Chapter 32: Awfully Oblivious.
"I don’t understand, I’m really not."
"You really, really are."
Bellamy settled back against his headboard, the earlier heaviness draining out of him fast now that he had a new subject to sink his teeth into.
Delight was now creeping back into his voice like it had never left.
"Case in point, do you have any idea how many people have already asked me about you? Since yesterday. In under twenty-four hours?"
"Asked you what?"
"Whether you’re seeing anyone. Whether you’re interested in seeing anyone."
He shook his head, finding himself in disbelief with each new word he spoke.
"One girl in my Continental History section wanted to know your favorite color, sorry not sorry for not knowing." A small pause. "Which, i also haven’t decided if its either extremely sweet or extremely concerning."
Bellamy went on, ticking off his points on his fingers like he’d been keeping an actual tally.
"It’s not just girls, either, for the record. An equal opportunity disaster, you are."
"That’s not... nobody’s asked me anything." Elian tried to defend himself.
"Because they’re all terrified of you, Ellie!" His voice raised into a dramatic high. "That’s the whole tragedy of it."
Bellamy looked delighted by his own explanation, warming to the theory in real time, not even addressing the new nickname.
"You awakened a six-generation-dead relic... thing, that’s got people wondering if you’ll take over the country. You froze an entire classroom on your second day of school. Every single person currently entertaining a crush on you has to weigh that against the very real possibility that flirting with you might get them accidentally hexed."
He stopped, considering something for a quick moment, then smiled proudly.
"Or worse, get them a very pointed conversation with me, because everyone’s also figured out I’ll absolutely interrogate anyone who tries."
"You wouldn’t."
"I absolutely would, and I’ve already done it twice."
Bellamy said this with zero shame whatsoever.
"There’s a second-year in the artificer track, one of Wren’s acquaintances, who cornered me at breakfast today asking extremely detailed, entirely inappropriate, questions about your schedule. I gave her nothing. She left disappointed and, I like to think, appropriately chastened."
Elian stared at him, genuinely unsure whether to be flattered or alarmed.
"Why would you do that."
"Because it’s fun..." A small pause. "And also because someone needs to run interference until you actually start noticing and, mostly importantly, understanding any of this yourself."
Bellamy waved a hand at him, encompassing the whole of him—the haircut, the staff, the general fact of his existence—with a ridiculous expression like it was supposed to be self-evident.
"You have got to be the single most oblivious, criminally pretty person I have ever met in my life. And I say that with love, mind you, because you clearly have no idea what your own face is doing to people."
Elian frowned.
"My face isn’t doing anything, and I’m not even prettier than you. If anything, they should all be going after you." He tried deflecting.
"Elian. I appreciate the sentiment, i genuinely do." Bellamy said it with the patient, long-suffering gravity of a man delivering devastating news.
Which would have been funny if Elian wasn’t actively trying to shrink himself into nothing right now.
"But your face is doing so much." Bellamy went on. "Constantly too at that. It’s genuinely a little unfair to the rest of us."
"Give me an example," Elian said to keep his mouth busy, mostly out of morbid—PURELY SCIENTIFIC.—curiosity at this point,
"Since apparently my face has been very busy without my permission."
"Gladly." Bellamy sat up properly, counting off points with the enthusiasm of someone who’d clearly been saving this list.
"One, the eyes. You’ve got that thing where you look startled by basic kindness, like nobody’s ever complimented you before in your life. That is objectively the most devastating thing you could possibly do to a room full of people, teenagers at that, because it reads as sincere instead of practiced."
"That’s not a compliment, that’s a personality flaw."
"It’s both, and that’s exactly the problem."
Bellamy held up a second finger, undeterred.
"Two, the haircut. I know your maid gets the technical credit, but you’re the one who has to walk around in it, looking like that, completely unaware of the ongoing crisis it’s causing in the entire school. People are starting to believe that you’re an actual fairy and not human."
"There is no crisis. ...And how am i fairy!?" His voice raised a pitch high despite himself.
"There is absolutely a crisis, there’s even a betting pool, I’ve seen it."
Bellamy pressed on before Elian could properly react to that information.
"Three, and this is the real one, Elian, pay attention. You go bright pink the second anyone looks at you too long. Which should be embarrassing. But no, It is in fact, the opposite of embarrassing. It’s the single most effective thing your face does, and you somehow have absolutely no control over it, which makes it worse for everyone else and considerably better for you."
Elian felt his face doing exactly that right now, which he was fairly sure was proving Bellamy’s point in real time and deeply resented on personal principle.
"You’re making this up." He said, not even trusting his own words.
"I am one hundred percent not making this up." Bellamy leaned forward, entirely serious under the theatrics now.
"You genuinely don’t see it, do you?" Bellamy sighed, looking him in the eyes.
"You look in that mirror and you see someone that none of us ever had the chance to know. For Lucenhall, you are the current you. Everyone else looks at you and sees the actual you, not your memories, and it’s..."
he gestured vaguely, apparently lost for the first time all evening for an adequate word
"...it’s a lot. For a lot of people. All at once."
Elian didn’t have anything to say to that.
He sat with it instead, the staff resting warm against his side, and found himself thinking—unwillingly, involuntarily—of the mirror back home, the version of his own face he’d built specifically to be forgettable, and how thoroughly that plan appeared to have failed without his ever noticing.
"I don’t know what to do with that, any of that, this was supposed to be about your boyfriend. Not about... my face." he admitted finally, quiet.
"You don’t have to do anything with it tonight."
Bellamy’s grin came back, softer than his usual full-force version, watching him with something that had settled, for once, into genuine warmth rather than teasing.
"Just... stop being so surprised every time it happens, and start accepting that you’re simply just, good looking. That’s all I’m asking. Baby steps for now."
Elian let out a long breath, finally reaching his proper limit for just how much devastating information he could take in for a day.
"Alright," He said, voice barely more than a whisper. "I’ll think about it."
Bellamy gave him a light shrug.
"That’s better, now get some rest, you look like you’re ready to pass out any second now."