Archive of our own
By: iridescentprincess
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The person comes out of nowhere.
He knows that he shouldn't have taken the shortcut. He knows that that part of town isn't the safest, but he's had a long day at the bar, and he isn't thinking straight, so he decides to take the shorter route. All he wants is to go home and sleep.
Taking a left onto a deserted side street instead of walking forward into the main intersection, he walks through the small neighborhood, his jacket zipped up to the top to keep out the chilly air, and his hands stuffed in his pockets. He enters an alleyway, and the sun doesn't shine on him anymore. He shivers.
Then he hears footsteps behind him, and before he can even turn, a knife impales him in the side, and something hard hits him in the head, knocking him out.
When Bellamy wakes up, he's laying on the sidewalk. "Uhh," he groans. Something hurts, and when he looks down, there's still a knife sticking out of his abdomen. Blood seeps through his jacket, the color red making his gray jacket darken. "Fuck."
Taking the knife out will only cause him to bleed out more, but he's pretty sure the knife is lodged in his lung, and it's getting harder to breathe. He gasps, his body going into shock. His head throbs, but it doesn't compare to the sharp pain he feels near his stomach. The person must've stabbed him by putting his arm around him first. His eyes start to get a bit cloudy, and he exhales harshly through his mouth, trying to cope with the pain.
Bellamy takes his phone out of his pocket. Whatever he got stabbed for, it isn't because the person wanted his valuables. "Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?"
"I just got stabbed by someone... I'm bleeding out. I need an ambulance."
"I am tracing your location through your phone. I have paramedics on the way to you right now. What is your name?"
He grunts in pain as he attempts to get up off the floor, his head rushing and the knife slipping in his body. Guess he's sticking to sitting in the meantime. "Bellamy Blake."
"Okay. Bellamy, I want you to stay on the phone with一"
He hangs up. He feels a little bad, but he has someone else he needs to talk to.
He dials the number one before pressing call. She's been his number one on his speed dial since practically forever.
"Hey, Bellamy. I was just going to call you to tell you something, but I'm just going to assume that you need to tell me something, so. What's up?"
Just hearing her voice makes him feel a thousand times better, washing over him like water. "I wanted to tell you something, but you can tell me what you want first. What is it?"
Clarke doesn't respond for a moment. "You sound weird, Bell. Is something wrong?"
He clears his throat, trying to sound natural. "Nah. I just came from work. Tiring day. Now what did you want to say?"
"Raven and I just had a late lunch at the best cafe in the world. It's called The Dropship. They have the most amazing food, and I honestly wish I could have their coffee with every meal for the rest of my life. We should go there another time! Maybe next Sunday?"
Bellamy smiles despite the pain. "Yeah, Clarke, definitely." If he lives through this, he'll go for sure.
He can imagine her smiling, wherever she is. She's probably home right now, sifting through Netflix for another good show, heating up leftover food. He wants to ask her what she's doing. He wants to keep this one last image of her. "So, what were you calling me for?" Clarke asks, breaking through his reverie.
There's an urge to stall, but he doesn't know why. He's dying, for fuck's sake. His time is up. "I need to tell you something."
He hears her snort on the other end. "Bellamy, I know that, get on with it."
"I just wanted you to know..." he breathes, panting for air. He doesn't know how long someone has left after they get stabbed, but it's probably not a long time. He needs to say this one thing before he dies. "I love you. I've loved you for as long as I've known you, but somehow it feels like a lot longer than that. Like I've loved you..." He pauses to cough. "For as long as I've lived." He says it all in a rush, feeling like he's running out of time. His breaths are numbered.
Clarke gasps. She doesn't speak for a couple seconds, and in the silence he can tell the gears are turning in her head. "Bellamy, what's wrong," she says flatly, not bothering to phrase it as a question, as if she already knows what is happening. "Bell, why do you sound like that? Are you okay? Where are you?"
Bellamy can feel the tears streaming down his cheeks, but he ignores it. He hears sirens in the distance. "I'm fine. I'm okay. At least, I think I'll be, really soon."
"Bellamy, tell me what the hell is wrong, right now!"
He lies back down on the floor in the alley, staring up at the darkening sky. He can see all the emerging stars twinkling back at him, and he wonders now if there's such a thing as heaven, if it's up there among the cosmos. Death can't be so bad, if it's just eternal sleep up there. Maybe he'll be up there really soon.
His head is still throbbing, and the knife feels like a weight that he can't lift, but he doesn't tell her any of that. "Nothing's wrong. Just remember what I told you..." He coughs again. "Remember that I love you, okay?"
Clarke's voice goes in and out of focus as he lies on the floor. "No, no, no, Bellamy! Don't you dare do this to me! Are you hurt? Please tell me what happened, I can get you right now, I can一"
The sirens are closer now. How long has it been since he called for the ambulance? Four, maybe five minutes ago? Time seems to be standing still and flying by all at once. "Stop," Bellamy interrupts her, not sure how much longer he can stay awake. His hands want to let go of the phone and slacken, so he touches the speaker button on the screen and places his phone on the ground, next to his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Clarke. Sorry I couldn't tell you sooner. This was a crappy way to tell you."
He wonders how life will move on without him. Octavia will be okay, he knows she's got a good thing going for her right now, going to college, figuring her life out. She'll have Lincoln, and Clarke, and Jasper and Monty and Raven. She's strong, she can definitely look after herself. It's a lesson he's learned now.
His eyes close. Clarke screams something on the phone, but he can no longer hear her. His hearing goes in and out, like his brain refuses to comprehend certain things. He wants to know what she said, but it doesn't really matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.
Instead, he can hear a car door slamming a few feet away, and then loud footsteps. Someone breathes over him. "Knife wound in the abdomen, possible punctured lung, major loss of blood... I need that gurney over here now!"
He blacks out after that.
———
When he wakes up, there's a bright light in his eyes and he feels like absolute shit. His mouth is dry, like someone's stuffed it with cotton balls, but at least he's in a bed.
His eyes open fully, and he gets a sense of where he is. A hospital bed.
Something moves in the corner of his eye, and he turns his head. To his right, Clarke sleeps in a blue leather chair, blissfully passed out and breathing loudly. Her legs are curled up under her, but her hands are hanging over the armrests, as if they are reaching for him.
He tries to say her name, but his mouth is still so fucking dry and his throat feels rough. Bellamy gives up halfway through trying to make a loud noise by banging a foot against the bed rails.
But then he comes to a thought: he's alive. He didn't die in that alleyway, like he thought he would. He told Clarke he loved her, after keeping it in him for so long, and he gets to live to see the outcome of that. It's a miracle.
He's basking in the happiness of his fate that he doesn't even notice Clarke rustling next to him, waking from her slumber. When he turns to look at her again, she's sitting up and blinking sleepily at him. They lock eyes, and then she glares.
"I love you too," she declares, her face shy and angry all at once, like her mood was conflicting with her words.
Bellamy grins. He clears his throat. "You sound really angry about that."
What he gets in return is an explosion. "Don't joke about this! You called me after you got stabbed with a knife and told me you loved me instead of telling me you were hurt! What the hell is wrong with you? Do you know how crazy that sounds?" She rubs her temples. "How crazy Octavia is right now? She only left to grab a change of clothes for you at your apartment. She's furious."
Dammit, Octavia. He totally forgot that he has to deal with the wrath of another woman, too. "In my defense, I called the ambulance before I called you."
Her glare hardens. That was not the right thing to say, nope, not at all. "Bellamy."
He exhales. "I thought I was dying. That was enough reason to confess," he murmurs softly, closing his eyes. "I didn't want to hear you worrying about me before I died. All I wanted was to know that you knew. I didn't mean for you to feel that way. But I thought I was going to die."
Clarke sighs, moving her chair closer to his bed so she can sit and be close to him. "I know. And I understand that. But you unnecessarily put me一and Octavia, after I told her what you did一through multiple hells."
He rubs a hand down her arm in apology. "What happened after I passed out?"
"The doctors told me that you were transported here, and you went into emergency surgery. I filed a police report, but I doubt they'll find him with no description." She crinkles her phone in anger. "The asshole who stabbed you will never be caught." Her eyes are fiery, a cold yet burning blue.
Bellamy waits for the rage that will come with knowing that he'll never find who nearly killed him, but it never comes. The utter relief of being alive does wonders to his temperament. "How did you know something was wrong over the phone?" he asks, eyes still closed.
She smoothes the lines of his forehead with her fingertips, relaxing him. "I thought about it, and you would never confess your love for me over the phone. It isn't you. You think technology gets in the way of real-life communication."
He admits that that is true. He only chose to do it over the phone as a literal last resort. Opening his eyes, he simply states, "I love you," taking her hand from where it lies on his cheek and placing it over his heart. "Is that how you imagined it would be?"
Clarke huffs, flushing a bit at his words. He wants to make her react like that again. "Well, no. I didn't expect you to say it from a hospital bed either."
"Guess I'll just have to say it again at another time and place."
She smiles, her eyes bright with the hope that he thinks is for him, and he just smiles back, waiting for the next moment he'll get to repeat the words.