A/N: So I know I've been bad with the updating and all, and that I always say sorry for being bad with the updating and all, but I kind of got diagnosed with a chronic illness, so. I've been dealing with that.
But guys, this chapter is over 10k words. I'm trying to make it up to you, here. You'll notice that I took Crowsfan's suggestion and edited my story summary to reflect that this story took a turn from the typical roommates AU. I've also changed the tags a bit.
This isn't the last chapter, but the next chapter will mostly be tying up loose ends. A lil more angst, but mostly fluff and exposition.
Anyways, hope you guys are still with me, I can't believe this is almost 100k. What a whopper. A/N
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
"Bellamy."
He groans, images of blonde hair tangled with seaweed playing behind his eyes.
"Bell, wake up."
He jolts upright, blinking as panic sweeps through him.
"What?" He rasps. "What happened?"
His sister is hovering above the bed, face unreadable.
"We think we found her."
Her words hang in the air for a moment, his exhausted brain struggling to take them in. When they finally hit, he leaps out of bed.
"What do you-where?"
Eddie gestures at the laptop, where Miller and Monty are frowning out at him.
"There's a property registered under the name Maya Elizabeth in El Monte, we think that might be where they are."
Bellamy rubs tiredly at his eyes. Miller pipes up.
"Elizabeth is-"
"Clarke's middle name." Bellamy grunts, cutting him off. "Yeah. So," he turns to look at Eddie. "-what are we waiting for?"
Eddie opens his mouth, hesitating.
"I know you don't want to hear this, but…we can't exactly go barging into someone's house looking for her. That's illegal."
Not quite able to process what he's hearing, Bellamy gets to his feet, anger simmering under his skin.
"I don't give a fuck if it's illegal," he tells them, because if that isn't obvious-
"We're not sure, Bellamy." That's Monty, his voice soft over the speaker. "We were just pulling some satellite images for the block that the house is on. There's a traffic cam too, on the corner of the street, but we can't pull the footage for that without breaking into the DMV database and it's just-it's taking a while."
"We don't have a while. If you're all so opposed to breaking the law I'll go by myself", he says coldly, reaching out to grab his jacket off the back of his chair, but Raven's hand comes down on his wrist.
"We're not saying we're not going to do something," she says shortly. "But we need to know what we're up against. If we're wrong then it won't help Clarke to go blindly charging into the wrong place. I know you want to get her back, Bellamy, but you need to stop acting like you're the only one who does."
He stills, eyeing her, gaze shifting to Octavia, and then Monty and Miller. They all look worn out, worn down, exactly how he feels. Raven's right. He knows that, but-
"I can't do nothing." He mumbles, and the amount of obvious pain that comes tumbling out with the words makes him wince. "I just-it's been over a week and I can't-" It seems impossible to put it into words, the way every time he closes his eyes he sees her, the way he's terrified, every second of every day that they will find her, exactly like the first girl, with her smile gone and her eyes closed. That feeling you get, when your chair tips just a little too far back and the bottom drops out of your stomach. But it never goes away. He's just hanging there, midair, waiting for the fall.
But even those words aren't enough, really, for the sheer desperation he feels knowing she's out there, knowing she's in danger. So he shakes his head and tries to ignore the looks being exchanged around the room.
"We're not going to do nothing." Octavia murmurs, jumping in. "But we just-we need a plan, Bell. If this is where Kolberg took her then we need cops or-I mean we need something."
She's right, too. He can feel himself deflating, and he misses the indignance, the anger. As it drains away he's left with the same hollow sense of terror as before.
The laptop dings, and it takes Bellamy a moment to realize the sound came from the other end of their Skype call. Monty makes a noise of surprise, and then the sound of him typing fills the silence in the room, echoing a little over the long-distance connection.
"There are a few images-we, uh, pulled a few pictures of Kolberg off of his facebook profile to run against the satellite images from the property in El Monte. To see if we could place him on that property at all." Monty is filling them in as he types, obviously distracted by whatever else he's doing. "It's not residentially zoned, there's a building that looks like a…I don't even know how to describe it. I'll send the picture to you guys."
There's a slight delay, and Miller mutter something to Monty while the file is transferring that Bellamy can't hear. It opens automatically when it finishes loading, and he squints at the screen.
The image quality isn't great, Monty has obviously zoomed pretty far in, but he can see the structure they're talking about. It's a tall, narrow, gray building with a domed top, nestled beside an unassuming white house. Both buildings are surrounded by yellowing grass, and a long gravel driveway disappears out of frame, leading to what Bellamy can only assume is the access road.
"I thought you said it wasn't residentially zoned," he says, eyes locked on the picture, wondering if that's where Clarke is at this very moment.
"It's not," Miller answers immediately. "It's zoned for agriculture. But it's not like people can't have farmhouses on their own property."
"It's a farm?" Bellamy asks, and he's not sure why, but the thought makes him feel a little ill.
"It…used to be," Monty says, still typing. "Best we can tell is that it hasn't really been used for much in years. The title was transferred from someone named Felix Soltano eight months ago."
"So that's…" Eddie frowns at the image. "-what, a grain silo or something?"
Miller makes a noise of surprise.
"Yeah, that would make sense," Monty agrees. "Weird that the house was built so close to it, but it must have been added after they stopped using the silo."
It doesn't look particularly new, but Bellamy supposes the silo could have been defunct for decades anyways. He's about to ask Miller what their plan is, if they all want back-up so badly who exactly they're planning to call. But he's been complacent in this game long enough. It's time for him to make a choice.
"We knew when we pulled that footage from the hotel that we'd be doing this at an arms-length from the cops," he says slowly, and five pairs of eyes drift towards him. "And I'm not saying we don't need them but waiting for them to get a warrant isn't really an option. It's been eight days. They've already found one body and he won't-" he grinds his teeth at the image that pops into his mind. "-Kolberg's not just going to keep her stashed safely in a farmhouse forever."
Raven lets out a sharp breath.
"Clarke won't exactly sit on her ass forever either," she grumbles, and it sounds like she's agreeing with him. "You know her. No way any of this is happening without a fight."
"That," Bellamy mutters darkly, "-is exactly what I'm afraid of."
.-.-.-.-.-.
There's a particular smell that always hangs in the air after a summer rain on concrete. Bellamy told her, one particularly hot afternoon, when the steam was still rising from the pavement, that there's a word for it. Petrichor.
Having lived in the perpetually rainy Vancouver all her life, Clarke knows it well.
She can smell it now, damp and ashy and gorgeously familiar. It smells like home. As she wanders down the sidewalk, trees of rich emerald green glistening wetly beside her, she knows this is a dream. But the mist looks real as it rises and swirls among her ankles, and the moist warmth of the air feels real, too.
It's lovely, and bright, and though she can't remember why, she knows the reality on the other side of her eyelids is dim and gray.
The dream will turn though. They always do now.
Surely enough, she comes to an intersection, two roads crossing at a four-way stop, and she pauses at the dip in the corner of the sidewalk. Glancing both ways, she sets one foot onto the quickly drying road, and then another.
She's halfway across when she hears it, never gets a chance to see it.
Tires screech, an engine hums and then growls as they try to swerve around her. They won't make it, though. Clarke only has dreams that end one way now. The impact comes to her right hip, and the world spins in slow motion as she's thrown into the middle of the street. The asphalt is still wet when it comes up to meet her, tearing jagged lines along her palms and cheek as she skids across it. There's a pain that she knows, that suffocating weight on her chest that tells her this will all be over soon, and then the driver stands over her.
"God, I'm-I'm so sorry." He gasps, leaning over her so that the sun halos his head. She can't see his face from this angle, cast completely in shadow. But something about his voice is familiar.
"It's okay," she breathes, though the words don't come easy. She's at peace with this. She dies every time she closes her eyes, and yet these stopped feeling like nightmares a few days ago.
Then the man kneels beside her, and when the sun hits his face the pain in her chest explodes.
"Dad," she croaks, the tears pooling under her cheek to mix with the blood and rainwater.
"Baby I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you," Jake mumbles, the regret obvious on his face. The words wrench excruciatingly on her heart.
"I know," she murmurs quietly, her voice barely a wheeze. "I know, Dad."
For a moment they just sit like that, Jake lifting her head into his lap, his tears joining her own as parts of the dream world around her begin to distort. She's going to wake up soon.
"I miss you," she says, because she won't get another chance. Even if it's not real, she needs to say it.
"I know, sweetheart." Jake replies, blue eyes that match hers soft and sad. "I miss you too."
"Maybe I-" she hesitates, weighing the words. "Maybe I'll see you soon."
His face changes, and suddenly it's Bellamy looking down at her, dark curls falling into his face as he stares down at her.
"Clarke, don't."
She blinks, fingers twitching where her hand lays open on the road. He slips his fingers in hers, shaking his head.
"I'm sorry," she hiccups, fully crying now. "But I miss him, Bell. And I'm so tired."
She is, too. She's asleep right now and she can still feel it, the sluggishness that's been slowly creeping in from her fingertips over the past few days.
He shakes his head.
"Just hold on, okay? I need you to-I need you."
Slowly, she nods.
"Okay."
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
When she wakes up, she's not expecting the wave of emotion that hits.
But she's still raw from the dream and-something about it, it's like losing her father all over again. She clutches at her chest, like maybe she can physically hold the pieces together as it feels like they're splintering off into a million tiny shards. She thinks of Bellamy's glass cabinet, of Jake's funeral. She thinks of her father's funeral, of Finn's.
For the first time since she's been here, she cries. She hasn't missed her father like this since he first passed, and she wants to curl up there on the concrete and die just so maybe she can see him again. Clarke isn't a religious person, doesn't believe in the afterlife, which has made the losses in her life hit her all the harder for their permanence. But she just-it's hard, sometimes, to wrap her brain around the notion that everything that once was Jake Griffin has rotted and bled back into the earth.
She thinks of Bellamy's face, pleading her not to give up, and it feels like such a big thing to ask of her. It's only been maybe a week, that she's been stuck in this pit, cut off from the world, but it feels like months. Being alone will do that to you. Being stuck in this place with no sense of time, no sense of anything, it could have been years in her mind.
Her head pounds from the crying. There are probably fewer parts of her body that don't hurt now than ones that do, as Steven's demons take over his mind, over his fists. The pain in her chest is the worst though, and she almost savors it for a moment, just because it's different.
She may have agreed to continue to try for Bellamy in her dream, but if she doesn't make a break to get out of here soon she'll lose her nerve. She'll just stop caring.
There's nothing in this room that she can use as a weapon, nothing she can use to escape. Steven has eyes on her, she knows that, so anything she tries to do he'll see. She only has one option, the most obvious, the most unsubtle.
And though it's not a good plan, and the odds of it working in her favor are overwhelmingly against her, she finds the lack of choice a little liberating. If there's nothing else to be done, then all she can do is try.
She thinks of her father again, a smile tugging open the day old cut on her lip. The blood is coppery when her tongue darts out to catch it, and it reminds her what's at stake.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They can't call the cops. They've gone round and round on this until Bellamy thought his head was going to explode. But most of the investigation they've done on Kolberg has been illegal, and there's no way it can be used to get a warrant. And without the warrant, well. The cops won't help them.
Bellamy thinks that Octavia is right, they need backup, but there's another problem there.
"Bell-"
"No." His voice is hoarse from arguing for hours, but this is one point he's digging his heels in over. "Octavia, no fucking way are you coming with me."
He can hear her grinding her teeth from where he sits, but at this point he really couldn't care less.
"Can you not be a sexist, overprotective douche for one second?" She hisses, and he fights the urge to roll his eyes.
"I'm not being sexist," he says tiredly, "-and if you really consider me not wanting you to break into a psychotic stalker-murderer's house being overprotective then whatever. But I won't be able to focus if you're there, O. Kolberg's already got Clarke and I just-please. Please stay here." There was a time when his ego would be bruised to beg like that in front of anyone, but that time has long gone.
The brunette crosses her arms angrily across her chest, and Bellamy almost sighs in relief. He knows her well enough to know her tells, and this one means she's letting him win.
"God, fine. But it's not because I couldn't kick his ass. I could."
"I'm not arguing with you there," he mutters, and the irritation on her face softens just a little.
"So it's just us, then?" Eddie asks, and Bellamy frowns at him.
"What? No, man, you don't have to come." Bellamy glances between Raven and him. "I don't expect that. I have no idea what we'd be walking into."
They both scoff, exchanging a look, and for a fleeting moment Bellamy thinks that they're more alike than either would be pleased to admit.
"Yeah, right. Clarke is my best friend, no way you're going without me." Raven sets her jaw, eyes burning.
"I'm coming too." It's a surprisingly succinct response for Eddie, and Bellamy files that away for later consideration.
He sits back in his seat, taking in the new, nervous energy that's suddenly filling the room. Octavia is glaring at him and fidgeting, but Raven and Eddie are almost purposefully still.
"So," he says abruptly, getting to his feet. "I guess we're going to get Clarke."
.-.-.-.-.-.
Clarke doesn't know how this happened.
One second she was knee-deep in her new reality, the grey and the cement and the bleakness of it all. And then she was here, jamming a plastic fork into Steven's jugular artery, and the irony isn't lost on her, but it's-
It just happened so fast.
One second he was standing there, taunting her, wondering what am I going to do with you, and the next he wasn't. The next she could feel the warmth of his blood flowing over her fingers in these little pulses, these…heartbeats.
"Clarke," he gasps, and it amazingly strikes her as something other than terrifying that he manages to look so betrayed. Like this is her fault. "Bitch." The word seems worse somehow, accompanied by a bubble of blood at the corner of her mouth. She must have punctured his trachea too. It's kind of hard to be precise with a plastic fork, when her hands are shaking from sleep deprivation and all that rage that she didn't even know she was carrying. Still, as her mother would say, she's getting sloppy.
There's still a part of her that wants to stay. Steven is writhing in her hands and screaming at her and still, that part of her that was trained to do no harm, the part that fixes things like this, it's telling her to stay.
It's a miracle that her legs don't fold under her as she steps back, dropping him to the ground.
"I c-I can't."
She turns, feet clumsy, slipping on the wet, slick concrete. She's used to blood as a surgeon but it's usually in bags, contained through suction. It's not supposed to be all over the floor like this.
The door is open, it's right there. She can go home. She can go to Bellamy.
But as the hand snakes around her ankle, she realizes she's wrong. She's Clarke Griffin. Griffins don't get their happy endings. So when her feet go out from under her, and the bloody ground comes toward her like the face of a train, it almost feels right.
And then it meets her, and she hears it more than she feels it, the crack, and then she doesn't feel anything at all.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.
"This is probably the stupidest thing we could possibly do." Bellamy pauses outside the door in front of them. It's red, paint peeling where the wood bows a little in the corners. The massive grain silo towers beside them, casting the tiny farmhouse in shadow. It only took about an hour and half to make the drive, including a quick stop for some things Miller and Monty told them they might need, and now they're here.
"Yeah," Eddie says, just agreeing. Raven, beside him, shrugs.
"We know, Bellamy."
"Raven," he pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration."-shut up for a second. It's dangerous, okay? Real, stupid, reckless danger. I have to go in, and I'm not questioning how much you care about Clarke, I'm just saying, you don't have to do this. You can take a second to think." His voice drops a few octaves, because he's serious, and he loves Clarke more than maybe anything is this world but Raven and Eddie are his friends too. He doesn't want them getting hurt, or worse.
Raven and Eddie exchange a glance, onyx and ice, and Bellamy knows. They don't have to say anything else.
"Okay." He mutters, turning back to the door. "Just-I don't know. Keep your eyes open."
He thinks he hears Eddie mutter something like aye aye cap'n but ignores it. He slides the first lifter from the lock picking kit Monty told them to buy into the lock and he's no amateur to this, so it clicks open after a few seconds. He turns the handle and gives the door a gentle nudge, and it swings wide. Thankfully, it does so silently, and their footfalls are just as quiet on the yellowing shag carpet that covers the hallway in front of them.
Bellamy strains his ears listening for something, anything, and catches the muted ticking of a wall clock coming from one of the adjacent rooms, but nothing else. It's completely quiet. Either Steven's not here, or they're in the wrong place.
Feeling edgy and out of place, he pushes forward, past a kitchen stuck in the 70's, a living room so sun-bleached that it's almost completely devoid of colour, and two small bedrooms. There's no sign of anyone. When Raven speaks, right in his ear, he has to bite his tongue to keep from screaming.
"What are we thinking?" She wants to know.
He glares sharply at her.
"Keep looking. You take Eddie, I'm going to look downstairs."
The gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans seems to flare hot against his skin as he descends into what seems to be a basement. He shouldn't have it, is violating all kinds of laws, but-
It's not like it really matters anyways.
The basement is almost nondescript. The floors are covered in a mossy green shag, board games stacked on a bookshelf in the corner, the stairs leading down to it just unfinished plywood, like someone ripped up the carpet there and never replaced it. There's another door off to the left, slightly ajar, and he can see a sink through it.
All in all, it doesn't seem like the basement of a murderer.
There are no windows, but then he sees the other door. It doesn't really stand out from the rest, they're all made from that fake oak veneer, but this is the only one without a cheap looking brass handle. The handle is silver and looks new, more modern.
He goes over to it, notices the lock. This isn't the same standard lock as on the front door, this is serious hardware, and it's new too.
The stairs creak, and his head jerks up, adrenaline flooding and then fading as he sees Raven coming down the steps, Eddie behind her. He motions for them to check the bathroom, which they do, and then they make their way over to him.
"That's the only thing in this house that wasn't made in 1974." Raven says, eyeing the lock he was inspecting. "No lock kit from Home Depot is going to get you into that," she adds as an afterthought, answering the question in his head.
"So how do we get in?" He asks. She cocks her head, studying the door.
After a few seconds, she sighs.
"Just kick it in. That's the same shitty hollow door on the rest of these frames. It's basically particleboard."
He stares at her.
"That's…I mean it'll definitely announce our presence." He points out. She shrugs.
"It's the fastest way in. I have no idea what kind of psycho would bother putting that kind of a lock like that on a door like this, but-" she falls silent when his face twists at her words. "Right. Sorry."
He looks to Eddie, then back at her.
"Okay." This all feels surreal, but then he remembers that Clarke might be on the other side of that door, Clarke who's been missing over a week, Clarke who needs him, and he turns and slams his foot into the door with all the force he can muster.
It splinters like cheap kindling, Raven was right, the crack echoing through the enclosed space. It takes a few more shots to make a hole big enough to stick his arm through, but he reaches through it and up to unlock the door from the inside. The debris crunches underneath it as he pushes it open, and he stares down the long, dark set of concrete stairs in front of him.
"What the fuck?" He squints, barely able to make out a landing almost forty feet below them.
Behind him, Eddie makes a noise.
"That must attach to the silo." He says, sounding incredulous. "Man, that's weird."
Raven scoffs.
"Why would they need to access the silo from inside the house?"
It dawns on all three of them at the same time.
Bellamy goes first, racing down the steps three at a time, no regard for who or what might be waiting at the bottom. Raven is close behind him, Eddie just on her heels.
As Bellamy closes in on the last stair, he sees the door, solid metal, and god, does that ever look out of place. He's sure there will be some kind of impossible lock on that, too, but when he hits the landing he realizes the door is slightly ajar.
He doesn't think about it, just pushes.
Someone hisses his name behind him, but he ignores it. The door pushes back a little, resisting, like there's something pushed up against it, and he pushes again, harder. Whatever was on the other side gives enough that the door opens about forty degrees, and that's when the smell hits him. Blood.
Panic rises like ice in his veins, up the back of his neck. The floor in front of him seems to be concrete as well, coated in a sea of red. He steps into the tiny room, barely has a second to register that it's like a tiny concrete grey jail cell before he sees them and stops dead.
Kolberg's there, laying in more blood than Bellamy has ever seen in his life, unmoving. But his eyes move almost immediately to Clarke, laying beside him, paler than he's ever seen her.
She's so still.
"Oh god," he drops to his knees, kicking Kolberg out of the way while Raven and Eddie talk to him from outside the door.
"What, Bellamy, what's-" they can't fit inside, not with Bellamy and the other two here, and he can't answer them.
"Clarke," her name is a gasp on his lips because she's here, she's right in front of him, but she's so cold. His hand flies to her neck, and for a minute everything stops because there's nothing under his fingertips, absolutely nothing, and then...just a whisper of a pulse. But it's there. "God," he croaks, then- "Raven! Call an ambulance! Now!"
He can't tell where the blood is coming from, it doesn't seem to be hers, but there are bruises on her face, on her neck, and he has to resist the urge to turn around and fire a few rounds into Kolberg just for the hell of it. Eddie trips into the room behind him, nearly falling onto him as he crawls over Kolberg's body. The blonde stares around at the scene with wide, horrified eyes.
"Jesus Christ," and then he spots Clarke. "Is she-"
"She's alive," Bellamy murmurs. His eyes flit back to Kolberg, and he nods at the body. "Can you check-"
Eddie just nods, bending down, and then he lets out a noise of disgust.
"No, he's dead." His friend says, looking a little unsteady, face ashen. "And his neck is…" he makes a vague gesture, eyes falling back on Clarke, gathered in Bellamy's arms. "Well, she got him good."
Something flickers in his chest, pride maybe, something he can't feel right now.
"Clarke," he says again, a little more softly. "Can you hear me? Come on, Princess, talk to me."
She doesn't even stir.
Her eyes are closed, circled by dark shadows, hair wilder than he's ever seen it. She looks feral almost, even still like this, and he suddenly misses her so intensely it's like a punch to the gut.
Eddie's just kind of standing between them and Kolberg, like a shield, and Bellamy gets it. He appreciates that.
"Where's Raven?" He asks, not taking his eyes off Clarke.
"She had to go back up to the basement to get reception. I think she was going to go out front to meet the cops."
He grunts in response, leaning down to press his lips against her forehead.
"Can you just-" he pleads, staring at her like maybe if he thinks it harder enough she'll open her eyes. "Something, please, open your eyes, or-"
Her hand moves, barely, but enough that her nails scratch lightly against the thigh of his jeans where her arm was resting. Bellamy sucks in a breath.
"Okay," he murmurs. "Okay, I'm right here."
.-.-.-.-.
There are cops everywhere, and Bellamy knows that's bad. Eddie gets on the phone to his defense attorney, because of course he has one of those, and all these uniforms everywhere are trying to keep Bellamy in place.
"I have to go," he practically shouts, pushing past the tenth officer to grab at him. "Look, you can meet me at the hospital, I don't give a shit, I'll talk, but I'm going with her."
They're loading Clarke into the back of an ambulance, and it's all so real like this, out in the daylight, with the red and blue lights bouncing off the white of her face. The terror hits him then, as he squeezes his way into the back of the rig with her, watching the paramedics poke needles and tubes all over her body. She doesn't look like herself at all.
.-.-.-.-.
He's almost glad for all the questions when the cops show up in the waiting room of the hospital. It gives him something to do other than sit on his ass waiting for news, almost keeps his mind off of it.
"But how did you know it was Kolberg to begin with?" The officer asking is one Bellamy recognizes from when he filed the missing person's report.
"Don't answer that." Eddie's lawyer says immediately, looking up from his phone where he stands between them. It barely took him twenty minutes to show up at the hospital, which means he obviously didn't fly in from Toronto, and Bellamy isn't totally sure what to make of the fact that his friend just apparently has attorneys readily on hand in multiple countries, on multiple coasts.
The officers sigh, exchanging an irritated look.
"You do realize we could just take your client down to the station right now, arrest him for breaking and entering, suspicion of murder, abduction-"
Bellamy makes a noise of outrage at the last charge, but the lawyer, a middle aged man named Fry Templeton, sighs.
"And we appreciate that. We do. Look, can you just give me a minute with my client please?"
Grudgingly, they back off.
Templeton turns to Bellamy.
"You guys really got yourselves into a mess, here." He says, sounding more stern than anything else. Bellamy shrugs. "I mean, spare me the details, but you obviously violated some privacy laws digging around in Kolberg's life, not to mention how you made that ID in the first place, you broke into his house, and then you're found with two bodies in the basement of his-"
"Clarke," Bellamy hisses, gaze snapping back to the lawyer from where it had wandered over to the nurse's station. "-is alive."
Templeton looks a little taken aback.
"Right. Sorry. I'm just saying. This all looks pretty bad."
"Isn't that your job?" Bellamy asks, exhausted. "To make it not look so bad?"
The other man frowns.
"Mr. Blake-"
But one of the doctors who received Clarke chooses that moment to appear, and Bellamy rounds on her before Templeton can finish his sentence.
"Is she-how is she?" He asks, and the woman looks a little startled, what with the major entourage of law enforcement officers filling the room.
"Are you next of kin?" She wonders, and he hesitates.
"Her mother's technically her next of kin, but she's not here yet, and-"
"Right." The doctor frowns. "And you are?"
"I'm Bellamy Blake, I found her, she's my-" he pauses, doesn't really know what to call her anymore, but thankfully, he doesn't have to figure it out. Raven appears from somewhere behind him.
"He's her emergency medical contact. You can check her file."
Bellamy blinks, turning to the Latina when the doctor grabs a tablet from the nurse's station and begins tapping at it.
"Still?" He asks, shocked.
Raven just gives him a sad smile.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "Still."
The doctor returns, waving him forward.
"You've got quite the escort," she murmurs, eyeing the half dozen officers still lingering in the room waiting to get their statements.
"Yeah." He doesn't even look back at them. "So how's Clarke? Is she going to be okay?"
She sighs.
"Ms. Griffin suffered some pretty serious brain trauma. It looks like multiple concussions in the past week, and when the brain get beat up like that…it swells to protect itself. It's called a cerebral edema. But, obviously, your skull can't grow to accommodate that extra pressure, and that can sometimes be a problem."
He stares, searching her face, but it's neutral.
"Okay, and is this one of those times?"
"After an initial assessment, we've decided not to operate. The swelling right now could go down on it's own, and we won't be able to tell until she wakes up if there was any permanent damage."
"When she wakes up?" He tries not to hear the implied if there.
"With injuries like this it's impossible to know for sure, but there's a good chance. You just have to be patient."
Patient. Right.
He can totally be patient.
.-.-.-.-.-.
In the end, it's Abbie's boyfriend, Marcus Kane, who saves all their asses.
Turns out he was the Deputy Attorney General for four years, which is just another thing Bellamy files away for later reflection because seriously, it turns out he doesn't actually know the people in his life all that well.
He calls in favours, a lot of them, but Bellamy's a free man by the time Clarke wakes up. And he'll owe Marcus for that forever.
It's been two days since Bellamy found her, since she was admitted, and the nurses and doctors all say the same thing; that he just needs to be patient, she'll wake up when she's ready. The rest of her injuries, including two broken ribs, a bruised spleen and a bit of internal bleeding, apparently aren't life threatening.
So he's been sitting, for two days, beside her bed. Abbie's there too, and so is Marcus, for the most part. Others cycle in and out, Eddie and Raven crash at a hotel, a different hotel, Octavia and Lincoln stop by as well.
People call, people he knows, and then, somehow, the press gets a hold of it.
Clarke's story wasn't big news until the first girl showed up dead, because Clarke's not exactly a public figure. Bellamy never would have considered himself one, either, but apparently he is because one day his cellphone starts blowing up with calls from reporters and journalists and talk shows and it doesn't stop until he turns it off and never turns it back on.
He only talks to her.
He holds her hand, and tells her stories, the ones he used to tell Octavia, about the Romans and the constellations. He traces the scar on her arm, thinks about how close he came to losing her, and how cruel it would be for her to leave him now, like this, when they're so close.
But Clarke has always been a whirl of colour and movement, and she's neither of those things now. He reaches out to brush a stray hair from her face, when suddenly, she gasps.
The noises that follow it are one's he'll never be able to forget, like she's choking, drowning.
At the foot of the bed, Abbie jumps up.
"It's her ventilator. She's choking on it," she says shakily, pressing a button to page the nurse. "I'm going to take it out."
It's not protocol, he's sure, but Abigail Griffin is the Chief of Surgery at one of the biggest hospitals in her country, so, no one says anything as she slowly guides the tube out of her daughter's throat.
"Shh, Clarke, it's okay. It's going to be okay."
Her eyes fly open, and the blue hits Bellamy like a bucket of ice water.
God, he'd almost forgotten how beautiful her eyes are.
"Clarke," he reaches out, takes her hand as her breathing calms a little. "Hey, you're alright."
She just stares back at him, blank, and then her eyes fall on her mother.
"Mom?" The word is almost lost in the rasp of her voice, but Abbie smiles.
"Hey, honey. It's okay, now. I'm here."
"How," Clarke winces. "What-" She tries to sit up, but Abbie pushes gently against her chest.
"No, Clarke, don't try to get up." Then she turns to the nurse. "Can we get her some water?"
He feels a hand on his shoulder. It's Marcus.
"Come on, son. Let's just give them a moment."
That's the last thing he wants, but he follows Kane out into the hallway anyways, sinks onto the ground outside.
"She's awake," he says, surprised by the tremor in his voice. Kane nods.
"She is."
"She can talk, and she knows-she seemed okay, right?"
The older man shrugs.
"I would have been asking you that."
She seemed okay, he thinks. Considering.
After about fifteen minutes, Marcus picks up on his impatience, and gestures toward the door with a sigh. Bellamy all but leaps to his feet. It's not like he really needed permission to go back in and see her, but. He was trying to be considerate.
Both women look up when he enters, Abbie smiling in a way that pools relief deep in his bones. She wouldn't be smiling like that if Clarke wasn't alright. But Clarke just looks him over curiously, face unreadable.
"Hey." He says roughly, eyes roaming every inch of her face, all the animations that weren't there when she was unconscious, so familiar.
"Hi," she sounds, groggy, uncertain. "I-" she turns back to Abbie. "Is he one of my doctors?"
It takes a minute for her words to sink in, and a loaded silence follows them.
She doesn't recognize him. Clarke has no idea who he is.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The world is overwhelmingly bright.
It reminds her of this painting she saw once, at the gallery. This mess of whites and blues and yellows so loud you could almost hear it. She'd always had to squint looking at that painting.
But her eyes adjust eventually, and the first thing she sees is a man. He's-
He has curly black hair and big, dark eyes, and this smattering of freckles across his face that for some reason fills her with delight. He's gorgeous, and looks a little frightening in his intensity, and she thinks that if she's died and gone to heaven then the angels look a lot different than she'd expect. Scarier.
His hand comes out, takes hers, and then he speaks.
"Clarke, hey, you're alright."
His voice is low, rumbly in a way that makes her tingle in all the places she isn't sore. She wonders who he is. There's something in his gaze, like he's waiting for something, and it makes her head hurt a little, so she looks away. Then her eyes fall on her mother.
"Mom?" Her throat feels excruciating, and she realizes that the nightmare she was having about drowning a few minutes ago might not have been a dream. She was probably intubated.
Her mother's here, and she's in a hospital, and she was intubated, so-
Something must have happened.
Abbie smiles at her.
"Hey, honey. It's okay now. I'm here." Her mother's voice is soft, maternal, and the rare display of affection has a wave of emotion rolling through her.
"How-" she tries to ask, wincing as the sides of her throat rub together painfully. "What-" What the hell is going on? What happened? She tries to sit up, to look around, but her mother holds her back.
"No, Clarke, don't try to get up." Abbie turns to one of the nurses and murmurs something, and for the first time Clarke notices Marcus Kane standing at the back of the room. He looks happy to see her, and he isn't always, so that's something she files away for later consideration. The freckled Greek god at the side of her bed is still there, hovering anxiously.
And then he's not, Marcus puts a hand on his shoulder and leads him out, and it's just Clarke and her mother. They bring her some water, and the burning in her throat flares, and then eases.
When she can speak, she fixes her mother with her most serious expression.
"What happened?"
Abbie frowns.
"What do you remember?"
Clarke considers that, rolling the hazy memories she has around in her head until they fall into something of a narrative. There's a fog around everything, and she's not sure if it's due to the painkillers or something worse, but it makes remembering slow and painful.
"I was…in a room…a hotel maybe? And then…I-" she frowns as all her memories go blurry. "It was just…grey. There was a man that I knew from somewhere, he had a knife, I think I-" her heart kicks painfully, adrenaline flooding her body uncomfortably. "I killed him."
The words sound wrong, clumsy off her out of practice tongue but they're not. She knows as soon as she says them that they're true. She closes her eyes, wanting to fight the images, but also wanting to know the truth. They come a little faster now, and they're violent and awful, but she reminds herself that she's here. She's here now, and it's over. Kolberg's dead.
"He's…his name was Steven Kolberg, his girlfriend, Maya, she died. She was one of my patients." She recalls. And the guilt of that had eaten at her for months. First patient to die on her table. Abbie's still watching her, almost nervously. "I guess he took me from the hotel, he kept me in this…place. It was like a jail cell. There were no windows, and I could never tell-" she breaks off, voice wobbling. "-I never knew what time it was."
She rolls over, facing her mother directly.
"How long was I there?"
Abbie's eyes sweep over her, evaluating.
"Nine days."
Her mouth drops open in surprise. It felt like longer. It felt like months.
"I stabbed him," she whispers, "with a fork."
Her mother's mouth sets in a thin line, hand tightening where it grips the armrest of her chair.
"I know. He's dead."
"And I thought that was it, I was going to get away, but he grabbed me, and I slipped." She frowns. "I don't remember anything after that."
Abbie reaches out, pressing a hand to Clarke's face.
"Your friends found you. Bellamy and Raven, and Eddie. They found where Kolberg was keeping you and when they got there he was already dead. You were…" she takes a little breath, steadying herself. "You'd been knocked out. They called the paramedics, brought you here, and-" she stops. "This is a lot to go over. Do you want to take a break?"
Clarke shakes her head, wincing as it sends a shock of pain through her temple.
"Just tell me."
"You had a cerebral edema from what they think was multiple concussions. You were in a coma for two days."
Clarke stares at her.
"That's why I was intubated."
Her mother nods. Then something else about the story she just heard strikes her. A name.
"But who's-"
They're interrupted when Marcus comes back in, accompanied by the freckled man from earlier. He smiles at her, and she notices the deep dimples flanking his chin. Inexplicably, she has to resist the urge to reach out and stick her finger in one of them.
"Hey," he says, voice rough. His eyes trail over her face, like he's studying her.
"Hi," she replies, feeling something shift. He waits, expectant, and she turns uncomfortably to Abbie, fighting the feeling that everyone in the room is acting like she should know him. "I-is he one of my doctors?"
.-.-.-.-.
Abbie blinks at her, and it's immediately obvious that that was the wrong thing to say.
"Clarke, honey, that's Bellamy."
Clarke looks back at him, confused.
"Bellamy." She turns the name over on her tongue. It feels familiar, like muscle memory almost, like she's said it a million times before. But she doesn't know him. She doesn't remember.
He's watching her now, eyes dark, jaw tense.
"You're one of the ones who found me," she says slowly, because that much she knows. He nods, slowly.
"You don't remember me." It's not a question, but there's something jagged in his voice that takes her breath away. When she sees the pain in his eyes, it feels like her heart is breaking.
"I don't," she whispers. She wants to. She thinks maybe he's important, because her fingers keep instinctively reaching out toward him, and she kind of wants to bury her face in his chest, but for the most part she's looking at him and seeing a stranger.
He doesn't seem to know what to do with that.
"Mom," she says suddenly, "-can you leave us alone for a minute?"
Soon there will be tests, and lights shining in her eyes, and this whole missing memory thing is probably going to mean she needs an MRI, but right now the only thing she can see is the boy with the freckles and the absolutely unconvincing mask of stoicism.
Abbie gets to her feet.
"Sure, sweetheart. We'll be right outside if you need us." She presses a kiss to Clarke's forehead, and then they're gone.
"Can you…" Clarke watches Bellamy pace, and gestures to the chair beside her bed. "Do you want to sit down?"
He looks up, surprised.
"Yeah," he mumbles, "alright." He sinks into the chair heavily, eyes on her. No one's ever looked at her the way he does. She finds it fascinating, and a little terrifying.
"I'm sorry that I don't remember," she says eventually. Sleep is tugging at her eyes again, but she doesn't want it. There are too many pieces still missing.
"It's okay," he replies automatically.
She scoffs, and his eyebrows go up.
"No, it's not. We're obviously close."
"How do you know that?"
She fights the urge to roll her eyes.
"You went looking for me after I got abducted. You found me. You came to the hospital, and look like you probably haven't left since I first got admitted. And you keep looking at me like that."
He freezes.
"Like what?"
"Like…" she waves her hands weakly, grimacing again when she feels pain radiating out from her torso. She must have a few cracked ribs, at least. "Like you're not totally sure I'm real, I guess."
He sighs, then changes the subject.
"How do you feel?"
"Like I was held captive for a week by a guy with a bad temper," she mutters, and his eyes instantly change, simmering with an angry heat. That surprises her, though if he is her boyfriend, or whatever, it probably shouldn't.
"They think you got the concussion when you slipped and fell, but-" he gestures at the rest of her. "Did Kolberg do that to you? Do you remember?"
"I remember," she says simply, but he catches the insinuation, hands fisting in his lap. "So," she clears her throat. "Who are you?"
He blinks.
"I mean, to me. Are you my boyfriend, or…"
He scratches at the back of his neck, and she senses a complicated answer coming.
"I…we used to date, yeah. You really don't remember me at all?" There's something in his voice, like he can't believe it, and it makes her think that there must have been something amazing, or at least tragic, between them. Something too big to forget.
"No." She bites her lip, suppressing a yawn. "If it makes you feel better, this is probably temporary." When he looks confused, she taps her forehead. "Memory loss after head trauma. A lot of the time it only lasts a day or two, especially with something as specific as this."
That does seem to calm him, a little of the nervous energy that had been humming around him fades away.
"Okay, well, I'm Octavia's brother. Do you remember O?"
She nods, trying to ignore the way that just seems to hurt him more.
"Well, I came to town one weekend and, uh, she basically manipulated you into letting me crash at your loft for a while."
A roommate? She pushes at her mind, wondering where that information has gone, but finds nothing.
"We didn't actually get along that well at first. You were kind of uptight and-" he smiles to himself. "I don't know. I was intimidated by you, by all your money, your fancy career, your house. I was an asshole."
She smiles too, and then it fades.
"I was totally in love with you within, like, a couple weeks."
"Naturally," she smirks, and he smiles back, a real one that almost blinds her. Those dimples, she thinks, those must have been the death of her when they were together.
"You flew out here, to California, to come to the Emmy's with me. My show was nominated."
She stares at him in surprise.
"You're an actor?"
He snorts.
"Not even a little bit. I'm a writer."
"A writer." She frowns, because that sounds right, too.
"I'm sorry. I wish-" his voice shakes, and he looks away. "I wish I had never asked you to come. This is all my fault. I should never have let you go back to the hotel by yourself."
She shakes her head.
"It's not your fault. Steven was stalking me, he would have found a way."
He straightens, turning the full force of his gaze on her.
"Clarke-"
A woman in scrubs bursts through the door, smiling widely.
"Ahh, Ms. Griffin. It's good to see you awake!" She says, grabbing Clarke's chart from beside her bed. Bellamy leans back in his chair, silent.
"Doctor…," Clarke greets the woman.
"Dr. Brady. I'm going to have to run some tests, your boyfriend should probably wait outside."
She doesn't correct the use of the word boyfriend, which Bellamy seems to notice.
"We can talk later," she says, because she doesn't want him to feel like she's dismissing him.
"Okay," he says, then hesitates. "I-I'll be around. If you need me."
The fact that he's not going home, or at least back to a hotel, doesn't surprise her. What does surprise her is how relieved she is that he's staying.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Post-Traumatic Amnesia. That's what they're calling it.
Bellamy can't help but think of it as the fact that Clarke can remember everyone and everything in her life except for him. And for some reason, he doesn't seem to be leaving that big of a hole behind.
.-.-.-.-.
The beeping of the monitor is keeping her awake. Clarke sighs, climbing out of bed to swipe at the volume setting on the side of the machine. She's familiar enough with the equipment to find it and turn it down without setting off any alarms. When she turns back to her bed, she realizes the chair beside it is empty. The one her mother was in just seconds ago.
Frowning, she glances around the room. Marcus is gone, too. It's just her, bathed in the dim fluorescent glow of the hospital lighting after dark. She walks gingerly over to the door, mindful of her sore, well, everything, and peers outside. There's no one there.
She's never seen a hospital hallway this quiet. Something in her stomach twists uncomfortably.
It's so dark, she can barely see it, but something is spilling across the floor in front of her, flowing from around the corner. It looks black almost, in the light, but then she smells it.
Blood.
Her steps are quicker now, breathing sharper even though each one feels like a knife to the side, and she rounds the corner at a jog. When she sees the source of the blood, her breath catches in her throat.
It's Bellamy, laying there in that ever growing sea of blood, and his face is cast white in the dim lighting, so different from the golden tan she remembers from earlier.
"Wh-" the words strangles in her mouth as she drops to her knees beside him, hands flying to the wound at his neck. The overhead light catches it, and she can make out four distinct puncture wounds.
Four prongs. The kind you'd find on a plastic fork.
"Hang in there, Bellamy," she says, choking back a sob. "I'm-HELP!" She screams. This is a hospital, for god's sake, where is everyone? "I'm going to find someone, I'm going to-"
"Clarke."
She jerks awake, gasping, blinking away tears. Slowly, the person in front of her comes into focus. Freckles.
And just like that she remembers.
"Bellamy," she whispers, and he takes one look at her and the next thing she knows he's kissing her like he hasn't seen her in years.
Which-well it feels like that for her, too.
His hand tangles in her hair, the other cupping her cheek, and she reaches for him, fisting her hands in his shirt as she clings to him. It's needy, teeth scraping and mouths gasping, but it doesn't last long. He pulls back.
"Your mom," he whispers, lips against her ear. "Is sleeping in the corner."
She fights a laugh, which just ends up turning into a sob.
Without any hesitation, Bellamy climbs onto the bed beside her, pulling her into his arms.
"Shh."
She drops her head against his chest, trying to control the sobs as they shake her, but eventually she gives up and just lets them come.
Bellamy doesn't say anything, just strokes her hair and hums a little, a song she doesn't quite recognize until-
"Are you humming the Earthbound theme song?" She asks incredulously. He stops.
"Uh,"
She laughs, for real this time, muffling it in his sodden t-shirt. He doesn't smell like he hasn't showered in three days, and he's been a writer the whole time she's known him, so yes she does know what that smells like. He just smells like leather and old books and himself, and Clarke wants to burrow into that scent and live there.
"Bell, I-"
"Clarke." He shakes his head. "Get some sleep. We can talk in the morning."
"Don't-"
He presses a kiss to the top of her head.
"I won't go anywhere, I promise."
.-.-.-.-.-.
Clarke is hot.
Hospital blankets aren't exactly renowned for being warm, and the central air is usually kept nice and crisp in order to stave off the growth of any of the millions of strains of bacteria that can be found there at any time, so at first she doesn't really understand why the back of her neck is damp with sweat.
And then someone moves against her back, sighing, and that familiar half snore vibrates through the bed, and she has to suppress a smile. Yawning, she looks around and realizes her mother and Marcus are gone. Her best guess is that they woke up and found Clarke and Bellamy wrapped around each other like ivy on brick and decided to give the pair a little privacy.
She wiggles a little, needing the stretch the stiffness where her bruises are, and Bellamy startles awake.
He blinks at her, wide eyed, and she wonders if he was having a bad dream.
"Good morning," she says softly. He exhales, long and slow.
"Morning." After squinting at her for a moment, he asks, a little uncertainly; "Do you still remember me?"
"I…" her mouth twists, brows furrowing. "I'm sorry…"
Immediately, he moves to slide off the bed, but she reaches out, grabbing him.
He looks up in time to catch the grin on her face, and growls.
"Oh," he tightens his grip around her, not painful, just a warning. "That is so not funny."
"I'm sorry," she sighs. "I couldn't help it."
"You're such a brat." She turns her head to face him, and he leans forward so their foreheads are touching and they just stay like that for a minute, because neither of them really want to have any of the conversations that they need to.
"You found me," she says quietly, and it's different than when she said it yesterday, because today she understands. It had all been explained to her the day before, Kolberg, and Monty and Miller and Bellamy and Raven and-all of it.
And she'd filled in some gaps for the police, too, and for her mother, but there were things she hadn't talked about yet.
"I will always find you," his heart thumps against her arm where it's pressing against his chest. "When they pulled that first girl from the river I thought-I didn't believe it. And then, just for a second, I did. And it was like-like the lights went out. Like everything had gone dark."
She can feel the timbre of his voice vibrating through every point of contact, and closes her eyes.
"I'm here. I'm okay."
"Don't ever do that to me again."
She makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
"What, get abducted? Okay, sure."
They lay back, her dozing against him, still putting off the thing they most need to talk about.
"Hey," she says suddenly, and his fingers still against her neck. "Did you win?"
"Win…"
"The Emmy?"
"God," he laughs hollowly. "That feels like years ago." When he doesn't answer her question, she elbows him. "No, we lost to Mad Men."
She harumphs, and he laughs again, this time with a little more feeling.
"How'd you know?" She wonders aloud, and again, he pauses, waiting for context. "Last night, when I woke up, you just...how did you know I remembered?"
He doesn't answer for a long time.
"It was," he clears his throat. "It was just the way you said my name."
.-.-.-.-.-.
They up Clarke's meds for the next few days. Bellamy doesn't ask if it's because of the nightmares, but she knows he knows she's having them.
It makes it harder for them to talk, she doesn't remember half their conversations, and she's so out of it half the time that he just reads to her, a strangely nostalgic story about a princess and a pauper, absentmindedly twirling strands of her hair around his finger.
She still sees Steven sometimes, still wakes up to the feeling of his boot in her stomach, and she gets discharged with a prescription for Ativan and the number of a good shrink back in Vancouver.
She's not as out of it now, but they still haven't really talked about it. She looks up from her hospital bed the day she's supposed to check out and catches him staring at her.
"What?" She asks. He shrugs.
"Nothing."
He's obviously lying, but Clarke can't read his mind, so she's not sure if it's something she needs to be concerned about.
"Why is this hard?" She wonders. He blinks at her, pausing halfway into turning the page of his book.
"Why is-"
"Are you coming?" She asks bluntly, suddenly tired of this dancing around the subject, around pretending everything can just go back to normal. They don't have a normal to go back to. Their normal is living almost 3000 miles apart, not really talking, not really seeing each other. Clarke doesn't think that's what he wants, even before all this happened she was kind of getting the sense that he'd been just as miserable as her, but-
"Are you going somewhere?" He asks stupidly. She throws a pillow at him, in a truly pathetic display of non-athleticism, and it falls a few inches short of his chair.
"Are you serious?" she practically shouts, and it's been almost a week of hushed voices and sleepy mumblings so the volume of it seems to startle him back to focus. "Yeah, Bellamy, I'm going home. Back to Vancouver, where I live."
His mouth drops open in understanding, little spots of angry colour appearing on his cheeks.
"Clarke-"
"You've been here for a week, you haven't left my side, you looked for me when no one else would, you broke about a dozen laws saving my life, and you can't even talk to me about what we do now?" She accuses, pointing a shaky finger at him. "Why is that hard, Bellamy? After everything, why-"
He's there in an instant, before she can blink, kneeling beside her, eyes fiery.
"Why is it hard? Because I can't just say oh, by the way, I'm moving back to the West Coast to be with you." He says slowly, dangerously. "I mean I am, I'm moving back whether you'll have me or not, because I fucking hate Toronto and I'm done with the TV thing and I miss writing books, which is what I always wanted to do in the first place."
She blinks.
"But I don't just want to move back to be with you, Clarke, I want to move back into the loft, or we could buy a new place, I don't care, and I want to wake up next to you everyday, and I don't want-" he breaks off, taking a deep breath. "I don't want you to go anywhere, ever again, and I don't ever want to live without you. I want to get married, and I want to take care of you, even though I've done a fucking terrible job of it so far. I want to have family barbecues, with O and Lincoln, and I want to watch you paint, and I want to cook for you, and remind you to eat when you forget, and raise a bunch of tiny, angry, artsy historians, and I just-"
He stares at her, chest heaving.
"I love you. More than I have ever loved anyone. And when I thought I lost you, I couldn't…"
"Bellamy…" she reaches out, splaying her fingers across her jaw, feeling his pulse thrumming wildly there. He closes her eyes, leaning into it.
"That's why it's hard," he mumbles. "Because it's not just that I want to come with you. I want everything."
Her lips curl, slowly at first, and then into a face splitting smile, and when he finally opens his eyes he looks surprised to see it.
"You don't look terrified," he observes.
She sighs.
"I've been terrified," she reminds him softly, and his eyes darken, deepen, at that. "The thought of being with you, forever, it's not enough to scare me anymore, Blake."
He dimples, and this time she indulges herself, pressing her index finger softly into the deeper one on the right.
"Is that a yes?" He wants to know. She raises an eyebrow.
"Did you ask me a question?" She expects him to laugh, but he doesn't. Instead, the easy smile disappears, replaced by something pensive.
"I-" He falls silent, brow low.
"It's kind of difficult to make someone doubt your intentions after a speech like that," Clarke says nervously, watching Bellamy retreat back into his head. "But right now you're doing a pretty good job."
That gets his attention again, and he shakes his head frantically, dark curls bouncing.
"No, shit, it's-its not that it's just-" he swallows, running a thumb across her cheekbone. "There are a lot of questions I want to ask you, a lot of promises I want to make to you. I just don't want to do them here. Not like this." He gestures sadly around the room, eyes lingering on her, and she remembers the mottling of her face, the veritable rainbow of blues and purples and yellows blossoming across her body right now, and she gets it.
"Okay," she fists her hand in his collar, tugging him forward to press her lips against his. "But for now, will you come home with me?"
"That depends," he breathes against her mouth. "Are you going to cut me a deal on rent again? Because I hear living in Vancouver has gotten kind of expens-"
She cuts him off with another kiss, biting lightly at his lip as an acknowledgment of his sarcasm.
"I think," she says breathily, when they eventually come up for air, "-that we can probably work something out."
