Chapter Text
Clarke ran her fingers through Madi’s hair, unwinding her curls while they watched Bellamy set up the tent.
“So Gabriel doesn’t care if we sleep down here?” She asked, leaning back so she could watch Madi try to mimic the same hairstyle with Eden’s fine curls.
“Uncle Gabe is sleeping at work,” Madi said matter of factly, not looking up as she continued her braiding.
“At work?” Clarke asked, looking over the girls’ heads at Bellamy.
“I try not to ask a lot of questions,” he shrugged, threading a tent pole through a giant piece of fabric. “He’s been on Eden duty for the past two days though so I kind of wonder whether he got himself a hotel room.”
Clarke chuckled, standing to help him lift the main part of the tent.
It was pretty big, but it would still be a tight fit with the four of them.
No amount of buffer could prepare her for a sleepy smile from Bellamy first thing in the morning.
This sleepover might actually be the death of her.
“Clarke, can I sleep next to you?” Madi asked, finally giving up on Eden’s hair so she could inspect the tent. “Daddy can sleep next to Eden.”
“Of course, that’s why I’m here, remember?” she said, helping unzip the front of the tent.
Madi bounced on her heels, running a lap around the tent with Eden chasing behind her.
“Basement, basement, we’re camping in the basement,” she sang, throwing her arms out as wide as they could go, spreading them like wings as she continued her loop.
The excitement was so pure, so sweet, Clarke couldn’t remember the last time she felt like that—maybe she’d never felt like that.
She’d always heard that children bring out the wonder in a person, that they help you remember the beautiful things about the world.
But she hadn’t understood it until now.
The last few years had been monotonous and hard, each day blending into the next until it became a jumbled heap.
Lately though, Clarke felt like she had something to look forward to again.
Bellamy sat heavily beside her, bracing his hands on his knees while the girls continued their laps.
“Sorry about all this, I know it’s not exactly what you expected but…” he sighed, gesturing to the tent.
She stopped him before he could finish the explanation, trying to find the right words for how she was feeling without revealing too much.
Sure it would be a bit strange to share a sleeping space like this.
But it would probably also be a lot of fun.
“Do you think Madi and Eden can handle a scary story or two before bed?” Clarke asked, completely changing the subject before Bellamy could suggest something ridiculous like sleeping on the couch.
At this, both girls stopped singing and immediately scampered over, insisting that they could handle it and were very brave.
“I pulled out my wiggly tooth all by myself even though it was gross and bloody,” Madi explained, holding her mouth open to emphasize her point. “I can listen to a scary story!”
“Me too!” Eden added, clearly unaware of what exactly she was agreeing to.
Clarke pretended to think, rubbing her chin dramatically with her hand as she looked at Bellamy.
“Alright, if you think you can handle it then we can maybe try a small scary story,” she sighed, still trying to seem a little skeptical.
“I don’t know Clarke, I think they can handle a big scary story,” Bellamy replied, playing right into her bit.
She had to admit they made a great team, and together, they seemed to be handling all of this pretty well.
It had only been an hour but Clarke was already feeling calmer about the way things were going.
Perhaps Emori was right.
***
The soft murmur of Top Gun crackled through the speakers of Murphy’s car, but the dialogue was far from Emori’s mind as she bent her head back so that he could kiss her neck more thoroughly.
Really, she should be more embarrassed.
They were making out like teenagers in the trunk of a car.
She had a packet of dill pickle potato chips wedged under her butt.
But she didn’t care.
John Murphy was on top of her, kissing her, holding her, pressing against her.
It felt better than anything she’d ever imagined, the weight of him, the feel of him.
“More,” she whispered, running her hands through his hair, tilting his head back just far enough that she could meet his half lidded eyes.
They were dark and hazy and perfect—and when he smiled at her, she felt her heart squeeze.
Still holding her gaze, he ground down, pinning her hips against the floor of the trunk, one hand wrapped around her thigh, the other reaching for her hand.
From this angle she could feel every inch of him and she’d never wanted someone this badly in her life.
He wedged a thigh between her legs while he kissed her, the tension building until she was close to asking him to have sex with her right then and there, decency be damned.
“I would love to but I’d rather not get arrested, Gabriel is obsessed with the police blotter,” John replied with a soft smile, bumping his nose with her own. “He loves the drama.”
Apparently she’d said that last part out loud.
But Emori didn’t even have it in her to be embarrassed.
Not with John.
She did want him.
Not just right now.
Somewhere deep in her bones, as she kissed the man in her arms, she knew this was going to be her forever.
And if he was going to be her forever…
Emori was going to let herself have a little bit of fun.
On the drive home.
And at her apartment.
Maybe even a few times at her apartment.
***
Clarke had just finished gathering Charlotte's hair into an elegant ponytail, tied with a purple ribbon to match her new satin pajama set, when the doorbell rang.
“They’re here!” She said, meeting Clarke’s eyes in the mirror as she smoothed her pajamas and smiled nervously.
It was sweet to see her get so excited, especially when they set up the ring light, colored lamps, and the fun card games that Clarke and Emoji picked out.
In their handful of interactions, Charlotte often seemed a bit older than her twelve years, a bit too comfortable with adults for a normal middle schooler.
But right now she seemed young and happy and bright, her freckled cheeks flushed as she gave herself on last once over in the mirror before running downstairs.
This was the way tween girls were supposed to act, and it was nice to see.
“Thank you…for everything,” Charlotte said, pausing in the doorway with an awkward smile, before she continued to meet her friends.
Clarke smiled back, caught off guard by the unexpected gratitude, but she found a flash of guilt in its wake.
The younger two girls liked her innately, had thought she was shiny and new and fun enough that they wanted her around.
But Charlotte…
Charlotte was starting to trust her, had allowed herself to open up, and felt relaxed enough to be herself even if just for a moment.
And there would be a very fine line between balancing that trust and her attraction to Bellamy.
She didn’t want Charlotte to think she was trying to replace her mom, didn’t want to lose the small amount of trust she had earned.
But she spent every waking moment with Bellamy just aching to kiss him.
“Clarke, come meet everyone!” Charlotte called from downstairs, jostling her from her spiral of overlapping thoughts.
Maybe she was getting ahead of herself.
None of these were concerns for tonight.
So with one last look at herself in the mirror, trying once again to shake the unsettling feeling that she looked like her own mother, Clarke turned off the lights in Eden’s bedroom and went to meet the gaggle of preteen girls.
However, the girls waiting at the bottom of the stairs didn’t look like any preteen girls Clarke had ever seen before.
Sure, she’d heard discourse that social media had changed this generation of kids, that tweens tended to look older and seem more mature than they had when she was a child.
But Charlotte had seemed like a pretty normal kid for the most part, aside from her demeanor and sense of humor.
It was enough to make her think that people had been overreacting, that the judgment had simply been the same overreaction that every generation had about the one that followed.
Now though, she wasn’t so sure.
While the girl standing closest to Charlotte seemed relatively normal in a slightly too large monogrammed J Crew pajama set with uneven curls, the others triggered a discomfort that Clarke typically associated with overcrowded spin classes and the dressing room at Aritzia.
Each one had expertly done makeup, artfully teased hair, and wore some variation of perfectly oversized sweatpants with a very tight cropped tank top. Some of them even had highlighter dusted on their collarbones and shoulders.
“This is Elsie,” Charlotte began, pointing at monogrammed pajama friend and then continued down the line of increasingly disinterested looking girls. “And this is Everly.”
The girl at the end eyed Clarke up and down, evaluating her in a way that kind of made her want to cross her arms around her chest.
It probably wasn’t good form to judge children, but Everly immediately put her on guard.
Like most women, Clarke had known many forms of Everly throughout her life, from Roma to Luna to Lexa, whether they’d been wearing designer mini skirts or nose rings and doc martens, they’d all had one thing in common—they hadn’t been her actual friends.
But perhaps she was just projecting onto an otherwise nice girl, perhaps the frown was a symptom of shyness rather than maliciousness.
Still, Clarke couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling gathering at the pit of her stomach as all the girls looked away from Charlotte and turned to Everly.
“Nice to meet all of you,” she said, trying to draw their attention away from whatever analysis Everly had about her or the party. “I’m a family friend and I’m here however you guys need me tonight.”
The girls all nodded politely but seemed largely disinterested in her, already turning to chatter with each other before she’d even finished her sentence.
Clarke looked over to Bellamy, who was still standing awkwardly by the door.
Carefully, she tilted her head toward the kitchen, eying the girls one last time.
It would be good to let them settle in on their own.
“Honestly I thought it was just me but they were just as strange with you,” Bellamy whispered after they closed the door, leaning heavily against the counter. “I don’t think I’ve been that uneasy around a group of middle schoolers since I was in middle school.”
Clarke nodded, trying to rid herself of the prickly sense of protectiveness she felt for Charlotte and the terrible taste the interaction had left in her mouth.
It should shock her more that she felt so strongly about all this, that she was so worried for a young girl she barely knew.
But at this point, Clarke had accepted the distinct place that the Blake family held in her heart and her life.
Without her realizing, a huge portion of her well being hinged on the happiness of three little girls.
And their father.
However, the latter felt a bit more complicated than the former.
“Is that her normal group of friends?” Clarke asked, following Bellamy out into the backyard, where the sun was just beginning to set over the trees.
Picasso curled his head in her lap as she sat on the back step, taking an offered soda from Bellamy when he joined her.
They were close on the narrow step, his knee just barely bumping hers, his sleeve brushing the skin of her arm.
It all felt so domestic, sitting outside enjoying the last moments of the day's warmth, the soft fizz of the soda, Picasso’s gentle breathing, discussing the girls, experiencing the discomfort of hosting a tween sleepover together.
“Those definitely aren’t her normal friends,” Bellamy sighed, scratching Picasso between the ears. “Elsie is her best friend and she lives next door. She’s a great kid, always been an incredible friend to Char. But I haven’t met the others before, they seem a bit…”
“Mature?” She finished, letting herself laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
Bellamy nodded, clearly trying to find a way to articulate what Clarke had also been thinking.
“I’m just a little worried about where this is all headed,” he said after a long pause, meeting her gaze. “Just when I thought we had everything figured out, Charlotte started becoming a teenager, and started hanging out with girls that make me feel like they might start bullying me.”
Clarke let herself laugh, admitting that she’d also been irrationally intimidated by the very pretty middle schoolers.
“We might be overreacting, people say kids these days just mature a little bit faster. It’s possible they’re perfectly nice,” she said, hoping that maybe if she said it enough times, it would be true.
“You know way more about middle school girls than I do,” Bellamy replied with a small laugh, bumping their arms together.
To her surprise, he didn’t pull away, leaving their skin pressed together as they quietly watched the sunset.
***
In Emori’s bed, at 10:57pm, John Murphy fell in love.
While he had the most beautiful girl he’d ever known gathered in his arms, her chin propped on his chest as they took turns feeding each other out of two different containers of ice cream, he felt a sense of peace he thought was reserved for people far luckier than he’d ever considered himself.
“So, how exactly did you end up living in an attic and co parenting with two other men?” Emori asked, smiling up at him as she set the spoon back into a now melting tub of ice cream and started tracing faint swirls on his chest. “Because a wholesome all American uncle who unironically makes coleslaw is a very far jump from the boy I once knew.”
“Do you want the long story? Or the short one?” He replied, tightening his arms around her as he quietly hoped, for the first time in his life, that she wanted the full explanation.
Emori looked away from him, clearly pretending to think, before she shifted so that her head was tucked under his chin and her arm wrapped firmly around his torso, their legs tangling together until he couldn’t tell where his ended and hers began.
“I have no intentions of leaving this bed anytime soon, so let’s hear the long version.”
Murphy let himself relax into her touch, wrapping his head around the fact that he didn’t need to explain the some of the hardest years of his life to her. It was a relief he hadn’t let himself truly experience until now, but it dissipated as he realized that he still had plenty of terrible pieces that fell into place after she’d vanished from his life.
But he wanted her to know him, to know everything about him, even if that meant exposing parts of himself that very few people got to see.
“I left The Desert pretty shortly after you disappeared, I wanted to make something of myself, wanted to try being a singer,” he began, detailing his early teen years trying and failing to get picked up by a record label, of all the failures and setbacks and seedy gigs he’d played. “I even got scammed once, paid a hundred bucks to some guy who told me to ditch the guyliner, grow out my hair, and sent me to an empty warehouse.”
“I for one liked the guyliner,” Emori interrupted, reaching up to stroke his cheek.
“Nobody likes guyliner so you probably just liked me,” he teased wiggling his eyebrows at her, grateful that she knew exactly how to react to a series of stories that might have made someone else pity him.
“Yeah yeah…”
Kissing the top of her head, he continued, telling her about his couch surfing days, about the dirty mattress he’d slept on in the back room of a laundromat, and everything else in between.
The sting of the memories were soothed by the weight of her in his arms and the occasional soft press of her lips on his jaw.
“When I turned seventeen I got a job bartending at this sketchy dive bar right on the edge of East Arkadia. That’s where I met Bellamy. He was a little bit older and had his head on a lot straighter than I did,” Murphy said, thinking back to the first time Bellamy rolled his eyes at him and told him to figure his shit out. “He was in college, taking care of his little sister, just trying to get by. He didn’t have a lot of patience for someone who was taking shots with the regulars and trying to squeeze performances in on my nights off.”
He trailed off, stopping himself before he got to a piece of the story that he hadn’t talked about since the day it happened.
“I admittedly had a problem back then. I didn’t know the difference between drinking to relax and numbing my pain. It was pretty bad, I don’t know if I would’ve made it out if it wasn’t for Bellamy. Granted, he beat the shit out of me a few times before I accepted what he was telling me. But he definitely saved my life. He took me in, helped me find a real place to live, convinced me to take some business classes at a community college so I wouldn’t keep getting scammed by get rich quick schemes,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “That night at Octavia’s wedding was the first time I’ve drank in a long time and it was pretty much the reason why I haven’t been drunk since. Bellamy convinced me to start going to therapy after that, and it’s made me realize a lot of things about the way I lived my life, it’s made me realize all the ways I want to continue to be better.”
Emori reached out and took his hand, squeezing his fingers between her own.
And it was everything he needed.
The warm press of her skin on his, the steady comfort of her grip.
She felt like home, she felt like everything he’d been working to better himself for.
“So essentially, Bellamy was the first real family I’d ever had. He’s helped me and been there for me and supported me even when I deserved to be kicked out onto the street and left there,” he continued, feeling himself get a bit choked up at what the past few years had handed to his best friend. “He’d always been the person who had everything figured out, who took care of everyone else. And then in the span of one day, he lost his wife and became a single dad to three kids. It’s a really crazy thing to see the strongest person you know crumple in front of your eyes, but when Bellamy could barely keep his legs from buckling at Gina’s funeral, it was like something kicked in for me, something that told me it was time to grow the fuck up and take care of someone else for once.”
Murphy cleared his throat, reminding himself that the terrible day when he’d held Bellamy while he cried in the pantry had led him to so many beautiful things, that amid grief they’d made a family, that everyone had turned out okay.
“Offering to move in felt like the most natural thing in the world. There was no way Bellamy could manage his grief on top of two babies and a heartbroken nine year old. It’s not like I had much of a life anyway, I was just playing gigs, picking odd jobs as a barista or a waiter, fixing bikes. I know it sounds cheesy but they needed me and I needed them and somehow living in an attic became the best thing that ever happened to me.”
When he looked down, Emori was smiling at him, and she reached up to tuck a piece of his hair behind his ear.
“Not cheesy at all, I’ve only known you guys for a few weeks and I can’t imagine my life without you,” she said, and the combination of her words and the way she was looking at him made his head go fuzzy.
It all felt very serious and a bit heavy, tinged with the implication that what they were doing here felt like something that could last a lifetime.
He never would have told her all of this if he’d had even a remote sense of doubt about where this would ultimately lead.
“So how did Gabriel come in?” Emori asked, seemingly also sensing the heaviness that settled into their conversation. “He doesn’t seem grisled enough to have worked in a sketchy dive bar.”
“Gabriel’s white pants wouldn’t last a minute inside that bar,” Murphy chuckled, letting himself lean into the shift. “He’s Gina’s brother, so he’s actually the more logical live in uncle. But he and Bellamy weren’t particularly close before and I think having three people instead of two eased a lot of the initial awkwardness.”
He’d never really considered what Gabe and Bellamy’s dynamics would have been like if it had ended up being just the two of them.
“And the kids would probably be vegan or something, so really it’s for the best that Gabriel’s influence was diluted,” he added, laughing to himself at the idea of world where Gabe forced the kids to drink green juice every morning and packed Bellamy a smoothie the size of his head for lunch. “He and I have come around to each other a lot over the years. When he’s not talking with that puppet he’s actually pretty great.”
“I really wasn’t expecting the puppet to come out as often as it does,” Emori agreed, giggling with him.
“I’ve occasionally wondered to myself if he uses it in bed.”
As naturally as it had come, the weight of his confessions washed away, leaving them laughing together in the sheets, slightly sticky from the ice cream.
He was completely and totally infatuated.
Or a little bit in love.
As crazy as it seemed, as sudden as it felt, everything about their relationship felt safe and right and perfect.
And if Murphy’s upbringing had taught him one thing, it was that feelings like that are not something that come around often and they’re not something to be ignored.
Emori understood not only his past, but his present. She cared about the girls, she understood the importance that the Blake’s would always have in his life, she made him feel listened to without feeling patronized and cared for without feeling suffocated.
In all the ways he’d believed he was too complicated and broken to ever be loved, she met him exactly halfway.
He couldn’t have asked for something like this even in his wildest dreams, mostly because he never would have known what it felt like before this exact moment.
And he almost built up the courage to tell her, to completely drop every pretense he’d ever hid behind while dating.
But his phone rang before he could.
***
“Psst Clarke,” Madi whispered, poking Clarke’s arm.
It was getting late, and they’d been trying to get Eden and Madi to fall asleep for at least a couple of hours but Madi seemed determined to make her sleepover last for as long as possible.
After two scary stories and several silent minutes of laying in the dark.
Their efforts had clearly been in vain.
Even little Eden was bright and awake, her chubby arm reaching over Madi to play with a strand of Clarke’s hair.
“Yes bug, what is it?” She replied, trying to keep her frustration from showing.
“Do you know how to sing?” Madi asked, wiggling her little body excitedly as she shimmied away from their corner of the tent and made her way over to her dad.
“Sing! Sing! Sing!” Eden echoed, clapping her hands together, eager to fill Madi’s now empty spot.
Clarke could sing, even if she wasn’t exactly good enough to sing in front of a man she had a crush on, but from the way that Madi was already looking at her dad, it was certainly clear that he could.
And despite her frustration and the slow creep of exhaustion, she couldn’t deny that it made her heart flip a little bit, especially as Eden curled into her chest.
“I can’t sing very well,” she admitted, letting Eden lie on top of her completely, her head curled into Clarke’s neck.
“I bet you’re still pretty good,” Bellamy prodded, the ghost of a smile visible on his lips, even through the dark.
He knew what he was doing.
And she was going to let him.
Even if it meant singing.
“Even if you’re not pretty good that’s okay, I just want a song,” Madi said simply, pillowing her head on her dad’s thigh. “Daddy isn’t as good as uncle Murphy.”
Clarke barely managed to hold in her laugh. Even in their worst moments, she did love these kids.
“Alright in that case, I might be good enough to sing with your daddy,” she agreed, flashing Bellamy a smile that she hoped he could see in the dark.
Sure enough, he smiled back, reaching down to gently stroke Madi’s black curls.
And then before she could lose her nerve, without waiting to see if it was a good idea.
Clarke began to sing.
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly…” she began, sinking back into old memories of her dad playing her his childhood records in his study, of warm afternoons spent coloring on the floor while she listened to the lyrics, letting them wash over her.
And then Bellamy joined in.
His voice was smooth and melodic, with a deep timbre that Clarke could feel in her chest.
The wave of emotion when their voices joined, melding together, mixed with the memories of her childhood and the weight of Eden’s little body curled up in her arms, it felt domestic in a different way than moments had before.
For the first time in her life, Clarke longed to be a mother.
Not to nebulous children that felt like figments of future possibility but rather to the ones curled up between her and Bellamy.
Of course, she would never be their real mother.
But she could sing them bedtime songs and braid their hair and tell them scary stories and plan their sleepovers.
And she wanted to.
She wanted to be that for them, wanted them to always seek her out for comfort the way they did now.
She wanted to do all of that with Bellamy, wanted to share a million more moments like this with him.
So she kept singing, switching to a different song when the first drew to a close, and then another, and another.
With each verse, they grew closer and closer, until Eden was sleeping peacefully on her chest and Madi lay sandwiched between her and Bellamy, just on the edge of sleep, one hand fisted in her dad’s shirt and the other holding onto Clarke.
Finally, her eyes fluttered shut.
Clarke was perfectly content to lay in the silence, holding the girls, the warmth of Bellamy’s leg against hers.
The edges of sleep washed over her and she let herself sink into it, into the comfort of it all.
***
Bellamy awoke to the feel of Clarke in his arms and Madi’s foot pressed against his chin.
Just over Clarke’s shoulder, he could see Eden curled up in the blankets, sucking her thumb.
It was such a sweet moment, so peaceful he wished he could hold onto it forever.
Until he saw Murphy’s head peeking through the zipper.
“What the hell are you doing,” he yelped, probably louder than he should have, trying not to jostle Madi and Clarke. “Why are you home?”
Beside him Clarke stirred, jerking slightly when she too noticed Murphy’s presence.
“Charlotte called me,” he explained, disappearing back through the hole.
He could never have a moment of peace in this house.
***
Elsie sat awkwardly between Clarke and Emori, seemingly trying to cave in on herself. Charlotte, Bellamy, and Murphy were all still upstairs, hidden behind a firmly closed bedroom door. Thankfully, all the other girls’ parents had come to pick them up, with varying levels of concern over the events that had transpired.
“I’m sorry, my parents went out of town for the night,” she explained, looking toward the door like she was still hoping they’d somehow magically appear.
“It’s alright, you can still spend the night here,” Clarke said gently, unsure of what her role was in all this. She didn’t want to condone anything, but she also knew it wasn’t her place to admonish anyone.
“Can I ask what happened?” Clarke asked carefully, wanting to at least hear part of the story directly.
The younger girl yanked on her oversized pajamas, crossing and uncrossing her legs.
“I didn’t try any of the alcohol if that’s what you’re asking…” she began, looking down at her sock clad feet, tracing the edges of chipping wood with her toe. “I, I got scared and pretended to take a sip.”
Clarke softened, placing a hand on her shoulder, straightening a few frizzy curls that had fallen out of place.
“That’s totally normal, I’m glad you didn’t do something you weren’t ready for. That isn’t always easy.”
Emori nodded, placing a hand on Elsie’s other shoulder.
“And alcohol doesn’t taste very good, you’re not missing much,” she explained, earning herself a laugh.
“Yeah, Charlotte gagged on her sip,” Elsie continued, softening just a bit. Apparently she’d deemed them trustworthy.
But then she paused, looking back down at her socks.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this…” she sighed, looking up at Clarke, eyes sad, a little lost.
And all she wanted to do was wrap this girl up in a hug, even if it would be incredibly inappropriate.
“What do you mean?” She asked, rubbing her thumb against the wrinkled sleeve. “The sleepover?”
Elsie shook her head in agreement.
“I didn’t want to do it, but Charlotte really wants to be their friend, I don’t know why she cares so much. They’re not very nice or fun,” she said, the words spilling out like she’d been holding them in for a while, stewing on them, the hurt evident in her tone. “And those boys are gross and mean. I didn’t want to go see them either.”
Tale as old as time.
Although twelve was perhaps a bit young to be smuggling alcohol and sneaking out to see boys.
If anything, Elsie’s reaction seemed the most normal.
“I just wanted to do skincare and learn a dance,” she said, choking on the last few words. “I want to go home.”
It may have not been the proper thing to do, but Clarke let herself hug Elsie, sinking into it and letting her shed some of the heaviness she’s been carrying.
She wasn’t sure how it happened or when, but she suddenly felt very maternal.
It scared her more than anything.
Clarke was in over her head.
***