Disclaimer: I don't own 'the 100' or the characters, I'm just borrowing them.
Skin to skin, pt 2
AN: Once again 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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Clarke has lost her mind.
That's the first thought that crosses Bellamy's mind when she tells him to take off his pants.
He's too shocked to form a coherent thought, other than that he must've misheard her, so instead he just stares at her back as she turns on the spot and scans the garage.
What exactly the cold has done to her libido he isn't sure, and if he's entirely honest, he doesn't want to know. They're friends. Good friends, leaders, partners, and they can't let anything jeopardize that.
Even if his body would really, really like to.
"Bellamy! Pants off!" Clarke snaps, pointing at the floor to indicate just where she wants his pants at that exact moment.
He fights off a smirk and raises his eyebrows. "Why, exactly?"
Her expression reminds him of one of his teachers back on the Ark when they were about to explain something they felt should be painfully apparent but that he still couldn't grasp.
"Because they're wet!" She shouts, her voice high and a little frantic. "If you stay in them you're going to get too cold. You'll get hypothermia."
Heat, but unfortunately not the pleasant kind, floods Bellamy's face. Of course she's all business. Unlike him she's gotten better at controlling her emotions and her hormones, especially after the mess with Finn. Though, to be fair, Bellamy's gotten better at controlling himself since his 'whatever the hell we want' days.
Still, it stings a little that she's focused on saving his life and his mind is still in the garbage.
"I'm not taking my pants off," he practically growls at her. Getting his ass almost handed to him by a bird is enough humiliation for one day. He isn't adding Clarke seeing him in less than optimal conditions for nudity to the list.
As if she can sense that he's only being stubborn to protect his pride, Clarke narrows her eyes dangerously.
"You'll take them off or I'll take them off myself."
"You wouldn't," he says, before he can fully think it through.
She's Clarke, and Clarke will do whatever she has to if it means keeping him alive, even wrestling his pants off.
"I would."
I'll let you.
Mentally slapping himself, this isn't the time or the place, Bellamy grinds his teeth and glares around at the cars. Finally, knowing giving her what she wants is the best way to deal with the situation and that letting her try to undress him would only lead to places neither one of them is ready to go, he starts unbuttoning his pants.
As he's grumbling and pulling his soggy pants off, Clarke wanders off again, looking for something only she is privy to knowing about, yelling something about 'drying' and 'sleeping bag' at him over her shoulder.
After a few minutes she yells for him to come, and to bring their pile of blankets. So with his feet icy and his legs almost numb with cold, Bellamy gathers up his clothes, the blankets, and the lumpy sleeping bag and walks irritably over to the boxy black vehicle she's standing by.
He's barely around the corner and dropping the blankets to the ground, getting ready to crawl into the (hopefully) warm sleeping bag when Clarke's eyes drop to his boxers and he feels his face warm again.
"Wait," she says suddenly.
They're pretty thin, pretty pathetic, and pretty much see through.
Before he can make a comment to cut through the uncomfortable feeling he's getting with her eye focused so intently on him, her hand darts out and grabs a handful of his boxer's fabric.
If he wasn't so cold, wasn't increasingly feeling embarrassed, a new sensation for him when it comes to his body, he'd say something crude to throw her off her game. She's entirely too calm about all this. It isn't fair.
"Clarke!" Is all he can manage to sputter out, though.
Her features are stern and determined despite the glare he's sending her way. "Take them off."
His mind thaws enough that he manages a smirk through his increasingly chattery teeth. "Not right now, Princess. Wait 'till I'm not frozen solid and then you can get a show."
She rolls her eyes so hard Bellamy is sure she'll have a headache from it.
"They're wet, you idiot. Not every girl is dying to get in your pants." She turns her back and, thankfully, misses the hurt that he's sure flashes over his face. "Just take everything off."
Deciding it isn't worth the effort to argue more, her mind is made up and he's too damn cold, he grumbles to himself 'this is stupid' and 'shirt isn't wet' as he strips down and wiggles into the sleeping bag.
"Done," he grumbles.
When she turns her eyes flicker up and down him as he glowers from under the top of the sleeping bed he's pulled over his head like a cowl. If it weren't for the dark, playing with the only faint light from the flashlight and making odd shadows, he'd swear she's blushing.
She points at the open door and the cold interior. "Get in the back seat. I'll get in behind you. Hopefully we'll generate enough heat to warm it up some."
As he's flopping over and into the seat, feeling increasingly ridiculous, Clarke, to his horror, begins picking up his wet and horribly sweating clothes. None of them smell great. In all honesty personal hygiene hadn't exactly been incredibly high on the priority list in the early days for anyone, so he's smelled worse, but it still makes him a little wary.
He doesn't even notice she's crawled in and carefully placed each article of his clothing over the front seats until she falls back on him, landing squarely in his stomach.
"Ow."
A moment passes and no comment on his being 'fragile' comes, so he peaks out.
She's perched at the edge of the seat, jackets, boots, and socks all carefully placed between the two front seats and her hands at the hem of her shirt. Bellamy feels his stomach do an odd sort of roll.
"What are you doing?" He asks warily.
"I need to warm you up," she says simply.
Well that explains everything.
"And a striptease is the best thing you could think of?"
Granted, he doesn't want to complain, but something, maybe his conscience, tells him he should.
"Skin to skin warming," she explains flatly, as her fingers go to her pants.
She's already down to her bra and her pants are halfway down her thighs before the last functioning bit of Bellamy's brain tells him she's got to stop. They're dangerously close to the edge of something, though what that is exactly he isn't sure, and the fewer layers she has on, whether by so-called medical necessity or not, pushes them that much nearer to toppling over.
"Clarke. Don't."
He almost doesn't recognize his own voice. It's low, husky and heavy with something he doesn't want to think about too much.
She ignores him and crawls over the top of him. In a last ditch effort to keep something, anything, between them, he grabs the upper edge of the sleeping bag.
"Don't you dare," he warns, though there's little heat behind his words.
"Stop being a baby, Bellamy," she mutters as she yanks the bag apart and begins to stuff a foot in.
Rolling, he gets an icy foot to his back.
"I thought you said you were going to warm me up?" He hisses.
Clarke is probably rolling her eyes as she pokes her other foot in then wiggles her legs and body in behind them.
"Well if you would cooperate I would be," she says tightly. "It's going to mostly come from the body core anyways."
Crossing his arms, Bellamy prepares himself for a few hours of ignoring her and the pleasant warmth radiating from her body even though there's still a breath of space between them, then he feels her shifting some more.
Curiosity gets the better of him and he rolls his head, just enough to see her hand behind her. His eyes widen against his will as his ears pick up the faint pop of her bra unlatching. Then, as though it's a common occurrence for them to sleep naked together, she tosses it behind her.
"We need to do as much skin contact as possible."
Bellamy's mouth echoes his thoughts. "You've lost it."
He's so busy concentrating on anything, literally anything, other than her breasts brushing against his skin that he has just enough time to scowl at her when he realizes she's adding her panties to the pile of discarded clothes.
Clarke gives his shoulder a gentle shove, facing his body and eyes away from her. "Just shut up and let me hold you."
His body goes rigid as she snakes her arms around him and pulls him flush against her.
It takes ever ounce of self-control he has not to push her hands away and crawl out of the sleeping bag. Every curve of her body, every inch of soft skin and the patch of soft hair that he's trying so hard to ignore rubbing against him are almost painful.
She's trying to keep him from freezing to death and he's trying to keep from asking her if she'd like to know what would really warm him up.
Really mature, Bellamy.
Slowly, he focuses on breathing, in and out, ignoring the gentle heat seeping through his back as his eyes get heavy.
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When he wakes it's to a face full of filthy blonde hair.
For a minute he's confused, his mind is sluggish with sleep, but it quickly wakes when he recognizes the body pressed to his.
Clarke is in the same spot she'd started in, hasn't moved so much as an inch, but clearly Bellamy has.
Sometime during the night he'd rolled over and, to his mortification, wrapped himself around her. He's got her pinned tightly against him, and just like when she's smashed up against his back, he's suddenly painfully aware of ever facet of her body on his. His skin has her memorized, and he doesn't think there are enough icy ponds to bathe in to erase the memory from it.
Her cold nose bumps his chest as she squirms against him, back into the thin blanket of warmth they've created with their bodies. He's never been happier not to be sixteen again and have no control over his body, otherwise his anatomy might've given Clarke a very unexpected good morning poke.
He starts to wake her up, there's no telling how long they've been like this and the others are probably worried. It would be their luck if a search party was sent out and found them. Jasper and Monty would be unbearable, Octavia would give him an obnoxious smirk (she's been taunting him about a supposed crush he has on Clarke for a while now), and Bellamy isn't sure he even wants to imagine what Clarke's mother would have to say about it.
Nothing good, that's for damn sure.
As he's about to give her a nudge, tell her it's time to go, she sighs.
It's a soft noise, and her breath ghosts along his skin, sending a shiver up his spine.
She looks so content, despite the situation, much more relaxed than she has since he's ever known her, that he can't bring himself to wake her.
He remembers his mother telling him a story, a lifetime ago, before Octavia and all the secrets, about a sleeping princess.
"Only true love's kiss could wake her," she read.
Bellamy had wrinkled his nose.
"What happened if someone who wasn't her 'true love kissed her?"
His mother had smiled sadly. "Nothing."
As his eyelids get heavy and droop closed, he wonders if Clarke, his princess, would sleep on if he kissed her, or wake to ride off to a happily ever after.
He snorts. She'd sleep.
If there's a Prince Charming in their group, Bellamy isn't it.
What had Murphy called him? A king. That's not right either. All the kings his mother had read about were good and wise, and Bellamy is sure he's neither.
With a shake of his head, he buries his face in her hair again before his cheek comes to a rest against her head and his body begins memorizing her again. He's having crazy thoughts.
Maybe he's still a little cold, he thinks he remembers something about delirium during Earth skills class, and his thoughts have got to fall into the 'delirious' category.
Or maybe he's losing his mind, too.
A little while longer in the sleeping bag with his human defroster ought to make his diagnosis clear.
That's what he tells himself, anyways.