Chapter 19
When Bellamy got home the next morning, his mom had already left for work, but his sister's car was there. He heard the laundry machine rumbling once again right when he walked in.
"Out all night, huh?" she noted, coming out of her bedroom.
"No," he denied, stepping out of his shoes, "I just woke up and decided to . . . yeah, I was out all night." There really wasn't any point in trying to pretend otherwise.
"Hmm, let me guess: You were with Clarke?" She gave him a knowing look, then laughed and shook her head. "You're so obvious, it's painful."
"She's goin' through something, okay? I'm just trying to be there for her," he said, not about to divulge just how he'd gone about being there for her last night. And how many times he'd . . . been there for her.
"Well, you seem to be doing an excellent job," she teased. "One might even say you're like her boyfriend again. Would one be right?"
"One . . . might be," he said unsurely. "I don't know." In high school, things had just been simple. They'd ended up dating, referring to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend even though that hadn't been the plan going in. But this was a lot more complicated. It probably wouldn't have been without the baby, but . . . that wasn't the baby's fault. "I'm really tired," he said, rubbing his face. "I'm goin' back to bed."
"Don't you have to go to work?" she reminded him after he'd taken only a few steps towards his room.
"Oh, crap." It was Monday, wasn't it? He had to be at work in an hour.
"Hey, while you're there, hand these out, will you?" she said, grabbing a small stack of brightly-colored flyers off the kitchen counter. She shoved them at him and said, "My roommate wanted me to do it, but I don't even care." She seemed more than content to hand that job off to him as she disappeared back into her bedroom and shut the door.
Bellamy took a look at the top flyer, a neon orange thing that was advertising some Trunk-or-Treat event. At first he thought it was a typo until he looked it over a little more. No, it was indeed Trunk-or-Treat.
Huh. He had an idea.
Work just about killed Bellamy's back that day, but Roan wasn't there—apparently he'd had to take one of his daughters to the doctor because she had a bad cold. So Bellamy felt like he had to step it up in his coworker's absence. He wasn't sure if Emerson noticed or not, but he worked through lunch and killed himself all afternoon lifting and transporting 4x4s. They weren't heavy at first, and they were light enough to carry without a partner. But after doing it for hours, his arms were shot.
Even though he was tired and left without even so much as a 'good job today' from his boss, Bellamy didn't head straight home. He stopped at Eligius since he knew Clarke had to work tonight. There weren't many people in there, so she was kind of just standing at the counter. It looked like she was doodling something on a napkin.
"Slow night, huh?" he said as he took a seat at the bar.
She perked up a little bit when she saw him. "Yeah. It's dragging." Tossing away the napkin, which she'd drawn a very pretty flower on, she put her pen back in her apron and asked, "You want something to drink?"
"Sure." He wasn't about to turn down a beer after the tiring day he'd had, but that wasn't the reason he'd stopped in. "Really, I just came to see you, though."
"Well, here I am." She grabbed a bottle out of the fridge, popped off the cap, and set it down in front of him.
Here you are, he thought, his eyes roaming all over her as he took a swig. She looked . . . sort of down again, like she had last night before they'd started . . . what they'd started. The poor girl had probably spent all day trying to focus on classes when she had a hell of a lot bigger things on her mind.
"What's up?" she asked, giving him a questioning look. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I just . . ." It was hard not to think about what they'd done together not even twenty-four hours ago. Although it'd begun in the kitchen, it hadn't stayed there. The couch had gotten some action, and even the staircase, too. "About last night . . ." he said quietly, even though no one was siting close enough to hear. "I feel kinda weird about it."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because you were upset about Finn. You were crying. Maybe I shouldn't have . . . you know."
She, too, lowered her voice, as she filled in, "Fucked me?"
"Yeah."
"Hmm," she said, thinking for a moment. "No, it felt pretty good to get fucked."
"But you were upset," he repeated. It wasn't like he'd gone over there looking for sex or anything.
"So?" she said. "That doesn't mean I wasn't thinking clearly. I knew what we were doing. I was totally fine with it. Besides, making impulsive decisions? I've been known to do that from time to time."
No kidding. Their entire relationship had started up because she'd made an impulsive decision about losing her virginity. "I just wanna make sure I didn't . . . you know, take advantage of you or anything," he said, grimacing inwardly as he said those words.
"Oh, god no," she assured him quickly. "Bellamy . . . you didn't do anything like that."
What if he had, though? She'd been vulnerable and emotional, and he'd sort of just been there.
"I wanted to," she insisted. "It—it felt good. I mean, I know we shouldn't . . ." She trailed off, sighing frustratedly. "I know it keeps happening, even though I've said it shouldn't, but let's just not dwell on it right now, okay? It was fun. And it made me feel better."
He nodded slowly, deciding that . . . that was a good thing, ultimately. Anything that made her feel better right now, anything he could do . . .
"Not that I'm trying to, like, use you for sex or anything," she quickly added.
"No, I know." Even if she was, though . . . he wasn't above being used.
"Okay," she said. "Just wanted to make sure you knew that."
"I know," he said again. "You like me for more than my hot body."
She touched her stomach, saying, "And you like me for more than my round one."
"You're not that round yet," he told her.
"Oh, really?" She purposefully stuck her belly out even further by slouching. "My stomach's been like a bottomless pit this week," she informed him. "I can't stop eating."
"Well, that's okay. You're eating for two." That was normal; that was healthy.
"Yep," she muttered. "Eating for two."
And just like that, she was down in the dumps again. It wasn't that she didn't want the baby—he knew that. But especially in light of that jackass Finn bailing on her, it was understandable why she still wasn't jumping for joy about it.
"So what're you doin' for Halloween?" he asked her, trying to change the subject as best he could.
"Halloween?" she echoed. "You mean besides not going out and not dressing up and not doing anything fun?" She shrugged. "Who knows? I'll probably just sit home and watch that Charlie Brown thing. What even is it? Something about the Great Pumpkin?"
"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," he confirmed.
"Whatever. The Christmas one was enough. They could've just left it at that and cancelled all the rest."
He got a chuckle out of her sudden burst of pessimism. He wasn't sure what Charlie Brown had ever done to her, but apparently she wasn't a fan. "So you're not doin' anything?" he surmised.
"Nope," she said. "I really don't feel like going to some party where I can't drink and therefore can't even socialize."
Yeah, he'd been invited to a couple of parties, but he didn't really feel like going to any of them. Miller was hosting one, but he'd warned him in advance that he'd be the only straight man there. And Bree . . . well, there wasn't a chance in hell he was going to Bree's Halloween party. "I have an idea," he announced, hoping she'd be down for it. "Something we could do together. As . . . friends." He was pretty sure friends didn't fuck each other the way they had last night, but if they could just hang out this week without all the added drama and pressure of figuring their own relationship out, maybe that'd be the best thing for her.
"What is this?" she asked when he took one of the flyers he'd failed to distribute out of his pocket. "Trunk-or-Treat?"
"Yeah, it's up at the elementary school," he said. "You pay for a parking space, park your car, deck it out to be all scary or whatever. And then kids show up and go from trunk to trunk, and you hand out candy."
"People actually do this instead of trick-or-treating?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"'cause it's faster and safer." He rolled his eyes, feeling like some parents were just too damn overprotective these days. His mom had let him run all over the neighborhood with his friends, and nothing bad had ever happened. "The school gets half the money from everyone who pays to be there," he explained, "and the other half goes to the people with the best car."
"Like the best decorations?" she asked.
"Yeah." He'd Googled a couple things. Some people went all out for it.
"So it's like a competition," she said, the flyer still in her hands. "I am competitive."
"I am, too. So we should do it," he suggested.
"You wanna spend your Halloween handing out candy?"
"Yeah, why not?" Wasn't like he had anything better to do. "It'll be fun. We could get Raven and her boyfriend to do it, too, and Monty and his girlfriend, your other friend."
"Harper," she reminded him.
"Yeah, her. And Jasper and Maya. That could be their second date." It was a good idea on so many levels.
"Well . . ." She considered it for a moment, then said, "My stepdad does have a black minivan he uses for work. We could probably borrow that. That'd be better to decorate than just the regular trunk of a car."
"See, now you're thinkin'." Clarke had a creative mind. He didn't feel like he could put this together without her.
"Well, yeah," she said. "Bellamy, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna win."
He saw an extra little gleam in her eyes, one that hadn't been there when he'd first walked in. "That's my girl," he said, smiling.
...
The next day, Bellamy accompanied Clarke over to her parents' place during his lunch break. Her stepdad was there, and when Clarke explained to him what they were doing, he gladly handed her the keys to his van. Clarke wasn't used to driving something that big, so Bellamy backed it out of the garage, then got out and took a look at it in the driveway. Perfect, he thought. Nice big trunk. If they pushed the seats down, they had plenty of room to chill out in the back. Actually, it wouldn't have been a bad place to have sex, but . . . no, he was in friend mode right now. As much as she wanted the sex, this was probably what she needed.
They got together that night, too, at her place, for a brainstorming session. Clarke was totally into it. She brought out her sketchbook to draw out some ideas, and she put on some Halloween music to 'get in the right mindset.' God, she was cute.
"I think it needs a theme," she declared. "Maybe we could make it match our costumes."
"Well, what're we gonna wear?" Most of the costumes at the store in town were for kids, and if he ordered something online, there was no guarantee it'd get there on time.
"I could be a zombie cheerleader," she proposed.
"And I could be a zombie quarterback." Octavia had lots of crazy makeup stashed in her room. They could use some of that.
"You still have your jersey?" she inquired.
"Yeah." He wasn't sure it'd still fit very well, but he could probably squeeze into it.
"Ooh, and then our whole display could be, like, a haunted football field," she said, immediately taking pencil to paper.
"Oh, yeah," he said, watching as she sketched the outline of the van. "We could get skeletons and set them up as football players."
Branching off of that, she said, "And we could get monster masks for the refs. Or we could make them and paint them."
"And then instead of the down markers, we could have tombstones." It was fitting. Sometimes a hard hit in football felt like death.
"Yes!" she exclaimed, her whole face lighting up. "I like it."
Oh, the ideas were really flowing now. Bellamy felt like he was back in school, except that he'd never actually contributed ideas to group projects back then. "And my mom still has this inflatable goal post in our shed from when I was younger," he said. "We could use that."
"And put cobwebs and bats and ghosts and stuff on it."
"We got this in the bag," he boasted
"Yeah, we do." She picked up her phone and said, "I'm gonna text Raven and tell her she and Murphy are goin' down."
He smirked, watching her adoringly as she texted with one hand and drew with the other. For the first time in weeks, it didn't seem like she was thinking about being pregnant. It just seemed like she was having fun.
She had fun when they went to the nearest Walmart and picked up decorations later that week, too. She liked stringing fake cobwebs in his hair and trying on monster masks. She even tried hiding and jumping out and scaring him, but it never worked. Sometimes the employees on duty gave them looks like they were crazy, like they couldn't understand why two grown adults would be playing around like they were. But just getting to see Clarke be playful at all after struggling so much lately . . . it was worth it. People could stare all they wanted. He didn't fucking care.
It ended up being so easy to get caught up in the planning process of everything that Bellamy nearly forgot to register for the event in the first place. He had to swing by the elementary school for that, and as he walked in the door, a couple PTO-type moms were walking out. They gave him looks, then looked at each other and grinned. Probably thought he was the new dad or something.
He walked into the office and approached the very busy secretary. "Hello," she greeted cheerfully, but it sort of looked like she was forcing a smile. "How can I help you?"
"Yeah, I wanna get entered in the Trunk-or-Treat thing." When he said it out loud like that, it sounded so lame, but screw it. He was in it to win it.
"Sure. It's twenty dollars," she said.
He took his wallet out, fished around for some cash, and managed to scrounge up that much.
"And your name?" she asked.
"Bellamy Blake."
She took out a big binder and started filling out a receipt for him, or a ticket or something like that. He stood there, listening to the sound of a screaming child coming from down the hall, and a crying child coming from the other direction. Kids were loud.
The phone rang, and the secretary said, "Sorry, I need to get this," before she answered. Bellamy tuned out her conversation, especially as the office door swung open and in came Raven.
"Huh," she said, "looks like we had the same idea today."
So it was official then. She was registering, too. "Yeah, well, don't steal any more of my ideas," he said. As far as he knew, her scrawny boyfriend hadn't played any sports in high school, so if they even tried a haunted football field, it wouldn't be as good.
"Please, I don't have to steal anything," she scoffed. "Murphy and I are gonna win. We've got the whole thing planned out."
"Well, Clarke and I have a plan, too, and ours is better than yours, so . . ."
"Wow, so cocky."
He shrugged. Came with the territory of having a big cock.
"I'll have you know, we're not taking it easy on you guys just because she's pregnant," Raven warned.
"Oh, I hope you don't. That'll make it all the more rewarding when we kick your ass."
The secretary hushed him, and he remembered that he was in an elementary school, where that word was probably strictly prohibited.
"God, what are we doing?" Raven said. "Trunk-or-treating? We must be the lamest twenty-somethings ever. How'd you come up with this idea anyway?"
"Ah, I just wanted to do something nice for Clarke," he mumbled. "This whole time she's been pregnant, she hasn't been able to think about anything else. She hasn't even gotten to just . . . be happy. So I thought this would be fun to do, something to get her mind off other things."
Raven didn't seem to have a snappy response for that. In fact, she looked at him with this kind of sappy smile on her face.
"What?" he said.
"Nothing, it's just . . . Bellamy. You like her so much."
"Okay, let's not get into that." This wasn't the time or the place to dissect his feelings for Clarke. No matter how obvious they were.
When the secretary hung up the phone, she quickly finished filling out his ticket and handed it to him. "Here you go," she said. "You're registered."
"Thanks." He pocketed that and threw out one last taunt at Raven before he left. "Have fun losing."
She just rolled her eyes.
...
Two days out from the competition, Clarke faked being sick just to get a night off work, and Bellamy headed over with all the decoration materials they'd gotten from the store. They set up shop in her spare bedroom, where there was plenty of space for her to a paint a candy bowl in the shape of a football and for him to cut out some shapes that were supposed to be spooky.
"How's this look?" he asked, holding up a black blob.
She stopped painting. "Is that a bat?"
"No, it's a spider." The eight legs had kind of morphed together, but they didn't look like wings, did they? "Maybe you should be doing this," he suggested.
"It's fine. Just try again," she encouraged.
He placed the spider stencil pack down on the black construction paper and traced around it for the second time. "I was never good at this stuff," he admitted. He'd taken a year of choir in high school just to get that damn fine arts credit out of the way.
"Oh, this is right up my alley," she said as she dipped a paintbrush into a small bowl of white paint. "How many little lines go on a football?"
"Uh . . ." He squinted his eyes as he pictured one in his head and in his hands. "Eight."
As she painted the laces on her football bowl, she commented, "This is really fun. I'm glad we're doing this."
"Good." Fun was the goal. Although if someone had told him two months ago that he'd move back to Arkadia and end up doing arts and crafts with Clarke, he would have said they were crazy. Doing a sixty-nine with her, sure, but arts and crafts? Completely out of his wheelhouse.
He tossed the stencil aside once he was done tracing, but before he cut this attempt at a spider out, he just took a moment to watch her, to watch her delicate hands as she swiped her paintbrush over the side of the bowl. Her hands were beautiful and soft, just like the rest of her. They felt so different than his own.
"What?" she said, giving him a look.
"Nothing." It was just that, being there with her right now, both of them six years older than they'd been on the only other Halloween they'd spent together . . . it was impossible not to reminisce.
...
When Clarke had walked out of her house wearing a sexy little nurse's costume, Bellamy had assumed that would be the highlight of his night. But he'd thought wrong. Clarke was spunky tonight, way more exciting than the supposedly 'lit party' they'd decided to attend. In fact, it was her idea to head upstairs, ditch the beer pong happening down in the kitchen. She took Bellamy's hand and led him up to the second floor, and when Bellamy spotted a slightly ajar door to one of the bedrooms, he pushed it open, interrupted one of his teammates and his girlfriend from another school, and simply said, "Hey. Leave." And that worked. Once he and Clarke were alone, he shut the door and made sure to lock it.
"This is a lame party," she said, pushing him down on the bed.
"So boring," he agreed, immediately reaching down to untie his robe. He'd gone ahead and done it, dressed up as Hugh Hefner in a dark red robe with a Playboy bunny logo on the back.
Pushing his hands aside before he could get his robe undone, she climbed on top of him and straddled his waist. "What do you say we liven it up?"
Nurse Clarke was hot. He was actually surprised her parents had let her out of the house looking like this, but maybe the whole medical angle of her costume had been enough to convince her mom that it was okay. Plus, it was tamer than the Cowboys cheerleader one had been.
"Oh, you must be drunk," he said, smoothing his hands up her thighs. Hell if he was complaining, though.
"Just a little bit," she admitted. "Now stay down. Let me examine you."
"Okay." He'd never really understood the appeal of 'playing doctor' until right now. "I could get used to this."
She put her pretend stethoscope into her ears and moved it around his chest. "Heartbeat," she said. "Hmm, I can't hear it very well. I think you have to take this off." Grinning seductively, she untied his robe and moved it off his chest.
"Can you hear it now?" he asked when she pressed the stethoscope to his bare skin.
"Mmm-hmm," she said. "It's beating fast."
"For you."
Taking her stethoscope off, she slid downward a bit and said, "Maybe I should examine down here, too," as her fingers hooked into the waistband of his black pants.
"Maybe you should," he agreed.
At this point, Clarke knew what she was doing when it came to pleasuring him. She was assertive with the way she pulled his pants and underwear down just enough to release his burgeoning erection. "This all looks very good," she said. "Best cock I've ever seen."
"It's the only cock you've ever seen," he pointed out.
"That, too." She surprised him when she started fondling his balls, an area she hadn't explored much yet. "I'm gonna give you a massage," she told him. "Don't worry, I'm a nurse. I know what I'm doing."
He just lay there and let her touch him, already planning his own examination for her when she was done. Unfortunately, he didn't get the chance to envision that or experience a Clarke Griffin hand-job for very long, because a sudden commotion rose up from downstairs.
"What's that?" Clarke asked as her hands kept moving.
He craned his head back to look out the window, and he was pretty sure he saw blue and red flashing lights. "Shit, cops," he swore, moving out from under her. He pulled his pants up and shot out of bed. "Come on." He grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet, and they abandoned her stethoscope as they ran to the door. He fumbled with the lock, then raced towards the stairs, pulling her along behind him. Two cops were just walking in the door when they were halfway down the staircase. "Come on!" he shouted, vaulting over the railing. He landed on the couch and motioned for he to jump over, too, as everyone else around them took off in all directions. It was chaos, but he caught her as she hopped over, grabbed her hand again, and darted to the back door with her. "Run!" he yelled as they spilled outside with lots of other partygoers. No way was he getting caught at a party with so much alcohol. He had scholarships to get, and underage drinking kind of dampened the chance for those.
"Bellamy!" she squealed, sounding almost . . . excited as they ran through the back yard. They'd have to run all the way around the block, hide out behind some bushes, and then sneak up to his truck when the cops were gone. Simple.
He doubted she'd ever been to a party that had been busted before, but hell, this was fitting. All of her most daring firsts were with him.
...
Bellamy shook himself out of his thoughts and started to cut out the spider. He accidentally chopped off one of the legs right away, though, so he knew he was gonna have to start over.
"So what's this room gonna be?" he asked, switching to the bat stencil. That just seemed easier for someone as artistically-challenged as him. "Nursery?" He'd noticed the purple bunny from the carnival sitting on top of one of the unpacked boxes. Maybe that was the first of many toys the kid would have.
Clarke stopped painting, looked around at the plain white walls, and said, "Yeah, probably. I mean, that'd make sense. I'll have to decorate that, too."
"I can help you," he offered. "I mean, I'll leave all the artsy stuff to you, but I'm in construction now. I can build things." Bookshelves would be easy enough, and maybe he could attempt a changing table. If Roan helped him, he might even be able to put together a crib.
"I might take you up on that," she said. Setting her paintbrush down, she took a moment to admire her creation, then turned it around to show him. "Okay, what do you think?"
The bowl she'd been painting was oval-shaped, of course, and it looked like a half a football. The inside was green, like turf, but the outside was brown and white, just like the ball he'd once tossed around so much. "That's awesome," he said. It was textured and everything, almost looked real.
"We'll just keep loading the candy in here," she said, "and then that fits with our theme." She set the bowl down on some newspaper to let it dry, then crawled towards him, picked up the spider stencil, took one look at it, and then discarded it. She didn't need to trace a spider; she could just draw one.
"Clarke," he said, stopping her right as she pressed her pencil into that black construction paper. "You know there's no one else in the world I would do this with, right?"
"I know," she said, smiling at him. "Thank you." She got right back to work after that. Just like he'd wanted her to be, she was focused on the task at hand. She had something else to think about for a change, something other than her pregnancy. But in the meantime . . . he was still just thinking about her.
