AN: [This was posted in AO3 first.] Just a pre-fic babble: this actually is a real-life story of mine when I was seven and ran away to the hospital to get a minor cut treated. Of course, real life sucked and there were no cute nurses or daddies to pick me up, but thought little boy Auggie deserved better than that. Here it is! [Also, a great big thanks to Morgane (emmaofmisthaven on Tumblr) for planting the seed of idea that Raphael Alejandro can make a great young Bellamy.]
It's an uneventful night and Clarke can't wait until her hospital shift ends in… five hours.
She sighs and drops her forehead on the wood of the front desk, taking a deep breath and then straightening up again and fumbling with the papers. Five hours and she's gonna be a free lady – not really, but tomorrow's her day off and she plans on spending all morning in her bed.
Honestly, there's nothing to do in here except arrange and rearrange the papers for the ER patients, and then eventually change the basin on one of the on-call rooms. For the first time in, like, ever, she wants to take on that task if only to have something to do other than stare at a blinding monitor records – but Raven beats her to it. Dammit.
She's ready to rest her forehead against the desk again when her phone buzzes from inside her pocket. She fishes it out and stares at the screen with disgust.
Finn: You have something planned after shift?
It doesn't take her a second to reply to that with an eerily calm, all lowercase, 'yes.', hopefully encompassing all the revolt she feels towards a trip to Chipotle with him. It's not that Finn is unattractive – he seriously isn't, with his puppy dog eyes and his shaggy hair and his charm – but it feels like he's trying too much to be this cool, mysterious, reckless guy that it comes off over-acted and just… no. But Finn is a great guy so she tries her best to turn him down without coming off as apathetic.
But it seems like she's really bad at it – or it could be that he's just really bad at taking a hint. Either way, no to dinner with Finn.
She looks up just in time to see Raven striding towards her, purpose in her steps, and annoyance in the high rise of her eyebrows.
"Hey, Griffin, can you check that Jordan file for me," she greets her with. "He keeps telling me he has weird pains on his lower back and I cannot tell whether he's serious or just trying to find an excuse for me to touch him."
Clarke scoffs – of course. She wordlessly searches for the aforementioned file, and tells Raven that the kid has UTI so he probably is serious.
Raven shrugs. "Well, then I'll send Murphy in for him." She turns back to where she came from and walks away, leaving Clarke alone once again with nothing but time to kill and a little boy at the sliding doors to cater to – wait, what?
She stands from where she was seated, trying to figure out of this is a hallucination from too much sitting alone with her quiet thoughts or real – because the little boy, (curly hair, big brown eyes, dimpled cheeks, freckled nose, small – really, really small) is alone and – dammit.
By the time she reaches the front of her desk, the little boy is already walking towards her, all seriousness in his young face (and really, that frown looks so out of place).
"Hi, my name is Auggie," he tells her, (and oh god, her heart melts a little because he still looks serious as hell). "Can I get my finger treated?"
And it's then that he holds up his left hand, his thumb up where there's a small cut, barely even an inch and really shallow, and Clarke sighs in relief.
She looks around, there's no one here except maybe a few dozing patients and Jackson checking on one of the beds at the corner, so she shoots the little guy a smile and tells him to sit on her chair while she gets a band aid from the cabinet atop her space.
The kid – Auggie – flops down on her desk chair and looks comfortable as hell, so she lets him spin around a few times before trapping the chair with her arms and crouching low in front of him. He silently holds his injured hand up for her to clean, carefully gauging his reaction and contemplating whether this is something she should be alarmed about.
"Are you alone, Auggie?" she asks while she tears the band aid from its wrapper.
"Yes," he replies, his unkempt curls bobbing as he nods. "I left my ta – my daddy at the park."
She looks up at him, her brows furrowed. "Why?"
The kid bites his lip in deep consideration, looking sheepishly at her with an expression that can only be called 'puppy dog eyes' and dammit, this kid is going to be a heartbreaker someday. "He's tired and I'm big now, so I walked to the hospital myself. I don't think he's gonna be proud of what I've done, though," he adds, and Clarke's stone cold heart completely gives in.
She gives him an apologetic look, wraps the band aid around and finishes with a soft 'there', all the while thinking about the horrors of the image of a little kid walking the already-turning-dark streets of Manhattan, alone.
"Okay, we're done," she declares, and Auggie gives her the biggest dimpled smile she has ever seen and she's helpless to return it. "Do you have your daddy's phone number? I need to call him and let him know you're here and you're okay, alright?"
"No!" he squeaks, grabbing her hand with his tiny fingers, his strength barely a match to hers, but she crouches back down nevertheless. "He's gonna be so stressed out – I don't want him to have a heart attack."
She tilts her head curiously. "Is he sick?"
Auggie shakes his head and looks down. "No," he says meekly. "But he's really, really tired. He just came home from three shifts and Aunt Octavia has work but tatay promised me a trip to the park and he still went even if he's really tired… I'm sorry."
"Okay… it's okay, how about your mommy's?" she asks carefully.
"I don't have one," he answers. "Aunt Octavia told me she went to heaven to build us a house there, but tatay says she died. I still don't know if it's the same thing, but I don't want to ask him about it because he gets sad and frowny all day. I'm sorry, nurse."
He pouts and curls in on himself even more. And okay, she may not have understood the rambling (and maybe a word there), but his concern about his father is evident. Still, someone has to know he's here, and if he truly were at the park with his father, then the best person to notify is him.
"It's okay," she assures him. "But I still need to know his number. I'm gonna call him, alright? Tell him you're here, and when he comes and picks you up, I'll put in a good word or two for you."
He perks up, eyes wide and bright. "You will?"
She hums and smiles back, fishing her phone out of her pocket once again.
They are engrossed in a bloody match of thumb wrestling when she hears heavy footsteps coming faster and through the doors, and before she knows it, the little boy is sprinting towards a tall and lean figure, the said tall and lean figure bending at the waist to catch the boy in his arms. All arms and legs wrapping around his torso, and exclaiming, "Tatay!"
Okay, Clarke is mesmerized, because even with Auggie's hair obscuring the view of his face, she's sure there's a commandment written somewhere about those arms.
She shakes that away from her thoughts and focuses instead on the way the man is trembling slightly, relief emanating from his figure as he drops to his knees and lets the kid down on his feet.
Clarke tries, she really does, not to eavesdrop (not that she can really understand even a quarter of what they're saying) but she catches a few words – and what she got is that he was scared shitless, basically. Who wouldn't be, is her notion, when your small child suddenly disappears from view.
(Clarke cannot help but let herself melt a little at the concern on his face – god his face though, freckled and dimpled, just like his kid, his eyes so full of worry and relief that even she feels it in her bones).
It's then that he decides to stand and walk towards her, Auggie holding tightly onto his hand. He sends her a bashful smile and the dryness in her mouth is entirely not her fault.
"Thank you," he says in a low gruff voice, "for keeping him safe. He's… always running here and there, and I kind of zoned out a little – I cannot – seriously, uh –
"Clarke."
" – Clarke, thank you. Bellamy. My name's Bellamy."
They stare at each other for far longer than a minute and Clarke would blame the dryness in her throat, but the fact that he seems like he's in the same predicament helps a little. (Just a little, because he's still smiling at her, and couple that with Auggie's confused glance bouncing from her to his father – it's making her nervous and fidgety.)
"Okay, Bellamy – uh – if there's nothing else you need –" She makes to turn around and continue on her work, counting this as those once in a blue moon chances of landing her eyes on an unbelievably gorgeous human being, but the man (Bellamy) is already taking a reluctant step forward.
" – wait – I mean, uh…" he glances down to where Auggie is tugging at his sleeve, and Clarke sends them both a curious furrow of her brows. "Are you…"
" – are you free tomorrow morning?" the little boy chirps in, his smile so bright and hopeful that it catches her off-guard. "Tatay will take me to the zoo tomorrow morning. We need a tour guide –
There is that word again, and Clarke can only guess that it means father in a language she does not recognize. She vaguely notices Bellamy when he tugs at his kid's hand lightheartedly, his eyes widening. "I was joking," he hisses. He looks up at her and shakes his head. "Sorry, he's just really… I raised him well, it's just that my sister, she's sort of a bad influence," he laughs nervously and runs his fingers through his curls – the similar curls on the little boy's head, and oh, she's so screwed.
She can't help but mirror his laugh because she's as nervous, but she also did promise to put a couple of good words in, so she does it if only to make them stay a little bit longer. "Auggie's a really great kid. Really brave," she adds, sending an unsubtle wink to the boy in passing. "I advise changing the band aid twice tomorrow, and the finger should be good as new in a day."
She manages to really turn around this time, and return behind the desk, retrieving a spare band aid and giving it to Auggie with a small smile.
"Thank you, nurse Clarke," he says, a small frown on his lips. "Are you really not free tomorrow?"
She blinks at that twice – of course she's free – but before she can open her mouth to offer a reluctant acquiescence, Bellamy is already chastising him lightly.
"Come on, Auggie, the nurse might be busy tomorrow," he tells him, sparing her a sideway glance. "Thank you, nurse Clarke, and… good night."
He turns them around and leaves her there with this burning desire to really go. So, naturally, she gathers just enough of her courage just when they were about to exit the doors.
"I'll be there," she calls at them, loud enough to hear, but not to disturb the patients. And quite frankly, she's proud of the steadiness of her voice. Both of them promptly turn their heads in surprise, and it could just be the cutest thing she's ever seen. "Is nine good?"
"Nine's perfect," they both answer, and they're so oblivious to the sheer adorableness of them that she has to smother her laughter with the back of her hand as she waves them off with the other.
Coda:
She learns at the end of the day that Auggie is short for Augustus, and that tatay truly is father in Tagalog, and that sometime around the afternoon, she learns that he starts his kisses gentle, and then it's up to her to deepen it.
She does.
Post-fic AN: Don't forget to leave a comment! Or prompts set to this universe that you'd like to read, and I'll see what I can do. I can't seem to get enough of the little rascal.