Chapter Text
When Clarke first sees him on Halloween, she’s one morgue-arita past caring that she’s not the type of girl to hook up with random strangers in a drunken tryst. But Raven’s disappeared with that scruffy Thor who complimented her Wednesday costume, and Monroe’s busy dry-humping Murphy out on Mount Weather’s dance floor, so Clarke’s left with, well, tequila. Until she spots him, that is.
She doesn’t really see how anyone could blame her for the indiscretion, honestly. He’s dressed as the hottest pirate she’s ever seen, and when it only takes one smile and a crooked finger for him to weave through the crowd to her side, she knows the attraction is mutual.
Sure, his Johnny Depp impression isn’t quite up to snuff––his attempted British accent sounds more Australian, and the eyeliner he claims his sister forced on him looks more like warpaint––but when she laughs at his attempted “Savvy?” he just grins right back. And then the way they’re grinning at each other stops being funny and starts sizzling instead, and he asks her to dance.
The dance turns into two, and then three; and then they leave the dance floor with the idea that they should get some water and end up pressed against one another, mouths fused, as they stumble into the storeroom in the back of the club.
He locks the door and then pushes her against it, and she feels him hot and heavy against her belly, even through those silly pirate trousers and the filmy gauze of her Princess Buttercup dress. Her fingers pluck at the laces, and he groans into her mouth when she brushes against his erection. She can’t get the pants undone, and he pulls away, panting, pupils blown wide to hurriedly undo them himself. She hastily wiggles her own panties down until they’re left hooked around one ankle. The second his pants are shoved down enough to free his cock, he starts to ruck up her skirt and she clutches his shoulders.
Once her dress is out of the way, he grabs her by the thighs and hitches her up against the door, his weight pinning her in place and holding her aloft. She moans and bucks forward when he slides against her slick heat, brushing against her clit and sending little sparks of pleasure through her.
She barely registers that his groaning words are actually a question about protection, and while the room spins in a combination of the alcohol and his touch, she pants out that she’s on the pill, only vaguely thinking that there was something else about that she should be remembering.
And then he’s inside her, moving in fast, short strokes that have Clarke’s toes curling inside of her princess slippers. She can’t do much except hold on tight, her nails digging into his skin through the cotton of his shirt, but he must like it because each time her hands clench he thrusts a little harder. It’s astonishing how fast he has her whimpering and clenching around him, and then one particular little hitch of his hips has him grinding hard just once against her clit, and she’s gone. Through the heavy burst of pleasure, she feels him duck his head to the curve of her neck and bite her skin to muffle his groan as he comes. The just-right sensation of his teeth sets off another little flutter of sensation that has him muttering a curse when he feels it, but he just holds her tighter.
When she wakes up the next morning in her own bed, she remembers his face clearly, but remembers the party and fucking in the back of club only vaguely. There’s a partial recollection of straightening clothes and returning to the dance floor, but that’s about it for the rest of the night. From the pounding in her skull, she figures she must have gone straight back for more of those shitty morgue-aritas. At least she remembered to retrieve her panties, she thinks, noticing them next to her crown on top of the haphazard pile of her clothing from last night.
She wanders out into the kitchen and sees Raven at the dining table, groaning into a plate of pancakes.
“You are a goddess,” Clarke tells her as she puts together a plate of the wonderful starchy food for herself. She’s always hated maple syrup, so she slathers her pancakes in butter and mounds of powdered sugar. “An absolute goddess.”
“I know,” Raven replies. “You tell me that every time I make pancakes.” She stabs at her plate and pops a bite into her mouth with a grunt.
“Anything I should remember about last night and don’t?” Clarke asks, eyeing her friend’s disgruntled expression.
Raven glares at her. “You puked in my purse on the cab ride home last night.”
Clarke cringes. “Gross.”
“Tell me about it,” Raven mutters. “Now it’s only good for your barf bag. You’re lucky I was holding my phone and I’d already spent all my cash.”
Clarke sighs and pours herself a cup of coffee. “Okay, I’m sorry for puking in your purse, but don’t forget that I was there when you found it for a dollar at Goodwill. You only bought it because it went with your costume.”
“Hey, I could’ve grown to like the black pleather and the skull decals,” Raven retorts as Clarke sits across from her at the table. “You never know. It could have become my favorite purse.”
“Raven.”
“Okay, no, it was a hideous piece of trash.”
Clarke sips her coffee as she eyes her friend. “Anything else happen?” she says in a leading tone. “With a certain hot Asgardian?”
Raven sneers, but her cheeks also flush.
“Oh my god,” Clarke gasps, “You think he’s gorgeous, you want to kiss him, you want to hug him––”
“Stop quoting Miss Congeniality right now or I will suffocate you in your pancakes,” Raven growls.
Clarke tries to stifle her giggles, but still nearly ends up with coffee up her nose when she accidentally lets out a snort.
“No, no, I’m sorry,” Clarke says when she’s finally calmed down enough to speak normally. “What’s his name?”
“Kyle,” Raven says shortly, the flush reappearing on her cheeks. “Kyle Wick.”
“You want to love him,” Clarke whispers into her coffee mug, then yelps when Raven pinches her arm.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you with your lover boy, Griffin,” Raven says. “What’s the deal with him?”
“Ah…” Clarke feels her cheeks warm. “I…”
“Clarke,” Raven warns.
“He had great hair? And freckles, too, great freckles,” Clarke offers.
“And? What was his name?”
“Um, well,” Clarke begins in a high-pitched voice; she stops and clears her throat. “Well, you see, I don’t think I ever, you know, really. Got it. His name, I mean.”
Clarke refuses to look at Raven, though she can feel the other woman’s stare burning a hole in her face.
“What, were you two too busy, or something?” Raven asks skeptically, then gasps when Clarke winces. “Are you serious? Clarke!”
“Stop hitting me,” Clarke complains, batting away Raven’s attempts to get Clarke to look at her.
“I can’t believe you, Clarke Griffin, had an anonymous Halloween hook up. Oh my god, where’d you do it? I didn’t notice when you left.”
Clarke stuffs a forkful of pancakes in her mouth so she can’t answer, but Raven’s too sharp.
“In the club? Holy shit, Clarke!”
“We were drunk,” Clarke mumbles around the pancakes. Her face is on fire at this point. “I had more tequila than I want to think about.”
“Wow,” Raven says. “Color me impressed.”
“Eat your goddamned pancakes, Reyes.”
Clarke doesn’t remember the lack of a condom for over a week, and then the memory hits her like a forgotten dream as she’s snuggling into her pillow at night.
Her eyes fly open and she stares up at the dark ceiling. “Shit,” she whispers. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.”
She isn’t been able to sleep much after that, so she is waiting with her cell phone in hand for the moment her gynecologist’s office opens.
“Goddamnit,” she whispers, nibbling on her thumbnail while the phone rings. Who knows what kind of skeevy diseases she could have picked up from that guy? Sure, he didn’t seem like the type to fuck a girl without a condom if he knew he had an STD, but lots of people didn’t ever present with symptoms.
When the receptionist finally answers, it’s only to tell Clarke that she can’t get in for an appointment for another week. Clarke sighs and takes the soonest one she can get, then drags herself into the shower.
Once she’s clean, she can’t help but mope around the house, and apparently she’s being obvious enough about it that eventually Raven sighs and asks her what’s wrong.
Clarke opens her mouth to tell her, but finds herself cringing at the thought of the conversation that will undoubtedly follow.
“Nothing big,” she says eventually. “I just didn’t get one of the jobs I wanted.”
Raven scoffs at her. “You’re always complaining about having too many! Jeez, count your blessings.”
“Yeah, I’ll try.” Clarke tries for a smile, and it’s good enough to convince Raven that Clarke was telling the truth.
She spends the extra seven days burying herself in those jobs, hoping that if she’s busy with new illustrations she won’t be able to agonize over potential STDs.
(No such luck.)
On the day of her appointment, Dr. Nyko absorbs her shamefaced story and request for STD testing with his usual calm expression, and then proceeds to ask her all the standard questions: how’s her health, are there any changes to her medication, etc.
Clarke reminds him about her allergy medication and tells him about the sinus infection she had about a month ago. Part of why Clarke likes her doctor so much is that he doesn’t waste any time on awkward small talk while he’s all up in her business, so his examination for physical STD symptoms is over quickly, and he takes the swabs he needs for the lab.
“I’m going to send in one of the nurses for a blood sample, alright Clarke?” he says, and she nods. “Just to be as thorough as possible.”
“That’s what I wanted,” she replies. Dr. Nyko gives her a smile and then leaves the room.
She hates needles, hates needles near her veins even more, but she wants to eliminate the possibility of every possible STD so that she can breathe easily again.
Clarke looks away when the nurse comes in, unable to watch even as her skin is cleaned and prepped for blood to be drawn, let alone as the needle pierces her skin. She always feels like a wimp every time she has to sit there with her eyes tightly shut until the cotton ball is taped to the inside of her elbow.
“All done,” the dark-haired nurse says soon, and he gives her a gentle smile when she opens her eyes. “Your test results should be ready in about a week, okay? Dr. Nyko will call you when they’re in.”
“Thanks,” Clarke says with a grateful nod.
Clarke’s next work project is the cover for the third book in a new children’s series, one that’s predicted to be the next Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. She really likes the story, too, and she wants to do an amazing job, so the importance of the work is enough to keep her preoccupied for the next week.
Well, mostly. She only has time to google “symptoms of STDs” three or four times, like, a day. And she only curses herself for not getting the goddamned pirate’s number so she could ask him about his sexual history, like, once or twice. An hour. But really, most of the time she’s totally focused on her painting. Swear.
Who the hell is she trying to kid? When her phone finally lights up with the doctor’s office’s number, she nearly ruins her work in progress by tossing away her paintbrush so she can snatch the phone up.
“Hello?” she says breathlessly.
“Clarke?” she hears Dr. Nyko’s voice say.
“This is she,” Clarke replies. “How are you, Dr. Nyko?”
“I’m doing just fine, thanks,” he says. “And according to your test results, you’re doing pretty well yourself.”
Clarke sighs in relief as the words are coming across the line. Then something about his phrasing catches her notice.
“Only ‘pretty well,’ huh?” she asks, and starts to chew on the inside of her cheek. The hand not holding her phone starts to worry at the little mole on her thigh. “What–What’s going on?”
“Clarke,” his voice says kindly. “Your tests show that you’re negative for any STDs. So that’s great. You’ll want to come in again in a couple of months for follow-up HIV tests, but that’s standard procedure.”
“That all sounds good,” Clarke says slowly. “But…”
“But,” Dr. Nyko agrees. “You’re STD free, but your blood tests did come back positive for pregnancy.”
Clarke’s fingers on her thigh still; her teeth stop moving against her cheek. She doesn’t…what?
“What?” she whispers. “But I’m on the pill.” There’s clearly been some kind of mix-up at the lab.
“That’s true,” Dr. Nyko says. “But sometimes antibiotics can make the pill less effective. Usually I recommend to my patients not to have sex for about a week after a course of antibiotics have finished.”
Clarke thinks back to that stupid sinus infection, tries to remember the days until Halloween. She’d finished her antibiotics on the twenty-sixth.
“I–” she breaks off. She doesn’t have a clue what to say.
“I know this is big news, Clarke,” he tells her. “But you’ve got some time to soak it in, figure things out. Can you make it to an appointment with me next Tuesday at one? I’d like to examine you more thoroughly, answer any questions you might have.”
“Uh,” Clarke says blankly, and digs around for her planner. With fingers that feel like they’ve gone numb, she fumbles to the correct page. “Yeah. Tuesday at one. I’ll be there.” She picks up her discarded paintbrush, too preoccupied to look for a pen, and paints in the appointment.
“Great,” Dr. Nyko replies. “In the meantime, go ahead and stop taking your birth control pills, alright? And check the practice’s website––there’s a good list of Dos and Don’ts you should take a look at.”
Clarke agrees mindlessly and then hangs up.
Eventually she shuffles out of her studio and to the kitchen. She hasn't eaten yet today, so she forces herself to eat a nutella banana sandwich. Then she immediately regrets it as her stomach seems to turn over.
She braces one hand on her kitchen counter and takes a slow, deep breath, but it sticks in her lungs like tar.
Clarke thinks about how only a week ago, all she wanted was to get back her test results so she could breathe easily again.
Breathe easily again?
What a fucking joke.
Clarke knows she should go back into her studio, clean her brushes and put away her paints, but she doesn’t. Instead she drags the comforter off of her bed and brings it with her to the couch, where she curls up and watches Pride and Prejudice on repeat until Raven comes home from the lab. She tries to convince herself it’s just that Jane’s so sad, and Bingley’s so sad, and everyone’s so sad in this movie that she’s crying.
But when Raven walks in the door, yelling something about getting takeout, Clarke knows it’s not.
“I’m in here,” she calls, freeing a hand from her blanket cocoon to try and wipe at her damp face.
“I’m kind of in the mood for Indian tonight, but pizza’s always good, and I couldn’t decide, so you have to choose or we’ll end up with chicken tikka stuffed crust pizza,” Raven says as she wanders into the living room. When Clarke doesn’t immediately say anything, she glances up from the takeout menus she’s shuffling in her hands.
“Clarke?” Raven’s eyes are wide, no doubt taking in Clarke’s red eyes, her prone position on the couch. The television is still playing Keira Knightley in the background, which Raven finally notices.
“Why are you in breakup mode?” she asks, confused. “I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.”
Clarke bites her lip to try and keep it from trembling, but it’s no use when she knows Raven’s just going to keep pushing for an explanation.
“I messed up, Raven,” Clarke chokes out, and then bursts into tears.
Raven drops the menus and crawls onto the couch until she’s lying beside Clarke. Clarke turns her face until it’s tucked against Raven’s collar like a child’s, and lets herself cry. It’s several minutes of Raven stroking her hair, waiting in that focused silence of hers, before Clarke’s sobs trail off and she can breathe easily enough to speak clearly again.
“You’re always so quiet,” Clarke says finally, sniffing. “Whenever anyone cries. It’s intense.”
“It’s because I’m waiting to hear who hurt you, and I’m busy planning their murder,” Raven replies.
Clarke lets out a watery laugh.
“Give it up, Griffin,” Raven says gently. “What’s up?”
“No one hurt me,” Clarke sighs. “If I anything, I hurt myself.”
“Clarke…”
She opens her mouth, and the words are hard to say, but not as impossible as she had expected. “I’m pregnant.”
She can feel Raven tense in surprise.
“...What?”
Clarke groans and shifts until Raven moves and they can both sit upright on the couch.
“I’m pregnant,” she repeats tiredly. “STD-free, at least, unless you count an embryo as a sexually transmitted disease.”
Raven stares at her. “Jesus, Clarke.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure?” Raven asks after a moment. “Like, did you take multiple tests?”
“I got the news from my gynecologist today when he called me with the results of my STD tests,” Clarke says. “He was pretty sure about it.”
“Shit, Clarke,” she replies. “Who?”
“The guy from the Halloween party at Mount Weather,” Clarke says miserably. “We didn’t use a condom, and I didn’t know my birth control had gotten screwed up from my antibiotics, and I worried I’d gotten an STD but instead I got knocked up.”
She takes a deep breath when she feels the sting of tears threatening again. Raven watches her quietly.
Eventually, she asks, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Clarke says. “I’ve got an appointment on Tuesday. I guess I should try to figure it out by then.” She hesitates, then adds in a small voice, “Will you go with me?”
Raven smiles at her. “Yeah, Clarke. I’ll go.”
By Tuesday, Clarke’s list of pros and cons is as complete as it’s going to get.
Pros of Baby:
Babies are often cute, sometimes smell good
I’m a 25 year old adult
I eventually want to have kids
I’m gainfully employed
Inheritance from Dad, Nana and Gramps
I work from home––easier to care for baby? No need for maternity leave?
Have room in house––Monroe’s old bedroom could be nursery?
No periods!!
Already live in good school district
Cons of Baby:
Babies are often smelly/dirty/gross/loud
I’m ONLY 25
Could still have kids LATER
Would have to give BIRTH
Would have crappy pregnancy symptoms
Baby Daddy????
I would be raising a baby alone for the next EIGHTEEN YEARS
(Raven disagreed with that one, and rewrote the entry below.)
I would be raising a baby with the help of my glorious friends for the next EIGHTEEN YEARS
College tuition will be VERY EXPENSIVE in eighteen years (though more expensive if I wait even later??)
Clarke stares at the yellow legal pad and fidgets on the exam table while they wait for Dr. Nyko.
“Did I miss anything?” she asks Raven.
“Clarke,” Raven groans. "You’ve asked me that at least ten times. We both know that all the important things are on the list.”
“I just—I just want to be sure,” Clarke says. “That I’ve thought of everything.”
“I’m pretty sure there is no possible way to think of everything, especially when there are potential human beings involved?” Raven replies. “Maybe you should add that to the cons.”
Clarke grimaces at her, but scribbles “Unpredictable” down on the list.
There’s a quick knock on the door, then Dr. Nyko enters the exam room. Clarke’s already been ordered to dress in the stupid gown, and after a brief greeting Clarke is suffering through the indignity of a transvaginal ultrasound.
“There it is,” the doctor says, pointing to the tiny little blur in a sea of black.
“Oh god,” Clarke whispers, staring at the screen. She swallows hard as Dr. Nyko takes a few notes.
Even when the ultrasound is over, and the machine is turned off, Clarke can’t stop thinking about that staticky little shape. Raven has to poke her in the arm before she realizes Dr. Nyko is speaking to her.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, cheeks flushing. “I was distracted.”
“That’s perfectly understandable, don’t worry. I was asking, where would you like to go from here, Clarke?” he asks. “I can go over different options for you, if you’d like. Or I can get you some literature that you can take home?”
Clarke bites lip and looks over at Raven, who arches her brow.
“I-I don’t need to know the options. I’m going to keep it,” she says in a rush, and the admission sends simultaneous floods of exhilaration and terror through her body.
Raven gives her a slow grin, reaches out and squeezes Clarke’s arm.
Dr. Nyko just nods at her with a smile. “Then, Clarke, let me say congratulations. You’re going to have a baby around the end of July.”
And just like that, it’s even more real. There’s a deadline––a due date. In the middle of summer, she’s going to have a baby. She’s going to be a mother.
Holy crap.