flash of color above the drop and they all watch as the bright green kayak flies over the lip, its occupant crouched forward with her paddle tucked to the side, in perfect formation. She lands in the rush of water at the bottom and sits up straight, raising her paddle triumphantly above her head as she lets out a joyful scream of “Yeah, motherfuckers!” Bellamy is stunned.
Clarke pulls into the eddy next to Bellamy, her boat bumping into his, and she’s grinning so widely at her friends as they congratulate her that she feels like her face could split in half. She’s filled with joy and relief after a clean run. It had all gone according to plan, from the first drop into the entrance rapid at the top to her landing at the bottom. Being airborne off the drop had been unreal, the light filtering through the mist like everything was glowing along with her energy. It’s the pursuit of that feeling that drives her passion for kayaking, and she feels like she’s on top of the world.
And the look on the jerk’s face is priceless. She knows she’s floored him. When dealing with the doubts of men and their egos, her m.o. was give them hell and then run the drop better than they ever could. That always wiped the smirks right off their faces. She’d wiped the doubt right off of his, and that felt amazing, almost as satisfying as finally running Gorilla after years of dreaming about it. She can’t keep the grin off her face as she meets his gaze and finds something new that wasn’t there before: respect.
Bellamy’s stomach jolts as Clarke’s shining eyes catch on his momentarily. He knows the joy of running a big drop like that, especially for the first time, so he gets it. She was beautiful above the drop, getting ready to run it, but now that she’s done it, she is absolutely radiant. He feels a tug of… something, some kind of aura she has about her, which is ridiculous, really, and means it’s time to leave.
“Nice line,” he says to her with a nod, because it really was a beautiful line. Miller was right. This chick—Clarke—is legit.
“Thanks,” she says, nodding back.
“Have a good run,” he says to the group of them, and then he looks to Miller, signaling that it’s time to get on their way. As they peel out and head downstream to the next set of rapids, Bellamy can’t help but guess that this is not the last he’s heard of this Clarke person.
“What a jackass,” Clarke mutters as she watches the two guys disappear over the horizon line, and then she looks back to her crew where they’re getting back into their boats. “You guys ready?”
“Hell yeah!” Raven shouts. “Let’s get a move on. The Green is ours, bitches!”