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“It’s time you learned some first-aid,” Clarke says to Bellamy one morning, a month after they had belayed down that god-forsaken tower. “It’ll be useful.”
Clarke sits on a the chair across from him during breakfast. As usual he looks at her tray and slides his apple over. She used to argue, now she knows it’s useless.
Bellamy lifts an eyebrow at her. “My bandage wrapping skills are perfectly fine.”
“They’re tragic,” Clarke says lightly. “And you’ll need to know when we split into teams to go after the reactors. Everyone should have some field medicine training.”
“Fine.” He leans back in his chair, regards her with smiling eyes and a grin. Clarke ignores the fluttering in her chest. “I’m training cadets in the morning, and we have those meetings. Then I have wall duty until eight.”
“Meet me in med-bay after,” Clarke says. “I’ll bring you dinner.”
Bellamy stands and stretches, shirt riding up his stomach just enough to show the vee-ridge of his hips and a tiny bit of hair over his pant line. She takes a bite of apple to distract her from the flush crawling up her neck.
*
It’s become a thing now between them to find little reasons to hang out, reasons that they can tell themselves have nothing really to do with each other. Like Can you help me bring in some firewood? Or I should teach you to drive the Rover and now It’s time you learned some first-aid.
Leader things. Arkadia things. Friendship things.
So it’s grown increasingly bothersome to Clarke that whenever they make these little...friendship dates...she can’t get her mind off of it for the rest of the day. Whether he’s accompanying her on a walk to gather some herbs (“No one goes into the woods alone, Clarke, not even you”) or she’s bringing him dinner when he works late (she would do that for anyone, okay?), she just can’t stop thinking about him.
Like how it feels when she sees him unexpectedly across camp, or when she catches his figure in the lookout as she walks into camp from a trading trip. Or how the hours seem to linger on forever when they’re supposed to meet in the evenings.
But she’s trying not to think about that.
The morning passes in a succession of meetings. Raven and Monty update them about their projections. Indra comes in to strategize about the summit that’s happening in a few weeks where the situation will be explained to all the clans. Bellamy pops in and out when he can, but they don’t get a chance to talk. In the first meeting he comes in, sweaty from training, his shirt sticking to him. Clarke suddenly finds the physics formulas on her handout interesting.
In the meeting with Indra, he hangs toward the back. She catches his eye and makes sure she holds his gaze for a moment. His muscles uncoil, just a bit, and he leans back against the wall. He leaves before the meeting is over, but not before catching her eye and giving her a small smile.
The afternoon is spent in the clinic with her Mom and Jackson. There are enough patients to keep her from doing something else, but not enough to actually be busy. She folds linens and organizes the medicine cabinets and does anything she can to distract herself. But by the end of the day she’s sketching on some old scrap paper and can’t keep away from thinking about Bellamy, so fine.
Fine.
As forms take shape on the paper, Clarke lets herself think about him. She can figure this out.
Clarke knows that she loves Bellamy in several ways, and that for the most part, they intermingle happily now that they are back together. She loves him like she loves all of the Delinquents; they’re her family, her co-survivors. Clarke remembers once at the dropship—fuck it seems years ago but really was only seven months—Bellamy quoting Shakespeare to her, We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...It had been the morning of Unity Day, and for a magical almost twenty-four hours things between them were light, breezy, fun. His dimpled cheeks and flirty smile; the heat that prickled up her neck when he said Have some fun, you deserve it. Their shared relief that for a few hours they believed the grown-ups were coming to save them.
Clarke sighs and pushes those memories away. She’s not willing to get lost down that road today. She focuses back on the feeling of her pen moving across the paper, lets her mind settle back to the task of figuring her shit out.
So the ways in which she loves Bellamy Blake, isn’t that what she was doing?
Clarke loves him like a best friend, too, like she loved Wells, like she and Raven are becoming as they mend their relationship.
She loves him as her co-leader, as the only other person who knows the weight, the distinctions, of the burdens they share. A familiar ache squats on her chest when she thinks about the fact that she left him with that. It’s the one memory that she can never, ever avoid, never push away, especially not after Octavia left, too.
That night on the beach, feeling his forgiveness wash over her, she thought that maybe she could start forgiving herself.
But then Octavia left, and now she’s starting to understand what happened when she walked away from him after Mount Weather.
It’s different, he told her last week when she caught him looking out to the woods. She linked their hands, curled her fingers into his. This time...his eyes glanced to her, then away...this time I have you.
She also knows that for all that it’s different, for all that he has her, and Kane, and Raven, and Monty, and Miller, he still goes to the stables twice a day to take care of Helios. He misses Octavia. All those months before, he missed her. It’s a feeling that is too glaring for her to look at fully, to know that she caused him that pain.
But Clarke also knows this time it is different, because she’s staying. She’s here now, and she knows she’ll never leave him again…
But why won’t you ever leave him again? The question whispers in her mind, curls around all of her thoughts and starts to give them a shape. It’s an answer that steals her breath; it’s the breadth of a clear night sky during a new moon, of both knowing shadow and light.
“Time to shut it down.” Clarke jumps when Jackson pokes her with a pen. He looks over her shoulder. “Nice drawing. Where is it?”
Clarke looks down to see what she drew, a sketch of a forested cove, a low tide rolling up on a pebble beach. A sliver of moon hangs above the rain clouds, which open to a starry sky above. She looks at it for a few long moments, then puts it on her desk.
“Oh. Um. Just...this is where the boats picked us up. When we were looking for Luna.”
Jackson—everyone—knew about Luna and Floukru. Luna was coming to the summit, a visit negotiated by Kane himself. “It’s pretty. I remember when you used to fill up whatever paper you could find with doodles.”
She grinned at him. “I remember you being particularly pissed about a certain medical textbook.”
“I still can’t believe that Abby Griffin’s daughter doodled hearts all over the last existing copy of William’s Hematology.”
“She was just being thematic,” Abby says, putting her arm around Clarke’s shoulder as they walk out of the clinic. Ever since Abby came back from the City of Light whatever was between them had loosened. It wasn’t perfect, yet--what was? But they were working on it. Bellamy’s words on forgiveness lingered in Clarke’s mind, how he said I don’t want to feel that way anymore. Somewhere in the months that had passed the resentment and bitterness Clarke had felt towards her mom had fallen away, and after the tower she let them go for good.
“What are your plans for the rest of the evening?” Abby asks her after they finish dinner. Abby has the habit of pushing food on Clarke’s tray too, and Clarke finds it oddly endearing that her two favorite people do this to her. Clarke wonders if it’s because after she left they worried about whether or not she had enough to eat.
Clarke wills herself not to look at the clock again--she’s already looked four times now. At this point she is playing the I won’t look at the clock anymore because I’m a functional adult game.
But she looks again.
7:43.
“Um…” Why does she have the instinct to dodge the question? (Why did you draw that ocean cove when you thought about Bellamy?) Clarke feels dumb about it, so she doesn’t. “I’m teaching Bellamy some first-aid.”
Abby’s eyebrow lifts almost imperceptibly before she catches herself. She can’t control the little smile though. “That’s a good idea. As many people as possible should be trained in field medicine.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You should take him some dinner.”
“I was going to.”
“Maybe some moonshine, too. I hear the new batch is really good.” There’s a sparkle in Abby’s eyes and oh god.
Before Clarke can flush any harder though, Kane sits down with his dinner tray. He kisses Abby’s temple before he picks up his cutlery. “Good evening.”
“Hi, Kane.” Sometimes she thinks she should feel something more about Kane and her mom dating, but she doesn’t. She loved her dad, always will, but life is different now. The Ark is the past. What they have now is so fragile, that seeing Kane and her Mom together makes her feel like more is possible.
When that hope starts to take a certain form in her mind, she shakes her head, looks at the clock.
7:49.
“Well, I better go.” Clarke stands and picks up her tray. “Especially if I want to get an extra plate before the kitchen closes.”
“Where are you going?” Kane asks. Just curious, nothing else.
Abby leans her shoulder into Kane. “She’s teaching Bellamy some field medicine.”
There’s a pause to Kane’s chew, a deliberate swallow of his food. “Oh. Well. That’s useful.” He keeps his face carefully neutral as he regards her. “Have fun.”
Clarke shakes her head at them—is field medicine a euphemism for something now?—and heads to the kitchen to grab one of the last trays left for those with irregular hours. The corridors are still busy with people heading to the cantina or back home, but the clinic is empty and cool and quiet, three things that are rarely available in Arkadia. Clarke leaves the plate on Jackson’s desk, then plops back into a chair, stretches her legs, lets herself relax. Med-Bay fades away as she drops into sleep.
She jumps at the sound of crinkling. Bolts up right, hands grabbing at place on her thigh where she kept a knife sheathed when she lived in the forest.
“Sorry if I startled you.” Bellamy’s low voice brings her back to the present. His eyes are watching her carefully, soft and thoughtful. She knows that he noted what she just did. “But I figured you could use a nap.”
Clarke rubs her palm across her eyes, yawns. “Yeah, thanks. I guess I needed one.” She tries not to think about the fact that he ate quietly while letting her sleep.
“We can do this another time—”
“No!” Clarke’s tone is sharper than she intended. “No, I’m fine. We can get started whenever you’re finished eating.”
“I’m done,” he says, getting up and moving around Jackson’s desk. “Thanks for the food.”
“Figured I could return the favor after all of those apples.” Her voice hitches on the sentence; it’s not the quip she wanted it to be. Spend all day thinking about how much you love a person, and nothing is ever the same again.
And Bellamy, being Bellamy, notices.
He leans against the front of the the desk, regards her with those dark eyes of his. “What’s up, Clarke?”
Suddenly Clarke is aware of him in a way that’s not entirely new, but also feels different somehow, more. Like her body is tethered to his and that connection is pulling her to him.
Clarke turns away from his gaze and forces herself to walk to the cabinet across the room, just to prove to herself that she can, feeling that awareness every step of the way. “Nothing.”
Bellamy gives her a skeptical look.
Fuck. What does she do? I’ve been thinking that I might be in love with you. I don’t know how to deal with it.
That’s what she would say to her best friend.
He is her best friend.
Clarke wants to bang her head against the glass front of the cabinet. They’re so tangled it’s ridiculous. Or perfect. She can’t decide which. Maybe both.
“I’ve just...had a weird day,” she says finally. She can’t—doesn’t want to—stop herself from confiding in him in some way, even if it’s not the full truth. “You know. Just...too much time to think.” Clarke remembers the meeting with Indra here, knows that’s complicated for him. “How are you?”
Bellamy relaxes back onto his perch on the desk. He still has a hard time answering questions like that—are you okay, how are you, what are you feeling. He’ll ask them to everyone else, but she knows he hasn’t had the practice to answer himself. So she makes it a rule for herself that anytime she can ask him, she does.
“The meeting with Indra was...hard,” he admits. “I know that I needed to be there, but I wish I didn’t have to be.”
Just like that, no matter what else is going on with her, she can’t resist comforting him. She crosses over to the desk, sits beside him. “I think it’s getting better. We have bigger things to work on now.”
“Yeah. I mean. That...," Bellamy trails off for a second then returns, crosses his arms tighter over his chest, "is always going to be between us. I’ve accepted that part of it. And I have no right to complain, I know.” Bellamy’s voice hardens against himself at the end, turns dismissive.
“Hey,” she bumps against him. “Stop. I want to listen. That’s why I asked. And I don’t think you’re complaining.”
He nods, relaxes just a smidge. For a second, if she’d let herself think it, it seems like he wants to press a kiss to her forehead. But he doesn’t.
Instead, Bellamy clears his throat. “So, field medicine and bandage wrapping. I hear that I suck and you’re the expert. Teach me.”
Clarke gratefully takes the segway, and puts on her most professional Ark Basic Care Instructor voice. “So the first thing you need to know about field medicine is the importance of cleanliness and an appropriate response to the situation…”
For the next hour she takes him through the basics of sanitation and wound cleaning, elementary stuff that he probably already knows, but she says anyway. Clarke taught some basic care on the Ark as part of her medical training, and it feels like another part of herself from before is being returned to her. Bellamy listens and asks questions, genuinely interested because he’s genuinely interested in everything.
Clarke takes a roll of cloth from the cupboard after explaining some ways to tell if an injury is a sprain or break.
“So...now we come to the practical part of your lesson. Effective and functional bandage wrapping.”
“Fine, Clarke,” he smirks a little. “Teach me effective and functional bandage wrapping.”
The ankle is the most practical place to start, especially given the journey they’ll be on, but she can’t quite get there with him. Something about ankles seems personal—add that to the list of further things to think about—plus the elbow was a fine substitute.
“Okay, you’re going to practice on my elbow.” Clarke hands him the roll of linen as she shrugs off her jacket, then pushes up her sleeve. “Unravel some from the roll, then start here.” She pointed to the crook of her arm, then holds it aloft for him.
The press of his thumb to her skin, even through the linen, sends a thrill up her arm. She resolutely does not look at him, just watches how he slowly, carefully, rolls the bandage over the joint…
“Then a third down,” she says, her voice coming somewhere distant. Bellamy’s hands move the fabric roll a third down, wraps around…”Then a third back up…” ...His knuckles brush her skin, rough and warm… “Keep going above and below, about ten more rotations.” His touch is so gentle, his fingers lightly hold her arm. Bellamy’s head is bent over her, and backed up against a bed like she is, and how broad his shoulders are...She’s surrounded by him.
The questions of the afternoon, that seemed so large and important then, now seem trivial compared to whatever this is, in this moment. In this moment all Clarke wants to do is take the last step into his space, lean her forehead against his chest, wrap herself up in him completely. She wants to brush her lips over the jut of collarbone peaking out of his shirt, to push up on her feet and lay kisses along the warm skin of his neck, press them into his jaw, and finally fist her hands into his curls and bring him down to her mouth. She knows that once she does this—and suddenly she knows that she will and soon—that will be it for her, for them.
That’s the shape that she wants; that’s the answer to her question.
Clarke jerks her arm out of his hand. Steps back. “Um, that’s good, Bellamy. Nice...uh...” Shit, what word does she want? She can’t seem to find words. “...formation.” Her heart is lurching in her chest; his name feels hot, clunky on her lips.
Her first instinct is to leave, to run. Back to her room, outside, anywhere else. In the way that Bellamy just knows her, in a way that devastates her, he shifts back. He allows her the space to go.
It occurs to her then, sharp and true, that Bellamy has known his answer for a long time. And now she knows hers.
Clarke swallows hard, runs a finger along the bandage, slows her breathing. Instead of being afraid of herself, she sinks into his presence. She can do this.
She lifts her gaze to meet his. Bellamy is giving her that look—eyes wide and clear, jaw muscle jumping. He is trying so hard to be impassive, to not demand anything from her. He never would, she knew that with a sudden clarity, too. When had Bellamy Blake ever asked for anything for himself?
Clarke keeps his gaze. The tension between them intensifies.
She doesn’t really know what to do. Part of her wants to just kiss him, just see where it leads. But the other part of her wants to go slow, so slow, for there to be a yes and a me too every part of the way.
“Clarke?” He pitches his voice low, and god, she loves his voice. “What’s going on?”
“I—” The words stick in her throat, but his eyes gentle, and that’s all she can take. Clarke steps closer and just—leans her forehead against his chest. She wants to feel him solid and warm underneath her, and honestly she hopes he’ll do that thing—
And he does, his hand finds the nape of her neck and curls around it. Clarke smiles under the curtain of her hair, against his old Ark shirt. Her arms slide around his waist and she presses herself into him, breathing him in.
It feels...perfect...that their first I love yous are traded in the quiet of the clinic, bodies entwined, alone and unobserved. She says it first, lifting her face to look at his.
Bellamy responds by raising his hand and pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear, leans his forehead against hers. His breathing is a little shallow, and he doesn’t say it back right away. It’s different for him, she knows, to receive I love you freely given, with no expectation, no burden. She just wants him, nothing else.
Several minutes later, when Bellamy does whisper it to her, he’s moved back to sit on one of the beds, tugging her with him. Clarke straddles his hips, tucking her head into the crook of his neck. His hands move slowly up and down her spine. She feels the words against her cheek, followed by the press of his lips.
The atmosphere between them has slowly morphed from warm and gold and sparking to something deeper, to the thrumming darkness of caves. It’s that other thing that connects them, the otherness that has bound them together since they landed on the ground. It’s fitting then that as the Ark hits curfew the lights fade out, leaving them alone, together, in the dark.