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Clarke knows it’s just a normal bodily reaction, she’s a doctor, or at least sort of one.
But no matter how many times she tells herself “You don’t mean it, it’s just your hormones talking,” she can’t help picturing it; a little boy with freckles and bright eyes, or a little girl with dark curls are paint-stained fingers.
It’s becoming a problem.
Bellamy, of course, thinks it’s hilarious. “You want to have my baby?” he asks, laughing. He’s caged her in with his arms on either side of her head on their pallet, so she just glares up at him. “That can be arranged,” he grins cheekily, bending to suck a bruise below the skin of her jaw.
“You’re insufferable,” she huffs, but it comes out more as a moan, because her body is a traitor.
She didn’t really expect this, when she came back to Camp Jaha. She’d steeled herself, thinking they would take one look at her, and tell her to leave again. She’d been ready for it, she’d been practicing her apologies the whole hike over.
Because it had never been an option to not go back, just a matter of when.
She walked through the gates, handing her weapons over to the guards, and hadn’t gotten two words through her first apology before Miller was wrapped around her like a vise. Monty was next, and then Raven, and Wick, and Harper, and Monroe, and Jasper, which was when she started crying, because her body is a traitor.
Even Marcus hugged her, which was only a little awkward. Mostly it involved a lot of shoulder patting.
She saw Bellamy when Abby was still clinging to her, and she expected him to frown, or pass her by and ignore her. Maybe ask why she was here, and when she was leaving again. Bellamy, she knew, had the most right to a grudge. She expected to find him reverted back to that angry soldier, bitter and mean.
But instead he strode up, grin wide on his face, and once Abby stepped back, he took her place. He spun her around a little, and everyone laughed, and Clarke cried even harder.
“I missed you,” she said, and he pulled at her hair. She’d tried to cut it, after it got caught in one too many brambles, but she’d done a terrible job. He just shook his head a little.
“You’re an idiot,” he smiled.
Abby wanted her to stay with her, but it turned out Marcus had moved in while Clarke was gone, and clearly didn’t know where else to go, so she turned her mother down.
Bellamy was the only one without a roommate, it seemed, so it made sense to take him up when he offered. “I like to have a place for when O comes to visit,” he explained, waving towards the extra pallet in the corner of his hut.
They were crude, and not particularly well-made, but they were sturdy, and they kept the weather out. They’d stuffed mud and leaves in all the crevices to curb the chill, so even inside the air smelled like forest.
It made sense that she should work with her mother in the clinic, but, shockingly, Abby and Clarke didn’t actually work very well together. Bellamy laughed when she told him, and Raven rolled her eyes a little, so Clarke knew it wasn’t much of a surprise, but. She thought she’d changed while she was gone, for the better. She thought she’d come back, and once everyone forgave her, she’d be done with petty things like grudges and arguments.
“You, not argue anymore?” Bellamy teases. They’d pushed their pallets together to form one big one, because they both slept better with the other near. It’s the comfort of body heat, Clarke told herself, because apparently she wasn’t done with lying, either.
“Shut up, you literally argue the most,” Clarke snaps, hitting him with a pillow. Really, it’s a scratchy sack filled with hay and saw dust, and it smells like wet trees, but. It was a gift from Lincoln, and Bellamy clearly likes it more than he lets on.
“Only with you,” he says, and it sounds oddly sweet, so she turns to face him. He’s staring at her, which isn’t anything new—they both tend to stare a little, just to make sure the other is still there. He reaches a hand into her hair, and moves slow so she can stop him. She doesn’t.
The kiss is just as slow, and it was nothing like what she’s imagined—yes, she has imagined it, it isn’t a big deal. It’s soft, and consuming, and when they pull back to breathe, Clarke knows it isn’t enough. So she pulls him back in, and everything else falls into place.
“I slept with Bellamy,” Clarke tells Raven the next day. Then she decides that isn’t very clear, since she’s been sleeping with Bellamy for some weeks now. “I had sex with him,” she clarifies.
Raven looks unimpressed, barely glancing up from whatever important thing she’s tinkering with. “So did I,” she shrugs. “What, is it a recent thing? I thought you guys fucked before you left, and that was why he was so mopey.”
“He wasn’t mopey,” Wick defends from across the room. Clarke can’t see him, through all the machinery. “Just, understandably worried about you.”
“He was the mopiest,” Raven argues. “You know, you and I should have sex,” she tells Clarke, “And then we’ll all be even.”
“Is this really happening,” Wick says, followed by the sound of him hitting his head on something metal.
“You are the least helpful of all time,” Clarke declares, and Raven makes kissy faces until she stomps out.
She brings it up later that night—after they fuck, because God, she’s missed him, and she’s missed being touched, and Bellamy likes to go down on her before anything else, and she’s not about to stop him.
“Why aren’t you mad at me?” she asks, frowning. She’s tracing the freckles on his cheek, and he’s still breathing a little heavy, which she’s smug about. “You should be mad.”
“I’m always mad at you,” Bellamy teases, and Clarke rolls her eyes. He catches her hand, and bites the tips of her fingers. “Okay, why should I be mad at you?”
“I left,” she says softly, worrying her lip. She doesn’t want him to be mad at her, but she’d rather be sure.
“Yeah,” Bellamy nods, rolling over so he’s mostly on top of her. It’s nearly summer, and their bed is made up of a lot of fur, and they’re both sticky with sweat, but she doesn’t care. She likes the weight of him. “But you came back,” he says, and kisses her. She doesn’t question him, after that.
Because she and Abby do best with some distance, and she spent so much time in the trees and mountain, Clarke ends up working mostly with Monty, identifying plants and creating poultices and teas. It’s calm work, and gratifying, creating things with her hands. She prefers it to stitching and bandaging, and digging bullets out of skin.
Working with Monty is just as easy—he keeps the conversation light, letting her know what the others are all up to. He makes it a point to check in on everyone, making sure they’re eating enough, and happy with their jobs. He’s also sort of a gossip, telling Clarke the detailed love lives of people she doesn’t really even know.
But he never asks her what it was like, out on her own, which she’s grateful for. People never believe her when she shrugs and says, boring. In the mountains, she was surviving, waking up and searching for food and clean water and walking a couple dozen miles before setting up camp in whatever hovel she found. Mostly, she spent the time stuck in her own head, going over each horrible memory one by one until she exhausted them, and once that happened, she turned back towards the camp.
Beyond the huts, and fortified barrier, a lot has changed at Camp Jaha. For one, there’s a school, or some semblance of one. Really it’s just a group of the smaller kids, that rotate around through the different tents, watching the different trades. Abby teaches them first aid, and Raven and Wick teach them rudimentary sciences, Monty teaches them agriculture, and Bellamy teaches them history.
That’s when the whole business with babies starts; Clarke is crossing over to where Bellamy is sitting in a circle with the kids. He forgets to eat if she or Monty don’t remind him, so she’s bringing him some of the weird purple fruit that grows nearby.
He’s sitting at the head of the group, with one of the younger ones propped up in his lap, playing with the beard he’s grown too lazy to shave. He’s talking about some ancient Earth king, but Clarke can’t really pay attention, because all at once she’s consumed with the image of a freckled little boy with her eyes and his father’s curls.
She turns on her heel and marches back to the greenhouse, and stays there until her blush fades. Monty, graciously, doesn’t mention it.
He does smirk a little, though.
She manages to keep the whole embarrassing thing to herself for the first few days, but once it’s started, it seems like it’ll never stop. When they eat dinner with the others, Bellamy likes to keep a warm hand on her thigh, and now she thinks about that hand holding a child’s. Whenever he curls around her to sleep, she thinks they might be able to fit a crib in the corner of the room. She dreams about it, which seems very unfair.
He finds out, of course. Clarke is drying leaves for tea, when he comes marching up, a pair of slightly rusted scissors in hand.
“This is an intervention,” he says. “I can’t take you seriously with that hair, anymore.”
Clarke huffs, and thinks about arguing, but the fact is the jagged ends have been annoying her lately, too. It’s impossible for her to tie it all back, like this, so instead she just nods and follows him back to the hut.
He washes her hair with a basin of lake water, and some of Monty’s fancy soaps, first. He’s soft, carding his fingers slowly through the tangles, massaging her scalp as he goes. The feel of it nearly puts her to sleep, and she doesn’t realize she’s pretty much purring until he laughs.
“I hope they have your laugh,” she says sappily, thoughts hazy with sleep and the fact that she loves him.
She’s loved him for a while, she thinks. She’ll probably tell him soon. It seems like something he should know.
His hands stop, and he sounds a little breathless. “Who?” he asks, and she can’t stop herself. She sort of wants to know how he’ll react. She wonders if he’s thought about it.
“If we had a child,” she starts, because she’s not that brave, yet. Not enough to say our child, like it’s already been decided. It’s mostly hormones, anyway, she knows. They’re not anywhere near prepared for a baby.
“I hope she looks like you,” he says, easy, chopping smoothly at her hair. “A miniature princess.”
Clarke sits still and quiet until he finishes, and then he sweeps up all the hair with a broom made of coarse twigs. He dumps out the water basin. He comes up behind her when he’s done, and wraps a hand around the back of her neck, thumb digging into her spine.
It’s really very unfair how large his hands are, and what that knowledge does to her.
“We could, you know,” he says, and she can hear his smile. She tips her head back to look at him, and he’s staring down at her, soft. “Make a baby.” He sounds a little smug about it, and she scowls.
“It’s just a bodily reaction,” she informs him, and he grins, pressing his mouth to her cheek.
“You want to have a baby with me,” he whispers, definitely smug.
“Against my better judgment,” Clarke says, and he laughs, dragging her back to their bed.
“We can try,” he repeats, dipping down to pepper kisses against her stomach as he pushes up her shirt. “It probably won’t happen immediately.”
“It maybe won’t happen at all,” she agrees, breathless. He grunts into her skin, and unbuttons her trousers with his teeth.
“I’ll make a fantastic godmother,” Raven declares when Clarke tells her.
“I’m pretty sure that role’s going to Octavia,” Clarke says, worrying her lip. Octavia and Lincoln are coming to visit in a week, for some Grounder festival. She’s trying not to think about it.
Raven seems to notice, anyway. “She’ll be happy, you know,” she says, uncharacteristically soft. “For Bellamy. And you.”
“She hates me,” Clarke says mildly, but it’s hard to really worry about it when Bellamy is so excited. He’s been telling anyone who will listen, and there’s a list of names on his side of the bed that gets longer and longer with every day.
She had an awkward conversation with her mother the day after her haircut, mostly just to explain why she didn’t need the bags of tansy tea anymore. It’s been a few days, but that morning, Abby stopped by their hut to drop off a few plants that are good for pregnancy. It’s a start.
“She did hate you,” Raven corrects, not at all comforting. “She doesn’t, anymore. You’ll see.” Clarke gives her a doubtful look, and Raven shrugs. “And if she does still hate you, I’ll step up as godmother. Take one for the team.”
Clarke snorts. “A big sacrifice, I’m sure.”
Bellamy creeps up behind her, arms winding around so his hands land on her still very flat stomach. He’s been doing this lately, regardless of the fact that she isn’t actually pregnant yet, which she keeps reminding him. He just shrugs and drops a kiss to her nose, or hair, or shoulder.
“But when you are, I’ll be ready,” he grins, and she loves him.
She leans back into his chest. “What ridiculous name have you thought of, today?” she teases.
“Callidice,” he says, completely serious. Clarke makes a face.
“That’s a terrible name,” Raven shoots. She’s working on something Clarke suspects is some sort of infant-sized robot car. “My goddaughter can’t be subjected to that.”
Bellamy looks amused, and Clarke folds her fingers through his. “I’m thinking Penelope. Or maybe Alexander.”
“We’ll see,” Bellamy decides. “I’m still holding out for Achilles.”
Raven looks up in horror, and Bellamy laughs. The sound vibrates down Clarke’s spine, and she smiles. We’ll be ready.