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Monty suspected he was the first one to catch on to what was going on in the days after the Sky People returned to Arkadia from Polis and the City of Light; or rather, in the nights.
Despite the defeat of ALIE, Monty still found it hard to sleep through the night. He had always been a bit of a morning person, but ever since Mt. Weather he had been waking up in the early hours, well before the sun rose over the tree line. Unlike the guards who were also up at three in the morning, Monty didn’t have a job to do or the pressure of keeping watch to distract him. Most mornings, he would just sit by the dying fire near Raven’s gate. It was in the midst of a clump of tents the remaining delinquents had claimed as their own. Now, more than ever, they stuck together and chose to sleep outside of the Ark’s cold frame. It felt more like home somehow. More like their first couple days when things were still exciting and new.
The first time it happened, Monty didn’t think Clarke even noticed him. He watched in silence as she stumbled out of her tent, eyes a little wild, and quickly made her way over to Bellamy’s. She hesitated only a moment before slipping inside. Sitting in the quiet dark, Monty counted the seconds before giving up. It appeared that Clarke had no intention of leaving the tent anytime soon.
Morning after morning, the pattern began to repeat itself. Clarke would climb out of her tent, hands shaking and breath coming a little too fast, and quietly make her way to Bellamy’s. The only things that really changed were how she stopped hesitating before entering his tent and the occasional small, sad smile she shot at Monty. When she first noticed him, the third time he watched her early morning routine, Clarke had come to sit by him and asked him if he wanted to talk. While Monty appreciated the gesture, he didn’t really feel like talking about his mom or Mt. Weather or the feeling of a knife being twisted through your gut when it’s really being stuck in your back. Besides, he knew where she found comfort and it wasn’t from him. Not at this hour.
As the days turned into weeks, the routine sometimes changed and Bellamy would be the one stumbling across the dirt to reach Clarke’s tent. He was always more tentative, Monty noticed, he always was up earlier too, sometimes just as Monty himself was coming out of his tent, and always looked especially haunted.
After four weeks of watching Bellamy and Clarke seek each other out, Monty finally cracked and told Clarke to just bite the bullet while they were eating lunch in the mess hall.
“You might as well just move your stuff into his tent, you know.”
Clarke’s face flushed but she didn’t pretend to be ignorant of his meaning. “I know,” she murmured, refusing to meet his eyes.
That afternoon he watched as Clarke moved her few possessions into Bellamy’s tent, his heart warming a little at the mixture of pride and awe on Bellamy’s face.
Bellamy had some advice of his own for Monty at dinner later that night.
“You and Harper are a thing, right?”
Monty nodded, unable to stop his smile at the thought of Harper’s warm laugh and soft skin.
“Well, in my experience the only way I can sleep, and I mean really sleep not just lie there and pretend to rest, is when I have Clarke with me. Just having another person, especially someone who knows you and what you’ve done, makes it a bit more bearable.”
He could tell Bellamy was a little embarrassed at the implication of comparing his relationship to Harper with Bellamy’s relationship to Clarke. Monty knew his friends hadn’t yet taken that seemingly inevitable step because he was fairly sure if they had he of all people would have noticed it. Bellamy was clearly uncomfortable but his desire to help Monty outweighed all else; a fact that made Monty suddenly very thankful to call the older man his friend. All the times he had watched Bellamy and Clarke trying to cope and worried about them they had been doing the same for him.
“Thanks, I’ll try that.”
Bellamy nodded. “Good.” He paused for a moment, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “I didn’t mean for it to sound, I don’t-”
“Its fine, Bellamy. I get it.”
He watched as Bellamy clenched his jaw, the muscle in it twitching. “Right.”
Monty smiled into his stew as Clarke came over and Bellamy’s focus was instantly drawn to her. Maybe they weren’t so blind to their feelings after all, or at least to the way their weird mutually dependent relationship appeared to others. Maybe Bellamy and Clarke were just too stubborn, not too ignorant. He shook his head before excusing himself to go find Harper.
***
Jasper had been expecting Octavia to leave for a while now. In fact, he was a bit surprised she had for staying as long as she did. Maybe she just wanted to see this final impending doom averted before leaving. Whatever reason she had for staying after ALIE was destroyed was apparently gone after they thwarted the latest nuclear apocalypse from destroying the human race. It hadn’t even been 48 hours before she made it known she was leaving to find Luna again and Jasper had half a mind to join her.
Bellamy, surprisingly, was taking the news fairly well. Jasper figured he had probably known it was a matter of time after everything that happened with Lincoln and Pike; after what Octavia had done to her own brother in a fit of anger. Where Jasper had used his words and alcohol, Octavia had chosen to use her fists and blades; the faint scar on Bellamy’s cheek a reminder of her grief.
The Blakes weren’t the same as they once were, back when the Sky People first touched the Earth. It surprised Jasper a little; how sad that made him.
On the morning of the third day after the final nuclear reactor team had returned to Arkadia with good news, Octavia left. A small group gathered at the gates to wish her well, comprised mostly of the pitiful remains of what had once been the hundred delinquents sent to die. Boy, Jasper thought, had they done their job well.
Bellamy was the last to arrive, closely followed by Clarke who was watching him with worried eyes. Over the past two months, Jasper had noticed how protective she had become of her partner. Not that she hadn’t been protective of Bellamy before, but lately it was different. For one thing, she always made sure she was close when Octavia was nearby. Bellamy seemed to have forgiven Octavia because, well, he’s Bellamy. The rest of those who knew where the scar on his cheek was from chose to pretend it had never happened, it was just easier that way. Clarke, however, did not find it so easy to forgive or forget. She only seemed to find those gifts easy to give to one person in particular.
It was a little sickening, really. How obviously in love Bellamy and Clarke were without even realizing it. Jasper had known for a while; at least known about Bellamy since back when they were at the drop ship and everything was so much simpler, so much more innocent even if it didn’t feel like it at the time.
“Bye Jasper,” Octavia murmured, pulling him into a hug and out of his head.
“I hope you find what you are looking for, Octavia.”
She pulled away from him, her big blue-green eyes that were so different from her brother’s looking up at his face with as much affection as she could muster. “You sure you don’t want to come?”
“Nah,” Jasper shrugged. “They need me too much here.”
They both smiled a little at his sardonic tone like it was a secret just between them. Jasper had always liked Octavia and always wanted to be better friends with her. It was too bad they both had to lose the loves of their lives to find that deeper connection.
Octavia gazed over at her brother who was staring at the ground like it had personally offended him. Clarke’s hand had found his now and she spoke softly as her fingers rubbed over his knuckles. “Take care of him for me?”
Despite it all, the bond between the siblings wasn’t totally torn.
“I’ll do my best, but I don’t think I’m the one to ask,” Jasper replied, looking pointedly at Clarke.
Octavia sighed and pulled him into another quick hug before moving on to Bellamy.
For a moment they stared awkwardly at each other before Bellamy reached out and pulled his sister into him, embracing like he would never see her again. To be fair, Jasper realized, there was a good chance he wouldn’t. The ground wasn’t too compassionate.
When they pulled away, Bellamy and Octavia exchanged some words that were too quiet for Jasper to hear. By the time she had awkwardly hugged Clarke and nodded a final goodbye to her brother, there were tears on both Octavia and Bellamy’s cheeks.
As Octavia faded into the tree line, Jasper watched Bellamy and Clarke out of the corner of his eye. The older man was now openly crying, unable to contain himself, and Clarke quickly pulled his head to her shoulder, wrapping one arm around his back and using the other to brush through his tangled curls. Jasper almost felt like he was encroaching on a private moment just by being on the sidelines. The way Clarke pressed her body against Bellamy’s, the soft tone she used to sooth him, the utter heartbreak in her eyes at simply seeing the man before her fall apart; it all screamed of intimacy and devotion. Jasper felt his throat tighten as he thought of Maya and of how much he wanted to hold her like that again, just one more time.
He turned to return to camp with the others who had gathered to say goodbye, except Bellamy and Clarke of course. They were still wrapped up in each other, offering and receiving the comfort only they could provide to one another.
Yes, Jasper thought to himself, he would take care of Bellamy for Octavia. It wouldn’t be too hard after all, not with Clarke looking at him the way she was now.
***
“Do you want to room together?”
Clarke’s voiced jolted Raven from her concentration. Putting done the wires and spare parts she was tinkering with, Raven turned to face the blonde from where she was seated on her cot.
“What?”
Clarke sat down in the small tent across from Raven, a faint smile playing on her lips. “I asked if you want to room together, you know, for the new cabins. Bellamy and Kane are asking everyone to figure out who they want to live with until next spring when we build more.”
“Oh,” Raven replied, a little puzzled. She knew all about the cabins; the huge construction project was all anyone was talking about. Nearly everyone was involved in it, eager to move out of the temporary tents and into real structures now that they had found a new place to call their own by the sea. It had been Bellamy and Clarke’s idea first, to leave Arkadia and the corpse of the Ark. They suggested it to the council, which basically just consisted of Abby and Kane at this point, a few weeks after they managed to shut down local nuclear reactors. They weren’t able to save the world, but they did save their little portion of it. After the hell of the previous year, everyone in Arkadia was in favor of a new start far away from the demons of their past. They had moved in the early summer and with fall and winter looming in the distance, building new structures was on the top of their to-do list. They figured they could build enough to house people in groups of two or three and finish the rest in the spring once the winter had thawed.
No, the cabins and the need to pair up until the spring didn’t confuse Raven. It was the fact that Clarke was still lacking a partner that made her pause.
“You don’t have anyone yet?” She asked Clarke, a little incredulous.
Clarke blushed and tugged on her short, shoulder length hair. It was a nervous twitch she had developed since she demanded Bellamy cut her hair not long after they arrived at the sea. “No, I don’t. I’ve been putting it off I guess, focusing on other things. Do you have someone already?”
“Yeah actually, Caroline and I agreed to room together.”
“Oh.”
Caroline was a girl from Farm Station Raven had known in passing on the Ark. They had gotten closer since the whole ALIE debacle and the subsequent near nuclear apocalypse. When it came time to choose roommates, it seemed like a good fit. They had similar habits and tended to get along well. It wasn’t that Raven hadn’t immediately thought of Clarke when they were told to choose people to room with, it was just that she had thought Clarke would already be taken. It was like how nobody called shotgun when Bellamy drove the rover and Clarke was coming along. Some things were just silently understood at this point.
“Look, Clarke it isn’t-”
“No, Raven, really its fine. I mean I figured you probably had someone since it’s so late, but I decided to ask anyways. You don’t need to apologize, I’ll figure it out.”
“If you would let me talk, Griffin, I could explain.”
Raven watched Clarke lock her jaw and tried not to roll her eyes. “Its not that I don’t want to room with you,” she held a hand up as Clarke opened her mouth to protest again. “I just assumed you would be rooming with Bellamy so when Caroline asked I said yes.”
Clarke scrunched up her nose. “You thought I would be rooming with Bellamy?”
It took everything in Raven not to scoff at her. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how most mornings you leave his tent instead of your own. Besides, you guys do everything together. With a case of separation anxiety like yours it seemed natural for you to live together.”
“I don’t- It’s not-,” Clarke struggled, her face turning redder by the second. “We aren’t sleeping together. I mean, we do but we don’t… we aren’t having sex.” Raven decided she really should get some sort of award for not laughing at the expression on Clarke’s now beet red face. “We just sleep better when we are together, we both get nightmares and its just… easier I guess.”
Raven felt her face softening as the blonde’s voice cracked over her words and, feeling a bit guilty, reached over and put her hand on Clarke’s. “Its okay, Clarke. I’m not trying to tease you or anything. I get it; he’s your best friend and he knows what you’ve been through. That’s all I meant by it. It just seemed natural that you would room together; not because of sex or anything but just because you are you.”
It was a bit of lie, Raven did think they would room together because they were Bellamy and Clarke and of course Bellamy and Clarke would room together, but it was also a little tiny bit about her thinking they could finally be fucking. Clarke didn’t need to know that though. Raven cared about her enough to allow her to take the time she needed to realize what everyone else was well aware of throughout camp.
“Do you think it would be weird?”
“What? Having sex with Bellamy? I can tell you from experience that in no way would it be-”
“No,” Clarke replied quickly, a strange, almost warning look in her eye that Raven tried to tell herself wasn’t jealousy. “If I asked him to room with me, would it be weird?”
This time Raven couldn’t keep a laugh in, though she felt slightly guilty when Clarke’s face twisted into annoyance. “Sorry, sorry,” she breathed out. “No, it wouldn’t be weird at all, are you kidding? You practically live together already, Clarke. Like I said, you are always together. Knowing Bellamy, he would be thrilled to be able to keep his eye on you 24/7. I can promise you he won’t think its weird.”
Clarke hesitated a moment before asking her next question. “Its not really Bellamy that I’m worried about, its more other people. They won’t think its weird? They won’t misinterpret it?”
“Clarke, half this camp already thinks you two are fucking and the other half has a running bet on when you will start.”
Raven watched as Clarke’s face curled in horrified shock. “Please tell me you are joking.”
“Clarke, screw what other people think, right? Just ask him and move in because there is no way he will say no. If people ask, just explain how much sense it makes. You two are our leaders, no matter what Kane and your mom have to say about it. It makes sense for you to live together, at least until the spring.”
Raven could practically see the gears working in Clarke’s brain, forming excuses and justifications for why she and Bellamy should be living in such close quarters. “Until the spring,” she murmured. Raven had to restrain herself from laughing at that. There was no way in hell either of them would move out in the spring. They would just come up with new explanations.
The next day Bellamy seemed to be smiling more than usual. Raven suspected she knew why but kept her mouth shut. A few weeks later Bellamy and Clarke finished their cabin and gave each the look; the look that was basically their patented, copyrighted definitely not platonic no matter how much they lied to themselves look. Raven just rolled her eyes and tried to keep from smirking as she walked by.
“Idiots,” she murmured fondly.
***
It had been over two weeks since the scouting party left, one week since their expected return date, and the edging sense of dread that had been creeping into Abby’s gut was now fully settled. As the summer storm that had struck on the party’s fourth day away developed into a full fledged hurricane, she hadn’t had much time to dwell on their missing people or how her daughter was coping with it. Now, however, as the sun just started to peak through the clouds and warm the rain-drenched earth, it was all Abby could focus on. Worry was stretched across every feature of Clarke’s face and dark shadows under her eyes made it clear how long her daughter had gone without sleep. Clarke had lobbied her and Marcus hard to send out a rescue group with her leading it of course, but with a hurricane shrieking outside the request had been resolutely denied. As a result, Clarke had spent the week in medical with Abby trying to keep as busy as possible, her anxiety palpable. Abby was fairly certain Clarke was even sleeping on the spare examining tables, if she slept at all that was; going back to the cabin she shared with Bellamy was too painful.
When Marcus brought her lunch on his break from training the guard, he brought some food for Clarke as well, though all three of them knew she wouldn’t touch it. He shot Abby a worried glance across the table that functioned as her desk at the back of the medical structure.
“How is she?”
Abby looked beyond his shoulder to where Clarke was reorganizing their jars of herbs and local medicines. It was the third time she had done so that week.
“She won’t eat, she won’t sleep, and she barely even speaks to anyone. Marcus, I don’t know what she is going to do if he doesn’t come back.” She heard her voice crack and hastily brushed a tear away from her eye.
Marcus reached across the wooden table and grasped her hand. “He will.”
“But what if he doesn’t? They are a week late, and with the storm-”
“If he doesn’t we’ll get through it. We’ll help her through it.”
His words were hollow and they both knew it. If Bellamy Blake didn’t return with his scouting party, Clarke would be lost as well.
Marcus snuck a glance back at Clarke before turning to Abby once more. “Are they,” he paused, trying to find the right words. “Are she and Bellamy finally together, do you know?”
Abby shook her head. “I have no idea, but knowing them and their stubbornness, I doubt it.”
Across from her, Marcus smiled tightly. It was their settlement’s worst kept secret that Bellamy and Clarke were in love with each other, even if they couldn’t see it. There was even a pool on how and when they would finally end up together. For most, it was almost a running joke. But as Clarke’s mother and the wife of Marcus, who saw Bellamy as the son he never had, it was a more serious matter for Abby. She knew Marcus felt the same way. They both just wanted the two to be happy. After all they had sacrificed, all the innocence they had lost in the years since they came to the ground, they deserved to be happy.
But now it looked like Bellamy was either lost or dead and Abby’s heart broke as she watched her daughter silently fall apart.
Marcus squeezed her hand drawing her attention back to him and out of her thoughts. “We just need to have faith, Abby. He’ll be back.”
She nodded, squeezing his hand back, before rising to try and coax Clarke into eating.
Two days later, just before the sun rose, the weary scouting party hobbled back into camp just as Abby was making her way to work. Francis was on a crudely made stretcher, carried by Nathan Miller and, thanks be to whatever god there may be, Bellamy Blake. As the gate guards blew on their horns to alert the camp to the sorely missed returnees, Abby took a moment to scan over Bellamy’s form, noting the bruises and scratches on his tired face, the way he held his shoulder a little funny, how he seemed to depend more on one leg than the other. She wasn’t exactly sure when she had come to care about Bellamy’s wellbeing so much, but he was essentially family now, whether or not he and Clarke were willing to admit it.
At the thought of her daughter, Abby spun around to search for the familiar head of blonde hair. Out of the corner of her eye she could swear she saw Bellamy doing the same. Sure enough, moments after the horn was blown, Clarke appeared all but sprinting to the front gate. Abby felt Marcus come to stand beside her, but kept her focus on her daughter, watching the way her face melted from worry to shock to relief as her eyes locked with Bellamy. The crowd that had gathered parted, knowingly, as Clarke and Bellamy met each other halfway in a tight embrace. Suddenly Abby had the urge to cry and grasped Marcus’s hand as she watched Bellamy bury his face in her daughter’s neck, a dirty, bloodied hand grasping desperately at her waist as another tangled in her hair.
Other people had now moved on to greet their family members and friends but Abby didn’t budge. Holding her breath, she watched Bellamy and Clarke slowly move away from each other, but not very far. Their cheeks brushed as they pulled away slightly and suddenly Abby couldn’t breathe, her hand clenching Marcus’s, when they tilted their heads and moved as if to kiss. Just before their lips met, they paused, sighed, and backed away ever so slightly. She heard Marcus huff in disappointment next to her.
Keeping her daughter close, Bellamy cupped Clarke’s cheeks and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. When he pulled away after a long moment, Clarke turned her head to softly kiss one of the hands holding her jaw. They stared at each other for long second, tears evident on both their weary faces, before finally stepping away.
Abby felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief in her gut as she watched Clarke move to greet Miller and the others. Marcus stepped away from her to greet Bellamy and Abby forced herself back into her doctor’s mindset, moving towards Francis’s prostrate body.
That night she and Marcus watched Bellamy and Clarke eating dinner on the steps of their cabin, leaning into each other despite the warmth of the summer night.
“They’ll figure it out,” Marcus murmured behind her. “Give them some time.”
“I was so sure she was going to kiss him today.”
“Yeah, from what I hear Thomas Nelson was especially disappointed they didn’t, he had his favorite fur cloak bet on it.”
Abby shot him a look as he smiled down at her, a little mischievous.
“I just want them to be happy; to finally be at peace.”
Marcus pulled her back into his chest, pressing a kiss into her hair. “They are happy, look at them.” Clarke was smiling up at Bellamy as he spoke to her quietly, gesticulating now and then causing a small laugh to bubble in Clarke, the pleasant sound reaching Abby’s ears despite the distance between them. “Just because they haven’t admitted it to each other doesn’t mean they don’t know,” Marcus continued. “And even if they never figure it out, they’ll always have each other in one way or another.”
“Until another hunting or scouting trip goes awry.”
“Or the world ends again or some grounder clan decides they don’t like us that much after all.”
Abby smiles at his poor attempt at a joke and casts her eyes over her daughter and the man she has come to consider a son before turning and leading Marcus back into their own cabin.
***
In the end, when Bellamy and Clarke finally kissed, it wasn’t really at all how Miller thought it would be, not that he cared or had thought about it because he really hadn’t. Really.
It wasn’t in the middle of a fight, desperate and angry and unable to restrain their emotions.
It wasn’t out of desperation as they watched the other one leave on a suicide mission.
It wasn’t in relief after one returned from a suicide mission against all odds, though they had been close a few times now.
It wasn’t even when they were drunk off Monty’s moonshine and could no longer hold in the feelings everyone else saw plain as day.
Instead, it was in the dead of winter, their third on the ground and their second in their new settlement by the sea. It was a cold night but also the winter solstice and some neighboring clans they traded with had come to celebrate and renew their peace and trade treaties. Almost everyone was drunk and dancing or singing or laughing around the huge bonfire in the middle of the settlement, even Jasper was whistling along to the grounder song, which was familiar after a couple years on the ground. Miller was sitting a bit farther back, his arm around Bryan who rambled on about his plans for a new chicken coop, but Miller wasn’t paying much attention. His eyes were fixed on Bellamy and Clarke where they leaned against the grain house across the fire. They smiled at each other, talking and joking, and the ease and peace on their faces was refreshing after years of watching them carry the world on their shoulders.
He supposed he should have been surprised when Clarke suddenly pushed up and pressed her lips against Bellamy’s; after all Bellamy was certainly surprised as evidenced by the way he almost comically froze, eyes blown wide. But really, Miller wasn’t all that shocked. This thing between them had been building since they were back at the drop ship, bickering over the best way to take care of ninety-something kids. He nudged Bryan to look as Clarke pulled away. His husband sucked in a breath, as if worried Bellamy was rejecting her after all this time, but Miller knew his best friend well enough and had had enough drunken conversations about Clarke with him to know that wasn’t the case.
Sure enough, before Clarke could get very far, Bellamy clutched at her waist, her hair, her cheeks desperately, kissing her like she was air and he’d been drowning for years. In a way, Miller figured, he had been. Clarke responded just as furiously, pulling him closer to her by the lapels of his jacket. Feeling his face heat up in embarrassment, Miller looked away and kissed Bryan’s cheek, allowing his friends the privacy they deserved.
“We lost the bet. I put one of our chickens in for them finally figuring their shit out this spring after a boating accident.”
“That specific?” Miller chuckled and affectionately pulled Bryan closer.
“Go hard or go home right?”
“Well, I won’t tell if you won’t. I’m pretty sure we are the only one’s who caught that.”
“You don’t want to be the one to finally tell everyone those two idiots figured it out? You’d be a celebrity.”
“Nah, I’ll let them tell people when they are ready. After all, you are pretty attached to those chickens and I’d hate to see you upset.”
It surprises Bryan that Bellamy and Clarke manage to keep their relationship secret until spring. It surprises him even more that the first time they kiss in public, revealing what he and Nathan already knew, is after a very suspicious boating accident. None of this, however, surprises Miller who had a nice long talk with Bellamy the morning after the winter solstice.