“I keep telling you, I’m fine,” he protests, slumping back against his seat. Jasper had the bright idea of wrapping a dish towel around his hand so he doesn’t drip blood all over Clarke’s car, and the makeshift bandage seems to be doing its job, at least. It stings, but it’ll stop bleeding at some point, right? “Let’s just go back in and enjoy the party.”

The look she shoots him at that is distinctly disbelieving. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not really, no.” He grimaces, shifting slightly so he’s keeping his arm elevated. “It’s just a scratch, Clarke.”

“A scratch?” she huffs, turning the full force of her glare over at him. “Bell, that dish towel is soaked through. You’ll need stitches, and maybe a tetanus shot, because god knows where that knife has been. It’s Jasper’s.”

That’s true, at any rate. Giving a half-hearted shrug, he lets his head fall back against his seat rest, hating the petulant quality to his voice. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

“That’s what you said the last time you broke your arm,” she says flatly, switching on her turn signal deftly. It’s one of the things he admires most about her— her ability to stay completely and utterly calm despite having a less than cooperative passenger bleeding out on her new car seats. “You tried playing it off as a couple of bruises, until it swelled to about the size of Russia.”

“I would say Brazil more than Russia, but okay.”

“Not funny,” she says drily, shaking at her head. Then, sobering, “Seriously, Bell. I know you like playing tough, but it’ll make me feel a lot better if you got your wound checked out.”

A snort escapes before he can help himself. “I’m not playing tough.”

“Sure.”

“I’m not,” he points out, reaching up to rub at his face with his unbloodied palm. “I’m just— mad at myself. I didn’t want to spend all of today going to the hospital, I wanted to spend it with you.” The words are slipping out of him now, hard and fast, and there’s a part of him that recognizes that he’s probably going to regret all of this later, but it’s not like he can bring himself to stop either. “It sounds stupid, but— I wanted to do all those lame Halloween things with you. Drink bad, novelty beers. Stuff ourselves with candy. Strangle Jasper with his stupid cape, maybe.”

That pulls a laugh out of her, her gaze softening a fraction. “Yeah, the latter sounds like a conducive use of our time.”

“It always is with you,” he says, before he can really stop to overthink it. The expression on her face is unreadable, at this point, and he turns away before he can do something truly stupid, like tell her he loves her, or something. “So,” Bellamy tries, clearing at his throat, “are we there yet?”

“Pretty much,” she says, pulling the car neatly into the nearest lot. “It’s a bit of walk, but I think we can manage it.”

Nodding, he’s already fumbling for his seatbelt just as her hand closes over his, lacing their fingers together.

He stills, freezing instinctively. “What are you doing?”

“I’m just,” she pauses, biting at her lip. There’s doubt in her eyes, but a kind of determination, too, and it’s, possibly, the longest five seconds of his life. “I’m trying to tell you it’s the same, for me,” she says, wry. “About spending time together.” Then, swallowing hard, “I almost always want to spend all my time with you.”

His mouth goes dry, and he has to wet at his lips surreptitiously to even manage a word. The implication in her words are clear, really, and he has to resist the urge to check that he’s not mishearing her. “Oh,” he says dumbly, because it’s all about all he can process when she’s looking at him like that. “Really,” he tries, biting at the inside of his cheek to keep his smile from showing when she grins right back at him, fucking bright. “Even when I’m bleeding all over your brand new car seats?”

“Yeah,” she says, leaning forward to press a long, lingering kiss against his cheek. (His heart doesn’t implode at the contact, but it’s a near thing.) “Even then.”

Something must show on his face at that, because she’s smiling when she pulls away, fingers cupping at the side of his cheek gently. “Now c’mon,” she tells him, tugging lightly at his uninjured hand. “Let’s get you stitched up.”

He groans, leaning into her touch. “This better not just be a ploy to get me through those doors,” he mutters, pressing a quick kiss to her fingers.

“How much do you think an open bar costs?”

Bellamy tears his gaze from his book to blink dazedly at his girlfriend.

“I… don’t know,” he says, uncertain. “Probably depends what’s on tap. Maybe… thirty bucks a head? Forty?” He pauses, scratching at his jaw. “Fifty?”

Clarke flops down onto the couch next to him. “Are you just going to keep increasing your guesses by ten?”

He squints. “Sixty?”

“Helpful,” she remarks, the corners of her mouth turning up despite her dry tone. She peers at her phone screen. “Not exactly cheap, though. Maybe we shouldn’t do that then.” She flings her phone aside, sighing dramatically. “Oh, but we have to, if we want to do it in the summer. We can’t not have an open bar in summer.”

He frowns slightly, peering at her over his glasses. It’s not unusual for Clarke to vent to him about her job planning and coordinating events for the local museum. “Miller knows this alcohol dealer,” he muses. “Pretty sure they used to work together. I can get him to pass along the guy’s contact information, if that’d help.”

She brightens instantly. “Yes, please!” she exclaims, typing rapidly on her phone. “Okay, so that’s one thing down. Although, on second thought, we should really decide first if we do want to do it in the summer.” She pauses, wrinkling her nose. “Maybe fall would be more comfortable? In terms of sweat potential, obviously. Don’t want the guests to spend the whole day all sticky and shit.”

He lowers the book, now too perplexed to pay attention to anything else. “Obviously,” he agrees slowly. “I guess. Uh, what—”

“Yeah, the colour scheme’s going to be all off if we do it in fall,” she says, focus already back on her phone. “Good point. Late summer, then? That’s, like, a happy middle, right? Or maybe early fall. I don’t know, what do you think?”

“Um,” he says, closing the book properly. This really doesn’t much sound like a work event at this point. For one, why is Clarke getting to choose the season?

More importantly, why is he getting to choose the season?!

He clears his throat. “Are we… celebrating something?”

She snorts, both thumbs still skidding briskly across her screen. “Well, we’re definitely not gonna be mourning our wedding.”

Bellamy’s not sure, but he thinks he could just about make out the sound of the microwave going off in their neighbour’s kitchen next door, the jarringly bright ‘ding’ cutting right through the walls.

He swallows, and blinks carefully. “We're… engaged?”

Fuck, is that his voice? God, he hopes it doesn’t actually sound that yelp-y.

Clarke pauses, and for a moment, it’s like he can see into her brain, all the gears and cogs grinding to an abrupt halt so that she just hangs there, like an ACME cartoon character suspended in mid-air.

“Oh,” she exclaims suddenly, looking up as she draws the single syllable out. “So that’s what I forgot to do last night!”

“What,” he starts to say, but she’s already bounded off the couch.

“Fuck, where is it,” he hears her mutter to herself as she rifles through her purse, lying forgotten on the living room floor where she’d flung it last night, too preoccupied with the sensation of his lips on her neck to bother with putting it away properly. “Where the— ah!”

She’s back on the couch within seconds, her face flushed and half-covered with untameable strands of blonde, all escapees of the loose braid she’d knotted her hair into earlier that morning. There’s a small velvet box in her hands, just a little smaller than her palm, and holy fuck, if that’s what Bellamy thinks it is—

“Sorry, I forgot to do this last night,” she says, a little breathless through her grin. “Well, to be fair, it was probably more your fault. You just had to go and distract me with sex.”

“I’m not the one who started making innuendoes about dessert,” he says tremulously, quickly laying his book aside.

She pauses, lowering the box on instinct. “You don’t seriously expect me to not make an innuendo when you’d already set it up right—”

“Clarke,” he interrupts, strained, with a pointed glance at the box. God, his heart is pounding so hard, it might just burst right through the cavity of his chest at any fucking second.

“Right, got it, got it, just—” She breaks off and closes her eyes, taking a deep, bracing breath before opening them again, the grin reappearing on her face like she just can’t keep it off. “Bellamy Blake,” she begins, her left hand clamped over the lid of the velvet box. “You are— fuck— you’re my best friend in the whole world, and I can’t ever, ever imagine life without—”

“I love you,” he blurts out. He can’t help it. His heart is literally, physically bursting. “Fuck, sorry,” he says in a rush, “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Clarke laughs, her grin splitting even wider. “You know what? You’re right, fuck the speech.” She opens the box, and at the sight of the plain silver band sitting there, the air fucking catches in his goddamn lungs. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” he says instantly, lunging forward to kiss her, both hands finding the sides of her face to hold both of them steady. They’re both smiling when he tears away. “Shit, was that too soon? I think I was supposed to wait a second or something before—”

Clarke’s eyes are shining, full of unshed tears, and with the way his vision is blurring in and out, he’s pretty sure his are, too. She shakes her head, her hand fisting into his shirt to pull him back towards her. “It was perfect,” she assures him, right before pressing her lips to his.