Bellarke Domestic AU's & One-Shots

Pumpkin belly

By enoughtotemptme from tumblr
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Summer is clinging on with a death grip, which means it's nearing Halloween and the temperature is in the nineties.

Clarke is due in a week and a half, and she's already suffered through June, July, August, September, sweating through day after day of excessive heat while she gets slower, bigger, rounder. She feels like it is not too much to ask for autumn to act like autumn, damn it, and cool the hell down. Little shrieks of delight reach her ears, and she cracks an eye open to watch Eli and Nora run around the backyard as Bellamy joins her on the porch swing. "I tried convincing them we could play pirates and mermaids in the bathtub if they came in for bath time," Bellamy says, draping his arm around her shoulders. She leans her head against him, even though he's too warm and the air is sticky and hot as it heads toward sundown, and the baby turns in her womb."Which would you be?" Clarke asks idly, tracing patterns on his thigh. "Mermaid, obviously." Clarke smiles into his chest. "Obviously. Did it work?"Bellamy sighs. "Not even close. They say they want to do art before bath time. Apparently, Lincoln draws or paints or sculpts or something with them, every night." Octavia and Lincoln are at a wedding out of town for the night, and Clarke and Bellamy are used to caring for the kids they're both teachers, so during the summers they take Eli and Nora for the day while Octavia and Lincoln work but they've never actually had to do an overnight before."So paint with them," Clarke says, shrugging, and Bellamy huffs a laugh, pressing a kiss to her brow.

"I'm not exactly the artist in this relationship, Clarke," he says dryly."Well, I'm on maternity leave," Clarke replies. "I'm as round as a pumpkin and I'm not actually sure I can get off this bench, physically.""Do you want to get off this bench?" he asks immediately. He's been like this her whole pregnancy—almost obnoxiously perfect, listening to her complain about the heartburn she gets whenever she eats her favorite spicy food, watching her carefully but never hovering in the helicopter fashion she'd feared he might, only be offering to help when she seems to need it, and not a second sooner so she never feels like an invalid. Clarke sighs. "No, not really. I'm as comfortable as I can get, these days." "Okay." He sighs when Nora shrieks at her little brother that he can't catch her! "What do you think the odds are, me getting them clean and in bed before a meltdown?" She hums, considers the rising pitch of the kids' voices. "Terrible. You should really try that art thing, Uncle Bell. I believe in you." "What the hell am I supposed to paint?" he demands. "I'm an English teacher, not an art teacher like some people."She pats his chest, then pushes him away from her because damn it, it's just too hot for any more cuddling. "Whatever the hell you want, Blake. Check Lincoln's studio for supplies." Bellamy sighs kisses her and drags himself off the porch swing and into the house. Clarke watches the kids play tag through her heavy-lidded eyes. She'd been there for both of their births, Nora three and a half years ago, Eli two. Lincoln and Bellamy had both cried at each birth, but while Octavia had teared up a little, she mostly just looked victorious and proud when she held her babies. Clarke declines to comment on the state of her own tear ducts when Nora and Eli let out their first cries.

It's kind of hard to believe that Clarke is going to be the one holding her own baby in a matter of weeks. It still gets her heart racing sometimes, in awe and in terror and in love, because when she was first introduced to her best friend's new girlfriend and her brother, she hadn't exactly bonded with the surly English teacher. She usually trusted Lincoln's taste, but god, she'd feared for him when she'd met the Blakes. Octavia was lovely, bright and open and a perfect match for Clarke's quiet friend, but the brother was prickly and protective and beautiful and rude when she'd tried to make small talk about their similar careers. But things had gotten better, slowly, when she took the vacant art teacher position at the middle school where Bellamy was tenured. They discovered they tended to fall on the same side of things during debates on the cost of living wage raises, banned books, whether or not the principal deserved to be investigated by the district. By the time they danced together at Lincoln and Octavia's wedding, a year after the two had met, she and Bellamy were almost friends. Then, a few weeks later, he'd kissed her in her classroom after school one day, right in the middle of her rant about the cut to library funding. And that was just right.Five years later, she's married to the man, in one of those weird ways no one believes in real life because when do best friends actually marry siblings like in the movies? She has a pretty little house, a hot, adoring husband, a niece and nephew she loves.And next month, she and Bellamy will have a baby. Bellamy emerges onto the porch again, lets an armful of non-toxic finger paint tumble onto the bench beside Clarke as she watches.