Concealing her face from all the cameras, Clarke walked up and down the grocery store isles. While purchasing nothing but a bottle of cheap soda, she walked away with enough food for the three and medication for Wells.
As she walked back to their squat, her fingers turned red with the tips chapped and bleeding from the cold. She didn't know how much longer they'd last this winter without heat. Wells's cough kept getting worse, showing no sign of getting better. Not even the black nurses took him at the clinic because he was too dark.
The metal door squeaked as she entered the abandoned factory. Between the large but non-operational machines various teens made their homes. She knew most of them. Lincoln and Octavia stayed over near the press, with O's brother on the other side, separate but never far from his sister. Monty and Jasper slept near the coil with Harper and Monroe. Finn and Raven made their nest under the stairs, while Lexa, Anya and Indra took the office since they were the unofficial leaders of this squat. Every level held people Clarke knew at least in passing, and could rely on to not turn her group in to the cops.
Wells's coughing echoed through the entire place, and she felt each one in the center of her chest. When she made it to their area, curtained off using old oil rags pinned together and hanging from a conveyor belt, Murphy had Wells laying on his side as he coughed up sputum.
"At least he's getting some of the shit out of his lungs, eh?" Murphy sounded like he was trying to be optimistic about it.
"Yeah." She wiped the spit off Wells's face and then checked for a fever. He wasn't hot enough to worry, so she just poured cough syrup down his throat and waited for him to fall asleep. Cough medication always knocked Wells out cold.
John leaned against the wall and she settled down next to him. "He needs a doctor."
"I took him to the ER yesterday while you were out. They didn't officially turn him away, but they called everyone else that came in and never called him back. After twelve hours of the staff ignoring me at my most obnoxious, we gave up and came back here." Murphy leaned his head back and sighed. "Where'd you go?"
"I was trying to get cash. No luck though." She rested her head on Murphy's shoulder.
"You went to your parents didn't you?"
Clarke ignored the question and wrapped her arm through John's. "We need money. I don't think we can afford to be squeamish anymore."
Murphy's resignation surprised her. "Bellamy owes me a few favors, we'll get him to look over Wells while we're gone."
"We should get moving. We need to make a couple stops on our way."
Not long after finishing the soup Bellamy gave him, the questions started. "Hey Wells, isn't your family rich or something?"
"I guess." He sighed and coughed again.
"So why are you homeless?" Bellamy asked.
Wells understood the question. None of these kids would be homeless if they had another choice, and Clarke had one.
"What's the story there?" Bellamy passed Wells the bottle of Duggan's he'd gotten that afternoon.
"I'm not a drinker, but thanks." Wells coughed to the point of blackout. When his surroundings came into focus again, he couldn't remember why Bell was there. "Huh?"
"Clarke and Murphy have me babysitting you." Bellamy helped prop him against the wall.
"Oh, ah, yeah." Wells remembered now. "What were we talking about?"
"You were about to tell me how you and Clarke ended up on the streets." Bellamy made a fire in the metal barrel Clarke found last week.
"Clarke's father died about five years ago. My mother died giving birth. Abby married my dad four years ago. So things were okay for a year, but when they found out my boy friend coming for weekends was my boyfriend, they kicked me out. She tried to stop them. Told them that if they kicked me out, she was leaving too. They didn't care." Wells sighed. "They still don't."
"How'd you two get mixed up with Murphy? I mean out of every street kid I've ever met, he's got to be the most fucked up." The fire crackled and more smoke rose out of it than when Clarke stoked one.
"Murphy, ah, Murphy's hated my family for a long time. My father laid off both his parents in the same wave. His father died working a dangerous pay-by-the-day, and his mother drank herself to death afterward. His father had to take the pay-by-the-day job because Murphy was sick and the medical bills got expensive. So Clarke and I had the fortune or misfortune to run into Murphy before anyone else." Wells hacked again, little strings of blood in the mucus. "He started a fight with me that Clarke broke up. She talked him into being our biggest ally since my father didn't treat me any better than he treated anyone else. In return we got him clean, and that's, I guess, that."
"They love you though. Clarke and Murphy. You know that, right?" Bellamy asked as he warmed his hands over the flames.
"Clarke's my best friend, of course she loves me. But Murphy's loyal out of some misplaced sense of something, I don't even know what."
"Yeah, that's why he's out there right now trying to get you medical help. Because he's got a misplaced sense of loyalty." Bellamy shook his head and smirked sardonically. "Do you any idea what he went through before you? His loyalty stems from gratitude, the gratitude of you and Clarke saving his life and caring about him. Has he ever told you what the last words his mother said to him before she died?"
Wells shook his head.
"She told him he killed his father. So when you and Clarke came along and cleaned up after his puke, held him while he cried through shaking withdrawal, and never turned your back on him, that might be the first time since his father that anyone's ever cared about him. So if you ever suggest to him you've just been using him this entire time, I'll hold you down while he slits your throat." Bellamy didn't sound acidic, simply truthful.
"I never said I didn't care about Murphy. I said I don't think he cares about me." Wells went into another coughing fit.
When he woke up, dawn peaked through the windows and Clarke and Murphy flanked him, the three of them covered by a thick warm new blanket.