Disclaimer: I don't own 'the 100' or the characters, I'm just borrowing them.
Skin to Skin
AN: This is my first attempt at bellarke fanfiction. So, so sorry if it's silly. Many thanks to Melika-Elena for suffering through my inventive punctuation and creative spelling choices to make it sound like I have a clue.
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While Clarke appreciates the wonders of seasons down on Earth, she's also beginning to tire of them.
On the Ark there was climate control, never too hot or too cold, and while there'd never been an abundance of food, it was steady. There were no peaks and valleys, only bland, flavorless meals three times a day.
The other thing she was beginning to miss about the Ark was something she'd already lamented, back when Monty was speared and Finn was shot.
Medicine. Equipment.
Because if they had even a handful of the carefully created, well tested medications at their disposal then three quarters of Camp Jaha wouldn't be sick with the flu. Nothing fancy, just some fever relievers and some decongestants would make things better.
The Grounders have been somewhat helpful. Ever since the alliance and defeat of the Mountain Men they've been less openly hostile. There are still squabbles, arguments over territory, but they don't end in bloodshed anymore.
Still, Grounder priority is Grounder health, not helping the Ark survivors. They give what little they can spare as far as dried herbs and plants, but no more.
So while everyone else is down and sick, the few not sniffling and sneezing, being packed in ice by Clarke's mother and her assistant, are trying to keep the camp up and running.
That's how this mess started.
Clarke had volunteered to go hunting again. She wasn't great, but she was better than she had been thanks to Bellamy somewhat patiently teaching her.
"Why do you want to go hunting?" He'd asked her their first trip out.
She'd only given him a half glance. "You know why."
He'd grunted a 'yeah sure' at that.
It was because of Finn. She just needed to put as much distance between them as possible and going on the hunts was the only real chance she got to do that. It's part of the agreement with the Grounders. Finn was allowed to live, but under one condition.
"We ever see him outside the fence of your camp again and we'll kill him," the dark haired woman had told them. They were nothing if not blunt.
While it had been awkward at first, the longer Finn was trapped in the camp the more he'd sought Clarke out. He was bored; that's how Clarke interpreted it, anyway. He was demoted from a tracker and productive member of the 100 to folding laundry after the others had taken it and washed it at the river.
Clarke had told him firmly to stay his distance. She didn't know him anymore and she wasn't sure she wanted to, but when he persisted she'd found another way to keep him away.
"Please, Bellamy," she pleaded. "Everytime I turn around he's there. I don't want to talk to him."
And shouldn't have to. They were finished before they even started and any chance they had died in the Grounder village alongside the people he shot.
"If a guy were following Octavia around after she asked him not to you'd help her out, right?"
That had been the clincher.
Reluctantly, Bellamy had agreed to act as her human shield. It benefitted him too, though: Clarke had more access to inside information than he did-hanging around her wasn't much of a chore.
"We're talking," he'd tell Finn anytime he showed up, sending him in his way back to folding laundry.
Out in the woods Clarke feels like she can breathe.
"Do you see that?" She asks Bellamy as she spots a large bird. "I think it's a turkey."
But she isn't sure. Earth studies has proven to be a hit or miss class when put to the test. Half the things they learned are helpful and correct, the other half are either useless or likely to get them killed. The bird might be a turkey, or it might be some carnivorous dodo.
"Only one way to find out," Bellamy mutters, taking the crossbow they'd liberated from the Mountain Men's facility and aiming at the bird.
The bolt fires with a thwap and hits the bird in the neck, which should kill it quickly. At least that's what Clarke thinks. The bird has other ideas.
It makes a horrible noise, flops around wildly and then takes off, running with it feathers splayed. Maybe warning others, Clarke thinks.
"Get back here!" Bellamy jumps from behind the golden log they'd hidden behind and begins chasing the bird. "You're our dinner, you stupid bird!"
Clarke scrambles after him, her feet slipping in the slush underfoot. Some of the snow has melted in the afternoon sun, making the forest floor a slippery, muddy mess.
Cold wind, too damn cold, stings her lungs as her feet pound against the ground, alternating on mud, then snow, then solidly frozen ground.
By the time she catches up with Bellamy he's tackled the bird and has it lifeless in his hand.
"It ran itself to death," he tells her, holding it out for her inspection. "Dropped dead after making me chase it all this way."
"How inconsiderate of him not to die sooner," Clarke says without thinking.
Instantly, she feels bad. Bellamy's just chased down a meal for them; she shouldn't be making fun of him.
He doesn't look annoyed, though, just grins at her. "Looks like I'm rubbing off on you, Princess."
Clarke rolls her eyes at that, even though it may be a little bit true. They've been around each other a lot, first as co-leaders and then simply as friends, they were bound to rub off on each other.
"Whatever," she mutters. Her eyes catch on the horizon, spot the deep purple gray that had preceded the last snow storm, and feels her stomach drop. "We need to get back to camp."
Bellamy turns, his eyes narrowing on the front moving in, then nods.
They aren't even halfway back when the winds pick up. It's another thing Clarke hates about Earth weather. When it changes it can be either lazy, almost reluctant to move into the next cycle, or it happens in the blink of an eye. Today it's half a blink.
Snow swirls around them and icy wind cuts through their makeshift winter clothes. The Grounders, mostly Lincoln, had shown them how to improve their thin pants and jackets, but they weren't quite up to the standard of a blizzard.
Clarke stumbles, her feet are going numb even in the fur lining of the boots.
"Bellamy!" She can barely see his dark outline in the whiteout of the storm. "We need to find shelter!"
He nods and pulls his cap, another stolen relic from the Mountain Men, down over his ears.
Before she can suggest they pull out their tent, if it can protect them from the acid fog then it should do well enough against the worst Mother Nature can throw at them, she feels herself being jerked sideways.
"Bellamy!"
Half carrying her, he trudges through the piling snow, finally coming to a stop at the side of what looks to be a small mound. Clarke's lips are frozen shut so she can't shout at him 'what the hell are you doing?' but she doesn't need to.
Bellamy's gloved hands start tugging at a handle she hadn't been able to see. It's probably frozen shut too, but Clarke grabs on anyway and tries to help.
Just as she's about to give up and pry her lips apart to suggest the tents, it grinds open and they both dive in.
It isn't much warmer, probably because whatever it is it's underground, and the ground has been mostly solid for ages.
"What is it?" She asks, pulling out her flashlight.
"Some kind of garage," he tells her. "It's where we found Lincoln."
She just nods. That means it's connected to the tunnels. Since the Reapers have been more or less wiped out, it should be safe, and if they're brave enough to traverse the underground blindly, they might be able to find a way back to camp. She doubts they are, though. They're more likely to get lost and die from exposure than they are to make it home.
Clarke starts walking, pulling her coat closer, but she stops when she hears something shattering.
Turning back, she sees Bellamy knocking out the back window of one of the boxy vehicles and opening the door.
"What are you doing?" She asks, her nose scrunching up. There has to be a reason; he isn't one to destroy things without one.
"I don't think they'll mind."
Clarke rolls her eyes.
He grins over his shoulder before reaching into the back seat and pulling out a small rectangle of material, blue with little green dots on it. A child's blanket.
"I bet there are more," Bellamy says, shaking the little blanket out and smiling at her. "We should at least be productive if we're going to be stuck here for a while. Check all these things for supplies."
It's as good a plan as any, so for what must be approaching an hour they knock in windows in and rifle through the contents of each one.
They find such useful things as an unopened, insulated sleeping bag (Guaranteed to 32 degrees and below according to the packaging), a hand crank lantern, and half a dozen fluffy blankets that all appear to have belonged to children once upon a time judging by the cartoonish designs and bright colors. They also find toys, useless electronics, faded photos and heaps of garbage.
"Maybe the storm has passed," Clarke finally says after crawling from the back of a very long vehicle.
Bellamy, who had been holding a small, worn doll, probably the beloved toy of a little girl a hundred years ago, sets the toy down carefully on the stack of blankets and nods. "I'll go check."
He's only gone a minute before Clarke hears cursing and he reappears from around the back of the garage.
"Still blowing," he grumbles, trying to shake bits of ice and snow that had accumulated in his hair in the few seconds he'd been peeking out. "We're stuck here for a while."
Sighing, Clarke digs in her backpack and pulls out the radio.
"Camp, this is Clarke, does anyone read me?"
There's nothing for a very long minute, then Raven's voice cracks in and out.
"CLARKE! ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" Stop. "THERE'S-STORM" Stop. "-SAFE!"
"We're fine!" Clarke yells back. "We'll head back once it passes."
If it passes. The weather is too unpredictable here, it may last a few hours or it may last a few days, no one knows. One of the luxuries they'd sacrificed when the Ark had come down, their ability to watch the weather.
Not waiting for a response, Clarke shuts the radio off. The batteries need to last, and there's no telling how long that may be.
She turns back to Bellamy to plan their next move but stops when she spots his pants. They're dark, almost black in the poor lighting. Her heart stops.
"Are you bleeding?" She asks, striding across the short distance between them and grabbing his leg to see if it is in fact blood. Surely he'd have known if he were bleeding, right?
"Watch your hands, Princess," he says, grabbing her hand as it makes contact with his thigh. "It's just wet. And no, I did not wet my pants."
She doesn't even bother with a fake laugh. "Wet?" Her stomach turns. "Why are you wet?"
He shrugs and points at the turkey, which he'd dropped unceremoniously in the middle of the garage, behind a red truck. "Stupid bird died in the middle of a wet patch. Must've been a part of the river, a tributary or whatever. It was pretty frozen, but I broke through on the way back. Just a little. Mostly just splashed me."
It looks like more than a splash, his pants look pretty soaked from his feet up to his thigh.
"Take your pants off," she tells him as she grabs up the sleeping bag and turns on the spot to find a suitable vehicle to set up camp in for a while, preferably one that had been unlocked and they didn't bust the window out of.
When she doesn't hear the rustling of clothes she turns back and finds Bellamy staring at her.
"Bellamy! Pants off!"
His eyebrows rise. "Why, exactly?"
"Because they're wet!" It was pretty simple. "If you stay in them you're going to get too cold. You'll get hypothermia."
Faster than he will with them off and sitting in the sleeping bag, anyways.
His face seems to darken, though with only the flashlight it's hard to tell. "I'm not taking my pants off."
Clarke glares at him. This is no time for him to suddenly get shy.
"You'll take them off or I'll take them off myself." He isn't going to die just because he doesn't want Clarke to see him naked.
She actually feels a little offended. It isn't like he's had a problem getting naked with other girls, and none of them were trying to keep him from freezing to death. What's his problem with Clarke seeing him?
He narrows his eyes. "You wouldn't."
"I would." I will.
The steel in her resolve must shine through her eyes, because despite clenching his jaw, glaring around at the silent vehicles as though it's their fault he's acting like a child, his hands go to his waist and he starts to undress.
While he's pouting, Clarke goes back to her search.
"You'll have to get in the sleeping bag while they're drying," she tells him over her shoulder.
She decides on a black one with the words 'Tahoe' on the back and peeks around the edge to yell.
"Grab the sleeping bag and blankets and come here!"
He comes around the corner a minute later, pants-less and scowling, carrying a stack of childish blankets over one arm and a lumpy sleeping bag over the other.
Clarke's eyes drop to his boxers, which are so thin they're almost nonexistent and haphazardly sewn in a couple of spots. They're also wet. He'd clearly gotten soaked a little more than he'd thought.
He's shivering as he drops the blankets and starts to crawl in the sleeping bag.
"Wait," she stops him and reaches out, grabbing the hem of his boxers for confirmation before he can stop her.
"Clarke!"
"Take them off," she tells him.
Even with his teeth chattering he manages a glare. "Not right now, Princess. Wait 'til I'm not frozen solid and then you can get a show."
Boys can be so gross sometimes.
"They're wet, you idiot. Not every girl is dying to get in your pants."
She turns her back to him. There he can have privacy if that's what he wants. "Just take everything off."
It's all probably wet and he just can't tell.
He mumbles darkly behind her, but she hears clothing being removed and the sleeping bag moving.
"Done," he grumbles.
Clarke turns and finds him looking like some kind of sullen, overgrown caterpillar, his clothes in a heap beside him. The bright green sleeping bag is pulled up over his head, shadowing his already dark eyes as he glares at her.
The thought that he's naked under there makes Clarke's face warm. Thankfully the dark will keep it from being noticeable.
"Get in the back seat," she tells him pointing at the opened door. "I'll get in behind you. Hopefully we'll generate enough heat to warm it up some."
He doesn't argue, just hops gracelessly over and topples into the seat.
While he's situating himself Clarke picks up his clothes. They're not just wet. They're completely soaked.
She suddenly feels her stomach drop. Bellamy is going to need to warm up quicker than she'd thought. He's been running around in wet clothes for too long.
Her brain spins as she tries to remember anything that might help. That's when the least pleasant option comes to her.
"On earth," the man that taught her earth studies class had told them one day, "survivalists would often use body heat to warm themselves in an emergency."
"Body heat?" Someone had asked.
"Skin to skin contact," the teacher had carried on. "The warmer person would strip down and use their body heat to warm the other."
"So...they were both naked and rubbing up on each other?" A boy had asked with a smirk. "Nice!"
Clarke had rolled her eyes at the boy and not thought much about body heat or skin to skin heating until now.
Her mother had talked about babies benefitting from being placed naked on their mothers' chests shortly after birth.
"It helps with thermoregulation," she'd explained.
If it helped babies, Clarke reasoned, it'll help Bellamy.
She crawls in after him and drapes his wet clothes over the front seats before plopping back into him.
"Ow," he grumbles from somewhere inside his cocoon.
Taking a steadying breath Clarke pulls off her jacket, then her boot, socks, the second jacket...
"What are you doing?" Bellamy asks, his voice no longer muffled by layers of blankets.
Clarke can't look at him, keeping her eyes forward as she lifts the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head.
"I need to warm you up."
"And a striptease is the best thing you could think of?"
Clarke glares at her reflection in the small mirror. Boys.
"Skin to skin warming," she tells him flatly as she starts unbuttoning her pants.
When she begins shimmying them down her thighs Bellamy reaches from his nest and grabs her hand.
"Clarke. Don't."
There's a little hitch in his voice even though it's lower than normal and Clarke feels her stomach do a sudden drop. The strain in his words isn't quite lust, but it could easily be mistaken for it.
She pushes his hand away and continues on. This isn't about what makes either one of them comfortable, this isn't about nakedness, this isn't about sex. This is about keeping him alive.
When she's down to her panties and bra she crawls over him and starts to unzip the very top of the sleeping bag to crawl in. Bellamy wraps his fingers around the upper edge of the bag and holds it together.
"Don't you dare," he growls.
Clarke rolls her eyes and yanks the edge from his hands. Did he really think that would keep her from getting in?
"Stop being a baby, Bellamy."
Before he can do anything else Clarke stuffs a foot in as he rolls away, causing her to graze his back with her frigid foot as she does.
"I thought you said you were going to warm me up?" He hisses as she wiggles her other foot, then both her legs into the bag.
"Well if you would cooperate I would be," she tersely tells him. "It's going to mostly come from the body core anyway."
Once she's in the bag, with still a scant few inches between her body and Bellamy's back she begins shifting her hands, twisting them behind her to get to the clasp of her bra.
Bellamy must feel get movement and get curious, because he glances over his shoulder and his eyes widen.
Before he can say anything Clarke unhooks her bra and pulls it from inside the sleeping bag, tossing it behind her. "We need to do as much skin contact as possible."
"You've lost it."
The dim glow from the flashlight, which Clarke had lodged somewhere behind her, is just enough to highlight the harshening angles of Bellamy's as he realizes Clarke isn't finished. She's already got her panties off and is tossing it with her bra.
"Just shut up and let me hold you," Clarke grumbles, giving his tilted shoulder a light shove before snaking her arms around his middle.
He stiffens almost immediately, his back straightening out and his muscles going rigid as Clarke presses her body against his.
She says a silent pray to whatever higher power may exist that they don't both die like this, naked in a sleeping bag, with half a dozen blankets on them. That would be her luck, to have a search party come out and find her and Bellamy frozen solid and looking like some post coital sculpture.
After a few minutes Bellamy's breathing, which had been choppy and short, evens out. When his muscles uncoil and his body lets Clarke's mould to it she knows he's fallen asleep.
She tightens her arms around him and lets her cheek rest against his shoulder as she tries not to let her mind wander to every inch of skin pressed to hers. It's a bit of a task. She's not blind, Bellamy's attractive. Very attractive.
Stop that!
Squashing down all her inappropriate thoughts, that the freckles on his back are adorable and that the muscles of his stomach are an example of perfect anatomy, Clarke closes her eyes and wills his clothes to dry faster.
When she wakes her nose is up against a new expanse of skin. Bellamy's chest.
He must've turned over in his sleep.
His arms are wrapped tight around her, one across her back, hand gently curled around her shoulder while the other hand rest at the nape of her neck. Hot breath puffs through her hair and she realizes he's curled himself around her and buried his face in her hair.
Bellamy Blake is a cuddler. Who would've guessed it?
Clarke twists her head slightly and peers up through her mess of hair and examines his sleeping features.
It's the youngest she's ever seen him look. His entire expression is relaxed, soft, and if she's being completely honest, adorable.
Instead of waking him, gathering up his undoubtedly dried clothes and heading back to camp, Clarke presses her ear to his chest and listens to the steady rhythm of his heart.
Eyes fluttering shut, Clarke decides to sleep a little longer.
Maybe everything on earth isn't as bad as she'd thought. If all snow storms went this way, she could definitely learn to appreciate them more. At the very least it's let her test out skin to skin heat exchange, definitely valuable knowledge.
Bellamy's body curls tighter around hers and she feels his lips against her scalp.
Definitely valuable knowledge.