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The children all huddled up around her, eagerly leaning in to listen. Clarke couldn’t keep the grin off her face as she looked around at their wide eyed gazes.
“You want another story?”
Her question was met with nods and cries of agreement. “Please Clarke, please, tell us another story!”
She narrowed her eyes at them playfully. “You just don’t want to go to bed, do you?”
She pretended to contemplate for a few moments, tapping her finger against her chin. “Alright, you win, one more story.”
When she finished they were all asleep. Clarke stood and softly walked out of the tent. She almost made it to the door without any of them waking up. Almost.
“Clarke?” a sleepy voiced called from behind her. With a grimace, Clarke turned towards the child, a little girl called Reese whose father had sacrificed himself in the Culling.
“Go back to sleep Reese.” Clarke stroked the girls head comfortingly and the child’s eyes drooped shut again.
“You’ll read to us again tomorrow right?” Reese asked, her eyes still closed.
Clarke hesitated and Reese's eyes cracked open again. “Yes,” Clarke answered hurriedly, worried that if they kept talking they’d wake up the others. It was the first night all the children had gone to sleep without much of a fuss. Clarke’s mother had told her that since they landed on Earth the few remaining children who had survived were plagued by nightmares every night.
“Nightmares of what?” Clarke had asked frowning.
“Of the ground, of the Ark, of monsters real and imaginary,” Abby answered grimly. “Most of them lost their parents in the Culling,” she added and Clarke heard the guilt creeping into her mother’s voice. She’d changed the subject then, but couldn’t get the thought of these children falling asleep every night only to wake up thrashing and screaming hours later. It reminded her too much of Charlotte. It reminded her too much of herself.
“Promise?” Reese’s small voice asked, snapping Clarke back to the present.
“I promise,” Clarke whispered back. “Now go to sleep.”
*
The next night Reese made sure that Clarke kept her promise. And the night after that, and the night after, and soon it became a routine that Clarke couldn’t escape. It was three nights later that she realized her audience had gained a new member.
That night her story was about a princess trapped in a tower by a sad old woman who had no children of her own. The princess later escaped the tower and went on a grand adventure to find her home. She was nearing the end of her tale when she noticed the figure standing in the doorway. When she was done she lifted a finger to her lips indicating that he should keep quiet so as not to disturb the sleeping children. She carefully stood - making sure not to disturb Reese who had curled up beside her - and walked towards him.
“That’s not the version of the story I’m familiar with, princess,” was the first thing Bellamy said to her once they were out of earshot.
Clarke waived her hand dismissively. “I took creative license, besides they liked mine better.”
“So did I,” Bellamy admitted with a grin. Clarke glanced at him then to see if he was teasing her but saw no irony in his gaze. “Although my version would be even better.”
There it is, she thought, he just can’t help himself.
“Oh really? What’s your version?”
Bellamy faced forward again and his grin widened. “Well I can’t say it now can I? Story time is over.”
By then they’d reached her tent and the two of them stopped walking. She turned to look at him, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “I guess I’ll have to wait until story time to hear about it then.”
Bellamy laughed and agreed. He walked back to his tent without realizing the promise he’d just made. Clarke, of course, didn’t. The next night when he showed up at the doorway again Clarke grinned wickedly.
“Everyone I have a surprise for you,” she said, her eyes trained on the boy in the doorway. Bellamy raised his eyebrows at her quizzically from across the room. “Bellamy is going to be telling you a story tonight.”
Ten pairs of eyes swiveled around to stare at Bellamy, whose own eyes had grown wide in realization. His surprise didn’t last long. This was Bellamy and Bellamy was not so easily shocked. Grin back in place he greeted the children cheerfully before sauntering towards the centre of the room and sitting down beside Clarke.
“Have any of you heard about the Legend of Hercules?”
He was an immediate favorite. Clarke couldn’t help but feel a tad jealous and more than a tad proud. The children took to his tales immediately and once they were outside he made sure to gloat about this at length. He stopped when he noticed the dangerous smile plastered across Clarke’s face. When he enquired about it, the smile only grew.
“Come on Clarke, I know that look, what are you smiling about? It’s scaring me.”
“I’m just happy they liked you,” Clarke said casually.
“Oh, yeah they really did, didn’t they?” The cheerful gloating was back. Though Clarke reflected, it never really ended to begin with.
“They really did,” Clarke agreed. “They just couldn’t get enough of you.”
Bellamy stopped nodding as his mind finally registered what was happening.
“Oh God,” he said, smacking a hand to his forehead. “They’re going to want me to do this every night aren’t they?”
Clarke laughed. “You have no idea what you just got yourself into.”
So it became a routine for them both. Sometimes together, sometimes in turns. Bellamy was on patrol duty every other night and Clarke volunteered at the med-bay when she could. But on most nights they found an hour or two for Bellamy to recount his favorite mythology and for Clarke to narrate some classical fairytales (with a few twists of her own, of course).
A few weeks later, in the middle of Clarke’s rendition of The Little Mermaid (in this version Arial gets into an epic battle with the sea-witch) Bellamy - exhausted from his lengthy patrol the night before - fell asleep. It wouldn’t have been that much of a problem, except that he was sitting right beside Clarke and when his eyes dropped shut, so did his head, right onto her shoulder. She glanced down at his mop of curly hair, fully intending to wake him up, but when she caught sight of his sleeping face and the dark circles under his closed eyes, she changed her mind.
She resolved to wake him up in half an hour, allowing him to rest a little while longer. But an hour later when Octavia walked into the tent in search of her brother, she found him still asleep. Her gaze then landed on the blonde head on his shoulder, noting with raised eyebrows who it belonged too. Having spent the night before doing a double shift at the med-bay, Clarke Griffin had promptly passed out onto Bellamy Blake’s shoulder (shortly after making her resolve). The next day Octavia didn't say a word as she listened to Bellamy grumble about his neck pain or when she noticed Clarke rubbing her neck with a grimace several times. She wasn’t at all surprised, however, when she peered into the children’s tent the following night and found the two of them sleeping in the same uncomfortable position again.