Tumgik
#she held me at gunpoint and told me i had to deliver bellarke babies within three hours
captaindaddykru · 5 years
Text
you hurt the ones you love (i don't believe that)
for @obviesbellarke based on this photo ;)
Raven has always prided herself on her work ethic. She didn’t come from much, her parents did not plan on having a child which about described her relationship with them, and she worked part-time jobs ever since the goverment allowed her to. (Since they put her in the system and the system failed her, she felt like she could pretty much do whatever she wanted to the system. So sometimes she repaid the cards they dealt her by doing some not so legal hacking into college databases to slightly change rich frat boy GPA’s and make some extra cash.) 
It paid off, because now Raven works for NASA and she didn’t even apply for the job. They asked her to come work for them. Who can say NASA asked them to come work for them? Raven Reyes can. Why? Because she is a certified genius who worked her way through high school, and college, and a master degree, and still managed to look halfway attractive, get in thirty minutes of exercise a day and keep a semi-active social life throughout it all. 
She loved her job. She did, but—but it also meant long days, a lot of overtime, even more time spend on business trips and conference calls. If it wasn’t for her boyfriend Zeke working in the same building as her, she’s pretty sure she would never see him either since she barely ever goes home. She just happened to luck out and get the most amazing, understanding and supportive friends in the universe. 
Besides, after spending half her life ‘being friends’ with Finn—who fucked her over and ghosted her after mere nine days apart at different colleges—Raven has come to learn what real friendship is. Emori tags her in a meme at least every other day, Harper brings over fresh vegetables from her and Monty’s garden whenever she looks extra pale and Clarke dutifully keeps her up to date on all her favorite shows she has zero time to watch. They’re as real as it gets. 
Hence, when things start to cross over from a strong work ethic to borderline workaholic slash inevitable burn-out and her boss Sinclair forces her to take two weeks off, she is disappointed when the first three people she asks to hang out on her first free Saturday night that year already have plans. They barely hear from her in months beside a quick ‘what’s up’ in their group chat before she falls asleep on her couch every Saint Glinglin and they have the audacity to not keep their nights free in case she might ask them to hang out sometime? Assholes. 
Since Emori and Murphy are out of town (probably robbing a house or something, she still doesn’t know what they do in their free time), and Harper and Monty have dinner with her parents, Clarke is up next. Raven texts her asking what she is doing that weekend, opening up a bottle of wine before padding over to her living room without a glass. She deserves the entire thing. Raven starts up Netflix on her smart TV while she waits for her friend to reply. 
Twenty minutes deep into an episode of Homeland, her phone buzzes annoyingly on the armrest. 
CLARKE [8:51 PM]:
who’s number is this?
RAVEN [8:54 PM]:
very funny griffin. drinks on saturday?
It takes a surprisingly long time for Clarke to answer her text, even though she isn’t a notorious bad back-texter unlike her boyfriend. One time like two years back, Raven asked Bellamy if he wanted to chip in on Murphy’s birthday present and he still hasn’t replied to this day. She’s pretty sure he isn’t even aware of the fact iMessage exists.
Raven has almost single-handedly finished off a bag of Cheetos before her phone buzzes again. She unlocks her phone to find a photo of a pregnancy test staring back at her, balanced precariously on what she assumes is Clarke’s knee, like the night terrors she used to have in middle school, terrified to end up like the other girls in her neighbourhood, sure a boy even looking at her could knock her up. 
RAVEN [9:08 PM]:
so no drinks then???
The reply comes faster this time, Raven sure that Clarke was just jumping for her to something. Anything.
CLARKE [09:09 PM]:
i just found out and my first instinct was to grab a bottle of beer, i’m fucked
She’s not sure what Clarke wants from her here—that one always had more up her sleeve than expected—a congrats or a condolences, so she settles on the safe middle of comic relief. 
RAVEN [9:10 PM]:
who’s the father?
CLARKE [09:10 PM]:
seriously?
RAVEN [9:11 PM]:
what? thought you two went to that swingers club the other month
CLARKE [09:14 PM]:
that was a teacher’s conference. he begged me to come
RAVEN [9:15 PM]:
i thought YOU begged HIM to come and now we’re in this whole mess?
A reply doesn’t come for two minutes, and then three, and when the clock ticks closer to five minutes, Raven decides to dial her number. It switches over to Facetime, but the screen is black, static commotion of the phone being moved around the only sound between their two devices for a good ten seconds. Finally, she asks, “Clarke?” 
“I didn’t plan for this, Rave,” is the first thing out of her mouth, and Raven has to bite back a smile. Clarke is such a in-the-closet neurotic mess and she missed it. The screen turns very bright, then finally she can make out her friend. From the looks of it, she is on the floor in her bathroom, mascara smudged lightly under her eyes, wavy hair a mess on top of her head. “I haven’t even finished school yet. My NCLEX exam isn’t until next month—“
“Sound like perfect timing to me,” Raven snorts, keeping her tone very bored. Is this all she has? Are these her best arguments? She’s off her game. “You’ll ace the exam, get a few months of nursing experience at the hospital and then you can go on maternity leave. Your mom owns the surgical ward, I’m pretty sure she can make it happen.”
She watches Clarke draw her knees up to her chest, resting her forehead on top of them for a moment before looking back up at her phone. She does look wrecked. Raven hesistates for a second, then inquires, “Have you told him?”
“No,” Clarke replies, and then she is quiet for another second. She sounds softer this time, “What if he doesn’t want this?”
Raven almost cackles out loud. That loser would do anything for her, even if he didn’t want a baby with her—which seemed very unlikely—he would probably go to his grave swearing it was all he ever wanted. Besides, Bellamy has a few years on Clarke, is a well-known mother hen and is practically smitten with his sister’s toddler. (The only pictures he ever posts on social media are either of Clarke, his sister, that bratty little Octavia look-alike, or the three of them together—which was probably Nirvana by his definition.) He was more than ready, Raven’s sure that his old man primal hormones are just off the charts.
“Fat chance,” Raven settles on, instead of manic laughter because she’s a good friend, eyebrows practically disappearing into her hairline. “You’re talking about Bellamy Blake? The same Bellamy Blake who, when you introduced him to me and I told him I would kick his ass if he ever hurt you, said he couldn’t wait to have your babies someday?”
Clarke scrunches up her nose in disbelief, and Raven wonders if she needs to get her sight checked. Does she not see how that buffoon looks at her? “He said that?”
“Yep,” Raven drags out, seemingly unimpressed.
“He was drunk,” she argues, brushing her off as she runs a hand through her tangled blonde hair. 
“That makes it more true, Clarke, not less,” Raven replies without skipping a beat, can’t help but sound a little tiny bit judgemental just because of who she is as a person. There’s more silence, Clarke chewing on her thumbnail as she stares off in the distance and Raven sighs, softening her voice. “No offense, but why are you complaining to me about this, babe? It isn’t like you to be this insecure.”
Was this not the Clarke Griffin who marched up to their arrogant orange-President-affliated professor and told him he might be an art teacher, but she was an artist? It was a popular meme around their college for weeks, black sunglasses and a animated blunt photoshopped onto her yearbook picture and plastered around the halls. The same Clarke Griffin who punched through a glass window because racist campus police let her go and took Monty into a interrogation room alone after catching the both of them with some weed brownies and still has the scar to prove it? Was she not the Clarke Griffin who got everyone to sign a petition to get Kyle Wick kicked out of school when he tweeted out a sexually suggestive picture of Raven?
“Because you know he’ll be excited,” she presses, aggrevated, blue eyes dark as she stares at her camera as if she can stare straight into Raven’s soul. “And I can’t break his heart and tell him that—”
“That what?” Raven cocks an eyebrow, figuring it’s time for some though love now. “You dont want a baby?”
“No—“ She tries to get it, but Raven doesn’t relent, keeps pressing, “That you don’t want his baby?”
“No!” Clarke blurts out harshly, cutting her off as her eyes brim with tears. “That I didn’t plan for this!” She swallows tightly, and Raven just watches her, chest heaving up and down erraticly, blue eyes darting from left to right as she tries to get her thoughts together.  “You know what happened when I started medical school, why I had to drop out,” her voice finally breaks, lip trembling. “This time, I was going to better. I was going to do it right.”
“You had a nervous breakdown, Clarke,” Raven snaps, tired of the sugarcoating. She was so hard on herself, and Raven still feels the slighest pang of guilt at that because she used to encourage that quality in her, held her to even higher standards. Maybe at first because she was jealous of her, of the golden girl who got everything handed to her. When she realized that wasn’t true, it was more because Raven knew she could be brilliant. Then after everything went down, she realized Clarke had already been brilliant all along. “You were making eighteen hour days, Lexa broke your heart and then your dad died in your arms. I think not having a breakdown over that would’ve qualified you as a sociopath.”
Clarke quickly wipes at the wetness trailing down her cheek, like she is trying to keep Raven from seeing, hugging her knees closer to her chest. Quietly, she sniffs, wondering, “What if it happens again?”
“It won’t. Because you’ve learned you can’t plan everything because life comes at you fast,” Raven says, authoratively, like she’s reading it from the pamphlet her therapist got them back then. “—and to communicate about how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking. Eat enough vegetables and sleep enough hours.”
Clarke takes a deep breath, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand as she lets herself nod. Raven can’t help but press, “Isn’t that what you and Bellamy use as foreplay? A good old fashioned emotional conversation?”
Clarke scoffs. “No, like talking shop doesn’t get you and Shaw going.”
Raven lifts a shoulder, indifferent. She’s not going to sit here and pretend like him being able to name every component of a Harvey Davidson motorcycle in alphabetical order doesn’t get her all hot and bothered.
Clarke wipes her palms on her jeans-clad thighs, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “What if I’m not any good at this?”
“Then the child will have the most awesome aunt to fall back on,” Raven smirks, and luckily, Clarke finally cracks a smile too. “You’re Clarke fucking Griffin. If this is something that you want—“ She drags out the last word, pausing to get her confirmation (she’s pretty sure it’s something she does want, deep down, but it doesn’t hurt to check before she rolls out the whole peptalk), and reluctantly, her friend nods, corners of her lips turned up almost shyly. “If it’s something that you want, you’ll succeed at it. You care about everyone, Clarke, to a fault.”
Raven finds herself smirking again, pretending to be half-distracted with re-tightening her brace. “And I know it’ll be hard to care about that baby knowing it’s Bellamy’s—“
“Shut up,” Clarke deadpans, and her eyes look brighter, clearer. Tentatively, her hand comes to rest on top of her lower belly, fingers flexing on top of her shirt for just a second. Raven can’t help but smile, happy for her friends. It’s what they deserve.
“You should really call him,” Raven pushes, pursing her lips satisfactory, “He’s going to be so salty you told me before him.”
“Probably,” Clarke snorts, just the slightest bit of nervousness flashing across her eyes before they soften as she says, “But, thanks, Rave. I’m glad to see NASA lets you out on probation every six months.”
“It’s NASA though,” she responds—a little boastful, because it’s NASA, she gets to be boastful—then stretches out her free arm. “Also, mocktails Saturday?”
Clarke beams. “Deal.”
(The next time Raven gets a text from Clarke, it’s a photo of a ring on her finger.)
9 notes · View notes