Hey! First time writing for this fandom, so don't kill me please!
Disclaimer: I don't own The 100 or the characters mentioned in this fanfiction.
There's a fifteen year old girl lying on the operating table in front of her, letting out stuttering gasps of breath as blood pours from the arrow wound in her chest.
Clarke curses under her breath as she pours more moonshine on the wound, feeling a pang in her chest as the girl- Mary, a part of her mind remembers- cries out in obvious pain. She wishes that she could have been unconscious for this, been unaware of the agony her body was in, but she knows that if the girl falls asleep, chances are she won't wake up.
She pours some more moonshine, tuning out the screams the poor girl lets out. The arrow pierced Mary's spleen, and she needs to sew it up soon, but there's blood, so much blood, running off her fingers and coating her already filthy shirt. Thankfully, the arrow's not poisonous- they reached a cautious peace with the few remaining Grounders after escaping from the Mountain Men- but simply part of an old trap no one knew about. That is, until Mary triggered it and ended up in this state, bleeding profusely on the table.
At the front of the table stands Jasper and Bellamy, both of them gripping Mary's arms tightly so that she won't fidget while Clarke is stitching her up. She nods at them firmly, stating that she's ready, and she can see both boys tighten their hold as she delves in and begins stitching. It's a long, arduous task, but Clarke works as quickly as she can, trying to quench the blood flow with lines of thin, neat stitches. Mary screams almost the entire time, and a part of Clarke registers that this is good, that she's not unconscious, but still, she knows that one wrong move can lead to another grave being dug outside of camp.
Finally, finally, after what feels like hours, the wound is closed and Mary finally falls asleep. Clarke rubs her eyes, exhausted, as Jasper excuses himself to wipe the excess blood off her hands, leaving her and Bellamy alone.
He looks at her, concerned, taking in the blood that covers her entire torso- still fresh, none of it hers. "You really should change," He tells her, moving around the operating table until they're standing less than a foot apart.
Clarke sighs irritably. "I can't. I have to monitor her vital signs until morning, and even then, I have to make sure that the wound is stitched properly and she still has adequate…" She trails off as Bellamy grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it off in one fluid motion. "What are you doing?"
He smirks at her, and her heartbeat involuntarily speeds up at the sight of his bare chest, toned and muscular. "What does it look like I'm doing, Princess?" He tosses her the shirt. "Put it on."
She lets it fall to the ground beside her, making no move to get it. "Why?"
He leans closer to her, heat radiating off his bare torso. "Because you're covered in blood and it looks like you're going to be here for a while. Put. It. On."
Clarke glares at the shirt, as if it was the cause of all of this, before finally relenting. He's right- her shirt's stained all down the front, sticky and uncomfortable. "Fine. Let me clean up a bit first."
Bellamy nods, taking his cue to leave as he exits the room, whistling under his breath. When he's gone, Clarke washes her bloodstained hands and arms quickly, before sliding into his shirt. It's too big on her, the shoulders too wide and the material too long. But it's soft, and warm, and it smells like him- like the forest and gunpowder and mint leaves all mixed into one- so she finds herself snuggling into it further, gripping the material tightly with her hands.
And, despite the fact that there's an injured girl less than two feet away, she finds herself beginning to smile.
o-o-o
Clarke begins sleeping in his shirt.
She knows she should probably return it at some point, but she can't bring herself to.
It's just long enough to brush the middle of her thighs and make an acceptable nightdress, worn down enough so that the material's soft, and light enough that she can wear it in the sweltering summer heat.
It has nothing to do with the fact that if you burrow deep into it enough, it still smells like him.
Nothing at all.
o-o-o
She overslept.
Granted, she's not the type to normally oversleep- most of the days she's up with the sun, eating breakfast before anyone else has straggled out of their tents and waking most of the camp up once she's done- but she was in their makeshift medbay last night until 4am, trying to save yet another person, so sue her if she sleeps in a little.
The sun's already high in the sky by the time Octavia (who returned a couple weeks ago with Lincoln in tow) and Raven come bursting into her little house, which was made shortly after the whole Mountain Men debacle in hopes of setting up a permanent society, to wake her up. She rubs her eyes blearily as she sits up in bed, grumbling at them as she pulls the covers off and makes her way over to the tray of food they brought.
"Clarke," Octavia's voice sounds strange, but Clarke's turned away from her and can't quite pinpoint why. "Are you wearing my brother's shirt?"
Her head whips back around to find Raven staring at her quizzically and Octavia looking positively giddy. It's only then does she realize that she's slept in Bellamy's shirt yet again, and her cheeks flame as she pulls the material closer towards her. "Um, no." She lies, trying to keep her voice even.
"It is my brother's shirt!" Octavia seems to take her denial as a blatant yes, and she moves closer to examine a patched rip on the left sleeve, the only blemish in the entire shirt and a place Clarke finds herself unconsciously touching before she drifts off to sleep. "I sewed that hole up for him after he snagged it on a tree!" She looks like the cat that just ate the canary, as her Dad used to say.
"So now, the only question is," Raven pipes up, from where she's sprawled herself on Clarke's bed. "Why are you sleeping in Bellamy's shirt?"
The hidden meaning in her words is clear, and Clarke finds herself blushing even more as she realizes what this must look like. "It's nothing like what you think," She assures them, tugging at the neckline of the shirt self-consciously. "Mine was covered in blood from when I saved Mary and he offered me his. There's nothing more to it than that."
"Clarke, Mary got the arrow in her chest almost two weeks ago," Raven's grinning now, too. "Why haven't you returned his shirt yet?"
"Because… because…" Clarke is desperately trying to come up with an excuse, to no avail. "Just don't mention any of this to anyone." She finally blurts out, scenarios racing through her mind of what could happen if this particular piece of information got out. "Please."
"I won't," Octavia promises, and Raven nods her head in agreement. Clarke sighs, satisfied, and turns to go and get dressed when a voice calls her back.
"He likes you too, you know!" Octavia shouts out, and she can hear her and Raven laughing as she exits.
In the back of her mind, a voice is asking her when she became so damn transparent.
o-o-o
Clarke continues to sleep in his shirt.
It's beginning to smell less and less like him, and eventually it needs a wash, so she douses it in cold water and hopes that the scent still stays.
It doesn't.
She still wears it anyways, because it's nice and comfortable and she's used to sleeping in it. Not at all because she likes having something of his, a little piece of Bellamy that barely anyone else knows about.
Not at all.
o-o-o
Jasper comes running into her cabin one night, panting hard and knocking over several items in his haste to wake her up. Immediately, she knows something's wrong, and the second he manages to choke out the word "Bellamy", she's off and racing towards the medbay, not even caring about how little clothes she's wearing.
He's lying on the table, breathing shallow and eyes fluttering closed, as she enters the room, Jasper on her heels. Octavia's already in there, and so are Raven and Monty and even Finn, to her surprise. His shirt is ripped in half, a long slash running diagonally across his torso. "What happened?" She demands, surprised by how cool her voice seems.
"Patrol," Monty explains, gesturing to the gun on his back. "There was another one of those panther-type things that decided to get a little too close to camp, and before we could shoot it attacked." He looks scared, they all do.
Clarke breathes out hard, surveying the boy- well, he looks like a boy anyways, relaxed and vulnerable- in front of her. He's lost a lot of blood, judging by the pallor of his skin, but thankfully the gash doesn't seem too deep, just long and wide. "Alright. Raven, can you get me one the needle and thread? Jasper and Monty, get moonshine, and a lot of it. Finn, if you could hold him down in case he wakes up, please." Clarke doesn't assign anything to Octavia- the poor girl looks like she's about ready to pass out. Her heart beats erratically, but she can't panic. She's the doctor, and Bellamy is her patient. She can't get caught up with emotions at a time like this.
After the supplies are collected and handed to her, she threads the needle on steady hands, covers the wound in moonshine, and dives in. It's a big wound, and jagged too, making it hard to sew. Octavia offers to take over after a little while, but her voice is trembling as she says it so Clarke shakes her head no and gets back to work. Everything's bloody by the end of it- the table, her hands, her shirt- and she's brought back to that night with Mary, only this wound is so much bigger, so much harder to sew up.
Eventually, she knots the end of the thread and promptly proceeds to collapse in the closest chair. Bellamy's breathing is more steady now, some of the colour returning to his face, yet he's still not woken up. There's nothing more to be done, so with a sigh she thanks everyone and sends them back to bed, except for Octavia, who sits opposite to Clarke, both of them gripping one of Bellamy's hands.
When he finally wakes up, in the wee hours of morning, she sits back and lets Octavia hug him first, blabber on about what happened. She waits until the other girl has left to go and inform the others before turning to face the boy lying on the operating table, smirking at her softly. Her hand's still clasped firmly with his, fingers intertwined, and he rubs little circles on the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb.
When Bellamy finally speaks, his voice is tinged with humour. "Are you wearing my shirt, Princess?"
She bites her lip, cursing inwardly. Of course that's the first thing he noticed. "Maybe."
Bellamy grins, trying to prop himself up on the table and failing. "Well, it looks better on you than it ever did on me, even bloodstained."
Clarke's heart does a little stutter at that. "It's kind of destroyed now, sorry. I was going to give it back eventually…" She's always been a terrible liar, and she can tell by the look on his face that he knows it, so she trails off.
He smirks at her, pulling her closer until her head's resting on his upper arm, his warm breath ghosting over her face as he speaks. "Guess I'm just gonna have to give you another one, then."
When he's finally able to walk around again, she returns back to her home only to find a shirt outside the front doorstop, folded neatly and smelling just like him.
o-o-o
The shirts keep coming, none of them the same, all of them soft to the touch and smelling like the woods and gunpowder and mint leaves.
She wears them because they're clean, because they're soft and comfortable, even though it's getting colder and she has to keep piling on fur blankets to keep her warm at night. She knows it's irrational, that she should start dressing in clothes more appropriate to the weather, but she likes this, likes falling asleep with his smell surrounding her.
One day, there isn't a shirt waiting outside her door.
And that's when she knows it's time.
o-o-o
The next day, she wakes up, throws on her normal jeans, before turning towards the pile of Bellamy's shirts and pulling one of them on before stepping out into the daylight.
She's woken up a bit late again today, meaning that most of the camp is already awake, eating breakfast by the fire or inside their little mess hall, which is really nothing more than four wood walls and a tarp roof. Clarke can hear the whispers start as she begins to walk past, the neckline of the shirt almost slipping off her shoulder and the soft fabric swishing against her sides.
She enters the mess hall, falling into step with Raven, who mumbles a sleepy greeting before snapping her head back around to do a double take at Clarke's attire. "What are you wearing?" She hisses, as the two of them grab bowls of berries.
Clarke simply shrugs as if it's no big deal, although inside her mind is going a mile a minute. There are so many ways this plan could go awry, so many ways that this could backfire, and she breathes in the familiar scent surrounding the shirt to calm herself before following Raven over to where they normally sit. Octavia is grinning at them, obviously noticing her choice in shirts, before turning to nudge Jasper and Monty, who almost choke on their berries when they see her. A small part in the back of Clarke's mind is wondering why everyone seems to automatically assume it's Bellamy's shirt she's wearing, although they wouldn't be wrong. Is it really that obvious?
And then Bellamy looks up.
Her cheeks flush as his eyes roam over her petite frame, dwarfed in her shirt. She suddenly feels awkward and lost, like a little kid playing dress up, as he takes her in, his face unreadable. A small part of her registers that most of the activity in the room has stopped, watching their exchange, but she can't bring herself to care.
Bellamy stands up, making his way over to wear she stands, and she looks down, not sure of what he's doing. It's only when he places two fingers under her chin, tilting her head up, that she finally makes eye contact.
He smirks at her, that goddamn smirk that was one of the reasons she fell for him in the first place. "Took you long enough, Princess."
And then somehow they're kissing, his hands bunched in the back of her shirt and her arms around his neck. They're kissing, and she knows everyone's watching them, she can hear people handing over rations and berries for bets they've lost, and somewhere in the background she can hear her friends cheering, but that's all white noise for her right now. Because Bellamy's there, and his hand is slipping up past her shirt, and she's raking her fingers through his hair and nothing else matters at the moment.
When they finally pull away, panting and lips bright red, to the sound of catcalls and cheering, Clarke blushes and burrows her face into his chest. "Does that mean I'm allowed to wear your shirts during the day now?" She asks, her voice muffled by the fabric.
He kisses her again in response.
I can't write endings, as you can probably tell.
Reviews are greatly appreciated and loved!
Thanks for reading,
-Jace ;)