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Clarke became the Pumpkin Queen when she was sixteen, and she hasn’t looked back since.
For the most part, it’s a great gig—she loves Halloween just as much as everyone else in Halloween Town, possibly more, since it’s literally her job—and she likes working with the other residents to put together the best show they can.
But in the last few years, the novelty of her position has begun to wear off, and she can’t help feeling like something is fundamentally missing.
She’s so sure this year will be different though, because Lexa’s here now, and she’s been keeping Wells sensible with the planning, and she’s been making sure Raven actually eats and goes to sleep at a reasonable hour, instead of getting sidetracked with making those giant Jack-in-the-Boxes that the ghouls will pop out of.
But in the end, it’s a great show, as usual, but nothing new. Clarke waits in the corn, in her scare crow costume, listening for her cue. Once Jasper crawls out of the well, she makes her entrance. She gets a standing ovation, even, and yet…
“You’re just feeling stagnant,” Lexa says, sensible as ever, over pumpkin tea the next morning. Wells is driving about in his Mayor-mobile, making sure everyone’s accounted for. Last year one of the skeletons got overexcited, and ended up stuck in the bog for three days.
Raven is probably collapsed somewhere, making up for all the sleep she’s lost in the months leading up to their holiday. Lexa will make sure she wakes up to eat, and Wells will make sure Lexa’s taken care of. Clarke wasn’t really sure the three would work, when Lexa was first created, but they all seem happier than she’s ever seen.
She wonders if Raven and Wells had felt like something was missing, too, and Lexa filled that hole for them.
A golem probably wouldn’t make her any happier, though.
“I know,” Clarke sighs, flicking at one of the cat bone wind chimes above her head. “I just don’t know how to stop. I feel like I could—I don’t know. Be doing something more.”
Lexa gives her a very unimpressed look. “You’re not thinking of children,” she says, a little warningly, and Clarke chokes on her drink.
“No! No, I get enough of that with Murphy.”
Murphy, hovering a little over in the corner and pretending to sleep, pops one eye open to glare at her, one shining green orb in his dark fur. He’s the only black ghost she knows, but he’s also the only cat ghost she knows, so it’s probably not that strange.
“Good,” Lexa says firmly. “This conversation sounds eerily similar to the first one I had with Raven and Wells.”
Clarke rolls her eyes a little. “It’s Halloween Town,” she points out. “Everything’s eerie. What was your first conversation?”
She doesn’t mean to be nosy, but. Lexa did bring it up, and the only thing Raven said when Clarke asked about it was “We wanted more excitement in the bedroom,” which Clarke knew wasn’t true, and when she asked Wells he just gave a small smile and said they were happy, which was nice but didn’t really answer her question at all.
“Why they made me,” she says flippantly. “It’s not everyone who gets that answer straight from their creator. They wanted to make sure I knew I was wanted, not just because they were bored, or lonely. Wells said they had so much love that some spilled over, and they wanted to give it to someone.” She grins a little, soft, like she always does when she mentions Wells. And then her smile turns wolfish, which means she’s thinking about Raven. “Raven said they wanted to give it to someone in bed, specifically.”
“At least she’s consistent,” Clarke muses, and collects their mugs for the sink.
Lexa hums a little, stroking one of the stitches on her arm off-handedly. “I should be going—Wells forgot his lunch again.”
Clarke bit back a grin. She’d grown up with Wells and Raven, and while they had always been a perfect fit, they were both easily distracted. When they were kids, she used to be the one always mothering them, but she sometimes gets lost in her own thoughts, and forgets to check in. She’s glad they have Lexa, now.
“I’ll walk you out.”
When they reach her door, leading down her very steep staircase that everyone complains about but Clarke secretly loves, Lexa pulls her into a hug, surprisingly. Lexa is the least tactile person Clarke knows—except maybe Murphy, but he’s a cat, and even he’ll sometimes curl up on her chest while she sleeps, purring grumpily. She knows Wells has been working on Lexa, with soft touches and romantic gestures, and Raven’s affection is pretty aggressive, so it all evens out. But they’re really the only ones Lexa seems to like touching, and even this hug feels a little off.
Clarke pats her back awkwardly. When Raven first made Lexa, Clarke was a little uncomfortable around her, because she felt shitty for having a crush on her best friends’ new girlfriend. But it’s been almost a year since then, and Clarke’s pretty sure she was just lonely, and anyway Lexa’s pretty, so it wasn’t really her fault. If anything, it’s Raven’s, for making her look that way.
“I do hope you become happy,” Lexa says, quiet into Clarke’s shoulder, before pulling back. “Happiness was the strangest concept for me to learn, I think,” she muses. “But I’m glad I did, in the end.”
“Me too.” Clarke’s trying very hard not to get choked up, because as the Pumpkin Queen, she’s generally only supposed to show a few choice emotions—namely anger, indifference, and scary. It’s been hard though, especially since Anya was Pumpkin Queen before her, and so good at it. Anya hardly ever laughed or cried. She barely even smiled.
It’s hard, because Clarke wants to live up to her mentor’s expectations, but she also wants to stay Clarke Griffin. And sometimes Clarke Griffin cries, and sometimes she laughs, and sometimes she vomits when she drinks too much moonshine. Anya had assured her that as she kept living in the pumpkin patch, she’d learn to leave those things behind, but—Clarke isn’t sure that she wants to.
She’s not sure about a lot of things, it seems. That might be her main problem.
She sees Lexa off, and when she turns, it’s just in time to catch Murphy drinking the leftover tea in the sink, glaring at her all the while. He really only likes her when it’s late at night, and he’s desperate. And even then, he still doesn’t like her all that much.
“What?” she asks, even though she knows he won’t answer.
Murphy yowls once, rolls his eyes, and hops down to slink around inside the walls.
Clarke frowns at the floor he’s just disappeared through. “You are so ungrateful.” And then she heads out to check on the pumpkins.
Clarke’s not sure if other places are caught in a perpetual autumn, like her home is, and she wishes she could find out. There are other seasons, she knows in a sort of abstract way. She’s heard about them, and Wells went through a phase where all he ever did was try to grow flowers, so he could maybe fake a spring. It never worked, though; they always browned the moment they reached through the earth, and he was always disappointed.
The pumpkin patch grows out around and behind Clarke’s house, spreading from the graveyard at the end of the road. Each pumpkin is a soul, or used to be, or maybe will be in the future. Anya was a little vague on the details.
They never rot; they just revert back to small buds at the beginning of the year, ripening just before Halloween and staying that way through to December. But sometimes one of the ghouls spreads rot through the vines for fun, making moldy brown and green spots bore through the orange. Or some of the neighborhood kids will steal a couple, and toss them around, cracking them open on the ground. So Clarke likes to go through and take a count, making sure they’re doing alright, and are still healthy. Besides her main role in the Halloween show, it’s really her only job.
Clarke’s pumpkin patch sits at the very edge of Halloween Town, fenced in by the woods of the Hinterlands. They’re not very interesting, as far as forests go; no evil witches, or child-eating wolves, or creatures that poison whatever touches them. The trees are naked and brown, like most things in autumn, and there’s a constant carpet of old dried leaves that smell like rainwater.
Sometimes the kids dare each other to spend the night in the forest, but they always set up a camp just inside, and in the morning they leave disappointed that no mysterious phantom attacked them.
Clarke spent the night there, with Wells and Raven, when they were teenagers. It wasn’t interesting at all.
But the thing is—no one’s really gone very far into the Hinterlands, or know where they end, or anything about them at all. For all Clarke knows, the interesting things are at the end of the woods, or in the middle. She’s checking on the last of the pumpkins, turning them around so the flattened yellow spots can get more sun and even out a little. She can smell the wet soil of the Hinterlands, and feels an immediate pull.
She hasn’t really given much thought to the woods in years, not since that night with Raven and Wells, but suddenly she wants to see everything the trees have to offer. There might be spring on the other side, or winter or summer, or some new season she hasn’t heard of at all. There might be other holidays, and people with no interest in boogeymen and ghost stories, where she could laugh without it seeming forced.
She should probably let Murphy know first, but that would mean hiking back to the house and up all those steps, and the asshole would probably just hide inside the floorboards or something while she called for him.
She left some tuna in the fridge for him. He can slip through the door, if he gets hungry, and besides, she probably won’t be away very long. Clarke heads into the woods.
She’s not sure how long she wanders. The Hinterlands are exactly as she remembers, as unchanging as the rest of the Town. She considers turning back a few times, but then reminds herself that there might be something different, just a mile up ahead. So she continues.
The sun is low in the sky, and everything is red and pink and orange, when Clarke finally sees something new.
There’s a clearing, where the dust in the air to catch the light. There are trees, wider than the rest, in a wide circle, with signs hanging on their trunks.
No, not signs, but doors.
They’re shapes, that Clarke doesn’t really understand. An egg, a pumpkin, a heart, a turkey, a clover, and a tree. The pumpkin door is closest, but when she turns the knob, she finds the tree is hollow, and open in the back, which sort of makes sense. She’s just come from Halloween Town, after all.
The tree is next, and Clarke decides she likes this one best. It’s bright, and shining, with baubles all over that reflect her back in gold and red and silver. The knob is shaped like a glittering star, and the door opens easily when she turns it.
This tree is hollow too, but solid, and she can hear some sort of bells ringing distantly from inside. There’s a sudden draft, and she shivers with a gasp—she’s never felt cold before, not really. Autumn gets chilly and crisp, and sometimes there’s frost in the mornings, but it always melts by noon.
But there are goosebumps on her skin now, and her lips are going numb as she ducks her head a little lower, trying to see the bells.
The second draft makes her lose her footing, and Clarke trips inside the tree, hearing the door shut behind her as she falls.
For a moment, she’s not sure she’s actually landed. But then her clothes start to soak through, and her entire body is going numb with the cold, so she opens her eyes to look around.
Clarke gets pretty sidetracked at first, eating the snow—because that’s what this is, she’s sure. It’s just like Wells’s books described, and while it doesn’t really taste like anything, it’s still somehow refreshing on her tongue.
Then she makes a few snow angels, until she’s shivering and chattering, but grinning the whole time. The angels look a little weird, because of her spider leg collar, but she doesn’t care, not really. This is exactly what she wanted; somewhere new, and foreign, and wonderful.
There’s a worried voice in the back of her mind, wondering how she’ll manage to get home, but she ignores it. There are so many things to see and study. She’ll bring snow back to Halloween Town, and they won’t even be mad she was gone.
She feels a little bad about skulking around the town, peeking into windows and cracks in the doors, but—she’s the Pumpkin Queen. Lurking is kind of her specialty. Plus she’s good at it, so she won’t get caught.
Or, she wouldn’t have gotten caught, but she doesn’t really know how to properly step on ice, and missteps while jumping from one window ledge to the other, crashing down right as someone steps out the door.
“What the hell,” a voice groans beneath her, and Clarke scrambles up.
It’s a boy, or she thinks it’s a boy. He looks altogether cleaner and more human than most boys she knows. He has brown skin, tinged red from the cold, and dark hair with specks of white as snowflakes get caught in the curls.
And he’s glaring up at her, clearly pissed off.
“What the hell were you doing?” he demands, brushing the snow off his side where he landed. It doesn’t do much; he’s still mostly covered in white.
Clarke bristles a little, defensive, and puts both hands on her hips. It’s her most dignified stance, the one she uses on the kids who steal her pumpkins. After she’s done removing her face, to scare them.
“I could say the same about you,” she snaps, and sees his eyes widen as he finally takes her all in, which—well she’s still a little irritated, but it’s very gratifying whenever anyone looks impressed by her look. They should be; she works hard on it.
“What are you?” he asks, a little breathless, and it could be from the cold, but she likes to think it’s from her.
“I’m the Pumpkin Queen.”
“The Pumpkin—” the boy stops and narrows his eyes, suspicious. “Where are you from?”
Clarke waves a hand around generally. “Halloween Town. Up,” she waves again, “There, I guess. There was a tree. I fell in.”
It sounds stupid when she says it out loud, but the boy instantly brightens, mouth stretching out in a crooked grin. He’s very—nice-looking, which she’s not really used to. Citizens in Halloween Town range from pretty in a dangerous way, to downright horrifying. None of them look very nice.
“You’re from the outside? What’s it like? Is it cold there? What do you do?” He asks the questions so rapidly that she just stands there and blinks, for a moment.
“We don’t have snow,” she says, kicking at the ground. “It’s always autumn. Nothing really grows there—it’s always about to die. We do—I don’t know. We have schools and jobs, but mostly we just wait around for Halloween all year.” Her existence sounds so dreadful that Clarke has to wince, but the boy just looks delighted. “What about this place? What is it?”
“Christmas Town,” he shrugs, and Clarke thinks maybe he’s just as bored with his life as she is with hers. “We make toys, and other gifts for the human kids. And then we wait for Christmas—basically the same as you.”
Clarke studies him a little—he looks warm in a cable-knit sweater, with long limbs and pink cheeks and freckles all across his skin. She wonders if he’d feel warm like his eyes, or cold like the air around them.
“No,” she decides, “We are very different.”
“Aren’t you cold?” he asks suddenly, and then frowns at her legs, covered only by the thin legs of her pantsuit, and spider web boots.
Clarke glances down at her feet, which went numb a while ago. She certainly doesn’t feel cold. “No,” she starts, but he’s already tugged off his sweater, and is pulling it over her head.
It gets caught on the spiny legs of her collar, which she has to take off, before swamping her altogether in warmth.
He’s wearing another, thinner sweater underneath, and grins down at her. “Better, right?”
Clarke shivers a little, but not from the cold. The sleeves dangle down past her hands, and she flops them a little. “Better,” she agrees, eyeing him. He’s nice, and warm, and a little bit grumpy, but like he’s trying to hide the fact that he actually cares. He reminds her of Murphy a little, but less of an ass. “I’m Clarke.”
She holds out a sleeve covered hand and he laughs, but shakes it. “Bellamy. Come on, let’s get you inside. I don’t feel the cold, but you might get hypothermia.”
He takes her hand, and his warmth is a shock to her system.
Apparently, he feels the same way.
“Fuck you’re freezing,” he hisses, tugging her in through the still-open door. He shuts it behind them, so they’re left standing in the hallway, lit by an overhead lamp with snowflakes painted on the glass. He takes her hands, rolling the sleeves up, and fits them both between his.
He brings them to his mouth, breathing hot, wet air on her skin. If it weren’t for his neck going blotchy, Clarke would think she’s the only one affected.
“How long were you out there? You could have died,” he scolds, and she bites back on a smile.
“I got sidetracked—we don’t have snow in Halloween Town.”
“I can’t believe you weren’t even wearing a jacket,” he grumbles, and Clarke makes a face.
“I told you, I fell in a tree! I didn’t expect to come here.”
“You should have been prepared!”
They’re still bickering when a pretty brunette storms in, looking war-hungry. Her hair is pulled back in angry twisting braids, and she has coal smeared around her eyes, with white shimmer across her lips. This girl, Clarke thinks as she glares at them, would fit in, in Halloween Town.
“O,” Bellamy starts, but the girl must have been waiting for her opening, because she launches straight into the conversation.
“The elves were supposed to have those stockings hours ago Bellamy, and Indra’s raving about the hole in her hat. We only have fifty-five days until Christmas—get your head out of your ass!”
Clarke goes a little rigid, but Bellamy just squeezes her hands, so she keeps herself in check. It’s easy for her to get outraged on another’s behalf, but. This isn’t her fight.
Bellamy, for his part, just stares at the girl, looking very disappointed. Eventually, she cracks.
“Sorry,” she sighs, and he lets go of Clarke’s hands, reaching forward to tug the girl into a half hug. “It’s just—everyone’s so stressed, and I’m the youngest trainee so I’m the one who gets yelled at, and—”
“O, breathe,” Bellamy says, amused, and Clarke suddenly feels like she’s intruding. “It’s okay. You can yell at me if it’ll make you feel better, but you should know I’m just going to whine about it for like, a year, and use it as guilt blackmail.”
“Ugh, you would,” O pulls away to make a face, and then eyes Clarke a little skeptically. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Clarke.”
“The Pumpkin Queen,” Bellamy adds, and O scrutinizes them both. “This is my sister, Octavia,” he tells Clarke, with a proud grin as he swings an arm around her shoulders. “She’s the youngest Santa Clause trainee there’s ever been.”
“Bell, stop,” Octavia growls, but she’s clearly pleased about it. “So, Pumpkin Queen, what are you doing here? And why are you wearing my brother’s sweater?”
“She was cold,” Bellamy defends, a little pink. “And she’s lost.”
“I’m not lost,” Clarke crows, indignant.
“Do you know how to get back? No? Then you’re lost.”
“Ah, I see what this is,” Octavia says knowingly, and Bellamy shoves her away.
It’s nice, watching them. They’re clearly familiar with each other, in a way only siblings can be. But it makes her a little sad, too, that she’ll never get to know what that’s like.
“Fine, I’ll take the stockings to the elves,” Octavia says, heaving an enormous sigh that’s completely at odds with her intimidating get-up. “And I’ll hem Indra’s hat. You take care of the new girl,” she waggles her eyebrows suggestively, and Clarke flushes.
“You’re such a brat,” Bellamy says, and Octavia cackles on her way out the door.
“Make sure you tell her about mistletoe!” she sing-songs, and Bellamy shuts the door in her face.
“What’s mistletoe?” Clarke asks, amused when Bellamy goes red all over.
“Nothing. Well, it’s a plant, but it’s—nothing. Really.” He rubs the back of his neck, awkward and endearing, and this time Clarke can’t hold in her grin. “Do you want some hot chocolate?”
She has no idea what hot chocolate might be, but it seems rude to say no, so Clarke follows him into the kitchen. It’s clean and bright, without a bloody steak knife in sight, and no poisonous murkweed hanging from the rafters. There’s some sort of leafy circular branch on every door, and bells hanging from the door knobs that jingle whenever they turn. Snowflakes made of paper line the walls. The décor in Christmas Town is very strange.
Clarke loves all of it.
Bellamy warms their drink up on the stove. It’s brown and thick, so Clarke assumes there’s some blood in it. He pours it into two mugs, and then tops each with dry white orbs.
“Dehydrated eyeballs?” Clarke asks, intrigued. She wonders how long they keep for.
Bellamy gapes at her, mugs in hand. “Dehydrated what? Jesus, no! What kind of things do you eat in Halloween Town?”
Clarke shrugs, trying not to feel insulted. “Not dehydrated eyes, if that’s what you’re worried about. Most people prefer them fresh.” She takes a tentative sip of her drink, a little suspicious. Anyone who hates the taste of sclera probably has bad taste.
But—it’s good. It’s sweeter than she’s used to, much sweeter, but she likes it. She probably can’t drink more than one cup at a time, but. She might drink more tomorrow.
If she’s still here tomorrow, which seems pretty likely.
“Good?” he asks, smug. “Not too sweet?”
“Definitely too sweet,” Clarke says somberly, and he laughs when she takes another huge sip.
“So, uh,” he starts, awkward. There’s a thin line of chocolate foam across his upper lip, that she very much wants to lick it off, no matter how sweet. “Don’t take this—I definitely want you to stay here as long as you’d like, but I’m assuming you have people who might miss you?”
Clarke sets her cup down, sobering. Wells will definitely be worried. He usually tries to stop by on his way home from work every day. And Raven, if she’s awake, will want to launch a massive search party, probably armed with grenades filled with the Black Plague, or something. Murphy would be right behind them, yowling angrily about having to fetch his own food, even though as a ghost, he doesn’t need to eat in the first place. He’s just a glutton.
“I should probably find out how to get home,” she agrees, and she’s pretty sure he’s disappointed.
He wants her to stay, and Clarke feels a little guilty, because she actually wants to.
But she can’t. She has an irritable cat to take care of, and the pumpkins, and Wells and Raven and Lexa, now. She’s the Pumpkin Queen; she can’t just abandon Halloween, forever.
But one night probably won’t hurt.
“Okay,” she decides, finishing up the last of her chocolate. The white things have melted at the bottom, making a creamy sludge. “What other strange Christmas things can you show me?”
Bellamy grins. “How much do you actually know about Christmas?”
“Assume I know next to nothing.”
“Okay, well—are you hungry? There’s a commissary in town that serves the best fruit cake.”
Clarke is a little skeptical about the fruit cake too—what kind of cake doesn’t have beetles in it, really?—but it’s surprisingly decent. Not as good as the hot chocolate though, and when she says as much, Bellamy laughs.
“So you’re a tailor?” Clarke muses, slurping down the rest of her eggnog. He warned her it had bourbon in it, but Clarke wasn’t really sure what bourbon meant. Whatever it is, it’s made her head a little foggy and warm, and she definitely likes it. “I need to bring this back home,” she decides, waving her empty cup in his face. He takes it from her gently, and then lets her play with his hand.
“I make the stockings, yeah, and I can darn things here and there. I’m not like,” he flushes a little. “My mom was a lot better. She made whole suits. And Octavia can, too, but I needed a job, and I didn’t want to be a Santa Claus.”
“How many Santa’s are there?” She’s studying his fingers, now. He has freckles on the back of his hands, all the way up his wrists, and she’s trying to count them, but she keeps getting stuck on thirteen.
“Indra’s the main one, but she’s retiring. This year will be Lincoln, her apprentice’s, debut. And Octavia is next in line.”
“My friend Lexa is a tailor,” Clarke declares, probably louder than is necessary. She’s sitting closer than necessary too, so her head is leaned on his shoulder, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “You’d like her—you’re both fake-grumpy.”
“Fake-grumpy?” he asks, amused, and she tries to roll her eyes but fails at it.
Apparently, Clarke is not a very coordinated drunk.
“Fake-grumpy,” she says, firm, and he chuckles, breath landing hot on her neck. She tips her head back to look at him, and he looks so stupidly fond it makes her breath catch. “Tell me more.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know everything about you.”
He grins, tugging a piece of her hair. “Well—I wanted to be a librarian, when I was a kid.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Apparently there are only about fifteen books in the whole of Christmas Town, and I own ten of them.”
Clarke laughs, delighted, and then tips so far back she’d have fallen off the bench if Bellamy didn’t catch her. “We should probably head back. I think they’re worried you’re going to steal all the eggnog.”
“They should be,” she agrees as he helps her stand up. “I still might."
He only has one bed, and is clearly very skittish about it.
“O took hers when she moved into the Barracks,” he explains, running a hand down his face, and Clarke leans against him.
This is new. Everything about this is new, but especially Bellamy. Clarke isn’t really a tactile person, or at least, she tries not to be. It was one of Anya’s first lessons. She’ll occasionally forget herself, and give Wells’s shoulder a soft squeeze, or punch Raven in the arm affectionately, but. Bellamy feels so warm, and safe, and different. He feels like home in a way the pumpkin patch never did, not really. She feels like Clarke Griffin, not the Pumpkin Queen.
“Sharing is a part of Christmas, right?” she teases, and he laughs, putting an arm around her, loose like he thinks she might want to get away. She tugs it tighter.
Bellamy offers to sleep on the floor of his tailing room—filled with cloth and felt of all colors and shapes, littering the floor with scraps of lace and fur trim—but Clarke just pulls him into bed with her. It’s a big bed. They fit fine.
She falls asleep to Bellamy telling the story of Rudolph, a strange red-nosed creature, and singing a song about sleigh bells, voice rough and off-key.
“Bell,” she mumbles. When did her eyes shut? She doesn’t remember. “Jingle Bell. It’s like you.”
She falls asleep to him laughing, low and warm on her cheek, the press of his lips so soft she almost thinks she dreams it.
Clarke wakes to Bellamy curled all around her, firm and warm at her back, one hand on her hip and the other on her stomach, impeccably chaste. He stirs when she rolls around to face him, blinking down at her sleepily.
“I really like you,” she says, quiet and small, because this is new. She’s never felt like this, never thought she ever would. Anya told her Pumpkin Queens don’t feel like other people, and Clarke thought she meant they didn’t feel at all.
Now she’s starting to think she meant the opposite. That what they feel can’t be flighty, or unsure. What she feels for Bellamy and his holiday definitely isn’t unsure. She’s so, so positive.
She wants this, she wants him. She wants it so much.
Bellamy grins, leaning in to kiss her like he can’t really help it. “I really like you too,” he grins. His mouth tastes like chocolate still, faintly, and Clarke thinks she likes it better than in the cup.
But then he pulls back, like he’s not sure he’s allowed, and worried he misread her.
Clarke grins, pecks his mouth again, and then rolls onto her back towards the ceiling. “There’s a plant hanging above us,” she observes, a little confused. She’s pretty sure it wasn’t there last night, but she was also fairly drunk, and the whole world was a little wobbly.
Beside her, Bellamy sighs. “O is such a brat.” He turns back to her, shy, and says “That’s mistletoe,” like it should explain everything.
And then he tells her that story too, and Clarke grins before rolling over him. “It’s bad luck if we don’t, right?” He’s still laughing as she kisses him.
They stay in bed, because Bellamy happens to have a bag of peppermint kisses under it, which they can eat. And because getting out of bed would mean facing the real world, which they very pointedly are not doing, because if they did, Clarke would have to leave, and Bellamy wouldn’t be able to go with her.
But they aren’t able to avoid reality forever, and soon Octavia comes marching through the door, looking entirely unimpressed with the both of them.
“Get dressed,” she orders, and Clarke glances down to see they’re both still wearing yesterday’s clothes. She’s still wrapped up in his sweater. “I’ve asked Indra if you could borrow one of the smaller sleighs to take Clarke home.”
Bellamy gapes at his sister, still tangled up in Clarke apparently without realizing. “I’m taking her home?”
Octavia sneers a little. “What, you think I have the time? You’re the least busy person in town! No one would even notice if you were gone for two months.”
She’s not being even a little bit subtle, but Clarke’s pretty sure she’s not trying. She knows Bellamy wants to leave with Clarke, and she’s saying he’s allowed to. Now it’s Clarke’s turn to gape.
“He can just—go? Just like that?” They’re sitting up now, and Bellamy scrubs a hand down his face before giving her a lopsided grin.
“What do you say, your Highness? I promise I’m a great houseguest.”
“He’s the worst houseguest,” Octavia argues. “And a pretty useless tailor; the elves can do twice your work in half the amount of time.”
“Thanks,” Bellamy says drily. “Really.” Octavia ignores him.
“You’ll have to be back by Christmas Eve,” she warns him, eyes narrowed. “We’ll need all hands on deck.”
“Yeah,” Bellamy agrees, but he’s not looking at his sister. He’s still grinning stupidly at Clarke, and she’s pretty sure she’s grinning stupidly back, because her mouth actually hurts from all the smiling.
Octavia makes a general noise of disgust, which Clarke assumes is normal sibling behavior. “You two are gross,” she declares, stomping back towards the door. She seems to consistently walk like she’s going to battle. “It was nice to meet you Clarke, please don’t let your freaky friends eat my brother, Bell you’d better be back by Christmas Eve, or I will tear you limb from limb, love you—bye!” And then she’s gone.
“Your sister would do well in Halloween Town,” Clarke smirks, and Bellamy leans in to press his face against her neck. He still seems a little reserved about it, like he’s waiting for her to pull back any moment, but—he also seems excited, and she thinks this might be new for him, too.
“What about me?” he teases, nipping her skin so she gasps.
“No, you’re much too soft,” she says, combing a hand through his hair. “You won’t fit in at all. But we do have lots of books.”
“Books are the only friends I need,” he agrees. “Did you want to take anything with us, before we go?”
Clarke starts to shake her head, before she thinks better of it. “Some eggnog, for the others. And maybe some snow, if it would keep. Oh, and those snow globes I saw in the town shop. And a wreath for Wells—two wreaths actually, one for his office. And—”
Bellamy laughs against her mouth, forcing her to stop. “Okay, I guess we’ll go shopping first.” He studies her a little, and she does her best not to squirm. Clarke knows what she looks like; with her skin and hair all in place, she can pass as human, and a pretty one at that. But her hair feels like one gnarled mass on her head, and his sweater has fallen off her shoulder, hanging a little lopsided.
But his eyes are going darker with every second he spends looking, so maybe it’s not that bad.
“Do you want to change, first? My clothes will probably all be pretty baggy on you, but they’re clean.”
Clarke shrugs. It’s different now, knowing he wants her too. “I’ll be fine. We’ll be back by sundown, and I can bathe at home.”
Bellamy goes a little pink at that, and then promptly stands up to change his sweater.
She’d already liked him of course, but. After seeing him without a shirt, Clarke becomes a lot more optimistic.
Clarke doesn’t really start to worry until they reach the Hinterlands, and she starts to recognize the trees.
“Almost there,” Bellamy calls back happily, and Clarke nods her face into his back, because she can’t really look at him.
It’s just—what if he doesn’t like it? She loves Halloween Town and the pumpkins and the citizens and the bog, but it’s her home. She’s biased. Bellamy is from a town where everyone drinks hot chocolate and sings carols and decorates everything with glitter and popcorn. He’s bound to feel like an outsider. What if he gets too uncomfortable, and decides it’s not worth it?
What if he decides she’s not worth it? She is the Queen here, after all. If he can’t handle Halloween Town, he probably won’t want to handle her.
But when he stops the sleigh right beside the town sign—which has been painted over hastily with WHERE IS CLARKE HAVE YOU SEEN HER, and a terrible portrait of her face—he’s smiling.
“It smells like leaves,” he says happily, helping her stand from the sleigh. The gifts they brought are packed in tightly all around them, and several fall out when they move.
He nods to the sign. “I think they missed you.”
Clarke shrugs. “I’m sure they managed,” she says, even though she’s positive they didn’t. It’s easy for her to forget that she’s actual royalty, and therefore important in the town. She feels like all she ever does is mind the pumpkins, but she’s essentially the figurehead of a ship. The crew thinks she’s important, and so she is.
Bellamy’s about to say something, but gets cut off by the megaphone.
“CLARKE FUCKING GRIFFIN,” Raven shouts, and then there’s a large screech from the phone as Wells wrestles it away from her.
“WE MISSED YOU,” he says, probably quietly, but the megaphone blasts it at them. They’re standing on the top of his Mayor Mobile, with Raven’s bad leg swung over the side, as Lexa sits behind the wheel steering.
“I missed you too,” Clarke shouts so they can hear her. They’re still a good dozen yards away, because Lexa has never really been a comfortable driver, and anyway the Mayor Mobile doesn’t go faster than a brisk walk.
When they’re finally within speaking distance, Raven struggles a little to jump down, probably so she can throw herself at them. Wells and Lexa each grip her by a hip to help, but once she lands she shakes them off and marches over.
“What the fuck were you thinking, disappearing like that?” she demands, jabbing a finger at Clarke. “Murphy was fucking insane with worry!” She turns on Bellamy suddenly, like she hadn’t really noticed him, and thinks he just showed up. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Bellamy,” he says, clearly caught between amusement and wariness. Clarke takes his hand in hers, and Raven tracks the movement.
“What are you,” she corrects, and Clarke answers for him.
“He’s from Christmas Town,” she says, and without waiting for a response, “He’s mine.”
“O-kay,” Raven drawls, leaning back and crossing her arms. Clarke’s pretty sure she’s about to start interrogating Bellamy, which she doesn’t think is fair. She never got to question either Wells or Lexa, because Raven and Wells had always been together, and Lexa was too much of a sudden surprise.
But Clarke’s never dated anyone before, and she can tell Raven wants to take full advantage of that, so she waves wildly at the sleigh.
“I brought presents,” she says, and Bellamy is instantly forgotten.
Wells calls a town meeting, both so he can let everyone know Clarke is home and safe, and so she and Bellamy can do their best to explain Christmas to Halloween Town. It goes about as well as she’d expected—there are a lot of questions like “But what do you eat, if not worms?” and “Wait, so he does or doesn’t have sandy claws?”—but other than that, everyone seems pretty open to the concept as a whole, if not outright excited about it.
“It just doesn’t sound as fun as Halloween,” Jasper shrugs when Clarke asks what he thinks. “Why would I want a giant sock with no foot in it? That just sounds impractical. I don’t have any giant feet it would fit.”
“You seem disappointed,” Bellamy says once the Q and A is over. Clarke’s leaning on the podium, poking at a snow globe filled with gold glitter.
“I guess I just hoped they’d love it as much as I do,” she admits, and he presses a grin to her hair.
“I think you love it enough for everyone,” he teases. “You made me tell you The Gift of the Magi five times last night.”
“It’s just a very touching story,” she sniffs, and he kisses her.
The town hall, or at least the room they’re in, is empty, and so he deepens the kiss, opening her mouth to explore. He tastes wet, like peppermint and chocolate and a little bit like the eggnog they drank before they left. (Eggnog, Clarke was pleased to note, was a resounding success at the meeting. Her citizens have decided that while mistletoe and stockings sound silly, they’d like to keep the drink.)
She doesn’t realize she’s making little sighs until he groans down into her, backing her up against the podium until it wobbles with their weight. Clarke’s growing dizzy with it; his warmth, his taste, his proximity—and it’s very, very hard for her to pull away.
But she does.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, mouth swollen, but visibly concerned. He’s worried he hurt her, and she gives a clipped smile.
“Nothing, I just—I’ve never done this.” She gestured between the two of them, waiting for him to catch on. “I think maybe, we should take it slow?”
She doesn’t realize she’s waiting for him to react badly, until he doesn’t. Bellamy grins, all soft and fond, and leans forward to press a dry kiss to her forehead, that makes her legs melt.
“Just let me know when you’re ready,” he says, taking her hand. “Now, I believe you promised me lots of books.”
Wells has been trying to find somebody to organize the town’s archives for ages, and he’s delighted when Clarke introduces Bellamy as their new resident bookkeeper.
She watches while they comb through the archives room, an enormous chamber filled with stacks of books and rolls of parchment, each ready to collapse at any moment. She’s pretty sure Bellamy is the only person in existence who can match Wells’s love for all things ancient and unimportant, but. It is nice to see them happy.
Clarke shows Bellamy the pumpkin patch that evening, and he goes around, giving them each ridiculous names and convoluted backstories, even making a pumpkin love triangle for three of them.
She laughs harder than she probably ever has in Halloween Town, and he grins like it’s a victory.
He sits her on the counter that night after dinner—a plain carrot-squash stew, with no sclera. Clarke finds it quite bland, but Bellamy seems to enjoy it, and makes them both hot chocolate after—and kisses her, slow and deep. He tastes overwhelmingly like chocolate, and a little like the stew, and a lot like Bellamy, which she’s beginning to think is a taste unique to him.
She whines when he finally pulls away, even though her lips feel puffy and she’s pretty sure one’s bleeding, and he chuckles a little, leaning his head on her shoulder.
“We’re going slow, remember?”
Clarke considers just telling him she changed her mind, and letting him do whatever he wants with her.
Then she breathes out, a little shakily, and lets him help her off the counter. She tugs him into bed with her, and curls up against his stomach, like she’s fit there her whole life. He feels like he was made for her.
“We’re going slow,” she says, and falls asleep with his hand in her hair.
They go slow.
Bellamy works at the town hall most days, organizing the stacks of books and papers into some semblance of a system. He and Wells usually eat lunch together, and Bellamy’s just as forgetful as Wells, so Lexa starts bringing two boxed lunches with her when she visits. She doesn’t say anything about it, and she still glares at Bellamy, and threatens to poison him with wormswort every now and then, and he grumbles and calls her ragdoll a lot—but Clarke knows they secretly like each other.
Murphy is boycotting Bellamy’s sudden appearance by constantly hiding in the walls, coming out only when they’re asleep, so he can vomit in Bellamy’s shoes—which, again, he can only do on purpose. Bellamy’s never actually seen a cat before, and is weirdly excited about the whole thing, and very disappointed that Murphy doesn’t like him at all.
While Bellamy’s at work, Clarke helps the others start planning for next year’s Halloween, and tries to perfect pumpkin-based eggnog, forcing Bellamy and Wells to try all of her experiments, because Raven and Lexa flatly refuse.
Clarke still walks the patch each evening, and usually Bellamy follows. He still tells outrageous stories about them sometimes, but other times he’ll put a hand on one, and listen, like he can hear their soul the way Clarke can. She chokes up each time she sees it, because—how can he belong here so perfectly? Like he was born and raised here, just like her, with her. Like she’s known him her whole life.
On December first, she hangs a calendar up in her office, counting down the days to Christmas Eve. She makes another mark each night, but refuses to think about it any other time of day. Bellamy hasn’t mentioned it once.
She's still waiting for him to decide the bog, and the witch with the hook nose that drips everywhere, and the little corpse girl Charlotte who follows everyone around talking about death, just aren't worth the hassle. She's waiting to find his things missing, the sleigh gone, her bed cold.
But it never happens, and he seems to catch on.
"Why are you so convinced I don't like it here?" he asks, out of nowhere during breakfast.
Clarke stares at him blankly for a moment, before catching on. "I just--you don't think this place is strange? It's so...different from your home."
Bellamy waves a hand. "I like strange," he grins. "I like autumn, I like your friends, I like your pumpkins--I even like your asshole cat. So stop waiting for me to just walk out, alright? It's not gonna happen."
He looks smug when she can't stop gaping, almond spiced oats dripping off her spoon.
"Finish your breakfast," he chides, but he's still smiling, so the effect is lost. "It's the most important meal of the day."
He still kisses her, wet and deep until she’s needy, before pulling back and righting her clothes with so much care it drives her insane. And at night he curls around her, pulling her into his chest, or up against his back sometimes when she wants to be the big spoon, because it makes her feel powerful.
They go slow, until they don’t, and two days before Christmas Eve, Clarke sits beside Bellamy by her fireplace. He’s reading one of the ancient histories he’s borrowed from the archives, so distracted that he doesn’t notice her until she crawls into his lap, displacing the book entirely.
“Clarke—” she grinds down on him so he chokes a little, fingers digging into the skin of her hips. He wets his lips, looking at her, wary and a little hopeful. “What happened to going slow?”
Clarke rolls her eyes and grinds down again, and this time he groans and presses sloppy wet kisses down her neck, like a reflex. “We’ve been going slow,” she points out. “And now I want to go faster, but if you don’t, that’s okay, I can wait—”
Bellamy cuts her off harshly, kiss already heated and possessive enough to make her moan. “I just want you to be sure,” he adds, pecking her mouth between each word. “I don’t want you to feel like I want you to hurry up, or anything.”
“I want me to hurry up,” Clarke growls, and that seems to be all the validation he needs, because he turns her on her back within the moment, crawling on top of her, fingers grazing down her sides.
The fire is close enough to heat them, and the floor isn’t very uncomfortable. Mostly, Clarke just feels frenzied. She’s been ready for a month, and now they only have two days left, maybe one and a half, and she feels like she’s wasted so much time. Too much.
She kisses down his jaw and behind his ear until his hips jerk into hers. His hand is ghosting at the hem of her shirt, so she reaches down and pulls it all the way off.
Bellamy stares for a long minute, which she was kind of hoping for, but then grazes up the skin of her stomach, hesitating a few inches from her breast.
Clarke moves his hand over to cup her, and his head falls to her chest with a groan. “I want this, Bell,” she whispers, and he presses a kiss to her breast.
His voice, when he speaks, is so rough she almost doesn’t hear it. “Good.” And then he moves his mouth over her nipple, and her eyes roll back in her head.
Clarke wakes in the morning, still naked, with Bellamy in her bed. She doesn’t remember anything after falling asleep on the floor, so he must have carried her in, and then curled up around her, the way he does every night—chasing her around the mattress.
She rolls over against him and he blinks open an eye, squinting at her until she smiles. “I didn’t think you’d fit,” she tells him, because she can now. And it seems so ridiculous, him not fitting. He’s taken to Halloween Town like a natural.
“That’s rude,” he says mildly around a yawn, tugging her closer. “I haven’t had that much pumpkin cake.”
Clarke laughs against his shoulder. “I mean—here, in Halloween Town. In my world.” He’s studying her now, face unreadable, and she worries her lip a little. Now that she says it out loud, it does sound a bit like she was doubting him, or them, their relationship. And maybe she sort of was.
“That makes sense,” he says. And then, carefully nonchalant, “So, do I? Fit, now.”
Clarke grins and rolls onto his lap, while he steadies her hips, staring up at her. “Like a glove.”
Octavia shows up one night early, with Lincoln--her behemoth of a Santa Claus--in tow. He has intricate tattoos running down both arms, and around his neck, and probably down his back as well. He also doesn't seem to speak, and Murphy actually likes him for some unknown reason, hovering about his shoulders, waiting to be scratched.
“I wanted to get to see your new home first,” she says, all faux-innocence, when Bellamy and Clarke find her at the door. They’re in their pajamas—well, Bellamy’s wearing pajama pants—and they’d been in the middle of an intense round of oral sex when the doorbell rang, sending screams throughout the building.
Raven thinks that as Bellamy’s return date has grown nearer, they’ve been constantly having sex. Clarke would like to disagree, but.
So she’s upset for more than one reason when Octavia and her Santa partner show up a day early.
She sets them up in her guest room, which hasn’t been used since Raven made Lexa, and finds Bellamy waiting on the edge of their bed—when had she started referring to it as theirs?—with his face in his hands.
Clarke sits beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder, until he moves to wrap his arms around her and pull her into his lap.
“I don’t want to go,” he says into the back of her neck, and Clarke strokes the soft skin on the inside of his arm. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“I don’t want you to go,” she says, and he tightens his grip around her. “I don’t care if that makes us bad people—I just don’t want you to leave.”
“You could come with me,” he offers. “See what a real Christmas is like.”
Clarke thinks about her pumpkins, and Murphy, and the townspeople. She’d have to let them know beforehand, this time. Maybe even get permission, to see if it’s doable.
But it can’t be that hard, right? Not just for a couple of days.
“I’ll talk to Wells about it in the morning,” she decides, and tucks them both in to bed. “I really like you,” she whispers, because saying anything else would be too much, probably. Humans don’t feel things the way she does, she’s pretty sure—their emotions aren’t as strong, as consuming. She should probably just wait for him to say it first.
“I really like you too,” he murmurs, pressing a chapped kiss to her cheek. “Go to sleep, Clarke.”
Octavia wakes them in the morning, but instead of her usual intense, sarcastic self, she’s intense and panicked.
“Something’s wrong with Lincoln,” she explains, and they all rush to the guest room.
Lincoln is nested in the blankets, twisting around in a fever dream, skin pale and sweaty with sickness. He keeps whimpering, like a scared little boy having a nightmare.
Clarke recognizes it immediately. “He has ghost sickness,” she sighs. “It’s non-fatal, but he’ll have to sleep it out for the next few days. I have a potion that might—”
“Few days,” Octavia snarls, clenching Lincoln’s sweaty palm in her hands. “Christmas is tomorrow. He’s our Santa Claus!”
“I’m sorry,” Clarke says, firm. “But he has the sickness, and he can’t do anything until the fever’s died down. You’ll have to find another Santa Claus.”
Octavia looks ready to either hyperventilate, or murder Clarke, so Bellamy steps in between them. “O, Clarke knows what she’s talking about. Besides, Indra taught Lincoln and you all the runs—you can do this.”
She looks ready to fight him on it, but then schools her features back to her usual stoic mask. “I can do this,” she agrees, and then hesitates. “I’ll need a suit.”
Bellamy frowns a little. “O, you know I can’t—”
“Lexa could,” Clarke offers. “She’s the best seamstress in town. She sews every zombie’s limbs back when they get snared or fall off.”
Octavia and Bellamy make identical faces of disgust. “Where is she?” O asks, resigned, and Bellamy puts a hand on her shoulder.
“That’s the spirit!”
“I’ll make some tea for Lincoln,” Clarke says, stepping out. She heads over to the old spider-infested pantry, where she knows Murphy likes to hide, and raps three times on the wooden door. “Murphy, I need you to fetch Lexa, please. Now.” She hears a little growl and then silence, which she takes to mean he’s listened.
She brings the tea back with her, and forces a little down Lincoln’s throat even as he winces in his dreams.
“How did he get sick?” Octavia asks, clearly suspicious. She eyes the tea a little.
Clarke shrugs. “Anyone who wasn’t born here is susceptible to the virus.”
“Why didn’t we get it?” Bellamy wonders.
“Your immune systems must be better. Lincoln’s just wasn’t equipped to handle Halloween Town.”
“He’s Halloweak,” Raven says from the doorway, grinning, proud of her ridiculous pun. Murphy probably fetched her, because he likes to make things difficult for Clarke, and Raven is nosy, and likes to meddle.
Octavia glares over at her fiercely. “He’s not weak!” There’s an intense glaring contest that stretches on for a while, until finally she sighs. “Where’s that seamstress, anyway?”
“Downstairs,” Raven says, mild. “Spreading out her materials. Red and white, right?”
“Right,” O agrees, begrudgingly. She gives Lincoln’s hand a final squeeze before turning to Clarke. “Take care of him?”
“He’ll be good as new before you know it,” she promises, and Octavia gives a curt nod before heading downstairs.
“Girl looks like a general of the undead,” Raven muses once she’s gone. “I like it.”
“That’s my sister,” Bellamy crows. “She’s a Santa Claus.”
Raven shrugs, which means she probably doesn’t even remember what a Santa Claus is. “Cool, I guess. Clarke, do you have any more foxglove tea? I’m having a craving.”
Clarke’s gaze immediately drops to Raven’s very flat stomach.
“Not that kind of craving,” Raven rolls her eyes, stomping down the stairs on her own.
“I should probably make sure they don’t kill each other,” Bellamy offers, pressing a quick kiss to Clarke’s temple before going after the girls.
She spends most of the day watching for signs that Lincoln’s fever might break, but of course it doesn’t. She’s had a little experience with ghost sickness, and it always takes a few days, like she’d said, but. She’d been hoping for a small Christmas miracle, or something. Weren’t those a thing? She’s pretty sure Bellamy mentioned them, between the story of Christ, and the creation of advent calendars.
When she finally goes downstairs, exhausted, she finds Octavia wrapped up in a form-fitting suit of red velvet, with trim of white silk on each hem. She’s folding her hair up in the extra-long hat Lexa’s stitched together. There’s charcoal around her eyes again, and the shimmery white gloss on her lips, and ink down her arms matching Lincoln's; she’s rolled the sleeves up to her elbows so they can be seen.
Lexa admires her work appraisingly. “I really have outdone myself,” she decides, and Raven smacks a kiss to her cheek in agreement.
“I’m totally gonna kick Christmas’s ass,” she declares, marching out the door. “I have to go pick up the Huphḗlios—later, bitches!”
Raven and Lexa let themselves out, presumably to go collect their workaholic boyfriend from the office, and Clarke wanders over to where Bellamy’s collapsed on the floor. She slides down beside him, tugging her knees to her chin. He stares at the door for another long moment, before turning to her with a smile.
“My baby sister’s a Santa Claus.”
“She’s perfect for the job,” Clarke agrees, and he hums, leaning into her. “So does this mean you’re not going back tonight?”
He grins over at her, crookedly. “I think they can handle one Christmas without me.”
“They’d better,” she decides. “Because your sister just took the sleigh.” She hesitates a moment, because—she probably says it too much, honestly. He has to know, already. But she likes saying it. She’ll probably never stop. “I still really like you.”
He laughs, like he always does, pleased. He doesn’t get it, and that’s alright. He will one day. She might even explain it to him. “Good, I was worried this really changed your mind.” He leans down to press his nose to her cheek, nuzzling. “We saved Christmas,” he says, low and wistful. “Think they’ll write any carols about us?”
Clarke runs a hand through his hair. “They’d be awfully strange,” she muses, and he pulls back so she can see his smile.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “But that’s the best kind.”