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Clarke doesn't know what ever possessed her to take the emergency room night shift at Ark City Memorial Hospital, but she wishes she could go back to her first year residency and whap her younger self upside the head, so she wouldn't have to deal with shit like -
"Hey, Clarke," Finn says, "you got a minute?"
She stops in her tracks and looks over. Finn's standing behind the intake counter, in his usual cartoon character scrubs - today it's the Jetsons - three clipboards in his arms and a stethescope around his neck, his i.d. card clipped to his shirt pocket. "Sure, I've got a couple, if you can find someone else to go scrub that BTK for Wells."
Finn points towards the end of the ER. "Octavia took a GSW in exam room one," he says. "Guy looked pretty shady, bald and with tats everywhere. Just check on them real quick for me before you scrub?"
Clarke's just about running on empty - the last cup of coffee she had was four hours ago, because the coffee machine is upstairs in the break room and going up there requires that she have more than thirty seconds' break, and she's been at the hospital for something like thirty hours - since the last night shift started, because she had a trauma patient she had to stick with through surgery. After so many steady hours, her hands are shaking, tremors shimmering through the overworked tendons.
"Okay," she sighs. "You reported it to the cops already?"
"Yeah, dispatch says Bellamy's on his way over to check it out." Finn's watching her carefully, eyes clearly clocking the way she's leaning heavily against the counter, and probably the way half her hair has fallen out of her bun, and she hasn't bothered to fix it. "How long has it been since you went home, Clarke?"
She glances at her watch, can't meet his eyes when she says, "Just a couple of hours."
Finn quirks an eyebrow incredulously in a way that only someone who has spent over a year as head nurse is capable of. "Come on, Clarke. How long?"
Clarke has no reason to feel guilty - doctors pull long hours all the time, and it's not like Finn has any real authority over her, in fact she outranks him - but she can't help but feel a little sheepish. "Three shifts. Probably thirty-two hours, or something."
Finn looks like he has something to say about that, but she ducks out of his disapproving gaze and hurries to exam room one without looking back. There's no sound coming from the other side of the blue curtain, so she goes ahead and pulls it aside, backing into the room so that she can pull it closed behind her.
"Finn asked me to check on you with that GSW - "
She turns around and freezes, equally shocked and ticked off, because it's two a.m. and it is way past too late for this shit. "Octavia, you have got to be kidding me."
Octavia pulls her mouth away from the GSW's with a soft suction noise, but doesn't do anything to correct the fact that she's sitting in the guy's lap, for chrissakes. Her hair's all mussed up, lipgloss smeared - which, who even has the time for lipgloss, really - maroon scrubs bunched up in the guy's hands.
"What the hell?" Clarke says.
Octavia has the good sense to look scolded, even if the GSW just looks kind of smug and brooding under his tattoos. "Dr. Griffin," Octavia says, her voice high-pitched, with an uneasy smile. "This is my boyfriend, Lincoln. Funny coincidence, right?"
xxx
Come four thirty a.m. the spread of pastries in the break room is mostly gone, just un-iced donuts and pieces of bearclaws that were deemed unworthy of recovery by whoever dropped them. Clarke manages to scrounge up a banana nut muffin, half of which Bellamy appropriates "in the name of the law."
The television in the corner is running a re-run of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? on mute, just blurred colors in the corners of Clarke's tired vision. Two cots against the wall are starting to look very appealing, even though she's pretty sure the sheets on one of them are actually extra curtains stolen from the ER downstairs.
"So," Bellamy says, sinking into the couch next to her, "my sister is sleeping with a mobster. That's awesome, really. No conflict of interest there, or anything."
He's in his officer's uniform, sidearm still holstered at his belt and a radio next to it. His hair's combed and all in order, and Clarke has an irrational and deep-seated urge to reach over and ruffle it, so it looks like it does when he's just woken up - unruly and a little frizzy and curled all around the edges, matching that lopsided smile that only shows up when he's well-rested.
"Maybe it's good," Clarke says. "She'll have someone looking after her from both sides of the law, if Lincoln really cares about her." She stuffs the rest of her half of the muffin in her mouth and washes it down with a swig of coffee hot enough to scald her tongue.
Bellamy rips of a piece of muffin. "I think I liked it better when she had the hots for my old patrol partner," he says, muffin stuffed in his cheek. "At least then she was all the way on the right side of the law, even if the guy was an asshole."
"Atom, right?" Clarke says, slowly. "The one who had the hunting accident?"
Like she could forget, ever, just past midnight and this poor kid, rushed in with a broadhead through his neck, skull already severed from his spine and they can't touch anything without killing him, and it was only her third month on the residency but he grabbed her hand and all he was whispering was kill me, please, and she couldn't even comprehend how he could talk, let alone get up the nerve for a mercy killing with Octavia sobbing in the hallway outside -
She feels Bellamy's hand on her knee and looks over at him, shaking off the memory. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to - "
Her hands are still shaking, but she wraps her fingers around his, and it feels grounding. "It's okay. It's, um - I guess we've both had a really long night."
He has a couple of crumbs left over on his fingers when he reaches over to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear, his thumb lingering on her cheek. "You look tired, princess," he says, his voice soft, and Clarke could fall asleep in it, but she has a job to do, out there - and so does he - and if they don't show up, people die.
Bellamy seems to follow her train of throught. "We're not the only two people running Ark City. It's not going to go up in flames if you take a nap for a couple hours."
"I've got two days of sleep to make up for," Clarke says. "If you let me go to sleep now, I'm not waking up for a lot longer than a couple of hours." In point of fact, the only thing stopping her from crawling across the couch to curl up against Bellamy to sleep for twelve hours is a little bit of caffeine and what's left of her stubborn will -
Bellamy's hand moves around to the back of her head, fingertips carding through her hair. "I will take you into protective custody if you don't go home and get some rest."
Clarke's eyes narrow. "On what grounds?"
Bellamy raises his eyebrows, rising to the challenge. "On the grounds that you're a danger to yourself and to others, since you haven't slept in - how long? Your fine motor skills have to be slipping, which, since you're a doctor - "
"Fine," Clarke says. "My shift ends in - " she looks at the time - "an hour and fifteen minutes."
Bellamy squeezes her knee one last time, and stands up. "I'll be out front in my cruiser at six o'clock sharp."
xxx
"Dr. Griffin!" someone shouts. "Phone for you!"
Clarke snips the ends off the suture she's sewing in some poor kid's forehead, and looks over her shoulder at the ER past the open curtain of the exam room she's in. "Who is it?" she shouts back.
For a moment there's no response, and then - "It's Octavia Blake!"
Clarke sighs, sets down her surgical tools on a cart, pulls off her latex gloves, and goes to answer the phone on the wall in back of the intake desk. They're having an unusually busy night - Jasper and Monty's ambulance has been in and out constantly for the past few hours, but only ever with little things - concussions and cooking accidents and one idiot who flew off his roof on a skateboard.
It's really not helping that they're shortstaffed, since Octavia decided not to show up tonight, and Finn called in sick on the shift even though Clarke totally calls his bullshit, because it was his girlfriend Raven's birthday yesterday, and Finn may be a cheating bastard but he never forgets a birthday.
Clarke leans against the wall and holds the reciever to her ear. "O, where the hell are you?"
Octavia sounds frantic on the line, panicked, and Clarke hopes for a brief moment that she's not stupid enough to have called the hospital instead of 911. "Clarke, thank God. Is everything alright? Has anything happened?"
"Has what happened?" Clarke asks. "What the hell are you talking about, Octavia - "
"Lincoln showed up at my apartment just before shift started," Octavia interrupts. "He begged me not to go to work tonight, and he wouldn't say anything, but I think something's going to go down at the hospital - "
"Something's going to go down?" Clarke demands. "O, you sound like a mobster - "
"Just listen to me, Clarke, something is going to happen, I don't know what but something, and it's going to be bad, why else would Lincoln have asked me to stay home?"
Clarke's about to answer - with something like shut up and get your ass in to work, we're drowning in patients - but at that moment, there are two cracking gunshots, and she hits the floor behind the intake counter faster than she can flinch.
She kind of resents that - that she recognizes the sound of gunshots so intrinsically after living and working for five years in Ark City that she can take cover almost reflexively. Octavia's having a full-on mental breakdown over the phone, but that's the least of Clarke's concern, not with men in dark hoodies, branded with the same gang tats Lincoln's got, pouring in through the doors to the emergency room.
"Octavia," she hisses, trying hard to keep her voice low, keep the panic out of it, "call Bellamy. Call the cops, whatever, just - "
Something presses against the back of her head, and through the haze of patients screaming and mobsters yelling to get down, hands where I can see 'em, she hears a calm, steady female voice, "Hang up the phone, and I won't have to blow your brains out."
"Clarke," Octavia's crying.
Clarke reaches up, her whole body shaking violently - except her head, held dead still by the threat of the barrel of a gun pressed into her hair - and hangs up the reciever.
xxx
The thing about being held hostage for six hours by armed-and-dangerous gang members who look like they got lost in the nineties grunge era is that - once you've collectively expounded upon all the possibilities for escape, and ruled every last one out - you really get time to think about your life.
Clarke's arms are starting to get sore from putting pressure on the through-and-through in Wells' stomach, and she can feel hot blood starting to leak out through her fingers.
She's numb, she thinks, her mind replaying scenes from her childhood, adolescence - patching Wells' scraped knee on the playground, sitting down on the floor of her room to pick a college that they both liked, even though Wells was a year behind Clarke in school, Wells holding her hair in her tiny bathroom when she got drunk for the first time at fourteen, after her father died.
Wells' eyes are closed, but she can feel him breathing under her hands, and she can hear the sirens still whirring outside, the promise of rescue somewhere in the - hopefully near - future.
Jasper is slumped against the wall next to them, his head lolling to the side, hand pressed against a wound in his own shoulder, earned after trying to make a grab for his EMT kit after Wells got shot - he looks pale, but the wound is nothing fatal for another couple of hours, and Clarke has more important things to worry about -
And yet, all she can think about is a pair of brown eyes that she might never see again, about Bellamy's voice and his strong hands and how it's really fucking stupid that she hasn't told him she loves him, ever. Hasn't kissed him, hasn't let him hold her for more than a few seconds, because she's got this idea in her head that they've both got responsibilities bigger than themselves, and they can't afford any distractions, any attachments.
They're responsible for people's lives. They've got people's blood on their hands, literally and not. They're holding this dying city up from the bottom, and if either one of them shrugs, well.
" - down," Jasper's hissing. Clarke blinks, looks over at him. He has one finger on a button on his radio, and there's quiet noise coming out, mostly static. "Clarke," Jasper says, a smidgen louder, but still too quiet for the gang banger patrolling the room to hear, "get down."
She starts to lower her upper body slowly, already kneeling, and a split second later there's a loud flash, and a bang, and smoke starts to fill the room -
Clarke throws her body over Wells, and gunfire breaks out over the room, bursts of the mobsters' automatics responded to by quick one-two shots from what she assumes are police-issued sidearms. Even cocooned by her own arms where she's bent over Wells, her eyes still start to water with the teargas, coughs scratching at the back of her throat.
In the confusion - bullets flying and smoke, cut by artificial overheads and barrel-mounted flashlights, people screaming and boots squeaking loudly on the tiles - Clarke feels Wells' breath stutter, catch, and fail.
"No," she says. "No, no, no - "
She sits up and starts compressions, her joints and muscles protesting with every rep. Somewhere in the back of her head, it registers that there's too much blood - everywhere, on the linoleum tiles, on Clarke's scrubs, her hands, nightmarish even though she does this sort of thing every day -
A long time later, someone pulls her away. Says, "Time of death, five forty-three a.m."
xxx
The sun's still just starting to come up over the cityscape outside the window of the bathroom in Bellamy's apartment, casting them both in a pale yellow light through the slats of the blinds. Clarke's divested herself of her shirt, the fabric too stained to consider saving, sitting in the tiny waistbin next to the toilet, sitting on the small bit of counter space next to the sink in just a tan bra and her blue scrub pants.
Bellamy's cleaning her hands gently with a washcloth, her fingers limp, and she's staring at his shoulder, at his white under shirt without really seeing it, gaze unfocused. He's somehow managed to insinuate himself in her space without crowding her, and she has an overwhelming compulsion to fall forward into him, let him catch her, for once.
He moves the bloodied washcloth to her cheek, uses it to dab a shallow cut. That's not sanitary at all, but Clarke's too goddamn tired to call him out on it.
Instead, she squeezes her knees against his hips, wraps her ankles around the backs of his knees. He looks up at her face, questioning, and she says, "I'm tired, Bell."
He throws the washcloth in the sink behind her, and his hands come back to settle on her waist, on the small of her back, steady and warm, his thumbs stroking absently over her skin. "You've had a heck of a long night, princess," he says, voice low and close, his breath rustling the strands of hair that have escaped her bun, "you're supposed to be tired."
"No, that's not - " she starts. She stops herself, takes a breath, her knuckles pressing against his abdomen just to reassure herself he's there, solid and real, she only had to lose one person tonight. "I'm tired of waiting," she says. "What if something happens to one of us? If you get shot on the job, or - "
"Clarke," says Bellamy, softly.
Ark City is starting to wake up outside, the sounds of morning traffic pervading Bellamy's fifth floor apartment, a whitewash noise at the back of Clarke's awareness. She looks him in the eyes, and he holds her gaze, earnestly, like if he looks away he'll break something, lose something they're both just barely managing to hold on to.
"Bellamy," she says, and her voice breaks. "Bellamy, I love you - "
He steps forward into the tiny amount of space that's left and kisses her in one breath. Clarke's heart stops for a long minute, like Bellamy's mouth on hers is the only thing keeping her from spiraling out of control completely, spinning out with no airbags and no emergency brake, and she thinks she kisses back, but everything is narrowed down to points of contact.
His touches are gentle, careful, but his muscles are tight under her hands and she can tell he's holding back, that he wants to hold her as tight as he can, wrap her up against him until he's got her covered from every angle, make up for lost time and years of unresolved desperation -
She sinks a hand into his hair, her elbow in between his shoulder blades, anchoring him against her, the planes of his chest pressed flush to her breasts. His heart's beating fast, the thump-thump of it deep and fuck if that isn't the only thing Clarke needs, will ever need - Bellamy's heart still beating strong, faithfully through every night.
Bellamy pulls away a fraction of an inch, for air, his lips still brushing hers with every inhalation. "I love you, Clarke," he says, and he sounds raw, stripped down to his core.
She smooths his hair out of his face and leans back far enough to look him in the eyes. He smiles, just a little, that lopsided smile that Clarke is starting to think is only reserved for her.
"I should've said that a long time ago," Bellamy adds. "The first time I met you, I probably could've said that, and saved us both a lot of trouble."
Clarke laughs, feels like maybe it's okay to laugh in this safety bubble they've got, five storeys above the real world, where she's a doctor and he's a policeman and his sister is dating a gang banger and she just lost her oldest friend in the world. "The first time you met me I think I wanted to take your head off."
Bellamy's smile twitches. "Well, angry looks good on you."
She's got an indignant response for that somewhere, she's sure, but he kisses her before she can think of it.