AN: Morning update today, since it's Father's day here in Sweden and I'm heading over to my parents' a little later to celebrate my dad and grandpa, so I'm not sure when I'll be home tonight and I don't want to keep you waiting until tomorrow!

A tiny bit of smut at the end of this one, nowhere near as explicit as the last two chapters, but if you don't want to read that, just skip the last sentence or two, really

And as always, I don't own anything relating to The 100

-18-

The water is still nice, and the day is sunny and warm – maybe one last hurrah of the summer, like Madi said. Lately, there has been a bit of a bite in the air in the early morning and late at night, and the winds aren't as pleasant when they whirl around the buildings on top of the hill as they used to be, so Bellamy suspects fall is right around the corner.

They have no idea, really, what the seasons will be like on this new planet. The summer has seemed a little warmer than the summer on Earth, or at least in the area on Earth where they landed, so he's quietly hopeful that maybe the winter won't be as harsh as it was there either. Construction of the cabins should be finished within a month or so, hopefully well before the temperature drops too much, and they've made sure they can withstand cold and even snow, if it comes to that, but still… he would definitely prefer the weather not testing their building expertise.

Madi shrieks with laughter when he launches her into the air so she splashes into the water, so he, Miller and Shaw take turns throwing her as far as they can for a while, until she's completely soaked from head to toe and shaking her head like a dog to get the water out of her ears.

After a while, Jordan and Octavia join them in the water and the activities slow down a little, Octavia showing Madi how to do a handstand and summersaults under the water while the rest of them throw a ball someone's made around. Bellamy almost drops it several times because he's too preoccupied watching his sister with Madi, the two laughing and splashing each other, showing off with different tricks. They look happy, and just seeing that makes a warm feeling bloom in his stomach.

They get out of the water for some lunch a little later, to find that Clarke and Raven have moved all the blankets together to form a large seating area where they've arranged the food they've brought down. Bellamy can't help but shake his head so he showers Clarke with water droplets before slumping down beside her, and she shoves him away playfully.

"I was so nice and warm," she complains, wiping away some water from her arm. "You got me all wet."

He chokes on the laugher bubbling up in his throat and it comes out more like a huff. "You want to maybe… rephrase that?" he asks innocently, raising an eyebrow.

"Get your mind out of the gutter," she shoots back, sticking her tongue out, which doesn't help much.

"Maybe I don't want to," he replies, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her into his lap.

"OK, no fooling around at the dinner table," Raven announces sternly.

"Oh, please," Clarke snorts. "Like we don't have to put up with you two making moon eyes over dinner every night."

In response, Raven throws some berries at them, which bounce onto the blanket.

"Thanks, Reyes," Bellamy says, picking up a couple and popping them in his mouth. She narrows her eyes at him, but doesn't say anything else and their picnic continues.

After they finish eating, Clarke insists that Madi stay out of the water for a while, so they all lounge around on the blankets in solidarity. The sky above them is a deep blue, the sunshine nice and warm, and before long, Bellamy hears a light snoring coming from Clarke's other side. He props himself up on one elbow to take a look, and sure enough, Madi has curled into a ball and is sleeping soundly.

"I guess we tired her out," he notes quietly, and Clarke chuckles.

"She probably didn't get much sleep at Raven's last night either," she notes.

"Probably not." He turns to look out over the lake for a moment. "You still haven't tried the water, Princess. It's warm."

She gives him a doubtful look. "Sure…"

"Really, I promise." He pushes himself to his feet before extending a hand to her. "Come on, if it's too cold for you I can always warm you up."

Clarke rolls her eyes at his blatant innuendo, but she does take his hand and lets him pull her up and along into the water. She stops when she's knee-deep, pulling her hand out of his and wrapping her arms around herself, rubbing her arms a little.

"This is not warm," she complains.

"Come on, it's better once you're completely submerged," he wheedles, stepping in behind her and placing his hands on her waist to push her in front of him into deeper water.

She goes along somewhat grudgingly, suddenly dropping down completely into the water when it reaches her waist, and he follows her lead, diving forward and breaking the surface some ways ahead of her.

"I told you it was nice," he says, swimming back to where she's sort of crouching on the bottom to keep her shoulders under the surface.

"You said it was warm," she corrects him. "I don't know if I'd go that far."

He laughs at her wrinkled nose and tugs her with him backwards further out. "Want me to warm you up?"

He doesn't wait for her response before pulling her flush against him, and she immediately wraps her legs around his waist to keep her head above water, since he can just about reach the bottom here. He runs his hands down her back over the soaked material of her tank top, finally letting them rest against her lower back, pressing her closer. She's stripped down to her panties, and he can feel her heat against him.

"Mmm, better," Clarke says, before closing the distance between them and claiming his lips in a kiss. Her legs tighten around his waist as he returns it, coaxing her mouth open.

"Keep it PG13, there are kids present!" Raven's voice comes from the beach and they reluctantly pull apart.

"I'm not a kid!" Madi objects loudly, though her voice is still a little raspy with sleep, and Clarke laughs.

"Rain check?" she suggests, giving him a quick peck before unwrapping her legs and sliding into the water.

"Oh, I'm going to hold you to that."

She swims away from him a little until she can stand easily on the bottom, and gives him a calculating look.

He realizes what she's thinking a moment before she does it. "Don't you dare…"

But she brings a hand back and then splashes him with a wave of water.

Which of course turns into an all-out water war, which Madi, Jordan and Octavia soon join. By the time they all collapse onto the blankets on the beach again, everyone's breathing hard and laughing harder.

-100-

On their way back up to the settlement later in the afternoon, Bellamy ropes Miller into helping him get his spare cot and a few pillows up the hill. They get it set up next to Clarke's in her bedroom, using rope to tie the legs together so the beds won't move apart in the night, and Clarke rolls up a blanket and tucks it into the small space between the two thin mattresses before spreading another one and her soft, fluffy comforter over both beds.

The room's not huge, they tried to be efficient during construction and only made each bedroom large enough to fit a double bed with space enough to move around it on either side, along with some extra room against one wall, for storage. For now, the only thing in here is the bed, which they move to the middle of the room instead of against the wall, where the lone cot was before, and a chest that Clarke keeps her clothes in, but Bellamy thinks he might be able to put together a couple of basic tables to use as bedside tables, maybe a chair and hopefully some sort of cupboards or dressers, for better storage. Still, it's not like they'll be doing anything in here that they can't do in the bed, so it can wait a bit until they've finished the rest of the cabins. He also has some vague plans for other furniture – a sofa of some kind for the main room, some shelves, maybe even a bookcase, if he's feeling extra ambitious, though they keep all books in the corner of the mess hall that's been dubbed the library.

"Does this mean you're moving in here?" Madi asks as Bellamy leaves the bedroom, having apparently lain in wait. He turns to Clarke for assistance, but her eyes widen slightly and she busies herself with unpacking the blankets they brought down to the lake earlier.

"I still have my tent down in the valley," he says lightly. "This is just so it'll be easier for me to stay here if I'm up here late and don't feel like making the trek down there."

"Oh," Madi replies, sounding neither disappointed nor relieved.

Bellamy turns to Clarke, wanting to check in and make sure his explanation is OK with her, but she has her back turned to him. Even like that, though, he can tell that her shoulders are tense.

"I'm just going to hang these up outside, so they'll dry," she says quickly, disappearing out through the door.

Bellamy looks after her for a long moment before turning his attention back to Madi.

"Would it…" he starts. "Would you be OK if I did decide to move in here with you guys?"

Madi looks up from the book she's reading. "Duh. Why wouldn't I be? It makes sense, anyway. I mean, you'll be moving in here eventually, right? And this way you don't have to build yourself a cabin you won't even use."

It's sound logic, for sure. But isn't it way too soon? It's only been a week and a half… on the other hand, it's also seven years in the making. And if he's being completely honest with himself, he doesn't want to spend another lonely night down in his tent in the valley. He wants to fall asleep wrapped around Clarke in the evenings, wants to wake up with her hair in his mouth and her legs tangled with his in the mornings, wants her to be the first and last thing he sees every single day. He wants it all with her, good days and bad, and he wants that to start as soon as possible. They've both waited long enough.

But he's also a little worried that he might scare her away if he tells her that so soon after they've found their way to each other.

"Maybe I'll work on that, then," he finally tells Madi. "I'm just going to…" He doesn't finish the sentence, just gestures at the door.

Clarke's around the corner of the cabin, hanging their blankets over a rope that she and her neighbor have put up between their two cabins to use as a clothes line. He can tell by her slightly jerky movements that she's upset about something. He hopes it's not anything he said or did, but has a sneaking suspicion that it might be.

"Hi there," he says as he reaches her, and she turns to face him, offering him a brief smile. "You OK?"

She nods. "Sorry about Madi ambushing you like that," she says. "I swear, I had no idea she was going to, but maybe I should have talked to her about this before we…"

"Hey, if anything, that's on me," he interrupts her. "I'm the one who put the whole moving thing into action right away." He pauses for a moment, debating what to say next, but finally decides to just get it out there. "The thing is, I would move in here with you and Madi today and never leave, if that's what you want. I know it's too soon, I know this thing between us just started, and I totally understand if that's too much, if it freaks you out or if you want to take things more slowly, but I just want you to know that I am all in, OK? I don't want there to be any misunderstandings between us about that."

She's still for a moment, staring at him as if she's not sure he's actually serious. Then she surges forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face against his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her as well, leaning his chin against the top of her head and lets out a sigh.

"I'm sorry, I jumped to conclusions," she mumbles into his shirt after a moment. "I guess I'm just so used to not getting what I want and telling myself that it doesn't matter as long as everyone else is alive and happy… when you said that about keeping your tent down in the valley to Madi…"

"I was just trying not to freak her out," he assures her when she trails off. "I wasn't sure how she would react if I said that I was moving in, or what you wanted me to say. I'm sorry if I made you think I didn't actually want to. I do, more than anything. I love you, I want to be with you every single second of every day, please don't ever doubt that."

"I won't. And your explanation was probably smart," she admits. "Madi seems to be OK with this whole thing, happy about it even, but living together is still a big step."

"She says she's OK with it, though," Bellamy says. "I asked her after you went outside, if she would be OK with me moving in here, and her exact words were 'duh'."

Clarke pulls away from him with a chuckle. "I keep saying she spends too much time with Raven," she notes. "She really said that?"

He nods, squeezing her hand. "She said it made sense, that I would move in eventually anyway and this way I wouldn't have to worry about building my own cabin."

"See? Smart kid."

"OK, so how do you want to do this? Like I said, I'll move in right now if you want me to. Madi says she's fine with it, but maybe we should still ease her into it a little?"

Clarke nods thoughtfully. "Yeah, that might be best. Just… you can still spend the night here, right? And not just tonight."

The slight pleading note in her voice makes what little doubt is left in his mind vanish completely.

"Of course," he agrees quickly. "I'll stay the night, just nothing official, I won't move any of my other things. We'll give it a couple of weeks, make sure Madi's comfortable with the situation, and then we can talk about it again?"

"That sounds good."

-100-

Bellamy doesn't want to be a complete cliché and say that his life is suddenly magically perfect as soon as he and Clarke get together. He was content enough before, the work on the new settlement keeping him busy but being fulfilling at the same time, his friends making what little time he had off from work nice enough.

But there had been something missing, and he had always known what it was.

So no, his life doesn't change dramatically – the work on the cabins is still exhausting, Miller still spends most days teasing him about Clarke even if the nature of his jabs change a little, and he still hangs out in the mess hall in the evenings, playing cards or craps that Jordan managed to make out of spare wood, laughing with his friends. Only now he has Clarke by his side, can lean over and steal a kiss whenever he wants to, and at the end of the night, he follows her back to what is still technically her cabin. The only nights they spend apart is when he's off on a two-day hunting trip or when Clarke and her mom go on a longer expedition to find medicinal plants, and even then he still sleeps in Clarke's cabin so Madi won't have to stay with Raven.

It's Madi who eventually brings up him really moving in one morning when they've slept a little later than normal and he has to rush out the door to have time to grab a change of clothes from his tent before he's supposed to meet the rest of his construction crew at the current building site. It's been almost a month since they moved his cot into the cabin, but they just haven't had time to talk about it more in the weeks since, the construction keeping Bellamy busy and Clarke swamped in the med bay with more flu cases, just when they thought it was over for the time being.

"Why don't you just keep your stuff here?" Madi asks as he's chewing down some berries while tying his shoelaces at the same time. "You already live here, it's just stupid not to have all your things here too."

He and Clarke exchange a look, and he packs up his things in a backpack – not like he has a lot of stuff – and breaks the tent down that evening. The cabins are getting close to being all finished anyway, so he would have been moving up the hill soon enough. There's still a handful of people sleeping in the mess hall, and a couple of guys from Bellamy's building crew down in the valley, but with his official move, they decide to join the last stragglers in the mess, and the camp down in the valley is deserted.

Which also means they can move the transport ship to its designated spot up on the hill. Raven's been vaguely talking about using the lake to build some sort of power station and give them electricity, or maybe something wind-powered, but they all know this is way into the future, if ever. So for now, they park the transport ship on one edge of the settlement – do you actually park a space ship, Bellamy wonders? It feels like there should be a grander word for it, it's not exactly the rover – and use the ship's system to power the most important buildings, meaning the med bay, mess hall, kitchen and Raven's workshop, for now. They're hoping to get electricity in at least all the public buildings eventually, maybe even in the cabins, but if they're going to continue using the ship's power system, Raven says they'll have to tweak it quite a bit before they can do that, since it wasn't really built to power the ship itself, a handful of large buildings and over two hundred smaller cabins.

But it still feels like a huge step in the right direction the day Raven flicks a switch – kind of anticlimactic, really – and a couple of bare lightbulbs in the med bay flicker to life.

Abby's face is glowing with happiness while she watches Raven show her how the system works. They have lights and a fridge they've moved from the ship, for storage of salves for burns and other things that benefit from being kept cold, as well as some portable heaters, also from the ship, for colder nights.

"This is going to make things so much easier," Abby gushes when Raven's done. "I always worry that I'll accidentally leave a candle or lantern burning and wake up to find the whole building in flames. And now that the days are getting shorter, these lights will be almost indispensable."

Raven and Jordan have also managed to hook up the water system, which has been finished for a couple of weeks by now, to the ship's water line – since nobody lives on the ship anymore, the water reserves have dried up, as they weren't being replenished. During the warmer months, bathing in the lake has been fine, but it's definitely fall now and the water has been more than a little chilly lately. Now they can use the two large, communal shower rooms on the ship instead, since they've realized putting showers in the individual cabins just won't be practical.

"And I've run it past the water heater, so we're getting hot water!" Raven exclaims when they test the system for the first time. The pressure isn't amazing, and the hot water is more lukewarm than anything. "Well, kind of warm at least, for a while. This is going to be amazing."

Bellamy has to agree when Clarke pulls him along onto the ship late that night, after everyone's asleep, and kisses him as the water cascades down their bodies. It's cooled significantly by the time she braces her hands against the cold metal wall and he pushes into her from behind, their simultaneous moans echoing in the room, but neither of them really notice.

AN: OK, so we're on thin technical ice again. I'm no engineer, not even close, so let's just assume the stuff I've described in this chapter are completely possible, OK? Great!