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Bellamy had his music turned up almost to full blast, so he didn’t notice the footsteps falling into line behind him. He was thinking about the history paper he should probably get started on when he passed an entrance to an alley and felt strong hands shove him from behind. He was pushed into the darkness of the alley, his face smashed up against the wall. He opened his mouth to say something—yell, curse, call for help, anything—when he felt the cold metal of a blade press against his neck. He closed his mouth and his throat closed in panic.
Someone ripped out his earbuds, then breathed heavily into his ear. “I’m gonna grab your wallet, and you’re going to stay against the wall, or we’re gonna have problems.”
The mugger pressed the knife a little deeper, just barely nicking Bellamy’s flesh. “Understand?” he said, his voice low.
“Fuck you,” Bellamy said and was rewarded with a hard shove against the brick wall.
The mugger started patting his pockets for his wallet. They could still hear Bellamy’s music through the earbuds dangling from his shirt. The Black Keys were filling up the silence of the alleyway, and Bellamy seethed as the mugger felt his wallet in his back pocket. Bellamy considered fighting, but every time he swallowed he could feel the knife so clearly against his throat that he knew he wouldn’t survive if he tried to turn around. As the mugger fished the wallet from Bellamy’s pocket and then his phone, the knife shifted and nicked Bellamy’s neck a little. He was angry and embarrassed, but he wasn’t a complete idiot.
The same couldn’t be said for Clarke.
A door opened on the other side of the alley, letting light flood around Bellamy and the mugger.
“Hey!” a girl yelled, and the mugger took off sprinting down the street. Bellamy turned around, the tightness in his chest unfurling as he took a deep breath and saw a blonde girl standing in the doorway. She was wearing purple pajama pants and a faded PowerPuff Girls t-shirt. She was bathed in light and it made her look angelic, but Bellamy couldn’t get over the ferocity on her face as she started sprinting after the mugger.
Bellamy shook his head and chased after her, not really expecting her to be so fast. He started to fall behind as Clarke pumped her legs and gained a lot of ground on the mugger. Bellamy kept running, though, and he was able to stay close enough to see what happened when Clarke eventually caught up with the mugger. He turned around abruptly when Clarke was right on his heels and sidestepped so she wouldn’t crash into him. As she started to turn herself back around, raising her fists, the mugger punched her square in the face and she smacked her head on the ground when she fell. The mugger took off, leaving Clarke unconscious on her back in the street. Bellamy sprinted harder the rest of the distance to her, and when he reached her he was breathing hard. He knelt down and pressed his fingers against her throat, terror once again latching onto him.
“Oh, shit shit shit,” he cursed. He felt her pulse and breathed a sigh of relief, but she was still passed out.
He leaned down closer to her face. “Hey, can you hear me? Please wake up.”
He snapped his fingers at her ears, trying to bring her back into consciousness, and after a few seconds her eyes started to flutter open.
“Hey! There she is, come on, wake up!” he encouraged, his voice a little hysterical.
Her eyes groggily opened all the way, and he noticed how piercingly blue they were even when they weren’t exactly focused.
“What’s your name?” Bellamy asked. “Do you know where you are?”
“I’m…Clarke,” she said slowly. She brought her hand to her head and winced. “My…ow. My head.”
“You banged it up pretty good,” Bellamy said. “Do you remember how?” He knew that memory loss was a symptom of concussions, so he kept prodding to see how much she could recall.
“I was running I think,” she said, her voice sounding less foggy. “I was chasing someone.”
Bellamy nodded. “You were chasing after the guy who stole my wallet.”
She met his eyes and scrunched up her eyebrows in a really cute way. “I didn’t happen to get it back for you, did I?”
“Not quite.”
“Right, well, I should probably stand up.” She was able to get herself into a sitting position just fine, but when she tried to stand she got wobbly. She leaned over and Bellamy caught her so she wouldn’t fall back down. Her forehead sagged onto his shoulder.
“I’m gonna puke,” she said matter-of-factly into his shirt, and Bellamy had just enough time to turn her around before she emptied her stomach. He put one arm around her waist to keep her in a sitting position, and used the other hand to brush back the hair from her face as she vomited onto the sidewalk. It smelled really bad and was really weird to feel her stomach heaving underneath his fingers, but he held onto her until she was finished.
When she leaned back into his arms, utterly exhausted, Bellamy tried his best not to smell her breath and gently started to help her stand.
“I think you’ve definitely got a concussion,” he said quietly, but she heard.
“You need to get me to the hospital,” she said, sounding tired but still lucid. “It’s a couple blocks west of here.”
“I know where it is.”
Bellamy kept his arm around Clarke’s waist and placed her arm around his shoulder, and they balanced pretty well. She leaned into him pretty heavily, and he felt himself blushing slightly at her closeness. They started shuffling forward and Clarke groaned.
“You’re not gonna call a cab? Not even an ambulance?” she asked.
“I don’t have any money, or a phone anymore,” he reminded her. He looked down at her pajama pants and felt a smile tug on his lips. “I’m guessing you don’t, either.”
She rested her head on his shoulder and said tiredly, “I’ve got a phone at my apartment.”
“Let’s get going, then.”
As they slowly made their way back to Clarke’s apartment, Bellamy did his best to keep Clarke awake.
“I’m Bellamy,” he told her.
“Knife to meet you,” she mumbled.
He was astonished and kind of wanted to laugh. “You don’t think it’s a little too soon to be making puns about my mugging?”
“Never too soon for puns,” she said and he pulled her a little tighter against him.
“You’re an idiot, you know that right?” he said a few minutes later. “You knew that guy was armed, and you chased after him with nothing to defend yourself.”
She blew the hair that was dangling into her eyes. “What can I say? I’m just trying to be a hero.”
“Well, you’re not a very good one,” Bellamy told her.
“You wound me,” she said.
He shook his head and exhaled, but he felt some sort of affection starting to build in his chest. When they eventually made it into her apartment, Bellamy set her down on her couch and called the ambulance.
“They’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said after clicking off the phone, and Clarke grunted a semi-coherent response. He noticed again how cute she was, slumped into the cushions with her face all smushed into the fabric. He found himself watching her as they waited, and he kept thinking about how fierce she had looked before darting after his assailant without a second thought.
When the ambulance pulled up and wheeled Clarke into the back of the car, the paramedic looked at Bellamy and asked, “Are you coming to the hospital with us?”
Bellamy looked at Clarke lying on the stretcher, her blonde hair tumbling into her face and her PowerPuff Girls t-shirt all smudged with dirt, and he decided to hop into the back of the ambulance.
*
He had to sit in the waiting for hours until they’d finished examining her. In that time, he called the police and gave a pitiful description of the mugger from what he’d seen as he ran away, and he read a lot of awful magazines. He tried to sleep, but for some reason he couldn’t get his heavy eyes to stay closed. He was too worried about Clarke to sleep.
He was anxiously jiggling his leg and staring up at the ceiling when someone sat down next to him about four hours after he’d gotten to the hospital. He didn’t even look over until the person nudged his arm. He turned and saw Clarke sitting next to him, dark bags under her eyes and a tired smile on her lips. Her hair was kind of a mess, but Bellamy still thought she was cute.
“Hey,” he breathed and shifted his entire body to face hers. “How are you?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been better. The doctors say I’ve got a mild concussion, but they think I should be okay.”
Bellamy breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s good.”
She sighed. “I’m not allowed to sleep for the next sixteen hours, though.” She crossed her arms over her chest and said, “I called my friend to pick me up. She’s gonna have to stay at my house tonight.”
Bellamy nodded, not really sure what to say. He tried to ignore how sweaty his palms were, and how rapid his heartbeat was.
Clarke shifted closer and rested her hand on his arm. He turned to look at her and met her eyes, which were soft and appreciative.
“Thanks for staying here and waiting for me all night,” she said, smiling a little.
Bellamy smirked. “Anything for my hero.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”
“No, seriously, I think you’re my knight in shining armour.” He looked down at the pajama pants she was still wearing. “Or, knight in billowing flannel, I guess.”
She knocked her shoulder against his and shook her head. They were both smiling.
“Sorry I couldn’t get your wallet and phone back,” she said after a minute.
Bellamy shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s not like I really need either of those things, anyways.”
She gave him a look. “You called the police, right?”
“Yes, yes, I called the police. Stop worrying about me and start worrying about yourself.”
Clarke leaned back in her seat. "I can't believe you got mugged and then had to take care of me all night."
"It was a pretty eventful night, I'd say."
She looked up at him, rolling her eyes a little. They held each other’s gazes for a long moment before Bellamy blushed and said, “You wouldn’t happen to want to get coffee with me sometime? After your recovery, of course.”
She smiled wide. “Yeah, I’d like that. You know where to find me.”
He grinned back, and just then Clarke’s friend burst into the waiting room.
“Clarke!” she cried, and rushed to her friend’s side. They hugged, and Bellamy stood up to go.
“I’ll see you soon, Clarke,” he said as he started to walk away, and she tilted her head with a parting smile. His heart skipped a beat, and he had the stupidest thought in the world about how maybe getting mugged wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to him.