a/n Thank you to those who reviewed that last chapter! Happy reading!
Bellamy genuinely wanted to share with Clarke every ounce of happiness that Charlotte's arrival had brought to the Ring. He wanted her to know every time the little bundle of joy so much as soiled her nappy, every time she gurgled and smiled. That was, of course, the reason he was describing his latest attempt at babysitting in such minute detail.
He was absolutely not procrastinating at all. Any suggestion that, while he was sitting here in the privacy of his room, dressed in nothing but a pair of worn boxers as he talked to Clarke, he was trying to put off the moment when they would make their first attempt at so-called radio sex was categorically untrue.
"So what did you do when she threw up on you?" Clarke asked, a laugh in her voice.
"I did what any self-respecting hero would do when his friend's kid's sick was dripping down their shirt. I swore loudly and changed my shirt."
"Wow. Really filling me with confidence about how you're going to raise our future kids, Bellamy."
"I'm joking. I swore pretty quietly, honestly. And I'm sure our future kids won't throw up on me."
"I think all kids throw up." She corrected him cheerfully. "I don't think you can claim ours would be any different."
"I can." He insisted. "Because our future kids will be perfect."
"That's sweet and all, but I'm telling you you're going to get sick over your shirt all the same."
He gave a grudging laugh and continued to recount his evening with Charlotte. "So then when I tried to put her to bed, she wouldn't settle down. And I started telling her some of those stories that O used to like and Madi likes, about the Greeks and Romans, but she wasn't having any of it. She cried and cried and cried. And in the end I got really desperate and started singing."
"And that worked?"
"Well it either sent her to sleep or it was so bad she pretended to be asleep to get me to shut up."
"I hope Murphy and Emori appreciated all this." Clarke was blatantly having a good giggle at his expense, but he found that he didn't really mind.
"Yeah, they did. Well, Emori did. She said thanks and that they'd had a nice date night. Murphy just started fussing about whether I'd fed Charlotte enough and whether she'd got enough sleep and whether she felt too warm."
"He's a sweet dad." she said thoughtfully. "But you'll be even better. You are even better, already, with Madi."
"Can I get that in writing?"
"No. You're thousands of miles away, this radio call is going to have to do." He breathed a sigh of relief at the way she was able to talk about their separation so lightheartedly, the evidence of how much happier she'd grown in recent months. "So have you finished telling me every detail of your babysitting now?"
"I think so." He agreed, nodding firmly but then remembering she couldn't see it.
"Great. Now stop putting it off and get on with radio-screwing me."
He gaped in shock at that, and was suddenly very grateful that she couldn't see him. "What?"
"I can tell that's what you're doing. I didn't put on my one good bra for nothing, you know."
"Your – your one good bra?" His mouth felt suddenly rather dry.
"Yeah, you know, a bit of lacy fabric a woman might wear around her chest?"
He tried to remember how to breathe, but it was already getting quite challenging. He was never going to make it through this evening without completely humiliating himself.
"Bellamy?" Clarke sounded a little worried about him, now.
"Yeah?"
"You don't need to be nervous, you know that. I love you, no matter how awkward and funny this turns out to be." He frowned at that. He wasn't convinced he was nervous, as such, just feeling an uncomfortable blend of anticipation and a burning need to make this good for her. "But I reckon it'll be pretty damn hot, if we just give it a go."
"I'm not nervous, more excited." He told her, and it wasn't quite a lie. "Let's do this. Where shall we start?"
…...
Clarke woke up the following morning with a broad smile already stretching its way across her face quite without her permission. It had, quite literally, been years since she'd felt as good as she'd felt last night. Somehow her own left hand felt a hell of a lot better when she had Bellamy's warm voice in her ear, too.
She heard Madi stir in the next room, and forced herself to stop grinning like a love-struck teenager. She'd turned twenty not too long ago, and however love-struck she might have been, she was sensible and rational and other mature things, too. But, yeah, she was also something of a quivering pile of stupid, it turned out, when Bellamy got involved.
She jumped to her feet and pulled on some clothes, then made it out to the kitchen. Within minutes, something resembling breakfast was on the kitchen table and Madi was dancing down the corridor to eat it.
"Clarke!"
"Morning, Madi. How are you today?"
"I'm great. How was your date with Bellamy last night?"
"It was lovely, thank you." She tried to keep the blush off her cheeks as she answered.
"What did you do?" Madi asked, with all the naive curiosity one might expect from a young child. "Did he tell you stories? Did you talk about baby Charlotte?"
"Something like that." Clarke said, carefully vague, as she served herself some fruit.
"Are you going to have a baby, one day? So I can have a little brother or sister?"
Clarke choked slightly, but made it look like a rogue apple slice was the culprit rather than her daughter's ill-timed question. "We'd like to do that, one day, yes. Would you like to have another kid to play with?"
Madi thought about that question, long and hard. "Yeah. As long as you and Bellamy still play with me all the time. It would suck if the baby got to have all the fun."
"Trust me, Madi, we'd always make time for you."
When they had eaten their breakfast, Clarke sent Madi off to read. She was just about old enough, now, to spend an hour or so on her own with a book quite happily, and so they'd started including a bit of reading in her schedule of lessons. Clarke had a call planned with Raven, so things had all lined up quite smoothly.
She sat down at the radio, and picked up the handset.
"Raven? It's Clarke here."
Within moments the response came through. "Clarke, hey. How are you doing?"
"I'm good."
"I'd say that's an understatement." Raven sounded amused, and Clarke couldn't quite work out why.
"What do you mean?"
"I think you must be better than good. Bellamy wouldn't stop grinning all through breakfast."
"I don't know what you're trying to imply." Clarke said smartly, even thought she knew full well what Raven was trying to imply.
"Yes you do. Come on, you know I'm smart enough to figure it out. Bellamy wants to be able to use the radio privately in his bedroom, he takes it in there last night, he looks smug as anything this morning. I'm not an idiot, Clarke."
"You must have called me about something more interesting than my sex life."
"I disagree. The saga of your relationship is literally the most exciting thing happening in this damn tin can. Except Emori's baby, I guess."
"Wow. I'll tell her you said that."
"Whatever. The point is, teasing you guys is my greatest source of joy."
"No." Clarke reprimanded her firmly. "Your greatest source of joy is definitely supposed to be the baby."
"You know, I did actually want to call about something else." She felt a surging sense of victory at this evidence that Raven was admitting defeat.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. So as far as I can see from my readings up here, the radiation levels are dying down quicker than we expected."
Clarke was silent for a moment, utterly shocked, trying to process this serious item of news that Raven had delivered quite so casually.
"Clarke?"
"You – say that again?"
"I've been measuring the radiation levels in the Earth's atmosphere." Raven explained with infinite care. "They're dying down a lot quicker than we expected."
"You mean – you mean that it might be safe for you guys to come down sooner than you planned?" She tried not to let her excitement run away with her.
"Well that's why I needed to speak to you. It's difficult for me to learn much about what it's actually like on the ground. It certainly won't be safe for us for a good couple of years, but it might not be as long as the three more years we were planning for. Nearer the time I'll ask you to go look for some equipment in Becca's lab so you can confirm what it's like down there."
Clarke was still struggling a bit to arrange her thoughts. "Less than three years?"
"Most likely, yes. But not immediately, still a couple of years or so."
"Less than three years?" She repeated, just to be sure.
"Yeah. We'll be there before you know it."
…...
Raven had wanted to tell Clarke about her hunch first, and now that she had done so she felt that it was only fair to share the news with her crew mates over the lunch table.
"Guys, I have news." As was usually the case in such circumstances, her announcement was largely ignored.
"I think Bellamy has news too, but he doesn't seem to want to share it with us." Murphy cocked an eyebrow, but it lapsed into an apologetic smile as Emori shot him a look.
"I have a better idea." Harper piped up. "Instead of teasing Bellamy, why don't we plan a nice evening together? A movie night or something? It's been too long."
"I'm game." Echo agreed. "One of those movies with all of the stabbing?"
"Why did you introduce her to horror?" Emori gave a sigh of mock-despair. "We'll never watch anything else again."
"I'd rather not choose horror, Echo." Harper suggested in a soothing tone. "Maybe we could split the difference, and go for some nice clean adventure?"
"Clean adventure is unrealistic." Murphy said, rolling his eyes.
"Well we're not watching romance." Echo shivered at the very thought of it.
"I don't see why not." Monty was, as ever, in touch with his sensitive side. "A good romance movie can be very rewarding. And Bellamy's apparently in a romantic mood."
There was a stunned silence at that. Sure, Monty was not averse to a bit of friendly teasing, but he rarely teased Bellamy. There was something of an unwritten rule on the Ring that Bellamy and Clarke deserved to be wrapped up in a little metaphorical cotton wool, after all the stresses and strains their relationship had overcome.
Raven, of course, was not interested in metaphorical cotton wool. She was interested in sharing her news. She therefore took advantage of the silence to stand up and yell her news so loudly no one could ignore her.
"It won't be three years."
She got a few funny looks for that.
"What won't be three years? The movie night?" Echo seemed to think they were still talking about entertainment.
"What's it?" Murphy frowned at her, confused.
Bellamy, however, had obviously caught on right away, but somehow looked about ready to cry. "It won't? It – it'll be more?"
"No, you idiot." Raven chided him affectionately. "It'll be less. We're going to the ground sooner than we thought."
Another stunned silence. And then Emori, of course, spoke up.
"I wondered whether you'd noticed that, Raven. I was beginning to think I was imagining it. But if the readings on the ground are directly proportional to what we're getting from up here, my bet is one year and eleven months."
Yet more silence, and expressions ranging from joy to disbelief to sheer incomprehension greeted her words.
And then, of course, Bellamy leapt to his feet. "Start on lunch. Don't wait for me. I have to go tell Clarke."
a/n Thanks for reading!