Chapter Text
“Princess, we’re going to be late!” Bellamy called from the front door. It was the last day of school before the Christmas holidays and Clarke was already running late.
“Hold on!” She yelled from their bedroom. On the sofa, Octavia snorted. She had to leave her dorm for the holidays, and so was back in the apartment instead of paying out money for the holiday accommodation. It was surprisingly early for her to be awake, actually – but Bellamy didn’t have time to think about it. They were running late and form started in about twenty minutes.
“Princess!” He called again.
“Hold! On!” Came the response. Octavia cackled, spooning cereal into her mouth.
Clarke emerged from their bedroom, hopping on one foot as she pulled on her flats. Clarke wore skinny jeans and a large dark jumper; she’d learned quickly that being an art teacher and wearing light-coloured clothing just didn’t mix. The jumper had the words ‘Mrs Claus’ on the front, per the request that all teachers wore Christmas jumpers for the last day of school. Clarke had been fairly enthusiastic about this idea, which was why Bellamy was standing by the door, begrudgingly wearing a ‘Mr Claus’ jumper over his work clothes.
Even in such a dorky jumper, Bellamy couldn’t help but see how beautiful Clarke was. He really lucked out, and he knew it.
“Bye O,” Bellamy said, heading out the door. He heard Clarke say goodbye, and Octavia yelling it as the door shut and Clarke jogged to catch up with him.
They sped down the stairs, their feet thumping on odd steps, before making it out to the truck and jumping in. Bellamy was lucky that this was a day in which the truck decided to start without any problems.
“Thank God,” he muttered before pulling out onto the road. As Bellamy wove between cars and slowly inched up the speed, Clarke sighing, shutting her eyes as she rested her head back against the head rest. “You okay, Princess?” Bellamy asked. She nodded her head.
“Yeah. Why do you call me Princess?” She asked. He rolled his eyes.
“I’ve answered this for you so many times,” he told her. Clarke shrugged.
“I know. I just feel like there’s more to it.” Clarke was right. There was more to it. He always had three reasons for calling her Princess, and he’d only ever told her two. Apparently, this thought was evident on his face. “Aha! There’s another reason, isn’t there?” Clarke leaned over from her seat, placing her hands on the middle of the padded bench that was the front of the truck. Bellamy just sighed.
“Maybe,” he replied. She grinned at this.
“Well you’ve got to tell me!” He shrugged, changing gears and turning the corner.
“I don’t want to,” he said. Clarke pouted, sighing. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her fiddling with her engagement ring, sitting proudly on her left hand ring finger. He smiled when he saw it, as always.
“Is it a bad reason?” Clarke asked.
“No.”
“Then why can’t you say?”
“Because it’s embarrassing.” This made Clarke even more interested.
“More or less embarrassing than your tattoo?” He snorted, trying to keep his eyes on the road and not on his distractingly fantastic fiancé.
“Less embarrassing in principle. More embarrassing because it was a conscious choice.” Clarke sat back against her seat in thought. The clock slowly ticked over another minute, and Bellamy was twelve minutes away from form. Six minutes away from the school. He could make it.
“We’re getting married, right?” Clarke asked. Bellamy groaned.
“Not this again.” She grinned but kept going.
“If we’re getting married, we should tell each other everything, right?”
“You’ve got to stop guilting me with this,” he told her.
“You would want me to tell you everything, shouldn’t you give me the same curtesy?”
“Can’t we be a twentieth century couple, where you have to tell me all your secrets, but I remain an enigma as you do all the cooking and cleaning and I go to work and use you as a source of comfort and release?” Clarke snorted.
“Yeah, if you want to start off our future in a patriarchal abusive relationship,” she replied sarcastically. Bellamy grinned, rolling to a stop at a red light. He looked over to her, taking one of her hands in his.
“If it would mean not telling you why I call you Princess…” he trailed off as Clarke laughed, backhanding him on the arm.
“Bell!” She complained. He grinned as the lights turned from red to amber, and he started moving again. Bellamy sighed. He knew he was going to have to tell her someday, but today wasn’t really that day, he felt.
“Can’t we talk about something else?” He asked. She shrugged.
“Like what?”
“Like how you haven’t spoken to your mother since she returned from her honeymoon?” Clarke rolled her eyes.
“So this is how it is?” She asked. Bellamy sighed, but glanced over to her and saw her small smile. That relaxed him. He didn’t want to have an argument while driving and being late for school. “I would have spoken to her,” she explained. “But she didn’t phone.”
“She phoned four times in the past week,” Bellamy corrected.
“Okay, I didn’t get the messages,” she amended.
“You picked up twice before hanging up, and the other two times let it go to voice mail.” Clarke groaned.
“Stop knowing things,” she complained. Bellamy chuckled, turning another corner. His smile faded into a groan, finding the road closed off for construction. Bellamy groaned, leaning forward and hitting his head onto the wheel. He checked the time again. Ten minutes. He could do this, right?
He reversed out of the road, turning and deciding that it would have to be the long way around.
“Are you angry at her?” He asked after devising a new route to work in his head. Clarke shrugged.
“No. She moved on – it’s been almost fifteen years, she deserves to.” Her words were slow, knowing that she couldn’t take them back once they’d been said.
“Okay,” Bellamy replied. “Do you not like Marcus?” She hesitated before shaking her head. Bellamy turned and took a side road, hoping to cut down on the time, but found a car slowly pulling out of a small spot in front of him. He was about to turn around, but found another car, directly behind him. They’re up my ass, he thought in annoyance.
“I like Marcus. He’s nice, and interesting, and is a generally good guy. I don’t have a problem with him,” she said. Bellamy leant against the door, his head in his hand as he watched the silver Nissan pull out. It was going at a snail’s pace and the car behind him had no interest in moving any time soon. He looked to Clarke.
“But he’s not your Dad,” he said, saying the words that Clarke wouldn’t. She sighed, nodding.
“That’s what Miller said, too,” she agreed. Bellamy reached out, taking her hand in his and giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’ve made my peace with him being gone – but it’s just that Marcus isn’t him. But he’s my step-dad. And I can’t help trying to figure out the person I would be if Marcus had been my father instead.” Bellamy raised an eyebrow but Clarke didn’t continue to talk.
“I don’t think you should worry about that,” he told her. “That isn’t your reality.” She gave him a funny look, so he kept going. “Your reality is right here, in the babe-mobile, having grown up for the majority of your life with just your mother. You don’t need to think about any other ones.”
“But what if that wasn’t my reality?” She asked.
“Then we probably wouldn’t be in this situation,” he told her. “There was a play, called Constellations, directed by Nick Payne or someone.” He saw her watching intently, and as he spoke, switched his gaze between her and that damn silver Nissan. “In this play, it was explained that there are different realities – there are so many versions of our universe. In each of these parallel universes, something different happens, meaning that each universe will have a different future, even if some are similar. And none of us know which future will be ours until we’ve lived it.
“With us,” he continued. “what if, on that first day, the teacher had sat us separately? We wouldn’t have become friends, and if we had, it wouldn’t have been that day. We wouldn’t have had the anniversary last year and we wouldn’t have stopped speaking for two months. But, overall, we probably wouldn’t be engaged now.” Clarke watched him carefully. “If we hadn’t kissed on our graduation day, if you had forgiven Finn and gone back to him, if Lexa hadn’t gone after her ex, if Miller had decided he didn’t like you – Clarke, it changes everything.”
“If Dad hadn’t died,” she continued slowly, and Bellamy nodded. “then I would never have moved to Polis, or met Maya. Jasper wouldn’t be happy now. I would have stayed friends with Wells, and probably formed a bad opinion of you and Miller because of that. I would have gone to the same university as him, across the country, probably studied to be a doctor…”
“And we wouldn’t have this,” he held their hands up between them. “Princess, we don’t know any of this for sure – but that’s just it. Those aren’t our universes. In plenty of them, I’m sure my mother’s alive and I’m still dating Echo. But those futures aren’t ours. This is our future, and in this one, we’re going to be late for work, there’s a driver that doesn’t know how to pull out of his spot, and we’re getting married.” The lines on Clarke’s forehead eased as she grinned up at Bellamy’s smiling face.
Their lips always reached the perfect balance of pulling and pushing against each other. His eyes fluttered shut, and his free hand came up to ghost along her skin. He felt her shiver into the kiss before they pulled apart.
“I love you,” she told him. He smiled.
“I love you more.”
“Not possible,” she replied. Bellamy turned back to the road, finding the car pulling out down the road. He sighed with relief, pushing down on the accelerator and glancing at the clock. Six minutes. He swore inside his head but kept driving anyway.
“So Octavia told you about Lincoln?” Clarke asked a few minutes later as Bellamy wove between cars. He nodded.
“Yeah, she was really surprised when I told her I didn’t mind,” he replied.
“Not even the age thing?” She asked. He shook his head.
“I mean, it’s a little weird that he’s even older than me,” he told her, sighing at another red light. He so wasn’t making it into work on time. He turned to Clarke. “But he’s good to her, and she loves him.”
“How long have they been dating for?” He shrugged.
“I think since she was about seventeen,” he replied. “So, back when you were with Finn and I was with Echo, probably.” Clarke nodded in thought.
“It would explain why Lincoln had been making loads of plans but not telling me where he was going,” she said. He smiled.
“What, you didn’t guess?”
“I’ve had an inkling since they met,” she said with a shrug. “Nice to know they’re being open about it now.” Bellamy nodded, speeding away from the green light. Two minutes. He drove down side roads, knowing that the traffic was going to be terrible no matter what.
“So you’re not going to tell me why you call me Princess?” Clarke asked eventually. Bellamy rolled his eyes.
“Why do you want to know so badly?” He asked. She shrugged.
“It’s what you call me,” she replied. “You got jealous of Finn for calling me it, and you’ve been saying it since year eleven. Just wanted to know, I guess.” In his peripheral vision, he saw her turn to look out the window. Bellamy sighed, knowing it was a losing battle.
“Three reasons,” he said into their silence. Her head snapped to look at him. “One, because of the uniform. No one wore it like that – it was just you.” She nodded. “Two, because of the class system, and the fact that you were very literally Ark’s own Princess – I mean, the town is in your name.” Clarke grinned. “Three,” he sighed. “Because you looked like one to me.” Clarke furrowed her brow as he glanced from the road to her.
“What do you mean?”
“All those stories I used to read Octavia as a kid – Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty. They all had the beautiful princess in them. When I saw you, I remembered them.” Bellamy sighed again, partly because of the story, partly because of the clock ticking over to eight. “It was like I was sitting next to a real princess.”
He knew the school was up ahead and Clarke stayed quiet as the clock ticked over to one past, two past, three past. It was almost five past when he finally parked and looked to her. She was lost in thought, but when he nudged her arm she turned to him with a smile.
She leant forward, crashing her lips against his and grinning into the kiss. Her hands found his hair and he leaned into it, his hands groping at her hips and sliding up under the Christmas jumper. When she pulled away, she smiled, a bright blue-eyed smile that made his heart clench.
“I love you,” she told him. “I love everything about you, from your Princess tattoo down to your Princess thoughts.” He grinned at her and pressed another lingering kiss to her mouth.
“We’ll be late,” she said, pulling away again. He shook his head.
“I don’t care.” Clarke let him kiss her again and again and again before they finally left the truck.
Bellamy loved Clarke with the seasons. Each time the leaves changed or the sun dipped slower, he loved her in a different way. Each season, just as powerful and beautiful as his love for her.
In Winter, they wore the matching Christmas jumpers and the school cooed at them. He grinned for the photos, and visited her during his lunches. They huddled close against the cold, and when the snow fell he told her of childhood memories with Octavia, letting her wear his coat when they couldn’t afford one for her. She would tell him of the snow in her back garden; the snowmen she and her father would build and Bellamy made sure to build her one that took weeks to melt back down to water. He loved her with every flake of glistening white, and every hot chocolate she made for the both of them. He loved her on Christmas day when they exchanged presents and ate as a family and drank whiskey in front of films that he’d long forgotten.
In Spring, she would take his hand and lead him through town during the weekends. They would drink to new life, and stroke the dogs they walked past on the street. She would bring Miller to the bar when he was sitting there with Murphy, and they would tell the Easter story in different ways each time it was brought up. He loved her as she was making expressions of the angels that rolled away the tombstone, and he loved her when she dragged him to the farm outside of Ground. He loved the look in her eyes as she stroked the baby lambs, and he loved the way that she told him about new life, as if he hadn’t already heard it all before. She was a marvel and a majesty; something he would watch when she didn’t know it, just wondering how he ended up so lucky.
During the Summer, he’d bring her flowers and they’d sit opposite Murphy in a dark bar, talking about the sun light. They’d joke and clink bottles with their friends, just finishing their exams, and sit on chairs, squinting through the crowds to watch them all graduate. They drank moonshine and told the story of the last trolley ride one too many times; celebrating their anniversary along with the scar that was still so prominent on his fiancé’s wrist. He loved her as she pulled him out from the darkness into the light, and he loved her when she insisted they learn to skateboard and to scuba dive. He loved her when she took them all on a trip to the beach, no matter how far away, so they could go out on a boat and splash in the ocean. He loved her sun tan, and he loved the way she traced his freckles with her fingertips. He loved her hair fading two shades lighter and the sketchbook she showed him, filled with his face.
In Fall, he loved her more than ever before. The leaves turned from green to orange, and he sat, silently reading in the park while Clarke sketched them over and over. She pulled him into shops so they could buy jackets and jumpers they didn’t need, and they kissed in the changing rooms as they pulled off their clothes. She complained at night over teaching the same things that she taught the year before, and fiddled with her engagement ring while falling asleep on his shoulder. She wore a white dress that he’d never seen before, from her shoulders to the floor, and her hair was curling down her back. She was the epitome of beautiful and he didn’t know how it took him six years to get her. She was kind and caring and gentle and he loved her more than anything, as he took her hand. He brushed away her tears and she kissed at his, and he danced with her alone in a crowded room, his forehead pressed against hers, eyes shut, relishing in the feel. He loved her. He loved her. He loved her. And he told her it every day, every night, every time he saw her, he couldn’t help it. He took her hand in his and slipped a new ring onto her finger, and she kissed his freckles individually at night. She counted them in the day time, and wrapped a curled lock around her finger. He loved her. He loved her. He loved her. And he told his Princess that at every available opportunity. She asked if that made him a king, and he told her only if she’d be his queen. She grinned and slipped a ring onto his finger, kissing his freckles one by one.
He loved her.
It only took him seven years.
Fin.