Chapter Text
It’s quiet.
They’d crashed to Earth in the late summer, peak insect season. The constant machine hum of the Ark had been replaced by the buzz of mosquitos and the whirr of cicadas. Now it’s winter, the season of death and death-like sleep, and the only sound inside the dark tent he’s sharing with Clarke is their breathing.
Next to him in the makeshift bed, she exhales heavily through her nose. Her legs shift under the blankets, then her head on her pillow. She’s agitated.
“It’s not a big deal,” he breathes, breaking the silence. “We’re never going to see these people again.” She huffs back at him. Murphy and Emori are in the tent to their left; Brian and Miller to their right. The Doah clan is still doing rounds, passing by their row of tents every twenty minutes or so. Only Roan – a fellow grounder, even if he is Azgeda – has been gifted with a bed under a solid roof, and he’d not seemed particularly eager to push for guest rights for Skaikru, too.
Mindful of their neighbors, Clarke’s reply is quiet. “Do you really feel that way?”
“What way?”
“That – that I’m more important than you?”
Bellamy closes his eyes and sighs. This is what he gets for trying to make light of what they’d done, make seem less…serious. The Tomac chief, striving for polite conversation, had asked Bellamy how Skaikru merged families. Bellamy had replied that, normally, the women took the names of their husbands, but I guess I should take Clarke’s name, since she’s Wanheda and all. “It’s not about what I think. It’s about what’s true.”
“It’s not true, you’ve done so much—“
“It’s not about you and me,” he interrupts. His voice is hushed but insistent. “It’s about other people. You’re Abby’s kid. And the grounders – you’ll always be Wanheda. It’s why we had to do this—“ he gestures at their shared tent “--in the first place.”
She turns on her side. “You know I don’t feel like that, right?”
He glances over. The ambient light in the tent shimmers in the whites of her eyes. “That I should take your name?” It’s a light joke, and she swats his shoulder for it.
“No, Bellamy,” she chides, amusement curling at the edges of her voice. “That I’m more powerful than you, or whatever. You and me—we’re partners. We’re equals.”
“I know. After all, even if you are Wanheda, it’s not like you forced me to marry you.”
Nathan speaks up from the other side of the tentcloth. “Oh my god. If you’re going to fuck, skip the foreplay, alright? Some of us are trying to sleep.”
“Kinda hard for them to swivv in their separate twin beds, doncha think?” Murphy chimes in.
“Who would sleep separately in this weather?” Clarke mutters under her breath. “What a waste of body heat.” Still, she turns back to her other side, grumpy and embarrassed under their pile of blankets.
Bellamy taps her socked heel with his toes. “Night, Clarke.”
**
It happens like this:
The Grounders are so used to violence and death and scrabbling for life among the dark that they don’t care too much about the future arrival of nuclear fallout. What they do care about, even among all of this, is power and the perception of power.
Overnight, Clarke turns into the most eligible bachelorette in the area.
Sons and daughters from any moderately-powerful tribe chief begin arriving at Arkadia, demanding an audience with Wanheda to present their offers of marriage. The problem is that they also refuse to leave until she grants an audience. When Clarke is at Arkadia, she has to waste precious time going through the formalities of declining one marriage proposal after another when she could be studying maps and learning about nuclear infrastructure. And when Clarke is away from Arkadia, the grounders wait until she gets back.
It’s out of control and the most ridiculous inconvenience.
So, she asks Bellamy to marry her. And he agrees with a half-shrug and keeps his word, even when she realizes that they would have to be married for real, a ceremony and all, because the grounders really don’t respond well to being tricked. They even scrounge up a nice jacket for Bellamy for the day of. On their wedding day, Abby only frowns a little, Bellamy delivers his vows with convincing confidence, and Clarke doesn’t once mention Octavia.
Not even to tell Bellamy that she wished she were there.
**
They’d come to stay with the Doah clan to visit the old university campus in their territory. Roan set it all up through his diplomatic channels, and for once, Bellamy is able to choke down his dislike for the man. The last few times Bellamy’d gotten his own way into a grounder-occupied area, it had been at gunpoint. Bellamy doesn’t want to do that anymore. It’s not just the exhaustion and annoyance of it; he’s tired of the glares and the spite. Now Roan is the one who bears all of the suspicion and dislike for aiding and abetting skaikru’s mission. Bellamy is fine with that.
Their days are spent in dusty rooms filled with books and scraps of paper. Raven and Monty are the brains of this part of the operation. They speak to each other in half-sentences and grunts while they pore over schematics and textbooks and take notes. Clarke follows along well enough, having grown up with Jake Griffin bringing his work home. Emori decodes the catalog system for them—thanks to her days as a scavenger on other campuses—and she and Murphy satisfy their share of the burden by tracking down the various alphanumerically coded tomes needed. The rest of them, Bellamy included, serve as note-jotters and second-readers and searchers-out of the this might be interesting? parts of books and maps.
Bellamy hates it. The numbers make his head hurt, the tiny text swims across his eyes, and he has weird dreams about splitting atoms with the axe he’d carried at the dropship. The strangeness of his dreams are compounded by waking up next to Clarke, all mussed blonde curls and snores and drool and nothing at all like the composed girl he sits next to all day long.
They’ve been married a little while now, maybe a week. He’s finally getting used to the little twitches she makes when she finally drifts to sleep and taking a knee to the kidney now and then. Once, he’s wakes up with his forearm settled in the curve of her waist and her hair crinkling under his cheek. Another morning, he awakens with nothing but with pins and needles in his arm and the sliver of a memory of scratchy wool socks between his ankles.
The Doah tribe feasts them on their last night. There’s venison and dried fruit, mulled wine and bubbly cider, and a sweet bread that melts on their tongues. The tribespeople are in a good mood, too. Not only is skaikru leaving in the morning, but skaikru had also been helpful during their stay. Clarke had played traveling doctor when asked and the guys had helped raise a barn the evening before. Bellamy likes to think that the Doah tribe doesn’t see their visit as all bad.
The tables are moved away after dinner and floor cushions are brought in for the after-dinner socializing. A traveling bard sets up near the hearth with his guitar and starts half-singing a version of Beowulf. Emori is fascinated by it, and Murphy begrudgingly joins her. He had to read it on the Ark, they all did, but he doesn’t say that out loud.
After a goblet of wine and another round of tiny bits of food served on large platters, Raven points up at something over the hearth. “What’s that?” she asks the chief, her accent rough. It’s a sprig of leaves with white berries. Something stirs in Bellamy’s mind, but it doesn’t coalesce into a full thought.
“You do not have this?” the chief grins. “It is mistletoe. Couples are meant to kiss under it, for good luck.”
“Oh!” Clarke perks up. “Like in the old movies!”
She looks over at Bellamy. He shrugs. “We didn’t have a movie screen.” She blinks at him and he feels bad right away. It’s sometimes hard for her to remember that not everyone had a multi-room suite in Alpha Station. It’s not her fault, of course. She grew up with it, so she thinks it’s normal. He gives her a small smile. “I’m sure you’re right, though.”
The chief gestures towards the fireplace. “Go, go! You are newlyweds, right?”
“Yeah, go get your good luck, kids,” Raven adds, her eyes dancing with mirth.
Clarke shakes her head. Her cheeks start to pinken. “Oh, no, that’s—it’s not necessary.”
Miller asks, lips curving, if Bellamy and Clarke suddenly have an excess of luck. “I don’t know,” Bellamy replies, “do you and Brian?”
But Miller is ready for this. He swats Brian’s arm and leads him to the mistletoe, where he cups the other boy’s cheeks and presses a kiss to his mouth. Brian is smiling, too, and he chases Miller’s mouth for one more peck.
A girl has dragged a red-faced boy to the hearth. She shoos the skaikru couple away, and then waits for the boy to shuffle closer and lean in for a quick kiss. “It’s just tradition,” the chief assures Clarke with a smile.
Bellamy glances at his wife from the corner of his eye. Clarke’s mouth has started to thin out into that line that he knows so well. She’s made a decision, and he just has to wait for her to tell him what it is.
He doesn’t have to wait long. When the conversation turns to something else, taking the attention off of the two of them, Clarke leans over. “C’mon,” she mutters. “Let’s just go do it quick.”
“If you don’t want to kiss me, just say so,” he teases, letting her push at his back while he steps carefully out of their circle of pillows and goblets. Harper calls out for Clarke to lay it on Bellamy, and Clarke huffs and pushes at Bellamy again. “I’m going as fast as I can!”
She looks like she’s going to battle by the time they’re facing each other under the mistletoe. The fire crackles beside them and makes Clarke’s hair go all orangey-red. “Just like the wedding,” she instructs him, practically whispering. “Short and sweet.”
Bellamy urges her closer with fingers soft on her elbows. “I know how to kiss in public, thanks. Smile, Clarke. We’re happy, remember?” The smile she gives him is dry and amused. His own smile shifts into a shape that feels more subdued, more natural. Her brow smooths, and then he’s closing his eyes and leaning in.
She smells like the soap they’d been given for their stay. Fresh, clean, new. Like their kiss at their wedding, her mouth is puckered for him and then goes soft under the pressure of his own. He curls his hands to fit her elbows in his palms, gives them a squeeze. He means to be fast, but she bends her arms and sets her hands on his sides and -- shit -- he opens his mouth and licks at her lips before he catches himself. He feels the sharp inhale she takes as much as he hears it, but she doesn’t jerk away.
“Sorry,” he breathes when he pulls back. Her hands still press into the weave of his sweater.
She shakes her head. Her throat bobs with a swallow and her tongue flickers out to lick her lips. “It’s fine.” Her eyes drop to his mouth, jump back up to his eyes. “It’s—don’t worry about it.”
She takes his hand to tug him back to the group.
That night, Bellamy dreams of hands all over.