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Clarke opens her eyes, blinking as the scene around her slowly comes into focus. How long she’s been sleeping, hours or minutes, she has no idea. None of the usual measures of time have any meaning here, in the lazy depths of summer, lives long since surrendered to nature, days measured only by the steady descent of the sun to the horizon, the ever-changing chorus of birds calling to each other through the trees, the slow ebb and flow of desire pulling at her body like hands working clay.
Above her the wind rustles through the trees, hammock gently swaying as a welcome breeze whispers over her over-warm skin, blushed pink by sunlight and sleep. Soon she’ll need to get up - already she can feel the faint pang of hunger, the warning prickle of her full bladder - but for now she stretches out, wriggling her toes, turning her face into the soft cotton of her pillow. Here, suspended above the earth, she is weightless, too precious a sensation these days to give up so easily.
Tilting her head to the side, she watches Bellamy as he works. His head is bent low as he expertly planes a length of wood, brow crumpled in concentration, shoulders bare and fiercely freckled from the summer sun. She knows from experience that, were she to touch him, she’d find his skin slick with sweat and a thin layer of fine sawdust, almost burning hot beneath her small palm. He’ll smell of clean sweat, the woodsmoke of cologne, the lemongrass candles they burn constantly to keep away the biting insects. Later he’ll rinse himself off before he goes into the house, standing under the outside shower that he hooked up by the back porch, the water clear and startlingly cold, coming to her with chilled skin and hair still dripping wet, shaking himself dry like a dog. She’ll squeal, and shy away, and he’ll laugh and press himself against her, gentle hands wrapping around what’s left of her waist, the price of freedom a kiss that she’ll pretend she doesn’t want to give.
He looks up then, suddenly, feeling her eyes on him. Clarke smiles lazily, reaching down to cup her stomach, his eyes softening as they follow the movement of her hands.
Bellamy cried when she told him that she was pregnant. Raised his hands to his face and sobbed, shoulders shaking, while she sat there, pleased and strangely proud, as smug as if she were giving him a gift she’d chosen all by herself, laboured over in secret, driven to the store and carefully picked out the wrapping and a perfect matching ribbon. As if it was something she’d had any hand in, rather than the random machinations of some imperfect, unknowable universe, mysterious alchemy resulting from five shots of tequila, a failed contraceptive pill and their inability to keep their hands off each other, constantly pouring love into one another, two overflowing hearts that never seem to run dry.
As if it weren’t a gift for her, too.
It’s awkward work, getting out of the hammock. Clarke sits up slowly, carefully swinging her legs round and tentatively letting her weight tip her forward until her toes meet the ground, making sure that her feet are firmly planted on the earth before she dares stand up. The dogs whine anxiously as she moves, nosing at her ankles gently, as if encouraging a puppy to stand. They follow her around all the time now, something about her altered scent irresistable, racing each other for the chance to lay their heads in her rapidly shrinking lap and look up at her with silly, adoring eyes. Bellamy starts too, his body turning towards her, and she smiles, knowing the war that he’s fighting with himself, just one of a hundred tiny battles he faces daily, struggling not to go over and help her, not to smother her under the weight of his overwhelming love.
She’d watched him carefully when the doctor told them that they were expecting twins. His face, tense with concern from the moment the doctor had entered the room, suddenly relaxing, eyes lighting up with joy and surprise, full mouth already widening into a smile even as he looked to her for her own reaction, as if he could hope to hide his own happiness for the sake of her comfort.
For a moment, he seemed so much younger, carried back into his own childhood, and she hadn’t been able to help the thought that she was seeing their future in his face, a glimpse of the children that they were about to have, all the normal rules of time and space rendered useless by love.
Later, after Bellamy went out into the hallway to call Octavia, the nurse had leaned down to whisper into Clarke’s ear. “He’s a good man,” she’d said quietly, hand reaching for Clarke’s, pressing her fingers briefly into Clarke’s palm like she was handing over a twice-folded note, closing Clarke’s fingers around the knowledge like it was a secret. “You have a good man there.”
Clarke walks over to Bellamy slowly. Everything she does now is slow, lazy and deliberate, the centre of her gravity shifting faster than her body can adjust, hips widening and weight settling backwards to compensate. The soft grass prickles at the soles of her feet, brushes against her calves, her whole body lit up and sensitive like she normally only is in bed, the boundary between her body and the world wearing as thin as the fragile skin that stretches across her rapidly expanding belly, that Bellamy rubs organic shea butter into every night. She cries at everything, the smallest things. Yesterday he found her crying in front of the open refridgerator over the eggs, reaching out to touch their perfect white shells, so beautiful she didn’t know how to survive it. The world is close now, too close, and she can’t bear anything against her skin that isn’t him.
She wears his clothes, his faded tees and button-ups and tanks and nothing else, enjoying the freedom as much as the gathering heat in his eyes, the quirk in his smile when he reaches between her legs and finds her, soft and slick and wet for him as always. As big as she is, he’ll always be bigger, and he can still lift her with ease, set her down on the counter or the table or the sink and go to his knees before her, like he has always so loved to do.
“I can’t carry them,” he’d said a couple of weeks ago, looking up with earnest eyes as he skilfully massaged her swollen feet, Clarke seriously deliberating what was more pleasurable, orgasm or the feel of his rough, capable hands working all of the tension out of her arches. “But I can carry you.”
“Hmm,” she’d said mildly, reaching down to run her fingers through his hair. “Isn’t that from the Lord of the Rings?”
“So?” he’d replied, defiant, refusing to give in to his embarrassment. She’d let her fingers wander over to the tips of his ears, hot and tinged pink, the closest he can come to blushing with his tan skin. “It’s still true.”
“Hmm,” she’d said again, already leaning down to kiss him.
“Castor and Pollux,” he says when she finally reaches him, reaching out to lay his warm hand over her stomach, fingers spread wide as if to hold both his children at once. She rolls her eyes, as she always does, leaning against the solid weight of him, leaning into the soft kiss that he presses to her temple. It’s a joke they have now, Bellamy’s notebooks filled up with lists of all the twins from ancient mythology, committed to memory and tested on her at every opportunity. Apollo and Artemis. Romulus and Remus. Cassandra and Helenus. It’s a joke, but it really isn’t, Bellamy speaking magic over his own twin divine sparks, summoning up all the old stories of bloodshed and tragedy and despair as if by so doing, he can somehow ward off any hint of misfortune, new lives bought with old sacrifice.
He’d politely declined when the doctor offered to tell him the gender of their babies. Later he told her that he wanted to know his children for themselves, without any preconceptions. “I want them to tell me who they are,” he’d said, tracing a careful finger over the sonogram, already worn, creased from too much handling.
The mountains are hot at night, and she burns even hotter. They leave the windows open, mosquito nets billowing around the four posts of their bed, and he lifts her tangled blonde hair from the nape of her neck, leaning in to blow cool air over her damp skin, to kiss the sweat from her throat. He whispers to her slowly swelling belly as he moves inside her, a lone fisherman casting lines out into deep and mysterious waters, hoping to catch some sign of the creatures that lurk there, half-formed, nameless things floating in dreams and darkness. She falls asleep, lulled by the movement of his body and the sound of his voice, endless and endlessly soothing, like holding a shell up to her ear and listening to the sea.
“What do you think?” he asks, smoothing a hand over the crib, dark wood fitted together with love and care, standing neatly beside its already finished twin. “Will it do?”
Clarke remembers the first time she met Bellamy. The careful way he’d bent down to kiss her cheek, the rasp of his stubble against her skin, the smell of him instantly comforting, triggering some ancient reflex buried deep in the softest part of her. She’d had to catch herself against the urge to lean into him then, to reach up and loop her arms around his neck, close her eyes and rest against his chest, instinctively trusting him to hold her up.
Bellamy hadn’t wanted to know the gender of their babies, but he hadn’t stopped her finding out, knowing all too well her natural tendency towards anxiety in the face of the unknown. Now when she dreams, she dreams of him holding their daughters, cradling their tiny bodies in his large arms with exactly as much care as he holds her.
"It'll do."