When Bellamy tracks Clarke down, she's looking as frustrated as he's feeling.
"Are they acting weird with you?" Clarke demands the moment she sees him. "Because they're sure as hell acting weird with me."
"If by 'they' you mean the rest of the delinquents, then yes, Clarke, they're acting weird as hell," Bellamy replied.
"I just tried to call Jasper over to help dry apples," Clarke says, gesturing at the fruit they'd traded the Trikru for, now sliced in rings and hanging on one of the clothing lines. "There are more than just Fox and Glass can handle if we want to get them done today. But when he saw me he just ran away! And when I asked Octavia she said something to me in Trigedasleng that I'm pretty sure is very rude."
"I tried to get Monroe to agree to a hunting expedition tomorrow," Bellamy offers, "but she just yelled something about female problems and said she'd talk to me later."
Clarke looks baffled. "What? It's not even the time of the month for her––" she stops talking when she notices his face. Bellamy's not a stranger to the workings of the female body––he grew up in a tiny box with two women, after all––but he has absolutely no desire to be as intimately acquainted with Monroe's cycle as Clarke has just made happen.
"Sorry," Clarke says. "The things a healer knows, you know?"
"Unfortunately," Bellamy replies. Clarke rolls her eyes at him, and he wishes she wouldn't because, honestly, it's cute and kind of distracting when they really need to figure out what's got the kids acting like a bunch of lunatics.
"Nothing seems to be wrong," Bellamy says. Even just standing there with Clarke, he notices furtive glances taking place between his people. But no one seems frightened, and they're all continuing with their duties (mostly).
"Let's just keep an eye on things?" Clarke suggests.
Bellamy nods and she turns to leave. He stops her with a hand on her wrist.
"Hey," he says. She looks at him expectantly. He dips his head down (really, sometimes he forgets how tiny Clarke actually is) and presses a kiss to her lips. He can feel her smile into the kiss. When they separate, she's still smiling up at him.
"Hey," she replies.
Now that all the important business has been attended to, in Bellamy's opinion, they agree to speak again at lunch and part ways.
In between the time they separate and the time they normally eat together, Bellamy's seen Monty duck behind water barrels at the sight of him. Harper claims to be busy with a patient and darts inside when he passes by the medbay, nevermind the fact that Bellamy didn't ask.
When he asks Raven and Wick about how the efforts to mechanize the front gate are going, Raven mutters something about him never being satisfied and Wick tells him they need more parts.
More parts? Bellamy wonders. Engineering is full of spare part upon spare part––when Bellamy asks him what, exactly, they need, Wick makes vague noises about special wire and Raven mumbles about batteries. Bellamy's no engineer, so he can't be certain, but he's fairly sure the last time Raven needed a battery to make something work was, uh, never.
Bellamy drops onto the seat next to Clarke and deposits a fresh apple onto her plate.
Clarke groans but brushes a kiss to his jaw.
"I'm sick to death of apples," she complains. "Since I couldn't get Jasper to help, I was slicing and hanging apples to dry all morning."
Bellamy knows he should feel some sort of sympathy for her, but right now Clarke smells overwhelmingly of the bright, fresh scent of apples and he can't help but press his nose into her neck to breathe her in.
"Bellamy!" Clarke squeaks and he smiles against her skin. She's dropped her plate into her lap and is pushing at his shoulders, trying to dislodge him. "Bellamy, stop acting like an idiot; that tickles."
Instead of responding, he presses an open-mouthed kiss to the curve of her neck and she stills immediately. He can feel the barely perceptible shiver go through her body. Unfortunately, he makes the mistake of laughing this time, and Clarke shoves him hard enough that he topples off his seat and lands flat on his back in the dirt.
He stays down while he tries to catch his breath in between wheezing chuckles.
Clarke is glaring down at him, arms crossed, but he sees the way she's struggling to keep the smile of her lips, and damn if it doesn't make him want to kiss her even more.
"Quit screwing around and eat your food," she tells him.
"Sure thing, princess," he replies, finally pulling himself upright again and dusting off his clothes.
They both tuck into their meals seriously this time, and Bellamy's halfway through his bowl of stew when a loud screeching noise causes everyone in the vicinity to cringe and yelp.
"What the hell?" Bellamy asks.
"Sorry!" Monty's voice is amplified and tinny. Bellamy notices Clarke's narrowed eyes and follows her gaze to Raven. The mechanic is busy shrugging and grinning at Clarke while she directs Monty's use of a patched together PA system––Bellamy's never seen it before, and it becomes clear exactly why the gate hasn't been mechanized yet.
Monty clears his throat. "Hey, everybody."
A loud chorus greets him in return, and Bellamy's surprised to realize that nearly everyone from the entire camp is gathered around them. Everybody else seems completely at ease with what's going on. He looks at Clarke's equally puzzled expression and sighs at the feeling he's getting in his gut. Shit.
"As many of you have been informed, today marks a year since the first dropship came to the ground," Monty says, and the entire camp cheers, screaming and catcalling and foot-stomping included.
Clarke turns to him, wide-eyed. "A year?" she mouths at him while the rest of their people keep yelling. Bellamy's shocked too; logically, of course, he realizes that they're well into autumn, winter starting to approach, but a whole year? That day the first one hundred came to the ground seems both so long ago and just like last week.
"We've lost a lot of people," Monty continues, and the cheering is replaced with solemnity. Clarke's hand finds Bellamy's and squeezes. He knows without looking that her face is a mirror his––guilt, anger, sorrow. Resignation.
"And we remember them, today and every day." Monty's a little choked up, and Bellamy swallows convulsively, but if he blinks a lot it's because he's got some dust in his eyes, alright? Out of the corner of his eye he notices Clarke surreptitiously wiping at her face with her free hand, and he shifts until he's got an arm wrapped around her. She leans into him and he can feel the shuddering breath she releases.
"But, um, while we remember them, the loss of our friends and our family should remind us of one important thing––that we need to live, and live life well."
Now Jasper relieves Monty of the microphone. "And on that note, fellow Sky People, let's celebrate!"
They watch as Raven hands off controls of the PA system to Wick, and immediately music fills the camp.
"What the…" Bellamy mutters under his breath.
"Why didn't we know about any of this?" Clarke asks. Monty and Jasper have shifted duties––one of the reserved kegs of moonshine has apparently been opened for the (unauthorized) occasion, and delinquents and Arkers alike are lining up for a drink. A feast's worth of food is being toted out of the cookhouse and set out on makeshift tables.
"Miller," Bellamy barks. The other man isn't far away, and he visibly sighs before he trudges over to Clarke and Bellamy. They stand up to meet his approach.
"Hey guys," he says unenthusiastically.
"Miller," Clarke growls, "what the hell is going on here?"
"A party," he replies.
"Miller," Bellamy says.
"It's a party, Bellamy; everyone––and I mean everyone––thought we should mark the occasion."
"Alright," Clarke says. "Then why weren't either of us told? We seem to be the only ones out of the loop."
Miller shrugs. "A couple reasons, I guess. One being that you two run basically everything around here, and we didn't see the point in forcing you to oversee the preparations of something relatively pointless in the scheme of things. And..."
"And?" Bellamy prompts when Miller pauses.
"And," Miller sighs, "everyone was afraid you'd say no."
Bellamy looks out at the camp. People are smiling, laughing––almost giddy. A few, Octavia and Lincoln included, have already started dancing to the old music Wick's got playing, though Bellamy suspects they're only brave enough to do so because of the half-empty jars of moonshine in their hands. Or in Lincoln's case, because Octavia's insisted.
He looks over to see Clarke eyeballing the keg and the tables now heaping with food. He knows her mind is on the huge dent this surprise party must have put in their stores…
Clarke sighs. "They were right. We would have said no."
"But…" Bellamy says. "I think we would have been wrong." Clarke nods.
Miller takes that as a sign that he's off the hook, and he quickly disappears into the crowd with a quick "Later."
The loss of the food is a bit of a hit, but their stores are ample and there's still time before winter to replace the missing inventory. Moonshine––well, as long as there are no major catastrophes resulting in countless injuries, they should be alright until the next batch is made. The mechanized gate is a luxury, not a necessity, and since he actually kind of likes the song that's currently playing, he can't be too mad about the sound system. He's not too happy that everyone went behind his and Clarke's backs to put this together, and got away with it, but he can't stay angry.
And their people are happy. Laughing, dancing, playing happy.
Looking at Clarke, Bellamy sees she's happy, too. She's watching the dancing with a glowing smile on her face, and with the way the autumn sun is gleaming off her golden hair, he doesn't know if he's ever seen her shine brighter.
"It's not such a bad thing," he remarks, and she nods.
"A surprise party is a lot better than the camp suffering under some mass psychosis. I was beginning to worry that the cooks had accidentally served a new type of jobi nut or something."
He snorts. "Nothing quite that alarming. Just a bunch of delinquents doing what they do best: breaking the rules."
Clarke hums, and her hand's back in his so he can feel it when she starts swaying to the beat of the music.
"I don't know," says Clarke. "I'm not convinced that's what they do best."
Bellamy raises a brow at that. "Oh, really. Do tell, princess. If it's not breaking the rules, what do our delinquents do best?"
Clarke waves her free hand at the roiling crowd. "Just look at them. Think of Unity Day. This...I don't know, anniversary party." (They've got to come up with a better name for their anniversary of reaching the ground, Bellamy thinks.) "What delinquents do best––well, it's obvious. They party."
Bellamy laughs. "Party, huh?"
Clarke nods, her lips pursed in mock solemnity but her eyes gleaming.
"Well, last I checked we've broken our fair share of rules, princess," he replies. "Partying would be child's play in comparison. What do you say you and I show those amateurs how it's done?"
He doesn't give her a chance to answer before he's tugging her toward him, spinning her around to the music. The kids cheer when they see them, and Clarke is shrieking in laughter, and his cheeks hurt from grinning so much but he never wants to stop because right now, in this moment, everything is perfect.