Work Text:
Bellamy has never married anyone before.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” says Octavia. For once, she’s actually acting like an aunt to Madi instead of a vaguely distrustful stranger, braiding her hair while Bellamy adjusts his collar. “Why would you have married someone?”
“I wouldn’t have minded practicing first,” he says. “To make sure I’m doing it right. Wedding rehearsals used to be a thing.”
“Blame your wife,” says O. “She’s the one who was in a big hurry.” She finishes off Madi’s hair and surveys her critically. Bellamy expected Clarke to handle her preparation today, but Madi declared that Clarke would be busy enough with her own dress, and she didn’t want to be in the way.
Even after a six months, he still feels like he’s catching up to his place in Madi’s life. He loves her, of course, loves her like a daughter, but it’s rare for him to be alone with her.
Honestly, she probably just didn’t want to have to help with Clarke’s preparations, and Bellamy can’t blame her. This isn’t the first wedding they’ve had, but Clarke is still something like Skaikru royalty, and Abby is in overdrive trying to make the best wedding ever. And they’re both their own strange kind of popular, in Eden. Respected, maybe.
Whatever the reason, the wedding is a big deal. Everyone’s excited, and Madi is hiding with him until it blows over.
“Do you want makeup?” O asks her. “Facepaint?”
Madi thinks it over, glances at Bellamy. “Are you getting any?”
“No, I think I’ll just stick with my face.”
“Are you sure?” asks Octavia. “Have you seen your face?”
“Thanks, O. You’re really making this wedding special.” He nearly runs his hand through his hair, but remembers at the last second that he has product in it and isn’t supposed to touch it. “Clarke wasn’t rushing it, by the way. She just didn’t want to have to do it more than once. It’s such a fucking production.”
“Yeah, but that’s because everyone wants to know what to do,” Madi offers.
Bellamy blinks at her. “What?”
“I know this isn’t the first wedding, but–it feels like the first Wonkru wedding. That’s what everyone says. This is going to be the new tradition.”
“If I knew we were making new traditions, I would have made it less complicated.” He sighs, sits down next to Madi. “I guess that makes sense. I just don’t really care. All I want to do is get married.”
“Soooooo romantic.” Octavia sing-songs. That is good. It feels like he has his baby sister back, at least for a little while. It doesn’t feel like either of them is doing anything wrong, just that they have different priorities.
It’s nice. She grew up. She got to grow up.
“I don’t know why you’re acting like that’s some burn on me,” he observes. “I love the woman I’m going to marry. I’d like to be romantic about it. I just don’t think that requires a big wedding.”
“But you’re having one anyway.”
“And it’s going to be fun,” Madi adds. “I like parties.”
“All the weddings had big parties, though,” O says. “We’ll take any excuse for a party.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I can think of worse things.” He exhales, turns his attention back to Madi. “Okay, you want to come check out the setup with me or go hang out with Clarke?”
“Setup with you,” she says, without delay.
O has other things to do, so it’s just him and Madi, which is good, because he’s a little worried about her. And he knows that she doesn’t really trust his sister.
“You want to go for a walk?” he asks.
She frowns at him. “Can we?”
“Who’s going to stop us? We’ll be back in time for the wedding.”
“Then yeah.”
Most of Eden is busy with their day-to-day business, with no wedding-related duties and nothing to participate in until the ceremony starts in an hour. Toren is monitoring the gate they choose, and he just raises his eyebrows.
“Cold feet?” he teases.
“Nervous energy. We’ll be back soon.”
Bellamy’s still shocked by how good the Earth looks, every time he leaves Eden. He was expecting it to be a struggle to survive if they got down, even in the green spaces. But it’s been–easy. Six months, and his life is easy for the first time ever. It still feels as if it can’t be real, sometimes, as if ALIE must have custom designed this just for him. He got chipped, somehow, and he’s still on the Ark in some paradise that the AI thought he’d believe.
If it’s not real, he’ll take it. But he doesn’t think ALIE could have come up with this. She wouldn’t have dreamed up Madi.
“So, you okay?” he asks Madi.
“I’m okay.”
“And?” he prompts.
She huffs. “And it’s not like I imagined.”
“You were imagining my wedding? Or just Clarke’s?”
For some reason, she looks surprised. “She didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I used to think about this all the time,” she admits. “Me and Clarke both, we were so focused on five years, when the people would come back. And you’d come back, and you’d marry her, and we’d be a family.”
His mouth feels like it’s full of cotton. “That’s what’s happening,” he says, careful. “I was just late.”
“I know. I’m not upset about you,” she adds. “You’re great.”
“Thanks. You’re pretty great too.”
“It’s just hard sometimes. I didn’t know–I was so little, you know? I didn’t know what it was going to be like with all these people around. I don’t want your wedding to be about me, but it feels kind of like it’s about everyone else, you know?”
“I know, trust me. Is that why you aren’t with Clarke?”
“Yeah. Everyone is so–” She makes a face. “I know how important she is to everyone, and that’s nice. But I don’t want to see everyone telling her what she has to be.”
“You know you’re the most important person in her entire world,” he says. “Nothing’s ever going to change that.”
“I know. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not,” he promises. “Weddings are–fuck, I don’t know. I never went to any, but I don’t get them. Weddings should be about the people getting married, but I think a lot of the time, they’re about everyone else.” But it’s the same thing he’s been thinking all day, that this is the best day of his life, the day he thought would never come, the day he gets to marry his favorite person in the world, the one he thought he’d lost forever.
And it’s good, but it doesn’t feel that special to him.
“I don’t think we can get out of the ceremony,” he finally says. “But I bet we could skip the party.” Madi cocks her head, and he smiles. “This should be about us, right?”
“What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. But we can talk to Clarke, figure something out. I bet she’s miserable.”
Madi smiles a little. “I bet. I should probably go check on her.”
“She’d probably appreciate it, yeah. And the good news is this is just one day. We’re going to be a family for the rest of our lives.”
“We’re already a family,” she says, fierce, and he smiles.
“Yeah. But officially.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll tell Clarke you love her.”
“Good,” he says. “Thanks.”
*
Of course, Clarke looks beautiful. She put her foot down about too much makeup and face paint, which he appreciate. He associates Clarke in full Trikru regalia with the darkest days of his life, and they weren’t much better for her.
They agreed this wedding was going to feel like a fresh start, and that means everything is new.
“Hi,” he says, under his breath, once she gets to him.
“Hi.”
Indra clears her throat, and they both start guiltily. They do have lines.
“Please join hands,” says Indra, magnanimous, and Bellamy reaches for her.
The ceremony takes an hour, and it’s excruciating. From what Clarke and Octavia said, weddings up until this one were about ten minutes and no one cared that much about the actual ceremony part. He’s unspeakably jealous over this; all he wants is for no one to care about his wedding aside from enjoying the party. Instead, they’re setting a template for everyone else to use and suffer through for years to come.
On the bright side, after an hour, Indra tells him to kiss Clarke, and he does, and they’re officially married. It’s probably not the single best moment of his life; that’s probably still when he came down to the ground, and he saw Clarke while Octavia was in his arms. Like the marriage, it’s the best kind of good moment, the kind where it heralds plenty more good to come. He’s going to keep on being married to Clarke for the rest of his life.
“Thank goodness that’s over,” she says, leaning against his side, and Bellamy smiles.
“Seriously.”
“Madi said you wanted to skip the party.”
“I want to celebrate with my family,” he says.
One of the thousand reasons he loves her is that she gives him a wary look and asks, “What about your sister?”
“I don’t think my sister’s going to be offended that we don’t want her to leave the party with us. Today’s not about her anyway.”
She bites her lip. “Where’s Madi?”
“I think she’s still with Harper,” he says. She opted out of being in the ceremony, so she’s just in the crowd. “Why?”
“I need a second.”
There’s a crush of people wanting to congratulate them, but they’re also happy to just chat with each other. Clarke takes his hand and manages to maneuver them out of the throng, not all the way back to their own quarters, but private enough.
“Too many people?”
“We got married,” she says. “I want to celebrate with Madi, but–”
She tugs him down for a kiss, a much longer, deeper kiss than they shared in front of everyone. It’s not as if they don’t kiss all the time–they had sex this morning, before they had to split up for their separate preparations–but he’ll admit he needed that too. This is it. They belong to each other for the rest of their lives.
It’s been true for him since before Primfaya, but it’s nice to make it official.
He tries to thread his hand in her hair, but her hairstyle is too elaborate for him to make much headway. So he just tugs her closer instead, kisses her because he gets this. He has this forever.
And forever doesn’t even feel like it’s going to be over soon. They’re fine.
“Good?” he asks, resting his forehead on hers.
“Good. I love you.”
It’s not news anymore, but he’s never going to get tired of hearing it. “I love you too. Let’s go get Madi.”
Toren has joined Harper and Madi, and Bellamy thinks he’s been flirting with Harper, which is only slightly weird. He wants to like Toren, and it’s probably unfair of him that he doesn’t. He came along and whatever relationship Toren had with Clarke hadn’t even survived a day.
It’s just that he can’t help remembering all the time Toren was here, and he was on the Ark. It’s why Clarke hasn’t entirely warmed to Echo and Emori either, because they got so much of him that she missed out on.
It’s possible they’ll always be a little awkward. But they have matching rings on their fingers, and they’re happy.
“Congratulations,” says Toren.
“You guys looked great up there,” adds Harper.
“Thanks,” says Clarke. She grins at Madi. “I’m surprised you didn’t go take off your dress already.”
“I like my dress.”
“I like mine too, but I’m ready to get changed. Come on.”
They head back to their place and just stay there, as planned. In a way, it feels anticlimactic, but none of them really need a big climax here. He and Clarke are married, and that means they’re an official family, but the official part is the only real change. And it’s their celebration, not anyone else’s, so all they do is pile into their living room and play cards. Miller shows up to drop off food, as requested, but then he takes off for the party, and it’s just the three of them again.
“Do we need to toast or something?” he asks.
“Toast?” Madi asks.
“How did you picture this? When you thought about it?”
She smiles down at her slice of cake. “This was what I thought about. I thought you’d get married, and we’d all be happy.”
He leans over and kisses the top of her head. “That’s the plan, yeah. This is enough?”
“Yeah,” she says. “This is perfect.”