Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Clarke pressed her fingers against her temple and winced at the loud music that was pounding throughout the club. Her eyes moved around the large crowd that was gathered around the bar, spotting the birthday girl immediately. It was hard to miss Octavia with her sparkling tiara and loud laugh. So far, Octavia’s twenty-first birthday was going well and Clarke had to brag a little because she had organized the whole thing.

“Hey!” Octavia slid up next to Clarke, her blue eyes bright. She tugged on Clarke’s wrist, bringing her drink close to her nose. “No alcohol? Come on, Clarke. This is my party and I can’t stand to see you in the corner all by yourself. Grab a drink and dance with me!”

Clarke shrugged half-heartedly. She really wasn’t in the mood to party.

“Is this because of Finn? Listen, he’s a dickhead and a piece of shit, and he shouldn’t be the reason you’re not having fun tonight. Come on, please. Dance with me for just one song and have at least one drink.”

Despite her mood, Clarke felt her mouth tipping up in a smile. Octavia Blake had been Clarke’s best friend since they were ten years old. Her and her older brother, Bellamy, had moved into town with their mother, and the two fourth graders bonded over their favorite color-pink. Of course it had changed since then. Octavia liked black more than anything and Clarke liked blue, but they had basically been inseparable since then.

“Fine,” Clarke agreed with a sigh. Octavia disappeared to grab them both new drinks, and by the time she returned, the music was somehow louder.

“Let’s go!” Octavia yelled over the music. She dragged Clarke out into the middle of the dance floor, careful not to spill their drinks. Clarke didn’t know what drink her friend had gotten her, but it was ridiculously strong. She downed it all quickly, not wanting it to end up spilling it on some poor bystander. They danced, Clarke’s blonde hair getting stuck her mouth, Octavia laughing as she tried to spit it out. They danced until Clarke was breathless and kind of sweaty. Octavia had to fight off a couple of boys who kept trying to get between the girls until Clarke waved her hand, telling her she was done dancing.

Her drink had hit her hard, and she stumbled a little as she pushed through the crowd to get another one. She hadn’t had alcohol in quite some time, mostly because she didn’t like hangovers and the last thing she needed was to feel physically shitty while feeling emotionally shitty. Octavia had been right about the source of Clarke’s mood.

Clarke had dated Finn Collins (and, unfortunately, fallen in love) for six months before she found out he had a girlfriend of five years. Raven Reyes was thin, mean, and an engineer.

It had been eight months since Clarke and Raven both broke up with Finn and became friends. Clarke couldn’t blame Raven when Finn had been doing the same thing to her.

Finn had texted Clarke earlier before the party, asking if he could talk to her, please, he just needed to talk to her. Clarke had simply deleted his message and shoved her phone back into her pocket. She hadn’t checked it since.

Clarke leaned over the bar, waving over the bartender. He gave her two cups of something (she couldn’t hear what he said over the music), and she took a couple of mouthfuls. She needed to forget Finn for the night and focus on her best friend. It was Octavia’s birthday and Clarke couldn’t just mope in the dark corner the whole time.

“Nice moves, princess.”

Clarke rolled her eyes as Bellamy stepped up behind her. He had been calling her that since she was twelve and he had never grown out of it. She knocked her elbow into his chest as she downed half of her drink.

“I thought I made sure you weren’t on the invite list,” Clarke said, squinting at him.

“Ha ha,” was all Bellamy replied. 

“Just don’t break a bone dancing, grandpa,” Clarke said as she set her empty glass on the bar and took a sip of her other cup. Her head was light and fuzzy and she loved it. She tipped the cup toward Bellamy and topped off his cup. She didn’t know what he was drinking but she knew he needed more. 

“I’m twenty-six. And I don’t think beer and vodka mix very well.” Bellamy frowned into his cup. 

“What are you going to do, officer? Arrest me?”

But Clarke wasn’t listening to his reply because her favorite song came on, and she pushed her way back into the crowd to find Octavia.

Clarke groaned loudly as she rolled over onto her stomach. Her head ached miserably, a terrible throb echoing just behind her left eye. The light filtering in through the window was blinding and definitely not helping. Who the hell opened the curtains? She tried to pull the covers over her head but only succeeded in getting it up to her chin because they were stuck under something and her arms felt like wet noodles.

Someone mumbled next to her and Clarke realized she wasn’t alone.

Squinting, Clarke turned her head and was immediately met with dark hair. She didn’t recognize him at first until he sighed and turned his face toward her. He looked so calm when he was asleep, something she had noticed over the past couple of months. He wasn’t smirking at her or snapping a witty comment.

Shaking herself out of her sleepy stupor, she searched around the blankets for her phone, finding it tucked safely underneath her pillow. She always managed to find a safe place for her phone when she was drunk.

Clarke checked the time and fully woke with a jolt of panic.

“Oh, shit,” she hissed at the same time Bellamy jerked back from her tone. He winced and reached back to rub the back of his head.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Clarke muttered as she scrambled out of his bed and began the search for her clothes. Where was her bra? Was that it hanging on his doorknob?

“Good morning to you, too,” Bellamy said, his voice thick with sleep. Clarke shot him a glare over her shoulder as she tugged on her underwear and tried to find the super tight dress Octavia had forced her into the night before.

“Your sister is going to kill us,” she replied, squeezing into her dress.

Bellamy sighed and leaned back against his pillows with his arms behind his head, watching Clarke wiggle and struggle.

“It’s not my fault. You’re usually up and gone before this.”

Scoffing, Clarke grabbed her heels from underneath Bellamy’s bed and sat down on the edge of his mattress to slip them on.

“I’m not usually hung over,” Clarke snapped. She crept to the door and cracked it open. Octavia’s bright laughter filtered in from the kitchen and Clarke cursed quietly before shutting the door again.

“Down the fire escape it is,” Bellamy said with a grin.

“Stop being an ass.”

Bellamy sat up, the covers falling away to reveal his toned stomach.

Not that Clarke was really looking.

“I’m kidding,” he said, reaching out to grab Clarke’s arm and stop her journey to his window. “Just…camp out here until she leaves. She has class soon. Besides, we don’t have a fire escape.”

Clarke let out an annoyed huff and sat back down on Bellamy’s mattress. She rubbed her fingers over her temples in an attempt to soothe her pounding headache. She couldn’t remember anything past dancing with Octavia.

Well, maybe she remembered leaving the bar with Bellamy’s arm around her waist to support her even though he was stumbling almost as bad as her. She kind of remembered Bellamy’s hands sliding up her dress as they lurched toward his room. And, okay, she definitely remembered his lips sliding down her throat, over her collarbones, teeth against skin.

They had been sneaking around for a couple of months, finding a perfect time for him to sneak into her apartment across the hall. And by perfect time, she meant any time Octavia was out of the apartment for more than fifteen minutes.

They weren’t in a relationship. After her cheating boyfriend, Finn, and her hardheaded negative girlfriend, Lexa, Clarke was finished with relationships. She was tired of putting her all in to people and receiving nothing in return. She had originally planned to swear off boys and girls alike, but then she decided, after a talk with Octavia and Raven, that she at least needed to have sex with someone.

And she picked her best friend’s brother.

Octavia was going to kill her if she found out.

Clarke decided to stop thinking about Octavia.

They waited in silence, and Clarke was pretty sure Bellamy had fallen back asleep. His breathing was even, his back rising and falling gently. She studied the freckles that covered his shoulders and slowly dispersed down his back.

She thought about how she had known him since she was ten, how she grew up with him. He had been an asshole from age fifteen to twenty-five. Actually, he still was an asshole; it was just watered down a bit because she was currently sleeping with him. Just one more notch on his bedpost.

Not that she really cared. They had agreed no strings attached, and that was now a rule Clarke was going to live by.

“Can you be quiet? You think too loud,” Bellamy said suddenly, startling Clarke. She frowned and rolled her eyes, mumbling a few choice words about him under her breath.

Octavia eventually left the apartment, her perfume drifting underneath the door. Clarke stood and grabbed her purse. She really just wanted to go home and shower and change into something other than the tight dress she was currently wearing.

“I’ll see you in a few hours,” Clarke said as she opened up Bellamy’s bedroom door. He didn’t turn toward her, just lifted his arm and waved.

“Did O invite you over for her birthday dinner?” he called, his voice sleepy.

“She did.”

He groaned. “She’s cooking and the only thing she can cook is mediocre pasta.”

Smiling, Clarke slipped her purse higher up on her shoulder and gave herself two more seconds to admire his back. Then she walked down the hallway, out of the front door, across the hallway, and into her own apartment.

Living across the hall from her best friend did have its perks.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

Clarke jerked in surprise and turned to see Octavia leaning against the door frame to her room.

“Well, you could knock. Or maybe ring the doorbell,” Clarke answered, ignoring Octavia’s initial question.

Her friend bounced into her room and dropped onto her bed, watching Clarke with narrowed eyes.

“Seriously. It’s Halloween and that’s what you’re going to wear?”

Clarke turned back to her mirror and studied her costume. She was wearing her favorite pair of scrubs and her hair was hanging loosely around her shoulders. And that was it; that was her costume. She was a doctor.

“I know I usually wear something sexy, or whatever, but I’ve gained some weight since your birthday and I definitely feel the opposite of sexy. And I’m not going to a party tonight, I’m just handing out candy.”

Octavia scoffed, bringing Clarke’s attention away from her mirror.

“Oh please. You always look good. And I told you Lincoln was having that huge Halloween party at his house and we’re going,” Octavia said, giving Clarke a look that meant no arguing.

Clarke groaned and dropped down next to Octavia.

“Is Raven going?”

“Nope,” Octavia replied, stretching back on Clarke’s pillows. “I invited her but she’s having sex with Wick tonight. Or they’re arguing, I can’t remember.”

“What’s the difference?”

Suddenly, Octavia sat up and swiped Clarke’s hair behind her shoulder. Caught off guard, Clarke didn’t have time to pull away before Octavia’s fingers were on her neck, probing.

“Is that a hickey?” she asked loudly, her tone full of surprise.

Clarke immediately jerked away, her cheeks flushed. She told Bellamy specifically to not give her hickeys on her neck, but since when did Bellamy ever listen to her?

Never. The answer was never.

“No,” Clarke lied, flicking her hair to cover up the bruise. “I got hit by a car.”

“Who’s it from?” Octavia asked, ignoring Clarke’s blatant lie.

Clarke sighed and relented, putting on a show for Octavia. She had thought up a lie long ago, so she didn’t have to waste any time trying to come up with a lie right on the spot.

“Just some guy from school,” Clarke said. “I didn’t tell you because it’s not serious or anything. I really don’t want a boyfriend right now.”

“I know that,” Octavia replied, looking positively offended. “Who? What’s his name? Is he cute? I thought you were going to try and get with the girl at the coffee shop."

Clarke moved away from Octavia and instead focused on her closet. The girl who worked at the coffee shop was incredibly cute until Clarke realized she had a boyfriend.

She filtered through the tight dresses, deciding that she wasn’t going to fight Octavia about going to Lincoln’s party. She would change clothes and just go because it would distract her friend from the dark purple bruise on her neck and the interrogation that was sure to follow.

“What should I wear to Lincoln’s party?” Clarke asked, glancing over her shoulder.

Octavia scowled but allowed the change of subject and pulled herself off of Clarke’s bed with a dramatic sigh. She began to pull out dresses with pursed lips. After studying three different dresses, she decided on a nice red dress Clarke’s mother had gotten her for her nineteenth birthday.

“And your red lipstick. And those black wedges that make your legs look good.”

“Yes, master,” Clarke replied, bowing deeply to her friend.

She threw on her outfit and stared at herself in the mirror, tilting her head. She smoothed her hands over her hips and down her thighs while Octavia gave her a nod.

“Much better. Now, my turn.”

Clarke wasn’t going to lie; she was very impressed with Lincoln’s house. It was located in a fantastic spot to live, the outside was beautiful, and his entire backyard was practically a lake. The inside was decorated nicely and currently crowded with college kids alike, most of them already drunk. There were barely any cars in the driveway. Instead, the space was taken up by big motorcycles.

(Also known as Reason Number One Bellamy Blake Didn’t Approve of Lincoln and His Bicycle Gang.)

There were more reasons (“How many tattoos does he have? Does he even have a job? How old is he? Did he graduate high school?”) but Clarke and Octavia both ignored Bellamy when it came to Lincoln.

He was tall and extremely muscular but he was practically a harmless little puppy. Well, harmless to his friends.

He was in a book club for God’s sake.

Octavia pulled Clarke easily through the crowd, looking for the host. Octavia had a thing for boys her brother didn’t approve of, and Lincoln had a thing for skinny brunettes with fire in their veins.

In other words, they were soul mates.

“Oh, there he is,” Octavia said, tugging Clarke a little more insistently. They came to a stop in a few feet away from Lincoln who was engaged in conversation with a guy who had a face tattoo. When he saw Octavia, he excused himself and made his way over, slinging his arm around the girl. Clarke dropped Octavia’s hand and took a step away from the couple.

Octavia was going on about school while Clarke adjusted her dress and scanned the crowd. She didn’t see anyone she recognized. Most of Lincoln’s friends were what Wells would call “wild.” Not a single body crammed into the living area was missing a tattoo or something made of leather. Clarke didn’t have a problem with any of Lincoln’s friends, even the incredibly intimidating ones like Indra or Echo. (Echo was an ex-thing of Bellamy’s and wasn’t necessarily intimidating, but she sort of hated Clarke because she thought something was going on between Clarke and Bellamy. Which there was. But Echo didn’t know that so her animosity towards Clarke was practically baseless.)

Turning back around, she opened her mouth to ask Octavia if she wanted a drink, but where her friends stood before was currently occupied by thin air. Squinting, Clarke saw Lincoln leading Octavia by the hand upstairs. She smiled, thinking to herself how much she would really wish they would date already.

With a sigh, Clarke moved toward the drink table. She had been pretty queasy earlier in the day, and she really wasn’t in the mood to nurse a hangover in the morning during work. She settled for ginger ale, pouring herself a generous cup and scanning the room again. Her eyes landed on a pretty redhead who was talking to another, taller girl. Clarke’s eyes moved down the length of the girl, noticing her dress and wedges. A tattoo was curled around her calf and she was wearing a leather bracelet. If Clarke got bored enough she could make a game out of it, really.

Then her eyes darted to the combat boots of the taller girl the redhead was talking to, and her eyes moved up slowly, taking in the dirty, ripped jeans, the leather jacket, and the wild brown hair woven with braids.

It took a moment for her brain to catch up with her mouth.

“Oh, shit,” Clarke blurted loudly, causing the boy filling up his drink next to her to give her a dirty look. As if a boy with three lip piercings and a neck covered in tattoos had never heard a curse word in his entire life. She ignored him and spun around, her first instinct to get the hell out of there.  Because she really wasn’t paying attention to where the hell she was getting to, Clarke slammed straight into somebody. She managed to save her ginger ale, and the guy had a pretty firm grip on his beer, resulting in no casualties.

“In a hurry?” Bellamy asked, taking a step back.

“Jesus, Bellamy, can you at least pretend you know how to walk?” Clarke snapped without thinking. Her natural instinct since the age of twelve was to rip Bellamy Blake to shreds before he had the chance to even breathe. It was sort of a bad habit to break, but her insults were becoming more civil which she thought was good progress.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he replied with a smirk, ignoring her biting response like always. “We must be drawn to the alcohol or something.”

She hummed in reply, not in the mood anymore for playful banter, and tried to walk around him. His hand caught her arm and she glanced up to see his concerned expression.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Fine. I’m fine,” Clarke replied. “I just think I’m going to go home.”

“Is it because Lexa’s here?” Bellamy asked, raising his eyebrow and tilting his head toward Clarke’s ex-girlfriend. The one she had noticed seconds before bumping into him.

“Damn it,” she grumbled, shaking off Bellamy’s hand. “Is it obvious?”

“You look like you just witnessed a hit-and-run.”

Clarke sighed and took a big sip of her soda.

“No alcohol?” he asked, gesturing with his beer bottle to her cup.

“No, I felt sick earlier. I didn’t even want to come but you left a fucking hickey on my neck and I had to distract Octavia somehow.”

Clarke moved her hair away from her neck to show Bellamy the purple bruise and pointedly glared at him. He only grinned, tapped his beer against her cup in a toast and took a sip.

“What are you doing here?” Clarke asked, deciding to change the subject.

“Octavia invited Miller and he didn’t want to go alone so,” he gestured to himself, “here I am. Unwilling to party.”

“Me too. And after seeing Lexa, this is honestly the last place I want to be. What the hell is she doing here anyways?”

“She’s Lincoln’s new roommate,” Bellamy answered easily. Clarke dangerously raised her eyebrows.

“Roommate?”

“Yeah. And Anya is too. She’s over there.”

Bellamy pointed to another brunette who was leaning against the wall and texting with a scowl on her face. Clarke had met her once before when she hung out with Lexa’s friends. That was also the night Lincoln and Octavia met.

Clarke groaned and pressed her fingers against her forehead. She didn’t date Lexa for long, only about two months, and they fought almost the entire time. Lexa was too hard, too serious for Clarke. Lexa thought she was childish and too emotional. They were too different to work out, and Clarke ended up breaking it off. Even though they argued a lot, Lexa seemed pretty upset, and they hadn’t spoken since.

And then Clarke started messing around with Bellamy two weeks after that (because she was tired of feeling like shit) and look where she was now.

“His roommate?” Clarke hissed. “Where’s your sister?” she continued louder, her eyes searching the room. “I’m going to kill her for not telling me. And then I’m going to raise her from the dead and then I’m going to kill her again for making me come to this stupid party.”

“Maybe you need some alcohol…”

Clarke waved him away with an annoyed sound. Even smelling his beer was making her a little queasy.

Bellamy glanced over her shoulder and immediately frowned, lowering his beer.

“Warrior princess is coming this way and staring directly at the back of your head. I’m out.”

“Bellamy!” Clarke grabbed Bellamy’s wrist as he turned and lightly pressed her nails into his skin. “I swear to God if you leave I will murder you in your sleep.”

He paused, his eyes flickering between Clarke and behind her shoulder. Apparently Clarke was a bigger threat than Lexa because he sighed heavily, made a face before he shook off her hand, and chugged the rest of his beer.

“I’m not nearly drunk enough to deal with the awkward tension that is about to happen.”

“Yeah, imagine how I feel,” Clarke muttered into her cup.

“Clarke.”

Swallowing her drink, Clarke turned her head slightly to see Lexa, a beer in her hand. Clarke kept her face neutral, her mouth twitching into a somewhat polite smile. Her muscles were tensed in preparation for a fight. Like she said, her old habits die hard.

“Lexa,” she replied with a nod.

“You look well,” Lexa continued, her eyes moving over Clarke quickly, admiringly. Clarke shifted underneath her gaze, uncomfortable.

“Thanks. You, too. Uh, you remember Bellamy, Octavia’s brother.”

Bellamy had grabbed another beer and was chugging it when Lexa’s eyes slid to him. She raised both of her eyebrows.

“Yes, I do remember him.”

Clarke had a vague memory of them not getting along, but she didn’t care to think of the details.

“Well, it was nice seeing you,” Clarke forced. Lexa nodded.

“Nice seeing you,” Lexa replied, and then she turned and disappeared into the crowd.

“Holy shit,” Bellamy said the second she was out of sight. “That was…I could literally feel the awkwardness.”

“Shut up,” Clarke grumbled, knocking her hand into his chest. She finished off her ginger ale and tossed the cup into the garbage. “I’m going to go sit by the lake and hope a giant fish will put me out of my misery.”

“I’ll join you. I don’t even know where Miller went.”

And so that’s how the two of them ended up shoulder to shoulder by the edge of the lake, Bellamy with a beer, Clarke empty handed. She rested her head on his shoulder, exhaustion settling it. She didn’t even know why she was tired. She hadn’t done anything the entire day, so she assumed it was from whatever had her feeling sick earlier.

She wasn’t sure how long they sat there, not really speaking. Bellamy’s beer had been empty for quite some time, and most of the kids in the backyard either filtered inside or left completely by the time Octavia found them.

“There you are! Jesus, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Clarke jerked away from Bellamy as Octavia approached the edge of the lake. The red lipstick she had been wearing earlier was completely gone, and Clarke had an idea to where it had disappeared. Octavia offered Clarke her hand and hauled her to her feet.

“Is that Bellamy?”

Bellamy stood, pulling his bottle with him and running his fingers through his hair.

“Miller’s looking for you. He’s in the kitchen,” Octavia said, pointing toward the house. Her brother nodded and made his way across the lawn without a goodbye. Clarke watched as he left, wondering if they had just shared a little moment.

Probably not.

Octavia looped her arm through Clarke’s as they walked to Clarke’s car. She kept sighing happily and the smile never once left her face as they unlocked the car and climbed in. If Clarke had to pick, she’d say Lincoln had something to do with her best friend’s current state.

With a frown, Clarke realized something in the back of her mind was nagging her. It wasn’t about Octavia, or the party, or even Lexa. It was her nausea and exhaustion. She really hoped she wasn’t coming down with the flu. It wasn’t even flu season.

While she drove the route back to their apartment building, she flipped through her symptoms, trying to decide what was wrong with her. If it was the flu she was going to swallow a whole bottle of vitamin C pills when she got home. She hated being sick.

Clarke usually didn’t get sick before she got her period, but that could be it too. She thought about the date and frowned. She counted up the days in her head slowly.

It took her a couple of minutes to realize she had missed her period.

She was so caught up in school and work she hadn’t even noticed it had been time for her period. But she was counting the weeks again in her head, and she was definitely supposed to get it last week. Her period was always on time, even when she first got it. It was never late, not even a day.

“Hey, are you okay? You look so serious,” Octavia said from the passenger seat. Clarke blinked, forgetting she wasn’t alone.

“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m fine. Just not feeling well.”

“If you throw up, aim for the window and I’ll grab the wheel.”

Clarke gave Octavia a smile that she knew didn’t reach her eyes. She tightened her grip on her steering wheel and decided she was probably over thinking it. A combination of school and work had been stressing her out, and she had been eating a pretty shitty diet. That was probably why she missed her period.

She nodded to herself. That was definitely it. Now, all she needed was to go to sleep and stop thinking about her non-existent period.

Clarke pressed her fingers to her lips and squinted at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. Her blonde hair was messy, having just rolled out of bed, and her cheeks flushed. She ran a hand over her flat stomach and frowned. Then she turned to the side and repeated the action, letting out a sigh.

Clarke was pregnant.

The pregnancy tests sat in a line on her bathroom counter, four different white sticks, all positive. She had bought them last week, the day after the Halloween party, but kept them stored underneath her sink because she was too scared to use them.

It was three in the morning and she hadn’t been able to sleep due to a bout of nausea and vomiting. She knew it wasn’t from a stomach bug or food poisoning. She knew exactly what was causing her sickness.

She was pregnant.

Shaking her head, Clarke picked up one of the tests with a tiny pink plus and sat down hard on the toilet seat.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

She traded that test for one with a smiley face and stared at it until her vision blurred. She’d known this was coming. She was going to be a doctor after all; she knew the symptoms of pregnancy. Groaning, Clarke pressed her free hand against her forehead and, holy shit, she was pregnant.

Clarke couldn’t do it. She couldn’t deal with a pregnancy right then. She had school in a few hours, and then a six hour shift at the hospital. Blinking back tears, Clarke threw the tests in the garbage and flicked off the bathroom light.

She would worry about it later. She would have to.

Clarke decided to worry about it one week later as she met Raven for lunch. She had told no one about her pregnancy yet, including Bellamy. She had decided that she was going to wait until she wasn’t freaking out to tell him even though she wasn’t quite sure how long that would take. She wanted to keep the information to herself for a little bit longer, but she was beginning to panic. Raven was her other best friend, Clarke had to tell her. If Bellamy wasn’t the father, Clarke would have already told Octavia, but at the moment that wasn’t an option. Plus, Raven was rational and level-headed during panic, unlike Clarke who had a tendency to not really think, just do.

Clarke had met Raven half a year ago and discovered her then-boyfriend, Finn Collins, had been cheating on her. Raven went to a different college than Clarke which made it easy for Finn to hide the girls from each other. After both relationships went the hell, Clarke found herself wanting to speak to the one girl who had something terrible in common with her. Their friendship surprisingly flourished and they had been friends ever since.

After ordering their food, Clarke picked a booth and slid into it. She was still in her scrubs from work with no makeup on, but she was so tired, she didn’t care at all. Raven joined her a second later, sitting across from her and grinning.

“Why did you call this emergency lunch meeting, doctor?” she asked, flicking her dark ponytail over her shoulder.

Clarke debated on easing into the subject like, “Hey, isn’t it weird how your uterus isn’t currently occupied? Well, mine is!” She leaned back and decided right then that she had to tell Raven, no bullshit. She didn’t want to dance around the subject.

“I’m pregnant.”

Raven’s grin immediately slipped right off her face. Her dark eyebrows furrowed as she leaned forward. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah,” Clarke said, raising her eyebrows. “Oh my God.”

“Clarke, I- holy shit. Are you sure? Did you go to the doctor?”

“Not yet,” Clarke replied. “I’m kind of scared to. I took the tests last week.”

“How many?”

“Four.”

“All positive?”

“Yup.”

“Shit.”

“Shit,” Clarke agreed.

There was a pause in their conversation as their food arrived, and Clarke scarfed half of her noodles down before she could even breathe.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Raven started, slowly eating a breadstick. “But who’s the dad?”

Clarke hesitated then, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She and Bellamy had agreed to not tell a single soul about their little arrangement. She moved her fork around her bowl in thought. It wasn’t like she was ashamed; she just knew what Raven’s reaction would be. Raven remained quiet and patient.

“Bellamy Blake,” she finally replied, taking a warm bread stick in her hand and taking a big bite.

Raven’s eyebrows all but disappeared into her hairline just like Clarke expected. “Bellamy Blake? As in Octavia’s older brother, Bellamy Blake?”

Clarke sighed, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “That’s the one.”

“What the hell? When did that happen? And why didn’t you tell me?” Raven fired off. “Wait, never mind. That’s not important right now,” she said, waving her hand. Her dark eyes softened. “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

Clarke shook her head, shrugging. Before she could stop it, one hot tear slid down her cheek. She quickly swiped at it, hoping Raven didn’t notice. But Raven wasn’t stupid. Clarke wasn’t the one to cry. She could usually hold it back until she got home, but she had been repressing her emotions for a full week; they were about to expose themselves in the middle of the restaurant.

“I have no idea,” Clarke whispered. “I-I ‘m in school and I have a job and I don’t have time for a baby. And my mother is going to kill me.”

She hadn’t even thought about what her mom would think.

“Don’t worry about your mom right now. Really, I don’t even think we’re supposed to be having this conversation. You need to tell Bellamy.”

“I will,” Clarke promised, wiping her wet cheeks again. She took a deep breath and willed herself to stop crying.

“Soon. I’m sure he’ll help you out. You can’t make these decisions on your own, or with me.”

Raven suddenly slid out of her seat and sat down next to Clarke. She took her hand, offering a gentle smile.

“You’re smart, Clarke. You know what’s best for you and what you can handle. You can figure it out.”

Clarke stopped by the mailroom on her way back to her apartment. She entered the air conditioned room, welcoming the cool blast of air. It was just barely the beginning of November, but the past couple of days had been surprisingly hot. The heat caused those tiny baby hairs at the back of her neck to stick to her skin with sweat and she hated it.

She pushed her sunglasses up on the top of her head and fumbled with her keys for the gold one that fit her mailbox. The door opened behind her, but Clarke didn’t have the energy to turn around. It had taken another ten minutes of quiet talking from Raven to get Clarke to stop crying. For the most part, she was okay. Raven had a knack for making Clarke feel better.

She opened her metal mailbox and fished out a couple of envelopes. All she wanted to do was crawl back underneath her covers and maybe sleep for the rest of the week. Her body protested with every movement, practically begging to be in her queen sized bed with her fluffy covers pulled over her head. Her back in particular ached in whatever position was possible. She honestly needed a nap.

“Hey, princess.”

Clarke’s head snapped around at the sound of his voice. Her blue eyes followed Bellamy as he pulled out his own keys and opened his mailbox. Her fingers tightened terribly on her envelopes, the paper crinkling beneath her touch. Her heart was hammering against her rib cage and she was suddenly afraid it would break the bone.

She immediately forced a friendly smile when she realized she had been staring at him, her lips slightly parted.

“How was work?” he asked as he pulled mail out of his box.

“What?”

Bellamy cocked his head to the side and gestured to her. “Work? Unless you’re just wearing those to impress me.”

“Oh,” Clarke said, brushing off his flirting with ease. She wasn’t in the mood for banter. “Work. Yeah, work was fine.”

He studied her for a moment, his dark eyes narrowed slightly. Clarke felt her face getting hot and she turned to shut her mailbox just to have something to do.

“Are you okay?” Bellamy asked. He reached out to her, but paused in the space between them like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to touch her or not.

Clarke made the decision for him. She took a step back, forcing another friendly smile.

She had promised Raven she would tell Bellamy, but seeing him standing there in his work uniform with a confused look on his face made that promise shrivel up and turn into dust. She couldn’t tell him right then. Not in the mailroom.

 “Fine. I’m fine. I’ll see you later.”

And before he could get another word out, Clarke spun on her heel made her way toward the door.

Something internally was telling her to turn around and say something because Raven was right. She couldn’t do it on her own. Giving in with an irritated sigh, she didn’t make it far before she paused and pressed her lips together. Her eyes fluttered shut for only a second, and then she turned, surprised to see Bellamy was still facing her.

“Can I come over later?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t sound as squeaky as it did in her ears.

He gave her a slow smile that made her shiver and scowl at the same time.

“Sure. Octavia has class at four. I’m off the rest of the day.”

Clarke nodded, biting her bottom lip. “Okay. Cool. I’ll see you at four-thirty.”

“Four-thirty,” Bellamy repeated, and Clarke gave him another nod before finally opening the door and stepping outside.

At four-thirty, Clarke padded across the hall, barefoot and already in her pajamas, and gently knocked on Bellamy’s front door. He opened the door almost instantly, looking extremely good in a ratty old t-shirt and jeans. His dark hair was wet and dripping onto his shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind. Her stomach tightened at the sight of him despite the fact that she was there for a reason completely different reason than he thought.

He gave her that stupid smirk and gestured for her to step inside, his dark eyes dipping from her eyes all the way to her toes. As soon as the door shut behind her, Bellamy tugged her into his arms, his lips pressing against hers immediately. She allowed herself to kiss him, just for a couple of seconds because they hadn’t done it in a while (and okay, maybe she liked kissing him).

He backed her up until she was pressed against the hallway wall, one hand cradling the back of her head carefully, the other splayed across the span of her stomach. Clarke’s hands slipped up the back of his shirt easily, momentarily forgetting why she was there as her hands pressed against his hot skin.

Bellamy’s hand stretched out, his calloused fingers just barely brushing her ribs. Clarke nipped at his bottom lip and his hand slid further up, cupping her breast.

She pulled away from his lips then, wincing at the ache she received when he touched her. She caught his wrist, panting, and eased his hand slowly away from her breasts. They had been exceptionally swollen and tender over the past week.

“You okay?” he murmured against her lips, his hand slipping to the small of her back to tug her closer into him.

She shook her head in reply, pressing her lips together.

“What’s wrong? Do you want to stop?”

Not really. Not at all.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted and promptly winced. She didn’t really have a plan going into his apartment, and she realized she probably should have thought of something other than just flat out telling him.

Bellamy detangled himself completely from her, blinking. His eyebrows were furrowed, his swollen lips parted.

“What?”

Clarke ran her hands down her thighs and took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m pregnant. I haven’t been to a doctor yet, but I took some tests last week and they were all positive.”

Bellamy blinked again, just staring at her. “Pregnant,” he replied, his voice flat. “Holy…oh, fuck, Clarke.”

She nodded, her only reply.

He ran his hands through his hair and tugged before letting his hands drop limply by his side. “Fuck,” he muttered again. “You haven’t been to a doctor yet? So it’s not confirmed?”

“Bellamy,” Clarke sighed. “I took four tests. Even tests you take at home are pretty accurate.”

He was quiet then, pressing his knuckles against his mouth and staring at the wall. She wanted to tell him something, anything to break the uneasy silence, but his eyes turned to her, and she pressed her lips together while he searched her face. She didn’t know what else to say to him. They weren’t in a relationship, they didn’t love each other; he couldn’t just propose to her and solve all their problems with a promise.

“What are you going to do?” he finally asked.

Clarke blinked in surprise. That was it? He was just going to ask her what she was going to do, he didn’t care at all?

“What?” Clarke replied.

“I mean, about the…baby. Are you going to keep it?”

“Oh,” she said, feeling herself blush. She hadn’t given it much thought. The biggest thing on her mind in the past week had been trying to work up the courage to tell Bellamy. “I’m…not sure. I haven’t really thought about it.”

He scrubbed at his face with his hands and she heard him release a heavy sigh. He turned away and started down the hallway before pausing.

“Come on,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him. “Do you want something to drink? I think O still has some of that tea you like.”

Clarke hugged her elbows and followed Bellamy into his kitchen. He was already shuffling around in the cabinets, pulling out a mug and the lemon and jasmine tea that was Clarke’s favorite. She knew he was avoiding looking at her, talking to her.

“Bellamy….”

“I know,” he said quickly, his back still to her.  He flattened his hands against the counter and she watched the muscles in his back tighten. “I know, Clarke, okay? We’ll talk about it. Just give me a minute.”

Clarke stepped out of the kitchen and into the dining room, pulling out a chair and seating herself. She chewed on her bottom lip while she waited for Bellamy to join her. Her stomach was in knots and she couldn’t stop tapping her fingers against the wood table.

(What if he wanted nothing to do with the baby? What if he wanted her to get an abortion or didn’t even care as long as he wasn’t a part of it? How the hell would she raise a baby by herself if he didn’t want it?)

She suddenly felt like she was going to throw up, and she might have gotten up to rush to the bathroom just in case, but Bellamy was already walking into the dining room. He set a mug down in front of Clarke, the smell of lemon overwhelming her. She had been queasy the past couple of weeks, but she took a careful sip of the tea and sighed when her stomach didn’t reject it.

“So,” Bellamy started as he sat down across from Clarke, giving her a strained smile, “Octavia is going to kill us.”

Clarke offered him a half-hearted smile in return. “I figured that much.”

Clarke scheduled a doctor’s appointment the Friday after she told Bellamy. She was originally planning to go alone, but after a night of no sleep, she texted Bellamy and asked him if he would meet her there. He agreed, seemingly offended that she didn’t ask him in the first place.

While he held open the door for her and she stepped inside the doctor’s office, Clarke was reminded of her mother.

She had managed to completely avoid going over to her mother’s house for their weekly dinner. She was afraid that the second she stepped inside, her mother would be able to smell the pregnancy hormones radiating off of Clarke, and Clarke wasn’t ready for that yet. She wasn’t sure when she was going to tell her mom, but she would prefer to hold it off for as long as possible.

She knew her father, if he were still alive, would still be by her side even if her being pregnant wasn’t “ideal.” Her mother, on the other hand, Clarke wasn’t so sure about.

After her father’s death, Clarke and her mother clashed. Clarke was too much like her father, too rebellious for her mother. And Abby was too controlling, forcing Clarke to live her life the way her mother wanted.

When Clarke turned nineteen, she moved out. She had gotten a job when she was sixteen despite her parents telling her she wasn’t required to get one. She didn’t want their money to support her once she was an adult.

(The kids at school already called her princess behind her back; she didn’t need that nickname to follow her around. She had saved up enough money to live on her own and she was going to do just that.)

Octavia, who had just started college, told Clarke the apartment across the hall was cheap, nice, and unoccupied. So Clarke moved in across the hall from her best friend and best friend’s older brother, because what better place to live?

After moving out, Abby and Clarke no longer butted heads. Clarke would come over for dinner once a week, and everything was okay between them. But Clarke knew when she told her mother she was pregnant, their relationship would shatter again.

All of these thoughts were going through her head as she sat in the waiting room of her gynecologist. Bellamy took a seat next to her, his eyes immediately glued to a woman across the room. Her swollen belly shifted as her baby rolled around inside of her. Clarke couldn’t tell if Bellamy was amazed or terrified. Probably both.

Deciding to hold off telling her mother for probably another week or two, Clarke followed the nurse who had called her back into a room. The nurse handed her a gown, smiled at her and Bellamy, and then shut the door.

Clarke squinted at the gown the nurse had given her and wrinkled her nose. God, she hated going to the gynecologist. Having someone insert cold things into you while have your legs held up on stupid stirrups was not her idea of fun.

Bellamy politely turned his back as she changed into the gown. She was glad he came with her, even though he hadn’t spoken much.

He currently seemed interested about everything he saw in the office. There were posters hung up on the wall, the one Bellamy was currently studying showed a full-term baby inside a belly. He turned to a model of a female’s reproductive organs and accidentally knocked off a fallopian tube with his elbow.

“Oops,” he said, quickly grabbing the plastic and trying to figure out where to place it. Clarke, laughing, took the fallopian tube from his hands and carefully inserted it into its assigned place.

“Do you know what they’re going to do?” he asked once she sat down, trying her absolute best not to flash him.

“Not really,” she replied. “I already did the urinalysis. Probably blood work and other things.”

Bellamy frowned. “What is other things?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. An ultrasound maybe?”

“I thought you were a doctor,” Bellamy teased, raising his eyebrows.

“First of all, I’m not a doctor yet. And second of all, I’m not going to be an OBGYN.”

Bellamy hmmphed and crossed his arms over his chest. “This seems like something you should know.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, a sharp remark on the tip of her tongue. Before she could get it out, the doctor walked in. She was holding a clipboard and she flipped the pages back and forth before she lifted her head and smiled.

“Hi Ms. Griffin,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

“Hi,” Clarke replied, offering her own smile. She was wringing her hands in her lap, a nervous habit.

“All right, so you’ve already taken an at home pregnancy test?”

“Yes. Four.”

“Okay. The pregnancy test came back positive.”

She knew that, she was expecting that, but her stomach still dropped at the words as if a doctor saying it really solidified the fact that she was pregnant.

“We’re going to do a transvaginal ultrasound to see how far along you are,” she continued.

Clarke nodded, breathing out slowly. She could do this. She was going to be a doctor; she could handle a transvaginal ultrasound.

The doctor left after walking Clarke through the process and instructing her to lie down. After the door shut, Clarke reclined, resting her hands against her stomach.

“So just an ultrasound?” Bellamy asked. He tugged his chair closed to her, his dark eyes searching hers.

“I guess,” Clarke said, shrugging and causing the thin tissue paper on the chair underneath her to crackle loudly.

The door opened again, and in stepped an ultrasound technician. She powered up the machine on the other side of Clarke, and while it hummed to life, she pulled out a wand. Clarke glanced at Bellamy, who was squinting at the wand with a weird look on his face.

She winced as the technician pushed the wand into her and moved it around. Without thinking, Clarke caught Bellamy’s hand that was on his knee. It was a little scarier than she thought. He stared at her for a moment before he turned his hand over and gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze that made her heart thump.

“All right,” the technician said, reaching her hand out toward the monitor. “Here’s the baby.”

Clarke squinted at the monitor. The baby was just a little grey blob in a black oval shape on the screen. It didn’t look significantly like a baby because she wasn’t too far along, but it was a baby.

Clarke’s stomach clenched painfully. Again, it was so real. There was a baby inside of her. She blinked at the screen, tugging at her bottom lip with her teeth. Her eyes shifted to Bellamy who was staring at the screen with his brow furrowed, his lips pressed into a neat line. She wanted to know what he was thinking, but she felt it would be stupid to ask.

(He was probably thinking the same thing as her; how the hell were they going to have a baby?)

The technician pushed a button a couple of times before pulling the wand out. She handed Clarke the pictures that printed with a smile.

“You’re about seven weeks along. It’s too early to tell the sex, but you should be able to tell in a couple of months.”

Bellamy raised his eyebrows at that, his eyes drifting to Clarke’s. The ultrasound technician turned off the machine, flicked the lights back on, and left the two alone.

Clarke sat up, clutching the sticky pictures in her fingers. After a moment of thought, she ripped off the bottom one, the one that looked the least like a blob, and handed it to Bellamy. He stared at her.

“Take one,” she whispered, her eyes flickering across his face.

“Clarke,” Bellamy said, his voice deep, “Are you going to keep it? I don’t…” he shook his head. “I can’t have one if you don’t keep it.”

Clarke studied his face, his dark eyes and freckles like stars spread out across his cheeks. “Can we do this?” she asked, her voice small and quiet. “Can we have a baby?”

“This is your decision-“ Bellamy started, but Clarke cut him off abruptly.

“No, Bellamy, it’s not. It’s not just my decision. This is your baby, too. This is our decision,” she said firmly.

“Then I want to keep it,” Bellamy said. He set his jaw tight, as if he expected her to argue. But she only nodded and slipped off the table.

“Good,” she breathed, looking at the glossy photos in her hands. “Me too.”

Bellamy offered to take Clarke out to lunch, but her stomach was churning, and she declined his offer gently. Her morning sickness had disappeared for a week only to come back with vengeance. Practically everything she smelled made her want to vomit.

He asked her if he could just run by a fast food place quickly, and she told him of course he could. They were in his truck, after all.

She didn’t realize her mistake. Five seconds after Bellamy pulled out of the line of cars with his burger in his hand, Clarke told him to stop the car. He quickly pulled into a parking spot and Clarke was out of the car in two seconds flat, retching into the bushes.

“Shit, Clarke, I’m sorry,” Bellamy said as he got out of his truck. He stood awkwardly by her side for a couple of seconds before he gently rubbed her back.

She coughed once, twice, before she straightened and grimaced at the burn in her throat. Bellamy disappeared from her side while she wiped her hand across the back of her mouth. She honestly didn’t think she was that sensitive to smells. She hadn’t even felt nauseas when he first got his food, her stomach just twisted and she knew very well what came after that.

“Here,” Bellamy said, standing next to her again. He had his drink in his hand and a handful of napkins in the other. She took the napkins gratefully but eyed the cup. “It’s water,” he said, offering it.

She took the cup from him, feeling guilty that she was putting her mouth on his straw, but she really wanted to get the taste out of her mouth. He watched her as she took a long drag from the water and spit it out. She took another sip, swallowing it this time.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine. Sorry, I didn’t think I would throw up,” she told him with a sheepish smile.

“Is that the morning sickness?”

Clarke nodded. “Yeah. I had it for a while in the beginning and it went away for a couple of weeks. I guess it’s back.”

Bellamy licked his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was young when my mom was pregnant with Octavia, but I mostly remember her being sick a lot. I’d wake up at four in the morning and she’d be on the bathroom floor with a blanket, asleep.”

“Oh, wow. Mine’s not that bad,” Clarke said.

Bellamy rarely ever talked about his mother; that was something Clarke realized as she grew up. Octavia was open about it, about her cancer and her death when Octavia was thirteen. Bellamy’s father had died when he was just a baby, and Octavia’s father was never in the picture.

Bellamy had been only eighteen when their mother died and he had to take care of his little sister. They moved out of their small house and moved into an apartment because it was cheaper. Bellamy picked up another job, his third, and he raised Octavia just fine.

Bellamy moved toward Clarke, his hand barely grazing the small of her back. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Clarke nodded, taking another sip of water. “Peachy,” she replied. “I would just rather be lying in my bed than throwing up in a Burger King parking lot.”

Bellamy smiled, his eyes flickering across her face. “Good,” he said. “This isn’t going to be like the movies where you blame me for everything, right?”

She squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

“Like the girl is throwing up and tells her boyfriend it’s his fault, or she’s giving birth and she punches him in the face,” Bellamy answered, his eyebrows raised.

“What kind of movies have you been watching? No,” Clarke said with a laugh. Her hand settled on her stomach as it gurgled loudly from the water.

“Okay, good,” Bellamy said, turning to head back toward his truck. “Besides,” he threw over his shoulder, “I’m pretty sure you kissed me first.”

With an embarrassed huff, Clarke threw a balled up napkin at the back of Bellamy’s head, missing entirely as a gust of wind knocked it off its path.

“That’s littering!”

“Shut up,” Clarke grumbled as she picked up the napkin. She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling as she climbed into Bellamy’s truck, her cheeks flushed from his comment.

“I’m pretty sure you kissed me first,” Clarke said, crossing her arms across her chest. She was not going down without a fight.

“Nope,” Bellamy argued, glancing over his shoulder as he backed out of the parking spot. Clarke couldn’t see or smell his food anywhere and she really hoped he hadn’t thrown it away just for her.

“How would you know? You were drunk off your ass,” she remarked.

“You were drunk off my ass,” Bellamy replied with a smirk.

Clarke scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I’m not flattering myself at all. You wanted me and that is literally why we are in my car right now.”

“Okay,” Clarke turned to him, raising one eyebrow. “We were both drunk. You kissed me first and then maybe I kissed you the second time.”

“Nah. You kissed me first. Trust me.”

Clarke threw her hands up, exasperated. “We have to get this story straight so we can tell our kid when they’re old enough.”

She didn’t know why she said it, the words just tumbled from her lips without a thought. Her heart fluttered in anticipation as Bellamy paused, thinking about her words. His eyes flickered over to her, jumping between her face and her stomach. Then he smiled and shifted his gaze back to the road.

“Yeah,” he said. “When they’re old enough.”

Octavia jerked Clarke into her apartment quickly, nearing making her drop her heavy medical textbooks. She had just finished up school when she got a text from Octavia, declaring a state of emergency.

“What’s the emergency?” Clarke asked, glancing around the living room and kitchen. Bellamy was nowhere in sight.

Not that she was looking for him.

Not that she was slightly disappointed he wasn’t there.

Octavia took a deep breath, a grin on her face. “Lincoln is officially my boyfriend.”

Clarke rolled her eyes and dropped her heavy textbooks on the kitchen table. It had been a little over a month since the Halloween party when Octavia and Lincoln snuck off to do something that Octavia never told Clarke about. She was too preoccupied to bug her about it, assuming she’d tell her on her own, but she never did. Really, Clarke knew exactly what happened.

“That’s the emergency?” Clarke asked, moving toward the fridge for a snack.

Octavia silently frowned at Clarke until she glanced at her from behind the fridge door. “Why aren’t you excited?”

“O, of course I’m excited. I just knew this was going to happen since you two made eye contact for the first time.”

Octavia beamed at her words and grabbed a bag of green grapes from the fridge. She popped a few in her mouth, still smiling. Clarke grabbed a bottle of water and took a huge sip.

“Besides,” Clarke continued, closing the fridge, “the night of the Halloween party….” She waggled her eyebrows and smirked.

“Oh, shut up,” Octavia laughed, throwing a grape at her. Clarke, completely oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t put the cap on her water, tossed the bottle at Octavia. Cold water splashed against the floor and all over Octavia. Clarke, frozen with her mouth wide open, stared in shock.

“You bitch!” Octavia laughed, reaching behind her for a banana out of the fruit bowl.

“I didn’t know it was open!” Clarke cried, dodging a handful of mushy banana.

When Clarke dodged another bit of banana, Octavia went after her herself, tickling her sides.

“Stop! Octavia, I’m going to pee on myself!” Clarke laughed, trying to worm away from her friend. She took a step back, trying to escape Octavia’s tickling fingers, and her Converses slipped easily against the wet floor. Her back slammed into the corner of the kitchen counter, pain jolting up her spine, and she landed hard on one knee, gasping.

“Oh, shit,” Octavia said, tugging Clarke’s arm to get her to stand up. “Are you okay?”

Octavia hauled Clarke to her feet, her face concerned just enough to hide the fact that she thought it was funny. Clarke pushed away from her, waving her hand while rubbing the developing bruise on the small of her back.

“Fine,” she squeaked.

She heard a door shut and footsteps down the hall, and Bellamy was suddenly there, touching her elbow.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice concerned. She nodded, her face automatically forming a wince.

“She just fell-“

“Quit fucking around, O,” Bellamy snapped sharply, causing Octavia to take a step back, her face confused. “Here,” he continued to Clarke in a gentler voice, “sit on the couch.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Octavia demanded, her hands on her hips. She shot absolute daggers into the back of her brother’s head as he led Clarke to the couch.

“I’m fine, Bellamy, really. I just slipped,” Clarke assured, trying to wave him away. At the age of twenty-one, Clarke had witnessed way too many real, full on arguments between the Blake siblings and she could go another week without being in the middle of one. She squeezed Bellamy’s arm and smiled softly to convince him she was fine, just a little embarrassed, a little bruised.

“Why are you two acting so weird?” Octavia continued, her eyes darting between the two. Bellamy glanced at Clarke and then back at his sister. He shrugged, his dark eyebrows furrowing at his sister’s obviously ridiculous assumption.

(Because nothing weird was ever going on between them.)

(That was sarcasm.)

“Is this because you two have been having sex for, like, three months?”

Clarke had never seen Bellamy’s head snap up so fast. Her stomach dropped to her toes as she sputtered lamely for an excuse. Bellamy sent her a horrified look that she scowled at.

“Don’t try to lie. You two are the least sneaky people I know. And I know Jasper and Monty, and that’s saying something.”

Clarke moved her eyes back toward her best friend and just stared. She was so sure no one knew.

“Do you guys think I’m stupid? First of all, I’m the biggest airhead ever and I practically always leave something at the apartment, which means I always come back for it. And Bell, you have the squeakiest bed on the entire plant. And Clarke, I’ve known you for eleven years, I know your voice. You’re not sneaky at all. Even Lincoln knew.”

Bellamy scoffed at the mention of Lincoln (which was the main reason Octavia rarely ever spoke about him in front of her brother), and crossed his arms over his chest, his dark eyes flickering between Octavia and Clarke. He was pretending to act offended that Octavia would even suggest such a thing, but Clarke knew when to surrender.

Octavia raised her thin eyebrows, obviously waiting for an explanation.

“We should tell her,” Clarke said, lifting her hands from her lap, placating.

Bellamy sighed heavily and tipped his head back.

“Need to pray about it first?” Octavia asked.

He made a face. “Okay, you found out. But that’s not it. Well, I mean, that’s a part of it,” Bellamy sighed again, glancing at Clarke. She bit her lip and nodded her head the tiniest, urging him on.

“Then what else? Are you two getting married? Already married?”

“It’s not like that,” Clarke said quickly. “We aren’t dating.”

Octavia scowled. “Then what?”

“O, Clarke’s pregnant.”

Octavia blinked.

“April fools?” she asked.

“It’s almost December,” Clarke said with a frown.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Bellamy answered, and then Octavia squealed loudly. She threw her arms around her brother and her best friend and squealed again.

“Oh my god, this is going to be so cool. Me? An aunt? I’ll be the best aunt ever.”

“You’re not mad?” Clarke asked tentatively, gently patting Octavia’s shoulder.

“Mad? I’m going to kick both of your asses for not telling me for so long, but my joy is outweighing that right now.”

And that was the best they could hope for.

Clarke couldn’t avoid her mother for much longer. Abby was beginning to get antsy with Clarke, calling her at random hours of the day, annoyed, asking if she did something wrong to push her away.

Clarke always gave the same answer (“You haven’t done anything, Mom. I’m just busy with school and work”), but Abby wouldn’t take her answer. She wanted Clarke to come over for dinner, but Clarke was eleven weeks pregnant and it was getting a little harder to hide. No one from school or work knew yet, and she wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. She didn’t want people to start asking her questions and judging her because she wasn’t married, or even in a relationship with the baby’s father.

Whatever. It was none of their business anyway.

“I mean, I know your mom has a huge stick up her ass-“ Raven started one afternoon when Clarke invited her over to help her de-stress.

“Huge,” Clarke interjected. “Like, ginormous.”

“Anyways,” Raven continued. “I know she has a huge stick up her ass, but she is your mom. And of course she’s going to be worried, or whatever, but she’ll love you no matter what. She’s not my favorite person, I’m not going to lie, but I’m sure she’s got a heart in that tiny body of hers.”

Clarke rolled her eyes with a sigh, and shoved a cookie in her mouth.

“You can’t hide it forever,” Raven said. As if to prove her point, she reached over and yanked up Clarke’s oversized shirt, revealing the curve of her belly. Clarke didn’t even try to push Raven’s hand away; she just gave her a dirty look and ate another cookie.

“Little baby,” Raven said, using her free hand to pat Clarke’s stomach, “you’re causing an awful lot of trouble.”

Clarke pushed Raven’s hand away, frowning. “Don’t blame the baby.”

Raven retreated with her hands up before raiding the fridge for food. “It’s just so weird that you’re pregnant, you know? I mean, I’ve known you for barely a year, but if I were to put money on it, I’d bet on me getting an unplanned pregnancy first.”

“I’m regretting inviting you over. You’re just stressing me out more.”

Raven opened her mouth in reply, but someone knocked on Clarke’s front door.

“If that’s your mom, I’m leaving. I don’t need to witness that hot mess,” Raven called as Clarke moved through the living room.

She needed better friends.

Clarke ignored her and opened her door, really, really wishing her mother hadn’t decided to make a surprise visit. If Clarke were to say she was less surprised to see Bellamy standing out in the hallway instead of her mother, she’d be lying.

“Bellamy,” she said, blinking at him. He was still in his dark pants and shirt from the bar where he worked, and there were two grocery bags in each of his hands.

“Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to show up unannounced,” he said, his eyes sweeping across her. She felt underdressed in her flannel pajama bottoms. Her hair was piled on her head and she wasn’t wearing any makeup, which wasn’t fair because Bellamy looked presentable.

“Oh, it’s fine.”

He cleared his throat and shifted the bags in his hands. “I, uh, got you some stuff.”

“Stuff?” Clarke asked, tilting her head.

He lifted the bags and Clarke realized he was still standing in the hallway. She hadn’t even invited him in.

“Oh!” she said quickly, gesturing for him to come inside. She shut the door behind him and led him into her kitchen just as Raven was stuffing a pretzel covered in hummus into her mouth. Her dark eyebrows quirked at Clarke as Bellamy turned and deposited the bags onto her counter.

Raven and Bellamy kind of knew each other. Sometimes, when Bellamy would bump into Clarke in the hallway, Raven would be trailing behind her.

Bellamy started pulling food out of the grocery bags: fresh fruits and vegetables, soup, snacks and sweets. All of the things Clarke had told Bellamy she had been craving over a week ago. She stared at him with her mouth slightly opened.

“Bellamy,” she said, her arms limp by her side, her stomach pooling with warmth. “You…didn’t have to do that.”

He shrugged, but Clarke could see the blush settling on his cheeks. “O ate all the Captain Crunch so I had to run to the store.” He shrugged again.

“How much did you spend?” Clarke asked, grabbing her purse and searching for her wallet.

“Oh, no, don’t worry about it,” Bellamy said.

Clarke stared at him, her hand stilled inside her purse. “No, I can’t-“

“Seriously,” Bellamy cut her off. “Don’t worry about it.”

He threw the bags in the trash and stepped away from the kitchen.

“I’ll see you later, Clarke,” he said, the corners of his mouth tilting up.

She was almost tempted to ask him to stay, but she knew Raven would be grilling him the entire time (“How are you planning to support my best friend and your future child? Have you gotten vaccinated recently? Do you think Bush was behind 9/11?”) and she didn’t want to put him through that. So she watched as he walked himself out and shut the door quietly behind him.

She didn’t really know what to say.

“I…”

“Damn,” Raven provided, eating another hummus covered pretzel. “That’s some next-level baby daddy.”

“He didn’t have to-“

“But he did. And now we can have a proper sleepover. He even bought ice cream,” she said, shuffling the food around to see what he bought.

Clarke groaned and pressed her cold hands against her hot cheeks. She didn’t know why she was so flushed.

(Except for the fact that she was totally enamored with him when she shouldn’t be.)

Raven noticed with a smile. “Out of all the things that get you flustered, I didn’t think grocery shopping would be on that list.”

“Shut up and go pick out a movie,” Clarke snapped, her blush deepening. Raven obeyed, but her laughter drifted from the living room.

No. Clarke wasn’t going to let her feelings get in the way of anything. She had known Bellamy for half of her life and she knew, from personal experience, that he was a dick. They would never work out and she knew that. That was why she went to Bellamy for sex and not romantic relationship.

Clarke put away the food except for the strawberries, the fruit she had been craving the absolute most. Bellamy had bought a lot strawberries and Clarke felt her heart swell considerably. She didn’t even think he was listening to her when she prattled off things she could devour in a day.

Hugging the bowl of strawberries to her chest, Clarke exhaled with a smile, and followed her friend into the living room.

The next morning, on her way back from work, Clarke bumped into Bellamy in the hallway. He was wearing his stained khakis and green shirt which meant he was headed to job number three- lawn care.

“Hey,” Clarke greeted, unlocking her door. “Off to work?”

“Gotta pay for rent somehow,” he said gruffly, but he gave her a teasing smile.

 “Bellamy, you really didn’t have to buy that food for me,” she sighed, leaning against her door frame.

“Clarke,” he replied, giving her a stern look, “seriously. I wanted to, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered, smiling, her chest feeling all sorts of fuzzy. “But at least let me share it with you.”

He hummed, locking his door, and turned to her, one eyebrow raised. “Why, Clarke Imogene Griffin, are you asking me on a date?”

Clarke, blushing and shrugging, opened her front door all of the way and stepped inside. “Probably not,” she said simply. “And Imogene isn’t my middle name, ass, you know that.” She heard his laugh as she shut the door behind her.

Grinning, Clarke dropped her purse on the couch and moved toward her fridge, craving more strawberries. At least she wasn’t craving pickles and ice cream.

Actually….

Clarke shook her head. She didn’t even like pickles.

As she swung the door open to her fridge, she was interrupted when her phone buzzed loudly from her pocket. She didn’t bother checking the name, assuming it was Raven or Octavia.

“Hello?”

“Clarke Griffin, if you’re not at my house at five for dinner, I’m coming to your apartment and we’re eating there. You can’t avoid me forever.”

Clarke froze at the sound of her mother’s voice and shut the fridge door. Sighing, she fiddled with the top to her scrubs.

“I, uh, have plans with Octavia,” she lied, wincing. She scrambled for another lie as her mother sighed.

“No, you don’t. I already called her, and Raven, and they said you’re free. So five o’clock.”

“Mom,” Clarke started, fumbling for an airtight argument.

“Don’t, Clarke. It’s not going to work. I haven’t seen you since October, and that’s ridiculous. So you’re coming over for dinner.”

Clarke knew a confrontation with her mother was inevitable. Her mother was Abby Griffin, after all, but Clarke didn’t want to deal with her mother’s anger. She sighed again and ran a hand down her face.

She had to get it over with. Rip off the band-aid or whatever.

“All right. I’ll be there at five.”

Clarke climbed the steps up to her mother’s house, typing out a text to Bellamy.

Hey, sorry, but I’m going to have to cancel tonight’s whatever we were doing. My mom is forcing me over for dinner, and I guess it’s about time I told her.

She sent the message and typed up a couple of fuck you’s to Raven and Octavia as she opened the front door.

“Clarke!”

Clarke was ambushed by her mother, peppering her face with kisses and squeezing her in a hug. She smelled like her perfume, the same perfume she’d been wearing since Clarke was a child, and it soothed Clarke’s nerves a little.

This was her mother. She would be surprised but like Raven said, Abby would still love Clarke. That’s what mother’s did, love their children inevitably.

“I can’t believe threatening you was the only way I could get you to come to dinner,” Abby said, leading her daughter down the long hall and into the dining room.

“I was really busy,” Clarke lied as she sat down at the table. Her stomach grumbled unhappily, not amused by the plate of chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes in front of her. She wanted fruit.

Abby went on about her latest surgery and the new interns at the hospital that were trying their hardest. She asked Clarke about school and work and Wells. (Her parents always wanted her to marry Wells, but it was just never like that between them. They tried dating when they were sixteen, but when they tried to kiss, neither of them could stop laughing so they decided friends would suite them better.) Clarke told her mother school and work were fine, and admitted she hadn’t spoken to Wells in quite some time. Being a new detective was hard work, so Clarke understood.

Her distaste for the food must have shown on her face or the way she pushed her green beans around idly on her full plate because her mother noticed.

“Clarke, are you okay? Something seems…off.”

Clarke cleared her throat and pushed another green bean to the opposite side of her plate. Her leg was bouncing in an attempt to get her jittery nerves out.

“Mom, I have to tell you something,” she said, setting her fork down completely. It was too late to turn back now. Clarke swallowed loudly and took a deep breath. The words felt heavy in her mouth, sticky. She casted her eyes to the ceiling and pushed on. “I’m pregnant.”

Abby froze, her face changing to one of concern to one of shock. She shook her head.

“How?”

“Well, when a mommy and daddy love each other-”

“This is not a joke, Clarke,” Abby said sharply. It took her a good few seconds before she exhaled loudly. “I thought you weren’t seeing anyone?”

“I’m not,” Clarke answered.

“Clarke.” There was a dangerous tone to Abby’s voice. One that, if Clarke were still living at home, would result in a grounding. “Then who is the father?”

She didn’t hesitate this time like she did with Raven. “Bellamy Blake.”

If Clarke thought Abby couldn’t get more shocked, she was wrong. “What the hell do you mean Bellamy Blake?” she snapped.

“Mom,” Clarke started, leaning forward, but her mother cut her off.

“Bellamy Blake?” she repeated, her voice shrill. “Your best friend’s older brother? How much older is he than you, Clarke? Has he been to college? Can he provide for your family? Are you getting married?”

Clarke set her jaw, surprised at the anger that bubbled in her chest. She knew it was going to be like this; after all, her mother was expecting her to marry some rich doctor and have beautiful, rich kids. Bellamy Blake didn’t exactly fit that criteria, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t change who the baby’s father was, and she wouldn’t even if given the chance.

She was very protective of Octavia and her brother because they were probably the most caring people Clarke had ever met (even though Bellamy could be an asshole most of the time). She didn’t want to sit there and listen to her mom denounce her best friend and the father of her baby.

“I didn’t come here for this,” Clarke growled, standing up and reaching for her purse. She ignored how her hands were shaking.

“What did you come here for? Did you want my congratulations? Clarke, this could ruin your life. You’re too young to have a baby, don’t you understand? You’re not married, you aren’t finished with school, and you’re not even dating the father. Is this what you want?”

“It has nothing to do with what I want. It never has been. It’s what you wanted, what dad wanted. It’s never been about me.”

Abby stood up, moving around the table to grip Clarke’s shoulders in her hands. “Listen to me, please. I’ve seen so many young mothers at the hospital. So, so young, so unprepared for a baby, and I don’t want you to be like that. Have you thought of other options? Adoption? There are nice couples who are prepared and ready for a baby they would love to adopt. Or there’s the option of terminating the pregnancy. There’s this clinic-“

Clarke jerked herself from her mother’s arms, shaking her head. “You would want me to give away your grandchild? To terminate the pregnancy?” The hurt sunk into her bones, but she didn’t want to think about it. “I’ve already decided to keep the baby.”

“Clarke, please,” Abby pleaded, reaching for her daughter, but Clarke took a step back, shaking her head again. “You’ll regret it.”

“I knew it was going to be like this,” she whispered. She reached for her keys and swiftly walked out of the dining room, trying to put as much distance between herself and her mother as possible before she could start crying. Her breaths were already shaky.

“Just think about the choices you’re making,” Abby called after her.

Clarke threw open the front door and paused, glancing over her shoulder to see her mother standing at the end of the hallway. “I already have,” she replied, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Clarke's little Volkswagen sputtered before it cut off completely. 

"Shit," she hissed. She twisted the key, but the engine refused to turn over. Yanking her keys out with a frustrated sigh, Clarke threw them on the floorboard on the passenger side. She lifted her eyes to the roof of her car and willed herself not to cry again. It wasn’t a big deal, she knew it wasn’t, and she knew it was silly to cry over something so simple, but she still had to blink away tears.

Clarke pulled her phone from her pocket and pulled up Raven's phone number, hesitating. Raven was on a date with Wick (their first one in a long time), and Clarke didn't want to interrupt them. She knew Raven would cancel her date and pick her up, but she didn’t have the heart to do that. Octavia was at Lincoln’s to stay the night, so she couldn’t call her. Clarke skimmed through her contacts, dismissing people left and right, especially skipping over her mother's number.

There was only one option left.

"Hello?" His voice sounded sleepy and annoyed. Clarke exhaled carefully, surprised at the relief that washed through her.

"Hey, Bellamy, it's Clarke."

He paused a moment, and Clarke could hear him shuffling around. "Is everything okay?"

She gripped her steering wheel with her free hand. "Yeah, but, um, could you come pick me up by chance? My car broke down virtually nowhere."

"I thought you said everything was okay," Bellamy said gruffly. 

"Bellamy-"

"Clarke," Bellamy cut her off. "I was kidding. Where are you?"

Clarke gave him the general area and, after hanging up the phone, dropped her head against her steering wheel and let out a frustrated sigh. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she tried to think of something other than her mother. She didn’t need Bellamy to see her crying.  

It started to snow thickly minutes after she hung up the phone. Within minutes, Clarke couldn’t see out of her windshield.

Twenty minutes later, Bellamy pulled to a stop next to Clarke's car. She let out a grateful sigh and grabbed her purse, climbing out of her car. 

"You were right when you said you broke down in virtually nowhere. Where the hell were you going?" was the first thing Bellamy said to Clarke as he opened the door for her.

She didn’t answer as she climbed into Bellamy's truck, too embarrassed to tell him she was aimlessly driving around to distract herself. He reached back and dug around underneath his backseat as she settled in the passenger seat. He let out a frustrated noise before twisting completely and squinting.

“Damn it,” he grumbled, turning around empty handed. “Octavia has my jumper cables. Your car will have to stay here for the night.”

“Okay,” Clarke said, tugging her purse closer to her chest. “That’s fine. It’s too cold to work on it anyways.”

Bellamy nodded and punched off his overhead lights. From the quick glance that she got, Bellamy’s curly hair was sticking up in odd places and his eyes were a little swollen. She had definitely woken him up, and she felt guilty. He had three jobs. There wasn’t a lot of time to sleep in between three jobs.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke said quickly, shifting her eyes from the road to him.

“For what?” he asked, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

“Did I wake you up? I’m sorry, if I’d have known you were asleep I wouldn’t have called.”

Bellamy didn’t reply for a moment, scowling at the snowy road, and Clarke was sure she had annoyed him.

“It’s fine, Clarke,” Bellamy finally said. “Really.”

Clarke pressed her lips together and turned her eyes back to the road. She shifted in her seat, pushing her hair behind her ear nervously.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Bellamy nodded, “You’re welcome,” and turned on the radio.

Clarke and Bellamy stepped out of the elevator, Clarke digging in her purse for her keys, Bellamy jingling his loudly. He paused at her door as if to make sure she got in safely, and the small gesture made her smile a little. But her smile dropped quickly as her hand groped around her purse, coming up with nothing. Where the hell were her keys?

“Damn it,” she said through clenched teeth, her hand stilling. She closed her eyes and pressed her cold fingers against her forehead. She left her fucking keys in her car.

“What?” Bellamy asked, and Clarke pulled her hand away in surprise. She forgot he was still there.

“I left my keys in my car,” she sighed.

“You don’t have a spare?”

“Octavia has it,” Clarke replied.

“Oh,” Bellamy said. He cleared his throat and shifted his weight from foot to foot. “You could just stay at my apartment tonight,” he suggested with a shrug.

Clarke tipped her head toward him, her eyebrows rising. “Really? That would be great,” she answered, her mouth twitching into a smile.

“All right,” he said, smiling back at her. “We can just worry about all of that tomorrow.”

Still smiling, Clarke followed Bellamy across the hall and inside his apartment. She shed her wet jacket and brushed the snow out of her hair before sitting down on the loveseat. She had a habit of automatically making herself at home because of all the times she had been there. Bellamy turned on the television, changed the channel, and then moved into the small kitchen, opening cabinet doors and using the microwave.

Clarke could feel that her eyes were swollen from earlier, and she luckily managed to wipe her smeared makeup off in the car before Bellamy arrived. She turned her attention to the television to distract herself.

Bellamy came back into the living room five minutes later with a mug in one hand and a beer in the other. He carefully handed the mug to Clarke.

“Hot chocolate,” he said when she gave him a curious look.

Clarke pressed her lips together and tried to stop the fresh onslaught of tears that were welling up against her will. She didn’t want to cry, especially not in front of Bellamy.

Damn him. If he wasn’t being so kind, she wouldn’t be crying again. He drove twenty minutes to pick her up, offered her his place when she left her keys in her car, and made her fucking hot chocolate.

“Rough day?” Bellamy asked, and Clarke laughed, brushing away her tears with her fingers.

“Rough day,” she answered. She took a sip of the hot chocolate and sighed. It was good hot chocolate, too. “I told my mother today,” Clarke continued. “About the baby. About you.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said that I was throwing my life away. She told me to ‘think about the choice you’re making,’” Clarke mimicked, her face scrunching up. “As if I’m a child and have no mind of my own. She tried to talk me into putting it up for adoption.”

Bellamy shifted at that, and she glanced at him, noticing his frown.

“I told her I wanted to keep it, and she told me I would regret it. I just left.” Clarke finished with a nod. She used the collar of her shirt to wipe at her eyes, thankful she cried her mascara off hours ago so there were no black streaks running down her cheeks.

Bellamy moved from the couch to sit on the loveseat next to her. His arm stretched out around her shoulders and he pulled her against his chest, surprising her. They never really hugged; their relationship was mostly just sex. But Clarke pressed her face against his shirt, her mug still gripped in her hands, and Bellamy tightened his arm around her.

The feeling of safety and comfort overwhelmed her as she breathed in Bellamy, all woodsy and soap. She thought she felt him press a kiss against her hair, but she wasn’t sure.

Somewhere between finishing her hot chocolate and stretching her legs out, Clarke fell asleep. She woke up to Bellamy gently easing her off of him as he slipped from underneath her. He turned off the television, covered her up with a thick, fluffy blanket that smelled of detergent, and she heard him shuffle on down the hallway to his room.

Clarke drifted back to sleep with a smile on her face.

On Christmas Eve, Clarke was curled up on her couch watching season nine of Grey’s Anatomy (for the umpteenth time) in her pajamas. She hadn’t set up her Christmas tree, not really in the Christmas spirit since she would be spending it alone. Her and her mother hadn’t spoken in the last week, not since their argument when Clarke stormed out. She had no other family to spend the holidays with.

Clarke tugged her blanket tighter around herself and reached for a strawberry just as someone banged loudly on her front door. Letting out an annoyed grumble, Clarke dropped her blanket and pulled herself off the couch, shuffling to the door.

Bellamy stood in the hallway, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. There was snow in his dark hair and stuck to his eyelashes.

“Hi,” Clarke said, leaning against her doorframe.

“Hey,” he exhaled. “What are you up to?”

“Rewatching Grey’s Anatomy.”

“So, not much. Good. I’m making Christmas Eve dinner and Octavia thought you would want to come,” Bellamy said, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Clarke’s heart squeezed and she bit the inside of her cheek to stop her smile. Of course Octavia thought Clarke would want to go.

(She had really wanted to ask if she could stay with them for Christmas, but she didn’t want to impose.)

“Okay,” Clarke replied quickly. “Yeah, I’d love to. I’ll go change-“

“There’s really no point,” Bellamy interrupted. “It’s, uh, kind of a tradition to eat our dinner in our pajamas.” He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Oh, really?” she said with a smile. “Why haven’t I ever heard of this?”

“Because it’s really weird. But we did it with our mother and O has always insisted on it, and I have a problem saying no to her for some reason.”

Clarke glanced back at her lonely living room, the television still on, the blanket abandoned on the couch. Not an ideal warming Christmas Eve situation.

“Let me turn off the T.V.,” she said.

After she turned off the television and stuck her bowl of strawberries back in the fridge, Clarke slipped on her shoes and shut her front door. Bellamy had that smirk on his face that meant he was trying not to smile.

“What are you cooking?” Clarke asked when Bellamy shut his door behind her.

“Spaghetti and meatballs.”

“A Christmas classic,” she teased.

Octavia bounced out of her room a second later, her dark hair wet and wearing her pajamas as well. Clarke glanced at her own pajamas, an old Pratt college T-shirt her father got her when she was fifteen and told him she wanted to be an artist, and a plain pair of black shorts. The shirt was oversized, thin, covered in tiny holes, and had paint stains on it from her teenage years before her mother convinced her that being a doctor was the best option.

Octavia pulled Clarke into a hug, smelling like her coconut shampoo. When she pulled away, she slung her arm around Clarke’s shoulders and led her into her bedroom, leaving Bellamy to the cooking because they were both awful.

“Pajamas, huh?”

Octavia grinned and closed her bedroom door before bouncing over to her bed and stretching out. She patted the empty space next to her and Clarke crawled in.

“Family tradition. Mom couldn’t get off work until around eight, and Bellamy and I would already be in our pajamas by then, so we just ate our dinner in them,” Octavia explained.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Clarke whispered.

“What?” Octavia frowned at her. “That was Bellamy’s idea. He asked me if I was okay with it yesterday.”

Clarke blinked, mirroring Octavia’s frown. “He told me you thought I would like to come over…”

“Of course he did,” Octavia scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Clarke asked.

Octavia waved her hand at her friend and reached for her phone. “Nothing. Never mind."

She changed the subject, telling Clarke about her night at Lincoln’s, and Clarke let her drop her weird comment, but it stayed on her mind through the duration of dinner, and even drifted into her thoughts before she fell asleep.

Clarke opened the sliding door to the balcony in Octavia’s and Bellamy’s apartment. It was New Year’s Eve and the air was icy with fluffy snow drifting lazily from the sky. Clarke tugged her robe closer to her as she slid the door shut behind and stepped out onto the balcony.

Bellamy had climbed up onto the railing surrounding the balcony and was sitting on the edge, wearing only a T-shirt and sweatpants. Octavia was happily, drunkenly, passed out in her bed after a party in which she kept throwing back jello shots and Clarke had to tuck her into bed.

“No wild parties?” she asked quietly as she shuffled toward Bellamy. He turned his head to the side, letting her see him roll his eyes, before he turned back. She leaned her elbows against the wood and stared out to wherever Bellamy was, trying to see what was so interesting.

Bellamy suddenly turned to Clarke, frowning. He glanced at his watch. “Shouldn’t you be in bed? It’s almost three in the morning.”

“Right,” Clarke said, hitting her forehead with the palm of her hand, “I forgot I had a bedtime.”

He scowled at her and shook his head. “Smartass,” he grumbled.

“Why are you out here? It’s freezing.”

Bellamy shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted some air.”

She bumped her shoulder into his (or tried to, but since he was sitting she mostly just got his upper arm). “Feeling trapped? A baby will do that.”

“What? No, that’s not-I didn’t mean-“

“I know,” Clarke said, cutting off his rambling and offering him a smile. “I’m kidding.”

Bellamy made an annoyed sound and flicked cold snow at her.

“This year is going to be completely different,” Clarke said, brushing the snow off of her fluffy pink robe.

“I know,” Bellamy replied. “We’re going to have a baby.”

Clarke exhaled slowly and watched her breath mist in the frigid air. She pulled a loose string on the sleeve of her robe and glanced at Bellamy.

“How do you want to do this?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“This. Is the baby going to have a room in your apartment and one in mine? Is it going to have every other day with one of us? Who is going to watch him if you have work and I’m at school?”

“Him?” Bellamy asked.

Clarke instantly blushed and looked away. “Out of all the things I said, that’s the only thing that caught your attention?”

“You think it’s a boy?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be. Or it could be a girl.”

“Or both.”

Clarke’s head snapped to Bellamy and she raised an eyebrow. “Don’t joke about that, asshole.”

Bellamy gave her a mock salute and swung around, hopping off the railing. He swept the snow from his knees and looked at Clarke.

“I guess you’re staying the night?”

She glanced down at her pajamas. “Oh, no, I was in my pajamas when Octavia called me to pick her up from Lincoln’s party. I tucked her in all nice and cozy and was going to leave, but I saw you out here.”

“You should stay the night,” Bellamy said quietly as reached his hand toward her and brushed the snow out of her hair.

“I should?” she teased, raising her eyebrows.

“You’re already here, and it’s late. You might as well.”

He was acting like she lived across town, not across the hall.

“Octavia’s a bed hog when she’s drunk,” Clarke said, her voice quiet because Bellamy had taken a step toward her. His eyes looked extremely dark and his long eyelashes cast shadows onto his freckled cheeks. Maybe she would never willingly admit it out loud, but Bellamy Blake was very beautiful. He smirked at her as if he could hear her thoughts, and she rolled her eyes in a silent reply.

“We can share my bed,” he said casually with a shrug.

“I guess,” Clarke replied.

“Oh, don’t be so enthusiastic.”

“You know me, always excited about sleeping with my back to someone the entire night,” Clarke said as she followed Bellamy inside.

“We can totally cuddle,” he replied with an affirmative nod.

“You don’t like cuddling.”

“Who said I never liked cuddling?”

Clarke scoffed, trailing Bellamy down the hallway to his room. The inside of the apartment was nice and toasty, and she was practically sweating in her robe. She untied it and dropped it on his bedroom floor.

“The girl who has slept with you quite a few times and woke up to either an empty bed or your back,” Clarke argued.

“You don’t even wake up until two in the afternoon, do you expect me to stay in bed all day? And I usually have work anyways.”

Grumbling, Clarke climbed into the bed before Bellamy and rolled over to face the wall (her usual sleeping position). He slipped in a couple seconds later and immediately tugged Clarke against his chest. She squeaked in surprise as he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and pressed his cheek against her shoulder.

“I wasn’t joking, princess,” Bellamy murmured. Clarke flinched at the sound of the stupid nickname that had disappeared for some time (much to Clarke’s relief). She elbowed him in the stomach, smiling in satisfaction as he grunted.

 “Don’t call me that,” Clarke muttered, but she didn’t try to pull away from him. He slipped one arm away to turn off the lamp before he wrapped it back around her.

“Good night,” he said quietly.

“This is weird,” she blurted, patting his wrist. He pulled away and she rolled over to snuggle up against his chest, her arms tucked between them. Bellamy settled back around her before she sighed and wiggled back. “I don’t like this either. Roll over.”

“You’re so complicated. How can cuddling be so complicated?” Bellamy grumbled as he rolled over. Clarke kicked her legs to scoot closer to him and she wrapped one arm around his waist. She let out a satisfied sigh as she pressed her cheek against his back. “You like being the big spoon?”

Clarke hummed in reply, her eyelids already getting heavy. Bellamy’s skin was warm, his shirt soft against her skin. With her cheek pressed against his back, she could hear the steady beat of his heart and it made her smile and, maybe, wiggle a little closer.

Clarke decided to stop admiring Bellamy, and instead focus on falling asleep. Octavia was going to be grumpy in the morning (as she was with most hangovers) and Clarke would need a good night’s rest to deal with her.

“Good night,” she finally replied sleepily as she drifted off.

Clarke woke up alone.

She should have seen it coming since it was Bellamy Blake after all, but she still felt a little pang in her chest as she pushed the covers off and slid out of bed.

“Happy New Year!” Octavia screamed at Clarke as she entered the kitchen. Clarke frowned, blinking at the sunlight streaming in through the open windows.

“It’s freezing, O, what the hell?” Clarke grumbled, reaching for the closest window and closing it.

“Bellamy went to your apartment to grab some food to make for breakfast since the roads are icy and we have no food here,” Octavia explained, ignoring Clarke as she shuffled around and closed the windows. “He told me not to wake you up.”

Clarke yawned and pulled out a seat at the kitchen table. She rested her chin on her hand and stared at Octavia through heavy-lidded eyes.

“You’re unusually chipper this morning. Are you not hungover?”

“I am,” Octavia replied, taking the seat opposite of her friend. “Tremendously.”

Clarke hummed and dropped her head on her arms.

“You’re up unusually early. Are you not tired?”

“I am. Tremendously,” Clarke replied, smirking at Octavia over her arms.

Bellamy ran through the apartment ten seconds later, depositing food on the counter and gathering things like a storm. He threw on his thick jacket and grabbed his boots. He wasn’t in his pajamas like the other two, but a T-shirt and jeans. There was snow stuck in his hair and Clarke wondered why he was outside when her apartment was across the hall.

“What are you in a rush for?” Octavia asked as Bellamy quickly zipped up his jacket.

“Can’t talk. Miller and Murphy are outside and called me down to ambush me with snow. I’ve got to go murder them.”

Then he swept over to the table, planted a kiss on Octavia’s forehead, and pressed another kiss against Clarke’s temple while he was at it.

She definitely wasn’t blushing, if anyone was asking.

“I’ll cook breakfast soon!” he called from down the hall.

Octavia, grinning, turned to Clarke. “Want to destroy Miller and Murphy?”

Clarke pulled on an extra jacket of Bellamy’s (since Octavia’s were too small and she definitely liked the smell of his clothes) and followed Octavia out into the hallway. She pressed her fingers against the spot where Bellamy kissed her and smiled. She kind of liked that he had been distracted and kissed her temple without thinking about it 

“Clarke, haul some ass! Bellamy is getting his ass kicked!” Octavia called, shaking Clarke out of her thoughts. Laughing, she followed her best friend down the stairs to engage in a snowball fight at eight in the morning on New Year’s Day.

They found out they were having a girl mid-February after Clarke’s twenty week appointment.

Bellamy couldn’t stop smiling the whole way back to their apartments.

Octavia squealed excitedly when they told her and immediately texted Lincoln, which made Bellamy scowl. (For some reason, he had thought the whole Octavia dating Lincoln thing would be short lived, and he was a little bitter that it had gone on for almost three months.)

“So,” Octavia said once she fired off a text to her boyfriend, “let’s talk names. I’m thinking Octavia. It’s strong, smart, and Bellamy picked it out himself.”

Bellamy pressed his palm against Octavia’s forehead and pushed her away.

“Good one, O.”

She ducked under his outstretched arm and dropped to her knees in front of Clarke. The curve of Clarke’s belly was noticeable even under her oversized shirt, and she loved it. She was absolutely terrified of having a baby, and the bump just made it that much more real for her, but she always found herself touching it, resting her hands on it, smoothing her hands over it. It was a bit of a habit when she was nervous. She would think about her mother and find her hands pressed against her belly, frowning. She would think about her exams coming up, and realize she was running her hands over her stomach thoughtfully.

Octavia pressed her hands against Clarke’s belly and smiled. “I think Octavia is a lovely name. And your parents would be honored to name you after your mother’s best friend and your father’s only baby sister.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes and shook his head, locking eyes with Clarke over Octavia’s head. “We should have never told her. She’s basically useless in name suggestions now.”

Clarke’s stomach fluttered as Bellamy’s eyes softened and he smiled at her. She tore her eyes away to look down at Octavia who now had both of her arms wrapped around Clarke and her cheek pressed against her belly.

“I am going to spoil baby Octavia. She’s going to have everything,” Octavia hummed.

“Her name isn’t going to be Octavia,” Bellamy said.

Octavia turned and frowned at her brother. “You have a better suggestion? Let me guess, Persephone? No, wait, Atia? Or Antonia?”

“No,” Bellamy snapped, but Clarke could see the tips of his ears turning bright red. He made an annoyed sound and turned away, busying himself with the ultrasound pictures they had gotten. Octavia pulled away from Clarke and snatched a photo from Bellamy.

She skipped over to the couch and admired the picture, smiling.

Clarke took another picture from Bellamy and stuck in on his fridge, right next to a picture of sixteen year old Clarke and Octavia at homecoming their sophomore year of high school. Clarke had gone with Wells, and Octavia had gone with her then-boyfriend Atom. Next to the homecoming picture was a picture of a slightly younger Bellamy standing with Miller and Jasper at a party.

Clarke smiled at the sight of her baby’s picture wedged between two very different memories.

Raven wouldn’t stop talking about Bellamy.

“You’re pregnant with his baby and you’re practically a married couple? Do I need to go on?”

“We are not a married couple,” Clarke argued with a frown.

She was curled up on Raven’s couch, a fluffy blanket tugged around her shoulders. They were supposed to be watching the scary movie they just rented, but Raven wanted to talk about Bellamy of all things because Clarke let it slip that she was kind of in love with him. She took it back the second the words left her mouth because she had been blabbing during the previews and it just slipped.

But, of course, Raven wasn’t going to let it go.

“Jesus, Clarke, you guys sleep in the same bed! He always makes you breakfast, you argue practically every other minute, you two have literally finished each other’s sentences.”

“That was one time! And I only slept in his bed on New Year’s Day because it was super late. It hasn’t happened since.”

“Listen,” Raven said, leaning forward. “I know since Finn and Lexa you’ve had this whole ‘love is weakness’ mentality and you wanted that no strings attached thing with Bellamy, but let’s face it. You’ve had a crush on him since you were, what, seventeen? You can’t really expect to have a non-emotional relationship with someone you were practically in love with a few years ago and have known for so long.”

“You’re getting way to deep,” Clarke said quickly, trying to force herself to stop fucking blushing.

Someone screamed on the television as they were hacked to bits.

“I’m just offering my advice. So what if your relationships with Lexa and Finn didn’t work out? I love you, Clarke, and I’m tired of you and Bellamy dancing around each other because you’re both too scared to say anything. I want you to be happy because you, of all people, deserve it. And Octavia told me Bellamy had a crush on you when you were eighteen. Just throwing that out there.”

“Raven,” Clarke whined, pressing her cold hands against her hot face. “Stop.”

“You literally just told me you were ‘kind of in love with Bellamy Blake.’”

Clarke, choosing to ignore Raven, picked up their bowl of popcorn and began to stress eat. She didn’t want to think about her maybe non-existent feelings for Bellamy. She hated that Raven brought up her crush on him. She was seventeen! She’d never had a boyfriend or girlfriend and Bellamy was the hot older brother of her best friend (every young girl’s dream). So of course she had a crush on him. She didn’t want to think about Bellamy having a crush on her just a year later.

“Hey,” Raven said, knocking her knuckles against the bowl. “Don’t ignore me. We’re going to figure this out.”

Clarke made an annoyed sound and moved away from her friend. “I don’t want to. 

Raven caught Clarke’s knee and forced her still. “Don’t let them keep you from being happy, okay, Clarke? You deserve to be happy, and if he makes you happy, then…” she trailed off and shrugged.

“Okay,” Clarke answered quietly, and Raven let it go, turning back to the movie they were watching.

Clarke started having second thoughts about med school when Bellamy bought her art supplies on her twenty-second birthday.

She opened the door to her bedroom after a god awful day at work and froze when she saw her bed was covered in things that don’t normally belong on beds. The supplies were stacked and spread out nice and evenly which was the first clue that it wasn’t from Octavia. Clarke let her purse drop to the floor with a thud before she carefully crossed the room.

There were watercolors and brand new paintbrushes, acrylic paint, a canvas, a sketchpad, an actual palette to put her paints on. She pressed her hand against her cheek as she lifted the card that was placed on top.

Happy Birthday, grandma.

-Bellamy

(and Octavia! Because she chipped in and because she loves you and we can’t go out drinking because you’re pregnant so Bellamy had another idea)

Smiling, Clarke set the card on her nightstand and picked up the paints. Only then did she notice her hands were shaking.

She hadn’t painted in years. Not since her father’s death when she was eighteen.

He was the one urging her to do whatever she wanted. He remodeled his old office as a painting room for her because it had the best view when the sun set. He bought Clarke her first easel, her first canvas and her paints when she was fifteen. She had always doodled before, during school, during church, during conversations with her mother, but she had never had actual art supplies.

It was amazing. The first painting she made was of a sunset and she gave it to her father. He hung it up in the dining room and Clarke knew the ugly thing was still there.

She stopped painting after his death because her mother convinced her being a doctor was what her father wanted. She had been too preoccupied with school and work to mess with art, even though she was so passionate about it.

When she moved out, she left all of her art at home and hadn’t even looked back.

Clarke started crying. Of course she didn’t realize it until a tear landed on the back of her hand. She reached up, rolling her eyes at herself as she wiped her tears from her cheeks. She sniffled just as her phone buzzed with multiple texts from Octavia.

love youuuu boo

paint me something cute bc Bell is awful at décor and this apartment needs to be spiced up

and I know we can’t go drinking because of the fetus inside you (lil Octavia is such a party pooper) but Bellamy made milkshakes and Raven is on her way

that means get ur ass over here

hello??? He made a giant strawberry one just for u

Clarke smiled at her phone, releasing a breath and wondering if Octavia somehow knew she was upset. She typed back her response after she changed out of her scrubs and into her pajamas and reminded herself just how much she adored her friends. 

I’m not naming my baby Octavia

The first time Clarke felt the baby move was when she was squished on Bellamy’s couch with Bellamy, Octavia, Raven, Wick and Miller watching (yet another) scary movie.

She didn’t understand what it was at first. She was practically sitting in Bellamy’s lap since Octavia absolutely insisted they could all fit on the couch, and thought he had poked her or something. But he was currently typing out a text message with both hands and that’s when she realized their baby had just kicked (or punched? Maybe she head butted Clarke’s kidney or something.)

“Feel this,” Clarke whispered, gripping one of Bellamy’s wrists and pressing his hand against her belly. He set his phone down with a curious frown and let his free hand join his other.

“What?” he asked, sliding his hands further down the curve of her belly.

Clarke wiggled a little and then their baby shifted inside of her, pushing her belly out. Bellamy raised his eyebrows, his lips curving into a smile. No one was paying any attention to them.

“That’s fucking terrifying,” he whispered and Clarke could only agree.

Clarke officially entered her third trimester on the week after her birthday and all she wanted to do was lie down all day. She didn’t want to go to work, she didn’t want to go to school, she didn’t want to move from her couch after watching Food network all day because her back muscles screamed in protest every time she even thought about moving.

 But she had class in an hour and she hadn’t even showered in two days and she just wanted to watch the god damn Food network channel peacefully at four in the afternoon like a normal person.

With a huff, Clarke slowly pulled herself off the couch and massaged her knuckles into the small of her back where pain radiated up her spine. She could totally go for a heating pad, fifteen Tylenols, a back massage and the baby removed from her uterus. And strawberries.

(And Bellamy.)

Whichever happened first.

Clarke turned off the TV, didn’t bother with shoes, and walked across the hall. Naturally, the front door was unlocked, so she let herself in and rounded the corner to the kitchen.

The sweatshirt was obviously too small for him; the sleeves didn't meet his wrists, the bottom revealed a good two inches of toned, tan skin that she was not staring at.

"Why are you wearing my sweatshirt?" Clarke asked, crossing her arms across her chest. Don’t even get her started on her huge, aching boobs.

Really, if anyone should be asking questions, it should be Bellamy since she was barging into his apartment at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

He turned, three pretzel sticks dangling from his mouth  

"Oh, shit, this is yours, isn't it?" Bellamy asked, raising his arms so that the fabric was pulled tightly across his chest and lifted another inch. He chewed loudly on his pretzels.

"How could you possibly think that was yours?"

He shrugged. "I'm doing laundry and this was the only clean thing. I just thought I got more muscular."

"Take it off," Clarke said with a laugh, crossing the kitchen to tug at the hem.

"Hey, if you want me out of my clothes, you'll have to ask nicely," Bellamy replied with a smirk, letting her pull the sweatshirt only to his underarms. "I'm not taking this off, I look way too good for you to compromise me. I took the trash out in this and two different ladies whistled at me. Now, I'm not cool with being objectified, but I'm not going to lie and say it didn't boost my confidence."

"It's mine," Clarke replied, tugging more insistently. "You're going to stretch it out."

"I'm pretty sure you've had this since you were, like, twelve," Bellamy said matter-of-factly, snapping his arms down so she couldn't pull the damn thing up any further. "It's my turn."

"I got it when I was sixteen," she corrected, pinching his skin just above his belly button. She smiled when he squeaked a little. "Why do you want this ugly ass novelty sweatshirt?"

She squinted at the sweatshirt she got from the aquarium at her sixteenth birthday party. It was decorated with great white sharks in that cheesy sort of way and the moment she saw it she fell one hundred percent in love.

"If it's an ugly ass novelty shirt, why do you want it back so bad?"

Because it brought back happy memories of when her family was whole, when her father made nerdy jokes and Clarke and her mother would just roll their eyes and then he would offer to take them out for Italian. But she didn't tell Bellamy that.

She twisted her fists (carefully) and yanked up (carefully). Bellamy only laughed, drawing her stubborn eyes from his sternum to his glorious face.

Did she just say glorious face? She meant dumbass face.

She pinched her lips together and stared up at him, not giving up. It was her damn shark sweatshirt and he was not about to steal it.

"You're really passionate about this," he said carefully, and only then did Clarke realize that she had tugged him down a little to stare at his stupid face.

Bellamy cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows as he smirked knowingly.

Was she staring again?

"I...love this sweatshirt," she replied lamely.

He hummed. She scowled. It was a dance.

And then his dark eyes darted to her mouth for a split second and it was his turn to scowl.

Clarke acted on instinct.

She had seen the Blake siblings fight, which meant she knew exactly where Bellamy’s ticklish spots were. She squeezed his side and he released a breathy laugh, immediately jerking against her. She gave him a nasty smile, her fingers dancing across his ribs.

“Fuck, Clarke, I can’t breathe,” he wheezed, trying to pull himself away from her, but she had crowded him against the counter and refused to let him go.

Her laughter bubbled from her chest because she loved that Bellamy was this strong, manly man but was absolutely, ridiculously ticklish. He started it and she was definitely going to finish it.

“Mercy, for the love of God, mercy,” he cried dramatically, squirming against her, pressing his face against her neck which made her giggle. He wrapped both of his arms around her, pinning hers to her side. Clarke rested her cheek against his chest where she could hear his poor little heart beating rapidly from her attack.

He pulled away with a sigh, his dark eyes searching her face, and then he kissed her.

It was just a kiss. They've kissed hundreds of time, and kissing Bellamy while he was in her ugly shark sweatshirt, his mouth still smiling, wasn't going to change a damn thing. He pulled away and rested his forehead against hers, an intimate gesture that made her blush.

"Is this you trying to distract me so you can steal my shark-"

"Shut up," Bellamy grumbled and he kissed her again.

Clarke wiggled her arms free from Bellamy so she could wrap both of them around his neck and pull herself up to deepen the kiss. He made a noise of approval that made her face flush.

She broke away with a gasp, her fingers tugging at his hair as his lips moved down her neck, nipping, kissing.

Was she still supposed to act like she wasn't enjoying it? Because she definitely just moaned. Loudly.

“My eyes!"

Clare almost broke Bellamy’s neck as she frantically shoved herself away from him in panic. She knew there was really no point in acting innocent, her red face and swollen lips really proved that

Octavia stood in the living room, her overnight bag from Lincoln's slung over her shoulder, her nose wrinkled in disgust.

She had no right looking that way because just last week Clarke had to sit through an entire movie while Lincoln and Octavia made out on the couch two feet away and Clarke had to pretend to not notice.

An entire movie.

Bellamy rolled his eyes.

"I mean, it's one thing to know you're banging, but it's another to actually see it. I could have lived my entire life without that image in my head and I would have died happily."

Clarke pointedly glared at the fresh dark bruise on Octavia's neck, and in reply, her friend huffed and stomped down the hallway to her room.

But even as she stormed away, Clarke could see the smile on Octavia's face and it made her chest pool with warmth against her will. 

"We don't even need a kid. We have Octavia," Bellamy said as Octavia's door slammed shut.

Clarke hummed, trying to remember why she came over in the first place as she awkwardly avoided eye contact with Bellamy. Was she there to punch him? Or for a back massage? She honestly couldn’t remember.

Were they going to pretend they didn't kiss? That's how things usually went. She tucked a strand of her slightly greasy (fuck, she forgot she hadn’t showered in two days) hair behind her ear and bit the inside of her cheek.

She felt seventeen again becayse him being within fifty feet of her made her heart hammer against her chest and her cheeks burn.

Bellamy moved to lean against the counter in front of her, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Hey," he said.

Clarke raised her eyebrows at him in acknowledgement before feigning interest in her mismatched socks. She pressed a hand against her belly to lean down and pick a piece of lint off her bright pink sock.

"I would like to kiss you more," he continued.

"Is that a marriage proposal?" Clarke asked sarcastically, trying to shove down the nerves in her voice.

Bellamy thought. "No. Not yet, at least, but I've been thinking...." he trailed off, casting his eyes to the ceiling.

"Go on," she urged.

"I was thinking you could be my girlfriend, I could be your boyfriend, and that I’m god awful at asking you to be my girlfriend. Wow, this is awful." He made a gesture with his hands like there were other things he had been thinking about.

Clarke pretended to think deeply. "What's in it for me?"

"What kind of question is that? If you're my girlfriend, you realize you get my body, right? What more do you really need?"

Clarke pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. She was giddy, she knew that, and she didn’t want him to know that she really wanted to be his girlfriend. Her answer must have been obvious because Bellamy dipped down and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips that made her heart beat frantically.

"Your body is a deal breaker," she said when he pulled away.

"Good. That was all I had to offer."

It was her turn to kiss him because even though his satisfied smirk pissed her the fuck off at all times, it also never failed to make her want to kiss him.

“So,” Clarke said, no longer able to keep the smile off of her face (probably because there was a kaleidoscope of butterflies in her stomach and her heart felt as light as a feather). “You had a crush on me when I was eighteen?”

Bellamy groaned. He gave her a dirty, yet embarrassed, look. “I’m going to kill Octavia.”

Clarke laughed, drawing Bellamy’s dark eyes to her. The smile he gave her was full of a fondness that made her stomach flip pitifully.

God, she was in deep