[This was inspired by an earlier fic of mine. Read it here: /2AwDlqP (link goes to the fic on my Tumblr.) ]
"The dog is acting weird."
Clarke pauses in the middle of scratching Atlas under his chin. "What do you mean?"
Atlas whines and nudges Clarke's wrist with his nose until she starts absentmindedly petting him again.
Bellamy frowns. "That. He's being weird."
Clarke looks at the dog. The dog gazes adoringly at her. "I don't think I'm seeing whatever you're seeing."
He huffs. "He likes you better now."
She snorts.
"No, seriously!" he protests, even though he knows he's being stupid.
It's not that Atlas hasn't always loved Clarke, it's just that—and this is fact, not Bellamy being conceited—Atlas always loved Bellamy more. Since the moment Clarke dropped the puppy in his lap, Atlas was his dog, and Bellamy was his person.
But for the last week, the dog's been sleeping on the rug next to Clarke's side of the bed instead of on the dog bed next to Bellamy.
When the dog leans up against the couch while they watch Netflix at night, he rests his head on Clarke's knee instead of Bellamy's.
On walks, Atlas is notorious for straining against the leash, eager to look at and pee on everything in his path—but now he hangs back to trot in between Bellamy and Clarke. Which, to be honest, is kind of nice—Atlas remains the biggest labrador retriever he's ever fucking seen, and the dog is strong. It's nice to not have to hold onto the leash so hard. But it's different.
Bellamy's tried not to let it bother him. After all, he loves Clarke. Of course their dog loves Clarke too. That should be a goal.
But… bizarrely, it almost kind of maybe hurts his feelings.
Even though Atlas still barks hello and rushes over to lick Bellamy's jeans when he gets home from work every day, and even though it's still Bellamy he wakes in the middle of the night by panting and huffing into his face from the side of the bed because he needs to go outside to pee, it's not quite the same when Atlas only wants to snuggle Clarke.
"Bellamy." Clarke is trying very, very hard not to laugh, but Bellamy isn't making it easy.
'He likes you better now.'
As if Atlas didn't think the sun rose and set on Bellamy Blake.
Bellamy refuses to look at her. It reminds her of when Atlas does something naughty and doesn't want to admit it.
She's still on the verge of laughing until she sees the way his mouth pulls down at the corners.
Well, that's not fair. He's actually sad, and now she can't laugh at him.
"Oh, Bellamy," she sighs, and crawls over into his lap. He wraps his arms around her waist and tucks his face into her neck; she starts combing his hair with her fingers. It's longer than it's ever been, wavy and a little tangled. She likes it, even though she misses the curls.
He slowly relaxes under her touch until finally he presses a kiss to the side of her neck and straightens.
"Sorry." His voice is gravelly, and he clears his throat. "Sorry, I know I'm being a dumbass."
"You are," she says, and presses a hard kiss to his mouth.
He blinks at her owlishly when she pulls away.
"You're still cute even when you're a dumbass," Clarke says. "I couldn't help it."
That finally pulls a smile out of him, and she has to kiss him again. His mouth is warm and soft, and she lingers long enough that he can kiss her back, take her bottom lip between his own, and she gets distracted from whatever she was going to stay next until Atlas wedges his head between where Clarke's body is pressed up against Bellamy's.
They both pull back, look down at the panting dog, who swishes his tail when he sees he's got their attention.
"You're being very rude," Clarke tells him; the tail swishes again. "Go lay down."
Atlas turns in a circle, then sits and leans against the couch so he can start licking her toes.
Clarke squeals and tucks her feet up into Bellamy's lap with the rest of her.
"See?" Bellamy says, but at least now he's smiling.
"It's just a phase," she says, eyeing the dog and the tongue lolling out of his mouth. "He's probably just still upset that you were gone for a week when you went to that conference. I promise you, he'll be back to being your personal lapdog in a week, tops."
It is not a phase. Or at least, not a brief one. Another two weeks pass, and Atlas shows no signs of abandoning his newfound affection for Clarke.
Bellamy is mostly resigned to it now. And again, this is really the opposite of a problem. Atlas adores his wife. Bellamy adores his wife too. That's why he married her. It's a good thing.
But when he mentions the whole thing to Miller when they meet up for drinks after work, Miller frowns instead of making fun of him like Bellamy thought he would.
"Is she okay?"
He quirks an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"Everyone says animals can sense those kinds of things," Miller says. "Like, that's why they train dogs to detect seizures for people who have epilepsy. If he's really being that weird, maybe something's wrong.
"Or your dog's just fucking weird," Miller adds quickly when Bellamy goes a little pale. "It's probably nothing."
He orders them another round and then changes the subject.
But Bellamy can't stop thinking about it that night on the way back to their house, or the next day when he comes home to find Clarke napping on the couch, Atlas slumped across her feet (Clarke never naps). Or the day after that when Atlas actually growls a little at Murphy when everyone is over for game night, and John gets too loud when he's arguing with Clarke about which Power Ranger is the coolest.
"Atlas, be nice!" Clarke scolds, and the dog calms down, but he sticks to Clarke's side for the rest of the night.
When everyone leaves, and they're in bed, the room dark and her front pressed to his back, he reaches for her hand.
"You'd tell me if something was wrong, right?"
Her voice is slurring with sleepiness. "What?"
"If something was wrong. Like if you were sick." Bellamy's palm is clammy.
"Of course I would tell you," she says, soft and sounding more awake. Atlas's collar jingles when he lifts his head at the sound of her voice. "Why are you asking me that?"
"Nothing, just—something Miller said. About the dog," he mutters. "Why he might be following you around."
Clarke sighs, her warm breath drifting over his back. Goosebumps ripple over his skin, and he turns. Most nights, she falls asleep nestled up against his spine, but tonight, he wants to be the one to hold her. She lets him gather her up in his arms, slotting her legs between his and burrowing close, like he needs.
"You're okay? Nothing's wrong?" he has to ask, one more time, and she kisses the skin over his heart.
"Nothing's wrong," she promises.
Clarke's not sure she's ever been this tired before in her life. When she was in college, she'd regularly stay up all night painting and go straight from the art building to her stats class, and even then she hadn't felt as tired as she does now, only two hours after she gets up for the day.
She starts falling asleep almost every afternoon, when she's on the couch trying to work or read or sketch. One day, she even falls asleep sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the pot of pasta water to boil, and only wakes up when the pot bubbles so violently water spills over onto the flame and hisses.
And then she gets sick. It's not so bad when it first starts, and it's easiest when she's just woken up, so she manages to keep it from Bellamy the first day, and then the second.
It's not that she's hiding it from him, really. But he'd just fret over her if he knew, and it's really nothing, just a little stomach trouble. She's probably just fighting a bug. Or developing a food sensitivity; she's always been a little iffy with dairy.
But by noon on the third day, the nausea has her hanging over the toilet bowl while the fatigue makes her dizzy, and Atlas is snuffling at the bottom of the bathroom door from the other side, whining softly.
Clarke vomits once more, then waits, until she feels safe flushing the toilet and leaning back against the opposite wall. Atlas cries at the door again.
She thinks about Bellamy, about what he mentioned Miller saying about dogs, and about her, and her stomach gives another sick lurch because suddenly she's afraid that it's true, and that something is very wrong.
Five more minutes on the cold tile floor, then she pulls herself up, rinses her mouth with tapwater, spits in the sink. Her phone is plugged into the charger on the nightstand next to her side of the bed. She ruffles the dog's fur when he accompanies her over to it.
The first Google result for for "dog senses i'm sick" tells her she has cancer, which she had prepared herself for.
"It's the Internet," she tells Atlas, trying to keep her tone light. He's sitting on top of her feet while she researches. "The answer to any health-related question is always either 'you have cancer' or 'you're pregnant.'"
She hits the back button, about to try reading another result, and stills.
Clarke looks at Atlas. Atlas looks at her. She looks at her phone, then up toward the ceiling, trying to count in her head.
He puts his head on her knee, and she lets out a shaky breath, then closes the browser app on her phone. Her period tracking app is buried in her "Health and Productivity" folder, which she accesses pretty much only when she needs to record the start of her period, and Clarke hesitates for just a moment before tapping the icon.
It takes a minute to load; she's cheap, and hasn't paid for the upgraded version with no ads or loading time.
"Thir—thirteen days late?" Clarke gasps. She feels nausea rising in her gut again.
Her period isn't exactly on time every month, but she's never even been close to a week late. But now she's almost two weeks past when she should have started, and with the fatigue and the nausea and Atlas—
She looks at the dog with wide eyes; he licks her knee through her leggings.
"Good boy," Clarke says weakly.
After a day that included, as a highlight, one of the ninth graders stuffed one of their friends into the library's garbage can, Bellamy's looking forward to relaxing at home.
It is extremely unrelaxing when he walks in the door and Clarke immediately says, "Hey, can I talk to you?" while Atlas is still barking hello.
Bellamy freezes in the middle of shrugging off his coat, then turns to Clarke. She looks a little pale, and her bottom lip is red—as he watches, she tucks it between her teeth and nibbles nervously.
"Yeah," he says slowly. "Sure."
She nods sharply. "Okay." She turns on her heel and strides into the living room, leaving Bellamy to trail after her, a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Clarke sits on the couch, then stands up and steers him over to sit on the cushion next to her, then sits next to him, then stands up and crosses to the other side of the room, and then crosses back to stand directly in front of him.
"Okay," she says, just as he's about to really lose it, and puts her hands on his shoulders. He doesn't know if it's meant to comfort him, or hold him down. "I need to tell you something, and you need to try not to freak out."
Bellamy barely nods, eyes fixed on her face, trying to read what she might be about to say in the lines around her eyes, the way she chews on her lip again.
"Remember how you said that Miller said dogs, um, know things? About people?"
He nods again.
"And remember how you asked me to tell you if something was wrong?"
There's a knot in his throat and an empty pit where his stomach should be, and he thinks he might be sick.
"Nothing is wrong!" she says quickly, squeezing his shoulders tightly. "I—but—something is, well. Happening."
The knot in his throat shrinks a bit, and he's able to croak, "What?"
She lifts her fingers to smooth the skin between his brows, the gentle touch trying to smooth away the frown lines he's spent most of his life accumulating.
"I think—well, I'm pretty sure—um."
"Clarke."
"I think I might be pregnant," she says. It takes a few seconds for Bellamy to parse what she'd said. Then his mouth drops open, and she bites her lip again.
"You're pregnant?" The words feel like a foreign language on his tongue, and she shrugs helplessly and grabs a bag he hadn't noticed off of the coffee table.
"I think? I didn't notice anything off until I got sick. I went and bought some tests today, but I didn't take them yet. I wanted to wait for you." She sits next to him on the couch and pulls out some boxes. Her hands are shaking a little.
Bellamy reaches for her, and she drops the boxes to throw her arms around him and bury her face in his chest.
"I'm almost two weeks late," she says, voice muffled against the cotton of his shirt.
Two weeks.
"And you were sick?" he asks, rubbing a hand up and down her back. He feels her nod.
"I didn't feel great the last couple days, but today I actually threw up," she says. "I was afraid it might be something bad."
Bellamy hesitates, then asks, "Is it something bad?" They've talked about kids before, as something they might do, as a hypothetical, as a future possibility, but never as an absolute.
But this isn't the future, this is right now, and if Clarke doesn't want to be pregnant, he'd understand.
She tenses. "I…what do you think?"
Bellamy takes a moment to think about it, and chooses his words very carefully. "I don't think it's bad, no. If this is what you want, I—I think it's good. But if it's not what you want, that's okay too, Clarke."
She relaxes degree by degree until she's slumped into him.
"I think—I think I want to take a test first."
"Sounds like a plan."
Clarke pees on four tests, and within a few minutes she has a plus sign, two lines, and a couple digital displays that read "Pregnant" in dark, bold letters. She and Bellamy examine them, lined up on a paper towel on the bathroom counter.
"I'm pregnant," she says, trying the words out loud. They sound very certain, and she doesn't feel certain at all.
"You're pregnant," Bellamy agrees.
Atlas's tail thumps against the bathroom vanity.
She wasn't on birth control, because she hated the way it affected her mood, and they only used condoms when she was supposed to be ovulating. They'd managed two years of dating and three years of marriage with no pregnancy scares, so she'd been confident they'd really gotten the hang of her cycle and their sex life.
Clearly, she'd gotten cocky, or they'd gotten lazy, because she's pregnant.
And the dog was the first one to figure it out.
Clarke snorts quietly, then giggles. Then she starts laughing, harder and harder, almost hysterical until she has to cling to Bellamy in order to stay upright.
"Clarke?" Bellamy sounds alarmed.
Poor Bellamy. She'd scared him to death, trying to tell him.
"I'm fine," she gasps. "I just think it's funny. Atlas knew before either one of us."
There's a pause, and then Bellamy laughs too, and holds her tight.
They agree to take a few days to adjust to the idea, to think it over, before making any decisions. It's the calm, sensible, adult thing to do.
Clarke bursts into the bathroom while he's brushing his teeth that night.
"I want it," she blurts out.
Bellamy stares at her, then hurriedly spits out the toothpaste and wipes off his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I don't want to think about it," she continues. "I think we should do it. I think we should have a baby."
The smile spreads across his face slowly, and Clarke relaxes at the sight of it.
"Okay," Bellamy says simply. "Let's have a baby."
Bellamy gets a sub so he can go with Clarke to her doctor's appointment.
"Yup, there you go," the ultrasound technician says, tapping keys to capture the dark, grainy picture. "Your little bean's in a good spot."
It's hard to believe that the blurry blob is a baby, and that the dark splotch is Clarke's womb, and that their baby is in her womb, and it's growing into a tiny person.
He needs to sit down for a minute. Clarke's already on her back for the ultrasound, but she looks like she feels the same way.
The look on her face doesn't go away throughout the rest of the appointment with her obstetrician. Dates and terms and lists and do's and don'ts and more appointments, and she gets quieter and quieter.
Bellamy frets.
He drives them to the taqueria she loves and parks the car.
"Are you still doing okay?" he asks. "With this?"
Clarke looks up from her lap.
"Yeah."
He frowns. "You sure?" It wasn't exactly an enthusiastic reply.
The grooves in her forehead relax, and she reaches over to squeeze his hand.
"I'm sure. It's a lot, but…it's good."
"Because if you changed your mind, I won't—"
"Bellamy." Clarke waits until he shuts his mouth and looks at her. "I don't want to change my mind. I just want to go eat some tacos. And maybe not talk about it for the next hour or so. That's it."
Bellamy nods. "We can do that."
And they do. They talk about game night, and if they should buy some new games, and they talk about what Bellamy caught his students doing in the library, and they talk about whether or not they should just commit and paint the front door green.
They don't talk about the baby, and it's almost better that way—a secret just the two of them know.
Well, almost better.
At home, he waits until Clarke brings it up again. "When should we tell people?"
Well, he'd like to head to the local news station and buy some airtime tonight.
But— "Isn't the rule when you get to your second trimester?"
"Who the hell made that rule? That's still over a month away."
He shrugs. "I don't know. I think the risk of miscarriage is supposed to be lower by then, so people wait."
Clarke makes a face. "I don't think I want to wait that long. If something happens, I don't want to have to hide it, or to have to tell people why I'm sad and weird right after it happens. Is that okay?"
He nods. "We can tell people whenever you want."
"Family first?" Clarke suggests. "Then everyone else, next Friday?"
The Friday of next week is the next game night, and Clarke's probably right that they should just announce it right way. If Atlas's behavior still didn't give it away, Bellamy probably would.
"Next Friday."
They call Octavia on speakerphone the next night, after Bellamy gets home from work. She's working on a ranch in Colorado, and is out of cell service most days of the week, but they have a standing phone call every Tuesday, when she's back at her cabin.
She answers, and Bellamy and Clarke go through the routine of questions, what did she do that week, how is Lincoln, what animal is causing her the most trouble.
Then Bellamy asks, "When do you think your next visit is going to be?" He keeps his voice carefully casual.
There is some rustling while his sister bustles around the cabin she and Lincoln share. "I don't know, probably next Christmas? It's going to be pretty busy here through the fall."
"Oh."
Octavia snorts. "What?"
"Nothing, it's just that you're going to miss it."
"Miss what, Bell?" she asks, distracted.
"When the baby's born."
"Well, I—" Octavia starts, then goes very quiet. A long pause later, she says, "Come again?"
"I said, when the baby's born. Clarke's due in October, and if you're not—"
"You asshole, oh my god," Octavia says, and lets out a long string of profanity, volume rising as she goes on. Atlas barks until she finally peters out.
Then she laughs.
"You really got Clarke pregnant?"
"Yup." He makes eye contact with Clarke, who grins at him.
"Clarke, you're knocked up?"
"Uh huh," Clarke says. "We're having a kid."
"You would," she says fondly.
After they hang up, he looks at Clarke. "Your turn next."
"Goodie."
The four of them meet at a café for an early dinner later that week, and her mother must know something is going on—it's not that they don't see each other, or go out to eat and visit, but usually there's more planning than there was today, when Clarke called mid-afternoon to see if Marcus and Abby could meet them that evening.
But she doesn't say anything, just gently peppers Clarke and Bellamy with well-meaning questions about their work, the dog, if they've done any more work on their house, until Clarke gets up the nerve in the middle of their entrees to tell her mother she's pregnant.
Abby blinks, a forkful of salmon halfway to her mouth. "You are?"
Clarke nods. Abby drops her fork back to her plate, clasps her hands over her mouth. Tears are already leaking out of her eyes, and she stands up, rounding the table to pull Clarke into a hug.
"Oh, Clarke." Her mom sniffs, and squeezes her tight, and something taut inside her lets go. Her mother's cheek is damp where it presses against hers, and Clarke holds her back.
In the background, she can hear Marcus as he offers his congratulations. Bellamy accepts for both of them while she waves a hand in Marcus's direction.
Then her mother lets go of her and reaches for Bellamy. He's dragged into another weepy hug, and he gives Clarke a wide-eyed look while her mother cries on him. He carefully pats her back.
Once they finally sit down to their food again, Abby asks, "Alright. Who's your obstetrician? Jackson Sinclair's a great option for you to consider."
That's more like what Clarke was expecting of tonight, and she just shakes her head and smiles.
She'd thought she couldn't get any more nervous than when she'd told her mother, but as their friends trickle in the next Friday for their biweekly game night, the butterflies in her stomach get worse and worse.
Raven gets there first, carrying a six-pack of booze, and then it's Monty and Miller, Harper and Zoe. Murphy and Emori are the last to arrive with Zeke in tow. When Raven sees Zeke she goes a little red and glares at Emori, who does a very bad job of pretending she doesn't notice. It's the pilot's first time at game night, and though all of their friends have a standing invitation to bring whoever they want, Clarke wasn't really expecting a new face tonight.
"You still want to do this?" Bellamy murmurs in her ear when he catches her in the hallway.
She considers, then nods. The butterflies feel more like a lump of clay now, heavy and solid, but she doesn't want to wait.
He kisses her quickly on the mouth, then takes the bowl of chips out of her hands to carry out to the dining room.
The actual game part of game night never gets going until about an hour after everyone arrives, mostly because her friends are bottomless pits. Tonight is no different, except that Clarke's not matching her friends chip for chip like she usually does.
Instead, she's been holding the same pretzel in her hands for the last ten minutes when Raven finally notices.
"Is that pretzel special or something?"
Clarke closes her fist around it guiltily, then drops it onto her napkin.
"No. I'm just not super hungry."
"Not hungry?" Raven says, and frowns. "Are you okay?"
The others are starting to notice, the other conversations dying down as they all turn to look at Clarke. Bellamy slips his hand into hers before she can get panicky and weird.
"I'm fine," she replies to Raven. "But we have something to tell you all."
She squeezes Bellamy's hand, looks at him meaningfully. They hadn't discussed having him be the one to make the announcement, but bless him, he knows her inside and out, and opens his mouth without missing a beat.
"We're having a baby."
Their friends stare at them for a solid five seconds, board game pieces abandoned mid-setup, as they process what he just said.
Harper is the first to shriek, and then everyone else erupts.
Murphy teases them about finally giving into Bellamy's need to parent someone, anyone, until Emori elbows him in the gut, and Miller snorts when they admit it was his comment about Atlas's behavior that clued them in.
Raven catches Clarke when she's alone in the kitchen, refilling her glass of water, and squeezes her in a tight hug.
"You good?" she asks, and Clarke squeezes back, blinking quickly.
"Yeah. I'm good," she says, and then clears her throat. Other than Bellamy, Raven is the one who knows her best. She knows how hesitant Clarke has always been about the idea of motherhood, and that she wasn't sure if she ever wanted to have children. Once she had Bellamy, the idea had become less daunting, more exciting, but still not an absolute probability.
But now it's an absolute. She's pregnant, and they're going to have a baby.
She's going to be a mother.
Bellamy's going to be her baby's father.
Oh boy.
A cold nose nudges her knee, and she and Raven separate so she can look down. Atlas gives her a doggy grin, licks her knee, and then politely licks Raven's knee as well.
"I swear to god, he's bigger every time I see him," Raven says.
The rest of game night is a bust, mostly because everyone is very bad at concentrating on Arabian Nights when they could be tormenting Bellamy and Clarke with never ending questions.
When's the baby due, is it a boy or a girl, how is Clarke going to survive without alcohol, whose last name will the baby get, how many parties requiring gifts are they going to throw to capitalize on accidentally procreating?
"All of them," Bellamy says. "Babies are fucking expensive."
"Don't worry, Bellamy," Monty assures them. "I am ready and willing to smash my piggy bank for you."
"Yeah, that should cover it."
Telling their friends and family is the easiest part of Clarke's pregnancy.
The rest is—well, not as easy.
Bellamy brings her peppermint tea and crackers every day for her morning sickness, and when it doesn't quite do enough, he rubs her back and Atlas lies next to her on the cold tile floor of their bathroom while she vomits.
It makes him feel terrible, but she promises he's helping.
And when he's not feeling terrible, it does hit him how amazing this is—how lucky he is, that he met this girl, and she brought him this dog, and he's built this life and family with two beings he loves so impossibly much.
Or—three beings, now. Two and a half? Two going on three.
So lucky.
And then Clarke throws up again, and breaks out, and develops heartburn, and grows out of all of her clothes, and he goes back to feeling terrible about everything, even while she puts on a brave face, but the luck shines through still.
When her belly starts to grow, so does the dog's interest.
"I can't imagine that's very comfortable," Clarke says. Atlas's ear twitches, but he doesn't move his chin from the top of her bump. "And you know you're not supposed to be on the couch."
"The internet says that he might be able to hear the baby's heartbeat," Bellamy says, sitting on her other side and handing her a glass of lemonade.
"Yeah?" she says, and scratches Atlas behind the ears.
He guesses he can't blame the dog. Every time he gets to hear the heartbeat, he thinks it's pretty neat, too.
Atlas doesn't seem to mind the way Clarke's body is changing, or all of the changes happening around the house.
They clear out the spare room so Bellamy can paint the walls a soft green, and Atlas gets paint on his tail while he "helps" Bellamy by chasing the paint roller while it moves over the wall.
By the time it's finished, Clarke's six months pregnant, and they order the furniture. In the middle of fastening two of the sides of the crib together, Clarke turns around and bursts into giggles.
Bellamy looks up from the instructions. "What?"
"Your dog thinks this is all for him," Clarke says, pointing to Atlas, who is enjoying his new spot, curled up on top of the crib mattress in the corner of the room. He gives them a doggy grin and twitches his tail when he notices them looking at him.
"Isn't it, though?"
All the furniture is assembled, Clarke's own paintings are hung on the wall, and the baby clothes that have started flooding in from their friends, family, and people who they only know peripherally but who apparently love to buy baby clothes are washed and tucked in the dresser drawers.
She makes Bellamy leave the crib mattress on the ground, next to the rocking chair.
"It's still wrapped in plastic, and it's going to be a long time before she needs to use it," Clarke points out.
"If you're sure," he says, dubious. Clarke smiles serenely and continues to rock in the rocker, Atlas curled up next to her on the mattress.
In a fit of nesting, Clarke scrubs, sands, and paints the front door kelly green, then buys seven new houseplants and a crate of petunias to plant out front.
She's never planted anything in her life, so they spend the weekend putting the plants in the ground, or in new pots, Bellamy showing her how to carefully loosen the roots and put the right amount of soil in each pot.
Atlas only pees on the petunias twice, so they count it as a win.
As the flowers grow, so does Clarke.
When she's almost eight months pregnant, Murphy asks, "Are you sure there aren't twins in there?"
"I'm gonna kill him," Clarke says, voice calm.
Murphy's eyes go wide. "Whoa there, I was just asking a question!"
"Help me up, Bellamy," Clarke demands. "I need to kill him."
He takes her hands, lifts her to her feet, but doesn't let her go. "Think this through. It's Murphy. We expected this from him. He's said worse."
"I've definitely said worse," Murphys says.
"John. Stop talking," Emori says.
Bellamy ignores him. "What did we agree on?"
Clarke grumbles under her breath.
He waits, and she sighs. "I can only kill him if he compares me to a whale."
"Oh, I wouldn't. You're not even close to a whale."
"Thanks," she says flatly.
"You're more like a very respectable dolphin."
"John." Emori elbows him hard enough he's wheezing when he apologizes.
"I'm just going to take him—somewhere else," Emori says, and Bellamy shoots her a grateful look.
"I still want to kill him," Clarke mutters, and Bellamy turns back to her, rubbing her arms.
"I'm not saying you can't," he says. "Just be stealthy about it. It's all about the long game."
A tiny smile. "Yeah, you're right. Get him when he thinks he's finally safe."
"That's my girl," he says, and kisses her forehead.
When Clarke meets and then passes her due date, she doesn't mind that much. Sure, she hasn't been able to take a deep breath for the last two and a half months, but there are benefits to staying pregnant just a little longer.
"We could throw the coolest birthday parties," she says, waving around a spatula. Atlas follows the movement with his eyes.
Bellamy looks at her blearily. It's 5:45am and she's wide awake—too uncomfortable and the baby's too active for her to sleep any longer, and she's also decided she wants pancakes—but Bellamy hasn't quite caught up.
"What?" he says finally.
"Parties, Bellamy," Clarke repeats. "On Halloween. I always wished I had a Halloween birthday. The perfect excuse to dress up, everyone in the world obligated to give me chocolate..."
"There's no guarantee she'll be born tomorrow," he says. His voice is rough with sleep still.
Clarke flops the last pancake onto the plate and turns off the stove.
"If she's not, it won't be because I didn't try."
Bellamy blinks at her.
Clarke smiles and dumps syrup on her pancakes.
That night, she eats what feels like half a gallon of habañero salsa. Then she drags Bellamy and the dog on a long walk around the neighborhood, ostensibly to look at all of the decorations people have put up.
Her legs are throbbing and her mouth is still burning unpleasantly by the time they get home, and she goes to bed hopeful, but by the time Clarke wakes the next morning, everything feels as normal as it's been for the last few months.
She groans into her pillow. Bellamy grumbles in his sleep, rolls over, and flops an arm on top of her.
Letting out a deep breath, she tries to relax and doze a little more. It's another early morning, and he was up late last night, working on sub plans for his paternity leave—she doesn't want to wake him if she can manage it.
Besides, she's got plans for them both that morning. They could both use as much sleep as they can get.
When he wakes, Bellamy is more than willing to go along with her plans, but despite his best efforts, Clarke still hasn't gone into labor by the time the youngest trick-or-treaters start hitting the streets.
Or by the time Atlas finally stops barking at the sound of the doorbell.
Or by the time the second bag of candy runs out.
Or by the time they snuff out the pumpkins and turn off the porch the lights.
Clarke feels a little ridiculous, sitting in bed and trying not to cry. But some silly little part of her had really thought the baby would come today.
"Clarke. Hey."
She looks up and sniffs. Bellamy's frown softens and he climbs into bed next to her.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." She leans into him.
"It'll happen soon," he says. "They said they'd induce labor if you go too much longer."
"I know. I think I'm just tired."
He presses a kiss to her hair, quiet, and she falls asleep holding onto him.
Atlas wakes her by squeaking.
"No," she mumbles, then cracks open one eye. Atlas pants in her face, then squeaks again. "Go wake up Bellamy," she whispers. He always wakes Bellamy. It's been part of their arrangement since she brought him home to Bellamy as a puppy.
More hot dog breath in her face.
Stifling a groan, she maneuvers herself upright and out of bed. Before she can take a step, a feeling like a vise around her middle steals her breath.
It's not the pain that surprises her, nor the immense pressure from her back to her belly and lower, but the way the combination of the two consume every bit of her concentration.
When it stops, she lets out a shaky breath, then realizes Atlas shoved his head under her hand in the middle of the contraction.
"Good boy," she murmurs. Clarke grabs her phone to use the flashlight and open up the contraction timer app she'd downloaded two weeks ago.
Atlas is reluctant to leave her side when she opens the sliding door leading from the living room to the backyard. She has to shoo him out to do his business. While she waits, she stares at her phone.
Nothing happens.
Atlas comes inside, bladder emptied, and Clarke follows his example, using the bathroom before heading back to bed.
Still, nothing happens.
Braxton-Hicks, probably.
She plugs her phone back into the charger, pulls back the covers so she can climb into bed, and warm liquid streams down her legs.
Clarke squeaks, much louder than Atlas had, and Bellamy lifts his head from his pillow, hair flat to his skull on one side and wild on the other.
"What?" He sounds a little wild too, half-asleep and surprised. It takes a second for him to focus on Clarke at the side of the bed, and another one for him to look at the expression on her face, and then he's scrambling out of bed.
"Clarke?"
"Don't—" she says, too late, as he steps in the puddle of amniotic fluid slowly spreading out from her feet.
"Clarke," he says, voice a little stunned.
"Can you get a towel?" she asks, voice strained.
"Can I—oh! Yes," he says, and sprints to the bathroom.
While he's rummaging in the cupboard, another contraction begins. Clarke's still in the middle of it when Bellamy gets back to her.
"Shit," he says. She ignores him, trying to focus on opening up the stupid app on her stupid phone so she can start keeping track of how far apart the contractions are.
He cleans up the fluid, and by the time she taps the app to tell it the contraction ended, their hospital bags are sitting on the bed.
"We can't go yet," Clarke says, trying a smile. "The doctor said to wait until I've had them every five minutes for at least an hour, remember?"
"I know." He clears his throat. "Have they been happening long?"
Clarke shakes her head. "Only two so far. I'm going to change."
She switches out her wet pajamas for the clothes she'd planned to wear to the hospital. Bellamy is petting Atlas with single-minded intensity, but when he sees her come out of their closet, he swallows.
"This is really it?"
Clarke shrugs. "I've never done this before. But I think so."
They end up on their couch, like always, curled up (as much as Clarke can curl up these days) and watching some dumb show. She's trying not to get too excited—she knows these things take time, and it might take hours to reach the point where they're allowed to head to the hospital. It would be just her luck.
An hour and thirteen minutes after Atlas woke her up for a bathroom break, Clarke's twenty contractions in. They're steady, coming closer to four minutes apart than five by the end of the hour.
Bellamy gets their bags from the bedroom and meets Clarke at the front door.
When they lock the door behind them, closing Atlas in, he howls and paws at the door.
Clarke swallows hard, trying to hold in tears.
Hormones are very inconvenient.
"We can't bring him with us, Clarke," Bellamy says gently.
She glares at him. "Shut up."
"Monty and Miller will be here in an hour to take care of him."
"Shut up," Clarke says, and stalks toward the car.
Halfway there, a contraction starts and she stops in her tracks, reaching out blindly as she squeezes her eyes shut.
Bellamy's there in a second, letting her lean on him while the contraction stretches on and on and on—seriously, aren't these supposed to stop after a minute—and carefully tugging her lip from between her teeth, reminding her not to bite it.
It finally eases, and Clarke releases a huge breath.
"Okay?"
She nods, and he opens the car door for her.
"Let's try to get there before the next one," Bellamy says, climbing into the driver's seat.
Clarke has four more contractions on the drive to the hospital, and Bellamy's knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel.
Bellamy tries not to show it, but he's getting a little scared. The contractions are closer together now than they were even just thirty minutes ago.
He parks the car, grabs their bags, and helps her climb out.
It's his turn to try a smile. "Hey. We're having a baby."
"Yeah," Clarke says. Her voice is just a little thin with nerves. "We are. Right now."
He squeezes her hand, about to walk toward the hospital and entrance, and nearly drops their hospital bags when she pulls him by the shirt to meet her mouth. He ends up dropping them anyway so he can wrap her up and kiss her back properly.
"I love you," she says, fierce, when she lets him go, and he blinks and then grins at her, bright and full of joy.
They're having a baby, and he's a little bit scared to death because Clarke has to give birth, but they're doing this together and he loves her, loves her, loves her.
"I love you, too. You wanna go do this thing?" He picks up their bags again and offers her his free hand.
She takes it.
They're doing this.
Having babies, as it turns out, involves a lot of waiting.
Bellamy is not a fan.
He doesn't remember having to wait this long when Octavia was born, but then again, his mother had left him with the neighbor, the way she did sometimes, and he hadn't even known she'd been leaving for the hospital until the neighbor took him to visit his mom and the new baby in the maternity ward.
Clarke is admitted right away, and things had been going so fast up until that point, he was sure the baby was going to born within the next hour. By five in the morning, at the latest.
That is not what happens. Clarke's contractions are close together, but her labor is very, very slow.
The nurses all smile brightly, assuring them it's normal, that Clarke's body is getting ready, that it will be over before they know it.
He'd say it all blurs together, but every second Clarke grimaces in pain or cries out is terribly clear. Bellamy knew it would be hard to see in her pain when it came time for her to give birth, but the reality is much, much worse than he could have imagined.
It's a little better once she gets an epidural—she's able to sleep, albeit fitfully, and when she wakes up, it's nearly time for her to push.
At 11:03pm, he can't help but sob when their daughter finally leaves Clarke's body, begins screaming, and is laid on Clarke's chest for the first time. Clarke's hands are shaking, and she's crying too, when she touches the baby's back with trembling fingertips for the first time. Bellamy smoothes the sweaty hair out of her face, kisses her forehead.
"You did it. You did so good, Clarke." His voice cracks.
She looks at him, bewildered. "This is our baby."
"Yeah." He's half-laughing, half-crying. "She's ours."
Clarke turns back to their daughter, who is still screeching with the indignation of being born. "Shh, baby. It's okay. You're ours."
After the rest of the delivery, the stitches, the weighing and measuring of the baby, Bellamy holds her. Clarke watches them, eyes drooping in exhaustion.
"Does she smell good? Everyone always says babies smell good."
He presses his nose to the cap the nurse had tugged over her head. Underneath it, she has wisps of dark hair.
"Yeah, she smells pretty great." He shifts, about to bring her closer to Clarke so she can tell for herself, but Clarke shakes her head, small smile playing on her lips.
"You'll wake her. I'll get a chance later."
Bellamy nods, and they both go back to watching the sleeping infant. The next time Bellamy glances at Clarke, she's sound asleep.
They're in the hospital for another two days, and it's honestly a shock to go from round-the-clock care and help to being shooed out the door with only a newborn and each other.
Clarke sits in the back, next to the carseat. Phoebe's awake, but drowsy. She's got one hand curled around Clarke's finger, and her little palm keeps opening and closing around it.
Bellamy drives them home, and it may take an extra five minutes for all of his caution, but fuck everyone who honks at them—his wife just had a baby.
"You know you can pulled over for going too slow as well as too fast, right?"
"Fuck you."
Clarke snorts. "It's alright. I think you're cute."
"I'm trying to be a responsible husband and father," he says.
They're both quiet for a moment, and he realizes he's never called himself that before—a father.
"I don't think you need to worry about that, Bellamy," Clarke says.
He swallows.
"Hey," she says, voice impossibly gentle. "You know I think you're going to be the best dad ever, right? You take care of the people you love. It's who you are."
"Yeah." He clears his throat. "Yeah."
They can hear Atlas barking wildly behind the house when they pull into the driveway.
"How do you think he's going to react?" Clarke asks while Bellamy helps her out of the car.
"I don't know. He's never been aggressive," Bellamy reasons.
"Well, except with Murphy," Clarke reminds him.
"All animals hate him; it's not Atlas's fault," Bellamy says.
"That's fair."
"And he's pretty well trained. We can tell him no."
"We can."
"If we need to, we can install the baby gates early, keep them separated."
Clarke nods, frown pulling at her mouth.
"It'll be alright," Bellamy says, but he's experiencing an amount of anxiety about this that he did not expect nor ask for.
Animals are animals.
They'll do their best, but they really don't know how he'll react to a very loud, smelly, strange miniature human.
Walking through the door carrying a carseat might be the most bizarre moment of the whole thing. They left the house just the two of them, and they're coming back with a baby, and they are the baby's parents.
The house smells like lasagna, and they find a note from Monty and Miller telling them everything went well while they dog-sat, and they left dinner warming in the oven.
"Oh, thank god," Clarke says. "I'm starving."
"Do you want to eat before we try letting Atlas in?"
As if he can understand them, Atlas lets out another string of raucous barks.
"You know he won't quiet down until he sees us," Clarke says.
It's true.
They google the best way to introduce dogs to newborns, and don't really find any good concrete advice, so they settle for putting Phoebe's carseat on the couch, Clarke sitting next to her, while Bellamy goes to let Atlas in.
The dog rushes through the slider, prancing around Bellamy's legs in excitement. He licks Bellamy's jeans three times, then rushes over to greet Clarke.
"Hey, you big goof," Clarke says, and ruffles his ears while he snuffles her, spending more time examining all of the scents lingering from the hospital, and licks her knee in greeting.
He turns his attention to the carseat so fast Bellamy doesn't even realize what's happening at first. After one big sniff, he puts his paws on the edge of the couch so he can stick his head into the carseat, nose delicately scenting the air above Phoebe.
"Oh fuck," Clarke gasps; Bellamy rushes over to them, but Atlas stays perfectly still. Phoebe's been dozing in and out since they left the hospital, but right now her eyes are as big as he thinks a newborn's can get, fixed on the dog.
"I don't think she's too sure about him," Clarke says, and Phoebe starts crying, right on cue. Bellamy's ready to pull Atlas away by the collar if he needs to, but the dog's only reaction to the screaming baby is a twitch of his ears and another sniff.
"Down, Atlas," Bellamy says, firm, and the dog pushes off from the couch and rests on his haunches. Clarke unbuckles the baby and carefully cuddles her until she quiets.
"I could use that lasagna right about now," Clarke says, and Bellamy nods.
"You're good here?"
She nods. "I think we'll be fine."
He looks at Atlas. "Stay."
His tail thumps innocently.
When he gets back to the living room with two plates of lasagna, Atlas is nonchalantly leaning against Clarke's legs, chin on her lap—just like normal, except he's looking at Phoebe instead of Clarke.
Clarke's holding the baby high, up against her chest. "Should we let him sniff her again?" she asks uncertainly.
He puts their food on the side table. "I guess? I'll pull him away if he gets too pushy."
Clarke slowly lowers her arms until Phoebe's toes are inches from Atlas's nose.
He raises his chin from her knee, sniffs Phoebe, who is less affronted by his interest when she's being held.
And he licks her toes. Or her socks, really.
Phoebe tolerates it.
The tension finally drains out of Bellamy, and Clarke turns to him, beaming.
"He's saying hello."
"Yeah, he is."
Now that he's greeted the entire family, Atlas huffs, yawns, and goes to sleep laying across their feet.
Atlas never quite goes back to being Bellamy's shadow, even after Clarke gives birth.
He's still affectionate, silly and sweet and kind of dumb sometimes, and would crawl in Bellamy's lap if Bellamy would let him.
(Sometimes he does.)
But he continues to sleep on Clarke's side of the bed, next to the bassinet.
Whoever's holding Phoebe can count on a doggy chin on their knee.
At six months, they transition her to the nursery, and despite significant bribery, Atlas chooses to sleep curled up on the rug in front of her crib until they give in and move his dog bed into the room.
Whenever he finds loose pacifiers scattered around the house, he brings them to the baby, sometimes piling three or four next to her. If she's napping and the door to her room is closed, he leaves them at the threshold.
And her toes—
"What is it about her toes?" Clarke wonders. Phoebe is squealing, high-pitched joyous baby sounds, while Clarke bounces her, and Atlas had been licking her toes for the past five minutes.
"Beats me."
Atlas still loves Bellamy and Clarke, of course. They get licks hello and outraged barks when they have to leave him behind. They're his family. His favorite people.
But Atlas's new favorite person of all is Phoebe. Always Phoebe.
And honestly? They can't blame him.