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It all starts when Sal goes to a sleepover with some of the girls from her class, and watches The Little Mermaid for the first time.
“Mommy,” she says when Clarke picks her up the next day, “Am I a princess?”
Clarke chokes a little but manages to turn it into a cough. She’s not really sure how to answer; Bellamy calls Sal princess sometimes, but Sal is old enough to realize it’s just a pet name. “Why?”
“Because Ariel is a princess,” Sal says, like it’s obvious. “And I’m like Ariel. I have a tail, too.”
She does, in fact, have a tail—but only sometimes, only when she gets completely drenched. It’s a little inconvenient, seeing as they live five minutes from the ocean, and six months out of the year is Hurricane Season, which means a lot of heavy rain. Clarke’s taken to carrying a bottle of saltwater around with her, to sprinkle on Sal’s gills, just in case. Bellamy has assured her they’ll grow out of it.
“Oh, honey,” Clarke says, smiling softly. Sal’s recently seven, and it shows. She’s taken to dressing herself, and somehow incorporates sequins into every outfit. Clarke suspects her Aunt’s been influencing her fashion sense. “You’ll always be a princess to me and your dad.”
Sal huffs a little, rolling her eyes. “That’s not the same thing, mom,” she declares, and Clarke bites back a grin. “Aunt Raven says I’m a mermaid princess.”
“Does she?” Clarke says wryly. Sal looks impossibly smug, every inch her father.
But she has Clarke’s glare, and she’s the smallest one in her class, too. So maybe she’s a little bit like her mom.
She means to bring it up with Bellamy that night, but when they get home he’s in the kitchen, stirring some sort of stew that always makes Clarke’s mouth water. He’s not wearing a shirt, both because it’s the beginning of September and still oppressively hot out, and because he just likes showing off. Noah is strapped to his chest in the baby sling her parents bought them; at any given time, Bellamy can be found wearing their son. He did it with Sal when she was little, too, and when Clarke asked about it, he just shrugged and said it was a mermaid thing.
So she gets a little distracted, by her half-naked husband with their son on his chest. She’s not a saint.
Raven shows up later that week, for Midnight Margaritas, which became 7PM Margaritas after Sal was born.
“Did you tell my daughter she’s a mermaid princess?” Clarke asks, eyeing the mixed drink Raven has set down before her. It looks nothing like a margarita, which isn’t surprising; Raven tends to switch the recipes around; this time, Clarke’s pretty sure it’s a Screwdriver made with the old Sunny D they forgot in the fridge.
“Of course I did,” Raven says, taking a sip of what might be straight tequila, poured in a wine glass because they’re classy. “She is a mermaid princess.”
Clarke frowns. “I just don’t want her to get her hopes up, that she’ll live in an underwater palace someday.”
“Hey, don’t underestimate the kid,” Raven shrugs. “She might find a mermaid prince and marry into royalty.”
Clarke grins back at her. “You’re such a dick,” she says, feeling fond and a little buzzed from the alcohol. Even after everything—college and marriage and two kids—Raven’s still her best friend. They don’t get to see each other as often as they’d like; Raven lives across the city, and Clarke’s always busy with school stuff, or kid stuff, or both. But they still make time. They probably always will.
After that, Clarke mostly forgets about it. They’re having an Art Fair at the elementary school, which keeps her pretty busy for the next two weeks, picking the best of her students’ work to highlight, while still trying to showcase everyone else’s—they’re only kids, after all. And she’s stupidly proud of all of them, even Brian, who only seems to want to paint things in brown.
But then it’s nearly Halloween, and Clarke’s sent Bellamy off to costume shop with Sal, while she stayed home with Noah. They marathon Girl Meets World, because Clarke has a seven year old daughter, and Disney Channel shows are easy to get sucked into.
She’s still watching it, with Noah snoozing intermittently on her stomach, when Bellamy storms into the room.
“What the hell is this?” he demands, thrusting some sort of package into Clarke’s face. She has to squint to see it clearly, it’s so close.
It takes her a moment to recognize the firetruck red hair, and the turquoise fishtail, and then she grins, because—
Her mermaid husband is upset about mermaid representation in the media. It’s a little funny.
“It looks like a mermaid princess costume,” she says, and Bellamy seethes down at her.
“It’s an abomination,” he says hotly, and then scoops Noah up in his arms, glaring back at Clarke before stalking out, probably to go sit Noah in the bathtub and ramble about ancient mermaid history while their son tries to eat his own tail.
It’s easy to make fun of him after that—Clarke buys the Disney soundtrack off itunes, and cues it up to play when he turns on the car.
He’s surly the whole drive, as she sings along to Under the Sea—flushing a little during Kiss the Girl—and he can’t even turn it off, because Sal is dancing around in the backseat, and he’s kind of a sucker for their daughter.
He goes out to sea every other weekend, whenever he gets a call from some offshore workers or fishermen, who notice an injured shark, or manatee. He’ll drive the boat out, with the tow ropes and anchors, and lead the creature inland so he can rehabilitate them at his marine center. He tries to take Clarke and the kids out when he can, and so the Saturday before Halloween he gets a call about a tiger shark with a bad gash from a boat motor, and they all pack up to head out.
“Salacia,” Clarke warns, as Sal dips her fingers over the boat’s edge to trail across the water. Clarke’s slathering sunscreen all over her neck and shoulders, and Noah’s face, but Sal is dark like Bellamy, and doesn’t burn like they do.
Bellamy’s steering, smirking at Clarke from over the wheel. She makes a face at him; she hates how red she gets in the sun, while he barely even feels it.
Octavia has draped herself over the hull, sunbathing in a bright red swimsuit. Lincoln stayed behind with their trailer, selling obscure edition books to unsuspecting tourists on the beach. They’ve been driving cross-country for the past several months, but they try to make it back home for major holidays, and Octavia’s been obsessed with Halloween ever since her first night trick-or-treating—which was objectively a little inappropriate, since she’d been a teenager at the time. They got a lot of glares from old people.
“Don’t worry, I won’t gill-out,” Sal huffs, and Clarke makes a face at the phrase—Raven’s handiwork, she’s betting. She should probably stop letting her babysit. She knows for a fact Raven likes to bet Octavia how long Sal and Noah can stay underwater, and then films it for proof.
“Relax, Clarke,” Octavia calls, not bothering to look back at them. She probably has her eyes closed but it’s impossible to tell under her very enormous sunglasses. “There’s no one out here for miles. Let her get in touch with her inner fish.”
“That’s even worse,” Clarke groans, but she knows she’s lost by now. She’s surrounded by asshole mermaids, and her children are half-fish. She’s had some time to come to terms with it, but it’s still terrifying, letting Sal go loose in the water. There could be things down there, that Clarke can’t see, and she’s an okay swimmer, but she’s not special, she’s just an ordinary girl. There’s not much she can do for them in the open sea.
But Sal’s looking at her hopefully, because even if she rolls her eyes more than Clarke would like, she’s still her mother’s daughter, and she waits to be told it’s okay.
“Oh, go on then,” Clarke sighs, and Sal grins, bright and happy, shucking off her capris before jumping in the water in her swimsuit.
Octavia jumps in after her, with a giant whoop and impressive front flip because the Blake’s all like to show off. But Clarke can’t really complain, because she feels better about letting Sal swim, when her Aunt is with her. Octavia’s probably the fiercest thing in the water.
Bellamy lets down the anchor with the hand crank, and then flashes her a grin before diving overboard. He bobs up right below her, hair plastered to his face, eyes bright and a little sad, like they always are when he’s in the water. Clarke knows he doesn’t regret it, choosing her, choosing their life together on the land. But she’s sure he misses it sometimes, the world beneath the surface, where he grew up.
He and Octavia haven’t changed since that third day on the surface. They seem relatively fine with it, and happy, but. It can’t have been easy, leaving their whole world behind.
Bellamy stretches his arms up towards her. “Give me the kid,” he grins, and she carefully passes Noah over, while he kicks his chubby legs in protest. Bellamy pulls him down until the water’s at his neck, and he squeals, gurgling happily. Clarke sees the flash of green beneath the water, as her son shifts. She never gets tired of this part, of the magic.
But it’s a little hard, knowing she’ll never be like them. She’ll never know what her children feel in the water, or understand what her husband had to leave behind. She’s always be the odd one out in her family.
“You should come in,” Bellamy tells her, and when he smiles he looks like the boy she kissed on the beach, at sixteen. Ten years later, and he still gives her butterflies. She presses a hand to her belly, to make them settle down. “The water’s just fine.”
She makes a face and he laughs, and when she opens her eyes again, he’s drifted off, bouncing Noah to make little waves for him to splash in.
Octavia seeps out of the water like a serpent, looking dangerous and strange. Clarke knows what’s about to happen right before it does, but she still doesn’t duck in time, and Octavia squirts a mouthful of water into her face.
Clarke splutters while Octavia cackles, and then she dries her face off and glares. “That’s it,” she declares, unbuttoning her over shirt. “It’s on.” She rips off her sunhat and tank top, leaping in with her shorts still on.
She can’t catch Octavia, of course, doesn’t even come close. But it’s still fun, drifting through the water, lunging after each other, moving her son’s arms in a backstroke. Sal floats over to lean on her, when she’s grown tired, and Clarke strokes down the smooth scales of her tail.
“How come dad doesn’t have a trident?” Sal wonders sleepily, and Bellamy crows indignantly a few feet away.
They have to get back in the boat eventually, of course, and track down the shark before sunset. Bellamy and Octavia coax it into following them back to shore, because even if they’re not technically mermaids anymore, some things they’ll never forget, like the language of water.
Bellamy’s been trying to teach Sal bits and pieces, but she still stutters over most of the words. They mostly sound like weird gurgles to Clarke, but just a few weeks ago, Sal managed to have a broken conversation with the sting rays at the aquarium, so.
“They like being petted,” she’d told her, reaching into the touch-tank. A ray bobbed up to nuzzle her hand. “They’re really nice. They said I smelled like salt, and that’s a big compliment.”
Clarke had smiled indulgently, and filmed her daughter chatting with the rays, and sent the video to Bellamy. She’s pretty sure he cried.
They drop Octavia off at the beach, and they drop the shark off at the center to be treated by the marine vets, and Sal and Noah fall asleep on the drive home. Bellamy carries Sal, dead to the world, in to her bed, while Clarke tucks Noah in his crib and peppers his face with light kisses until he squeaks.
She crawls over Bellamy that night, licking the taste of the water off his skin. “You smell like salt,” she grins, and he kisses her.
“You smell like sunlight,” he mumbles, “And milk. Did you feed the kid?”
“You know we have two kids, right?” She nips at his neck until he groans and rolls them over.
“Wanna add to the collection?” he grins wolfishly, and she laughs as he pulls off her nightgown.
“Does it really bother you,” she sighs later, hitching her leg over his. He groans a little, probably just on the edge of sleep, because she has a habit of interrupting that.
“What?” he slurs, rolling over just a little, closer to her. He does that sometimes, chasing her around the bed through the night. She’ll wake up with him half on top or under her, trapping her with his arms.
“When Sal references The Little Mermaid.” Truthfully, it’s been bothering her for a while, now, not knowing how he really feels. Sure, it’s easy to make fun of him being annoyed, because Bellamy’s constantly annoyed, with everything. But she doesn’t want him to be bothered. It’s only funny if he’s not really upset.
He blinks and squints over at her, reaching to curl a hand through her hair. “It bothers me that I can’t ever really show her that world,” he admits, quiet. This is her favorite Bellamy—middle of the night, soft eyes and whispers Bellamy, earnest and a little shy. She slides over to press her mouth against his jaw, and just stays there. “I won’t ever get to show her where O and I grew up, or where our mom’s from, or any of that.”
“You can still swim with her,” she points out, and he smiles a little.
“Even that’s different now, though.” He sighs, rolling over to look up at the ceiling. “I feel like—I don’t really belong in the water, anymore. It’s not my place. I walked away from it. But—I don’t belong on the land, either. It makes me crazy, when I go too long without swimming. And gravity still feels really weird.”
She knows he’s only trying to lighten the mood, embarrassed by how serious he’s gotten, so she curls over him, protective even though he’s so much bigger and there’s no way she can cover him up.
“I know where you belong, Bellamy,” she says, firm, and he stares up at her. “You belong with me. With our children. You’re ours.”
“Yeah,” he says, rough, open. He slides a hand down her spine so she shivers, and surges up to lick into her mouth. “I’m yours.”
The next night, Clarke’s putting the finishing touches on Sal’s make up. She’s Ariel, obviously, with a blue sequined tail and everything. They’d spent hours gluing them all together, and Clarke’s pretty sure the glitter will never wash out of her hair, completely, but it’s a small price to pay. Her daughter is bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, the most excited she’s ever seen, so it’s worth it.
Octavia is, predictably, an intimidatingly hot Ursula. She’s got Noah, dressed as an eel made up of green felt, on her hip, and she keeps posting selfies to Instagram and captioning them with quotes from the film.
Lincoln and Raven are on candy duty, because neither of them see the point in asking for free candy when they can just take shots instead, in the comfort of a house while watching all the Halloween movies on AMC.
Bellamy’s still on his way home, having gotten caught up in traffic, and Clarke isn’t really sure what she’s expecting to see, but it’s not her husband wearing an enormous white beard, carrying a foam trident, spray painted a metallic gold.
Sal squeals when he bursts in, and then yells at him for not wearing the matching white wig and crown, but ultimately decided to forgive him.
“At least you tried,” she says reluctantly, and Clarke beams.
Octavia ushers the kids out, because even if the rest of the adults are too old to trick and treat, Octavia will be going door to door in costume until the day she dies, and soon it’s just Clarke and Bellamy left in the kitchen.
“Nice costume,” she teases. “But I’m a little disappointed in the lack of fake tail. It’s totally ruining my immersion.”
“I can take off my shirt if you like,” he offers, slinging the arm not holding the trident around her.
“You just think you’ll get more candy if you show off your abs,” Clarke accuses, and he grins.
“It worked with you,” he says, smug, and she tugs him along after their children, because if she leaves them alone with their Aunt, she knows she won’t see them again until dawn. “You totally fell for my pretty face. It was basically love at first sight. Very Disney.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, and he fits their hands together. “We’re a goddamned fairytale.”