Archive of Our Own

***

Bellamy realizes Clarke fucking Griffin is his soulmate the very second he nips at Bree’s earlobe.

He sees her tense across the fireplace as she speaks to Sterling and he knows.

It’s not that he’s paying attention to his co-leader on purpose. It’s just… He can’t help but be hyper-aware of her when she’s around, and to search for her when she’s not.

It’s not his fault, for the record. It all began the second day after their landing on Earth.

She was yelling at him and dabbed her finger on his chest. Bellamy can’t even remember the reason for their argument. What he can remember, though, is the way electricity hit his body, making him shiver as a fire spread through his skin and right to his heart.

When one day a few people started to freak out because drawings were randomly appearing on their skin it was no surprise to discover, the following night, the sunflower that had bloomed over his heart.

At first, nobody knew what those marks meant and Bellamy’s first decision was to not tell anyone about his own. He needed to show he was in control. He needed to be the shoulders carrying the burdens, not another burden for people to worry about. He couldn’t afford to be weak.

The explanation came soon enough, though. And peace with the Grounders immediately with it when Octavia returned to camp with a warrior holding her hand and a delegation announcing themselves as “Trikru” behind them.

Turns out, the drawings were soulmarks. As in the mark left by your soulmate on your body when they touch you for the first time.

No need to wonder about the sunflower on his chest, Bellamy knew perfectly well who his damn soulmate was.

Clarke fucking Griffin.

Of course, it had to be the spoiled Princess of the Ark. Because something up there—a higher power, fate, God, whatever—decided that Bellamy Blake’s life had to be a journey through hell and back and that nothing would ever be easy for him.

And Octavia’s soulmate was a Grounder warrior too old for her and too threatening for Bellamy to handle. But he couldn’t do anything about it. Because it was the ultimate law, here on Earth where those kinds of things were common, no one could hurt someone’s soulmate.

The Grounders explained to them how it was supposed to work. Not everyone was lucky enough to have a soulmate in the first place. Some people had none, some people had two or three. Some people had platonic soulmates, others were romantic. Sometimes, people had both. Lincoln was one of those and when Bellamy asked him how he knew Octavia was his romantic soulmate, hoping that maybe she wasn’t, he was quick to answer. He explained that his platonic soulmate was his brother, which destroyed any hope Bellamy had to keep his sister for himself a little more.

And so, the two clans made peace and learned to live together. They both learned from their previous mistakes. They tried to fix the wrong they had done to one another and learned to forgive each other.

Bellamy would never admit it out loud, but without Trikru, they couldn’t have made it so far. And against Trikru, he doesn’t even want to think about all the lives they would have lost. Therefore, because he cares about his people—even if he pretends he doesn’t—he sucked it up and dealt with his resentment.

He kept his role as a leader, right next to Clarke. He learned what he could from Trikru and taught them what he knew. He tried not to wince every time he saw his sister flirt with Lincoln. Tried to forget his own soulmark, taunting him every time he was undressing, but it was hard when every day, every decision, every choice still to be made, brought him closer to Clarke.

The day passed and everything changed around them. They built a real camp. Lived under real tents, and started to build cabins. They got a real medbay. They learned to fight, to hunt, to live outdoors, and even to swim. But most importantly, they learned to trust.

Two months after he first was introduced to Lincoln, Bellamy could no longer say he didn’t like him. Not when he was making his sister so happy. Two months after peace with Trikru settled, Bellamy couldn’t deny how good it was to have them here. Hell, there were a lot of things Bellamy couldn’t believe had changed, one of them being: he and Clarke were friends now. It was hard not to get close to someone you saw all day, every day. She needed him, she had said one day. And he needed her too, even if he would never, ever tell her that. She was sharing responsibilities. They were leading this camp together. If he was the dad of these delinquents, she was certainly their mom.

He tried not to think about the sunflower on his chest and what it meant. He tried not to think about the word “soulmates.” He tried not to wonder if she was really his soulmate and whether she could be his platonic or romantic other-half. He forbade himself to think of the possibilities lying in front of him if he would just tell her. And mostly, he tried not to check her to see if any mark had bloomed on her skin on the places he had touched her so far.

So what if she was his soulmate? He was obviously not hers, which meant that either she had none or that she hadn’t met them yet, or had never touched them. He had no reason to feel disappointed, right? He had no reason to be jealous of the people who discovered their matches all across the camp and amongst Trikru’s people. He was alone, just as he’s always been and will always be. And he was doing perfectly fine on his own.

He’s doing so great on his own, two months later, that seeing Clarke play drinking games with others and flirting with Sterling is not the reason why he sits next to Bree on the other side of the fire. Watching Clarke laugh with Sterling is not the reason why he offers Bree a drink. Noticing the blush on Clarke’s cheeks as Sterling leans to whisper something in her ear is not the reason why he starts kissing his way from Bree’s shoulder to her neck and then her ear.

Definitely not.

It feels all wrong but he’s becoming really good at ignoring what his gut is telling him. It’s not the right smell under his nose, not the right shade of blonde in her hair, not the right hands fumbling with his curls and Bellamy hates it. He hates how something he can’t control inside him makes him want someone he can’t have. He hates that he’s alone, pining for a girl he shouldn’t want in the first place but that his whole body, heart, and soul longs for.

So he’s not thinking about Clarke when he nips at Bree’s earlobe. He’s not thinking about Clarke but it’s on her that his gaze is fixed and it’s why he watches her flinch. Her reaction triggers his curiosity. He kisses the skin under his lips, keeping his focus on the one he can’t get out of his mind. He traces a path from her ear to her neck, sucks a gentle bruise right on her pulse. Bree moans softly and tightens her hold on his hair but he doesn’t realize it, not when Clarke absently brings her hand on the spot he’s lavishing on Bree’s skin.

He grazes his teeth on her neck, after, harder than he meant to but enough to watch Clarke bite her lips and startle so vividly that Sterling asks her if something’s wrong. That’s the moment he realizes.

He already knew she was his soulmate and was starting to accept the fact that he wasn’t hers but there’s something between them even if they don’t want to admit it. Something bounding them to each other that he is, for once, tipsy enough not to let it bother him. Tipsy and curious enough to want to play with it a little.

It might be Bree under his lips, between his arms, but there’s only Clarke on his mind now. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander, bringing his hand on the side of her face, grazing her neck, her collarbone with his nose, kissing everywhere but her lips. Her cheek, the corner of her mouth, behind her ear. His hand wanders further, sliding on her side, settling on her hip, venturing on her leg, and then, slowly, between her thighs and to—

There’s a crash nearby. Sterling’s voice echoes around the fire, interrupting Bellamy’s fantasies, making him snap his eyes to him and Clarke. His co-leader isn’t sitting on the log anymore. She’s standing, flushed and disoriented. There’s a gleam in her blue eyes that Bellamy wants to see from closer. Something looking like lust.

“Clarke? Is everything okay?”

Bellamy watches as she dismisses Sterling’s worry.

“I’m fine. I think I just had too much to drink. I’m going to bed, I’m feeling tired.”

He tries not to feel too happy about that, but he can’t help the smirk stretching his lips, nor the feeling of victory invading him. He doesn’t understand what’s happening but this is definitely better than pining in silence from afar. Although, for the record, Bellamy is not pining.

Fortunately, Clarke doesn’t meet his eyes when she nearly runs to her tent because she would see right through him, he’s afraid.

Facing them, Sterling sighs and sits back on the log, shoulders heavy, looking defeated. Bree laughs with someone and Bellamy is suddenly reminded of her presence next to him.

“Poor Sterling,” she says, “You’re not getting laid tonight.”

“Shut up, Bree.”

“It’s not like nobody warned you. Everybody knows Clarke is a frigid little—”

“Hey,” snaps Bellamy. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

She watches him with wide eyes and a frown, which makes her look ridiculous, and he realizes suddenly that’s not where he wants to be—with whom he wants to be. Suddenly, Bree is too close, too warm, not right enough. He stands up, his teasing mood long forgotten.

“I’m heading to bed too.”

The blonde scrambles to her feet to follow him.

“Wait, let me—”

“Alone,” he adds and she sits back.

He’s almost at his tent when he hears Sterling’s mocking words to Bree.

“Seems like you’re not getting laid either.”

Uh, it seems like nobody’s getting laid anyway. Not Sterling, not Bree, not Clarke, and certainly not him. The thing is, it’s not that Bellamy doesn’t want to. The fact that the very person turning him on without even noticing she does definitely wasn’t the blonde he had in his arms earlier but the one on the opposite side of the fire is very, very upsetting. As upsetting as it is stimulating, it seems, if the way his cock hardens quickly just by thinking about her is any indication.

But he doesn’t seem able to help it. Just like Clarke couldn’t do anything to stop squirming, shivering, and startling earlier across the flames, Bellamy is horny in a way he has never experienced before. He collapses on his bed, not bothering with his jacket or his heavy shoes. In a second, his hand is opening the button of his cargo pants and sliding in his briefs.

Just like earlier across the fire, nothing around him is real as he lets his fantasies invade his mind. He’s not in his tent, not on his makeshift bed and this isn’t his hand. It’s Clarke, all over again. He opens his eyes and it’s the ceiling of her blue tent, not the red of his. It’s her drawings hung on the walls, not the bareness of his. It’s her breathing superposed to his, her smell surrounding him. Her small hand fists his hard cock. Bellamy sighs but it’s her moans that fill his ears. There’s wetness on his fingers and anatomical parts that don’t belong to him under his palms, but he’s way past caring.

Nothing is making any sense anyway. Not since they all land on Earth. Even less since the day he noticed the mark on his chest and then learned about soulmates. But this—this intense, white-hot pleasure—it’s something real, something he can touch, smell and hear.

“Bellamy,” whispers a voice he can’t mistake as anyone’s but Clarke’s, and he closes his eyes, surrendering to whatever is happening.

“I’m here, Princess. I got you.”

He doesn’t even know if he’s saying the words aloud or just thinking them. Doesn't even know if this is a very vivid dream or the harsh reality. Maybe he’s dead, for all he knows. He doesn’t even care. All that matters is this, her, them, blending together as one as they pleasure themselves as well as each other. It shouldn’t be possible to feel her clit under his fingers, to gather her wetness to rub at the small bud of nerves, to tear sighs from her that he only ever dreamt of. But he does. Bellamy does at the same time as he pumps his fist quicker and harder around his cock. Or is it really his hand? Are these thin fingers really his? The thumb brushing at the head of his cock doesn’t feel familiar. There’s too much spontaneity, too many differences to mistake this touch as his own.

It just turns him on more and more. If Clarke can feel his touch as he’s fantasizing about her, maybe the reason he’s also able to feel her is that she’s thinking about him too?

He moans at the thought. She’s thinking about him, right? Right now, as she’s touching herself in the privacy of her tent. She chose to leave Sterling by the fire to go there alone and pleasure herself by thinking about him.

“Oh!” she whines when he thrusts two of his fingers inside her. The pad of his thumb doesn’t leave her clit, pressing, circling.

“Fuck, Clarke,” he sighs when her moves intensify on his cock.

He feels her pussy clench on his fingers at the sound of her name. She tilts her hips to change the angle of his thrusts and God, he wants to be inside her. He wants to grab her hips hard as he fucks her, pinning her to the mattress. He wants to leave marks on her pale skin where his fingers hold on her curves, wants to mark her the same way she marked him almost three months ago, now.

“There, right there!” she shouts, and then, he’s coming, or maybe she is coming, Bellamy doesn’t even know.

The pleasure invading him is like never before, blinding him, leaving him breathlessly whispering her name. Something inside him clenches, a fire explodes as something warm gushes over his fingers.

After, he lies there on his makeshift bed and tries to regain the breath Clarke stole from him. Nothing of what just happened makes sense, but as sleep slowly invades him, Bellamy is sure of one thing. Two heartbeats are echoing widely in his ear right now, and one of those belongs to Clarke.

***

As days pass and turn into weeks that turn into months, Bellamy learns a few other things.

One, Clarke doesn’t have a soulmate.

She had started to take notes of the different soulmarks she came across, filling pages and pages of worn-out notebooks that Lincoln brought her. It had just been a hobby, at first. He had watched her at the breakfast table or around the fire at night, drawing the soulmarks she found pretty. The butterfly on Octavia’s biceps where Lincoln had grabbed her the first time. The leaf on Jasper’s palm where Monty had high-fived him during their first day on Earth. The chess piece on Raven’s shoulder blade where Wells had laid his hand to comfort her after she had learned that Finn was a cheating bastard. But then, more delinquents had asked her to draw theirs.

They needed a system, Clarke had decided. And she was now this system herself, gathering notes, drawing the marks, registering the names.

“What about you?” Bellamy had asked one evening, “You didn’t register your own soulmark in there?”

She didn’t need to know that he had been gathering his courage to ask that very question for weeks now.

“I don’t have one,” she had said then, and he had tried not to pay attention to the dull pain in his chest, right under the sunflower she had left on his skin nine months ago.

“What about you? Do you want me to draw yours?”

“I don’t have one either,” he had lied.

Two, it’s not because Bellamy isn’t Clarke’s soulmate that she isn’t linked to him.

Somehow, she seems to feel his touch when he’s focused solely on her. And he can feel hers too when he hopes she’s thinking about him.

Three, there’s a reason why Clarke is his soulmate.

She gets him in a way no one else ever could. Sure, she’s a pain in the ass, bordering on rude sometimes, always trying to sap his authority and challenging him all the damn time, but this is Clarke for him. Getting on his nerves, slipping into the cracks of his hard exterior, finding the weaknesses, the soft spots, reading him like he’s a freaking open book, and just … getting him.

Four, he’s attracted to her, if the way he’s only turned on by the thoughts of her means anything at all.

He stopped sleeping around. He doesn’t flirt anymore. Hell, he can’t even show off anymore, can’t walk around camp shirtless, not since he got a sunflower on the spot she dabbed angrily on his chest with her index finger months ago.

Five, they’re best friends now. Sort of. The kind of best friends where one of the two is pining silently for the other without any, any hope that they might return their feelings one day.

After weeks and weeks of leaning on each other, making decisions together, leading the hundred in the same voice, it’s not really a surprise. Not for him anyway. Sometimes, Bellamy comes into her tent in the evening and reads while she draws. Or Clarke finds him in his and they talk and talk until she falls asleep in his bed and he has to sleep on the cold hard floor.

“You should wake me up,” she had said one morning.

“You need to rest.”

“You could carry me in my tent, then.”

“Who do you think I am? Your knight in shiny armor?”

“Well, you could at least sleep next to me on the bed. It’s big enough for the both of us.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening.”

She looked almost offended … disappointed. “Why’s that?”

“You deserve your privacy, that’s all. Sleeping on the floor doesn’t bother me, Princess.”

“That’s not what your back is saying.”

“Is that your way of offering me a massage?”

She had scoffed. “What about privacy, Bellamy?” she had mocked then.

Six, privacy doesn’t have any meaning anymore.

Since that first night around the fire, it had happened again. Just one more time the following week. And then another time, three days later. And then the following morning. And the one after. And now, it was all. The. Damn. Time.

Seven, Bellamy is slowly but surely losing his mind.

Clarke doesn’t seem to notice the effect she has on him, but Bellamy definitely noticed every reaction he gets out of her. Every sigh, every shiver, every move indicating that she is feeling his touch. And he proceeded to learn every one of these pieces of information as he kept learning her body. In the haze of his pleasure, he got to learn which words were turning her on more, which pressure she liked, the perfect angle of his fingers in her pussy. All the things that make her lose her mind. Hell, it would have been a lie to say Bellamy isn’t losing his mind either.

Feeling her so close, getting to know her as a leader, a friend during the day, and as a lover at night was getting harder and harder each following morning. They never do anything more than touch during those episodes, not kissing, not … not fucking, but now Bellamy longs to know this part of her for real. He longs to experience this with her physically and with both her full consent and enthusiasm, not in this sort of weird soulmate-trance that’s happening without their control when they do.

This frustration, this craving, sometimes makes the days hard to handle. It’s making him rude, and irritable, and…

“God, you’re such an asshole, Bellamy!” shouts his sister at him in the middle of the camp. “I’m not a child anymore! You’re not my father. If I want to go to the summit with the others, I can do whatever the hell I want! I don’t need your blessing to take a walk into the woods anymore.”

“You don’t even care about the summit!” he shouts back. “You only want to go to be with your soulmate.”

“And the only reason you’re bitter about this is that you don’t have a soulmate of your own—”

“Octavia!” interrupts Clarke from where she’s standing at their side, next to Lincoln, ready to leave for Polis.

Octavia shuts up, but it’s too late. She said the words, the ones she knew were going to hurt Bellamy the most. Only his sister could ever have guessed that this soulmate thing was upsetting him, even if she doesn’t really know how or why it upsets him exactly.

His voice is dark when he answers.

“You know what? I don’t even know why I’m bothering with this. I don’t care. Go live your life while I’m finally getting to enjoy mine without you.”

He storms off quick enough not to see the hurt in her green eyes, but barely. Not quick enough so Clarke can’t follow him, though.

She stops him with her hand on his forearm and her touch burns like it always does. He knows it’s her even before she speaks, even before he turns around and faces the worry in her blue eyes.

He’s sick of that. He’s sick of everything.

“What?” he snaps.

She doesn’t recoil. She frowns and stands her ground, saying what she came here to say.

“I’ll take care of her. You don’t have to worry.”

He snorts. “Right, you’re just going to travel through enemy territory to the Grounder’s capital and meet their leader who once wanted to kill us all. Nothing to worry about.”

She smiles slightly. It only pisses him off more. “Why are you smiling? The fact that you might die is everything but funny.”

She just smiles more. It pisses him off more.

“It’s just—for a second, it sounded like you cared about me too.”

“Of course, I care, Clarke,” he says, “I’m not a monster.”

“You’re not. You’re a good brother, a good friend, and a good man. And one day, when you find your perfect match, you’ll be the perfect soulmate too. I’m sure of it.”

He scoffs. She has no idea of what she’s talking about.

“I mean it, Bellamy. And I care about you too. That’s why you have to trust me when I say I’ll protect your sister. I know how important she is to you.”

There’s something heavy in his throat that even swallowing can’t make disappear, so he nods.

She nods too and says goodbye. He grabs her wrist when she takes her first step away from him. No burn under his fingers this time, when they only close around the cold metal of the wristband she never took off, and that he never got off her after all.

“Be careful, okay? You—,” he scratches his voice. “You’re important to me too.”

“I will,” she smiles. “And who knows? Maybe I’ll meet my soulmate in Polis and the peace treaty will write itself thanks to that.”

She turns and walks away from him and Bellamy is grateful for that. He could never be strong enough to pretend like her last words didn’t feel like a bullet fired in his heart.

***

The camp feels empty and Bellamy doesn’t want to admit that it’s because Clarke’s not here. Jasper, Monty, and even Miller asked him all day why he was brooding and he has never been so grateful that he had a public argument with his sister before. It’s the perfect excuse for his dark mood.

“She’ll be back before you know it,” tries Miller while they’re both keeping watch at their camp’s gate in the middle of the night.

Bellamy nods, lost in thought, barely registering his best friend’s words.

“Octavia, too,” adds Miller after a beat.

Bellamy freezes and widens his eyes as he meets his knowing gaze. There’s a silence, heavy, during which Bellamy tries to figure out what Miller knows exactly. If it’s the fact that Bellamy cares about Clarke, that’s okay because he said so himself, when they left eighteen hours ago. If Miller knows that Bellamy might have a tiny little crush on his co-leader, that’s fine too. He’ll be embarrassed, but he won’t die from it. Plus, he’s pretty sure that his best friend will keep that info for himself.

Another option makes Bellamy’s blood freeze in his veins, though. An option he didn’t even consider before now.

What if Miller guessed what Bellamy has tried to hide from day two on Earth? What if Miller somehow saw the sunflower on his chest and put two and two together?

What if Miller knows what Bellamy refuses to even think about? What if he knows that since that fateful first night when he and Clarke shared pleasure, and with each passing day and every night in between getting to know the wonderful person she is, Bellamy fell in love with her?

Fuck. He’s in love with her. She’s not just his co-leader, not just his best friend, not even just his soulmate. Bellamy loves her.

He gulps and watches as Miller turns his gaze back on the trees in front of them. They don’t really have to keep watch anymore, now that peace is almost made with the Grounders, but they do anyway. Habits die hard, it seems.

“Don’t worry,” Nathan says in the silence, his breath drawing white puffs in the cold air. “I won’t tell a soul.”

Bellamy nods at his side, unable to say something making sense. Not when he just realized he’s in love with the woman who is somehow everything to him. Not when he knows that he isn’t the soulmate of the woman he has feelings for.

He’s saved by Sterling and Monroe who come to relieve them from their watch and disappears into his tent. He can feel his heart beating widely in his chest and his breath burning, trapped in his lungs, can feel his throat close, his emotion strangling him.

Bellamy watches around the tiny space of his tent and feels his eyes sting as he suffocates. She’s everywhere. Clarke. How didn’t he even notice before now?

One of her shirts is thrown on his desk chair, her drawings and charcoal littering the table. There are two rubber bands on his bedside table and the books they take turns reading are placed on the covers. When he lays down on his makeshift bed, it smells like her from the numerous times she fell asleep there.

He can’t escape her, Bellamy realizes. Maybe Clarke is all around in the things she left behind, but she’s also in his thoughts all day, in his dreams all night. He traces the edges of the sunflower covering his chest without having to take his shirt off. He knows the mark by heart now. She’s on his skin as well as under. How did he not realize that sooner? How did he do nothing to prevent this from happening when it can only lead to his own heartbreak when eventually, Clarke never returns his feelings? When his world will shatter, the day she finds her true soulmate? Hell, maybe she’s finding them right now, as she works for peace in Polis while he has to stay here to lead the camp in her absence.

He closes his eyes, tries to take deep breaths, and focuses. It had become so easy, in the past weeks, to reach out to her. He just had to think of her, to think of how much he wanted to touch her and she was there, at the edge of his mind, meeting him halfway, reaching for him too. So he tries to do exactly that, as he lies alone in the dim light of his tent. He pictures her mouth, full and pink. He pictures the mole above her lip. He grazes them with his mind, pokes at Clarke from a distance.

She’s always answered before. She didn’t know it, never realized it, never talked about it after but she always returned his touches with her own.

But not tonight. Tonight, Clarke is nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be felt. She’s too far away, in Polis, seeking peace, and maybe the person who will mark her as theirs in a way he himself wasn’t able to. Tonight, as he lies on a bed that smells like her, in a tent surrounded by her things, with only her name on his lips and the feelings that he finally realized he has for her engraved on his heart, Bellamy has never felt so lonely.

He falls asleep just like that, longing, aching, craving. Maybe that’s the reason he really thinks he’s not dreaming, at first. Because even in his sleep, he longs, he aches, he craves. And because Clarke’s arms sliding around his waist feel too real. Because her chest pressing on his back feels too warm, too solid. He rests his hand on the one she laid on his stomach and she links their fingers together.

“Clarke?” he asks but he’s not speaking with his mouth, he realizes quickly when his lips don’t move.

She hears him anyway. When she answers him, her voice sounds in his head, not behind him despite the hot breath he can feel between his shoulder blades.

“I’m here,” she says, tightening her hold on him, and Bellamy melts against her.

He wants to say that she’s not. That she’s never here, not the way he wants her to, not when she won’t remember this anyway when the morning comes. Not when their connection deepens with every passing night but she doesn’t change how she’s acting with him during the day in the slightest. Because it’s not their connection that deepens. Just his connection to her, not her connection to him. Because she’s his soulmate but he’s not hers.

“I promise I’m here, Bellamy. You’re not alone.”

He wants to believe her. He feels her words, embracing him just as her arms do, warming him from the inside, just like her skin against him does. Bellamy wants, and wants, and wants.

“Sleep, we’ll talk when I’m back.”

They had never just slept together before. They fooled around, they learned each other’s bodies, they pleasured themselves while fantasizing about each other. Or is it the other way around? Bellamy can’t say. But tonight, he breathes in, and out, and lets himself go in Clarke’s embrace, just sleeping.

***

Clarke is back five days later, and Bellamy is happy to see her, at first. It takes approximately three hours for his good mood to change entirely. It’s her fault. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s fate’s fault. Fate and these freaking soulmarks fault too.

She promised him. For four entire nights, she came into his dreams, hugging him from behind and lulling him to sleep. For four entire nights, he fell asleep to the promise that they’d talk about everything the day she’s back. But Clarke won’t talk to him. She won’t even meet his eyes more than strictly necessary. Like when she announces around the campfire, a moonshine glass in her hand, that peace is achieved and the hundred are finally safe, named the thirteenth clan—Skaikru—by Heda herself.

And then he notices. How everyone says “Heda” but Clarke says “Lexa.” The slight flush on her cheeks when she does. The way she avoids talking about the woman who governs the entire continent when she knows he’s listening. Fire burns in his throat and lungs. It has nothing to do with the alcohol he just swallowed. No, moonshine he can ingest, but he seems unable to swallow these feelings invading him, hurting him, driving him crazy.

“I take it that you had fun in Polis?” he asks, almost spitting.

“It was a good trip, yeah. The culture is—”

He snorts and she stops talking.

“What?”

“I’m just surprised that Lexa didn’t follow you back here, or that you didn’t stay there with her.”

She stops smiling now, too.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t pretend I don’t know you, Clarke. It’s her, isn’t it? Your soulmate.”

She grasps at her wrist, an instinct she doesn’t seem able to stop. Bellamy notices her movement, a cold shiver running down his spine while his insides churn painfully. He wants to yank her palm to see it for himself: the mark left on her skin by someone who isn’t him. The proof that she might own his heart, his soul, his head, but that it means nothing. The proof that they don’t belong together.

But Clarke lets her own wrist go and he realizes she was grasping at her silver wristband. He doesn’t have the time to wonder why she’s still wearing it, why she’s still carrying hope for the Ark to come down on Earth one day. Because her eyes fall on his and Bellamy sees it. The realization.

She knows.

Clarke knows she’s his soulmate. She knows he’s the unwilling victim of whatever fate had played on them, making him prisoner from her while she’s here, within his reach but fleeting, never staying, always fleeing. She knows how pathetic he is, longing for someone that is not destined for him.

He doesn’t wait for her next words, doesn’t stay to hear if he’s right or wrong at guessing Lexa is Clarke’s true match. He clenches his jaw and walks away.

“Bellamy, wait—”

He turns angrily towards her, jealousy flowing in his veins, anger exploding in his chest with every heartbeat.

“I am done waiting for you, Clarke!”

His outburst surprises even him. The force with which he uttered the words stopped her in her tracks as she was trying to follow him, like the echoes of his broken voice slapped her in the face when, truly, they just shattered his heart.

He shakes his head in front of her shining blue eyes, full of what he can only read as pity, and keeps going. He strides through the deadly silence that fell on their camp and right to the now-open gate, disappearing into the woods.

Clarke doesn’t follow him. Maybe she thinks he just needs to sulk on his own for a while. Maybe she doesn’t care at all, and that’s it. End of the story. But Bellamy doesn’t just need to sulk. He needs to act on his anger, needs to let himself explode, needs for this fire inside him to burn everything to the ground. His jealousy, his longing… These feelings he doesn’t want anymore have to disappear, and they can’t do that if he stays here.

He starts to walk. He doesn’t know where he’s heading. He doesn’t know where he’ll stop. He doesn’t know anything but the way his heart is beating furiously in his chest, the way his lungs burn, and his throat ache. From heartbreak, at first and then, after hours walking in the woods, just from the sheer effort. It feels good to give up on his heart, on his head, and to just focus on his body.

But when his thoughts don’t stop torturing him, Bellamy starts to run. Until there’s no air left in his lungs, no energy left in his heart, no strength in his aching muscles. And even after that, he keeps running. He keeps running until what he thought was a never-ending forest turns into a cliff. Until the solid ground turns into air. And then, it’s too late to stop. He trips and falls, and can do nothing else but hold on as his body rolls on rocks, hits trees and branches.

In his head, he thinks he can hear Clarke scream his name.

When Bellamy finally stops falling, he feels like passing out. His entire body is aching and he doesn’t dare to move yet, just his hand so he can touch the warm liquid flowing on his forehead. He groans when his fingers come back red with blood.

Clarke is going to kill him.

The thought of her worried blue eyes makes him move and try to sit. She’s going to be so pissed at him when she’ll get the truth of what happened to him. I was running and I fell. What a reckless, stubborn idiot he is.

Fortunately, nothing seems broken, although he feels dizzy and his head keeps bleeding. He’s thinking about a way to bandage his wound when he hears it. The tweak of a branch. The creak of woods. A low groan.

A boar? A bear? A panther? Bellamy stands up just to muffle a cry when his right ankle screams under his weight.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.

He pulls out his gun and unlocks the safety while taking on his surroundings. He sees high walls, floors, and cages. Everything is half-destroyed but he recognizes the building from the old archives he saw on the Ark. It’s a zoo. Or what’s left of a zoo after a nuclear apocalypse anyway.

Bellamy doesn’t have time to wonder what animal can hide in a place like this. He’s suddenly hit by something. A heavy, black, and giant creature that runs in his direction again, hits him right in the chest and sends him on the ground once more. The impact steals his breath, the shock makes him release the gun somewhere around him and he scrambles for it, trying to look around to catch a glimpse of the monster that attacked him.

He’s about to reach his weapon when it jumps from the cliff over them, landing in front of him. Even though it doesn’t look like anything he could have seen in books and archives on the Ark, Bellamy recognizes it. It’s a giant gorilla. And the giant, murderous gorilla starts to run in his direction once more. The gun is within reach, but not close enough. The only thing saving him from the horrendous teeth of the animal is the stick of wood he holds in front of him right before kicking and fighting to get hold of his weapon. When he finally does, he doesn’t hesitate before firing, doesn’t even take the proper time to aim.

The shot echoes on the walls around them. The gorilla groans and whines before letting Bellamy go.

“Bellamy, run!” Clarke’s voice shouts in his mind.

He does, his ankle making him suffer from each step. He doesn’t even realize where he entered before the cage closes behind him. The gorilla is on him already, hitting him once more, striking him on the chest with claws as dangerous as his teeth. The step back Bellamy takes is what saves him, but barely. His shirt is ripped apart as the claws sink in his flesh. The pain is immediate, echoing in his head with a voice that sounds like Clarke’s. When the gorilla gets hold of him, he’s thrown on the opposite side of the room like he weighs nothing at all, hitting the cage’s bars.

Bellamy lets out another scream when something pierces his upper body, on his left side. His hands are shaking when he lays them on the metallic bar protruding from his body. He’s quick to realize that it’s one of the broken bars of the cage and that the fact that it’s actually broken means that he has enough space to slide in between them and get out of here.

He doesn’t hear the screams he lets out when he tears his body off the bar. Blood seeps from the wound and Bellamy can only press his left palm on it while he fires his gun once more. A few bullets land on the gorilla but most are directed on the lever he can see behind him, next to the door, the one that hopefully will close the cage on the giant animal.

When he hits it right, Bellamy doesn’t stay a second more. He slides between the bars of the broken cage and backs up until his back hits a wall. His whole body is shaking and aching. His ankle is on fire. His chest stings. He’s pretty sure he has broken ribs from the way the gorilla threw him in the air and there’s a hole on his stomach but he’s alive. He’s alive and the monster is trapped. For how long, though, Bellamy wonders when it starts to groan, and scream, and hit the metal door, the bars, and the stones with his giant feet and fists.

He has to get out of here, now. He has to get as far away as he can before the gorilla finds its way out of its cage. He has to go back home to Clarke.

It takes him far too long to get out of the zoo, climbing the walls and the cliff back as quickly as he can. When Bellamy finally returns in the forest and on the path he took earlier, before falling, everything around him blurs. His whole body is killing him. His lungs burn and his heart beats hard but too slow in his ear. There’s blood on his chest, blood on his stomach, blood on his hands, and all Bellamy wants is to lie on the ground and sleep for a thousand years.

But he can’t. He has to go back. No one knows where he is. Nobody knows that he ran this far. Nobody knows where to look for him.

He keeps walking, keeps walking until the sun starts to go down and his knees start to give up under him. He falls. Nothing has ever felt as comfortable as the leaves under his body as his body hits the ground. He is so tired, so exhausted. Maybe he could just sleep here for the night? Maybe he could wake up rested the following morning and go back home? Maybe he can meet Clarke in his dream one more time and tell her, tell her—

“Bellamy!”

That’s her voice, calling his name. Uh, maybe he’s already asleep. But then, her face appears over him, her blonde hair tickling his face, her blue eyes worried about him just the way he pictured them, and maybe he’s not only asleep. Maybe he’s dead.

“I’m here, I’m here. You’re okay, you’re—”

She closes her mouth as she checks on his injuries and this—the sadness on her face, the crease between her eyebrows, the way her chin trembles, it can’t be a dream. It can’t be the safe space they always share together because when Clarke meets him there, she’s always happy and calm, not upset and frantic.

“Clarke?”

Bellamy coughs and tastes blood on his lips.

“I’m here. Lincoln is coming with another horse, we’re going to take care of you.” She raises her head and gestures to someone before yelling: “Over here!”

“How did you—”

How did you find me, he wants to ask? But he can barely breathe, let alone talk.

“Shh, don’t try to speak. Focus on me, just focus on me, okay?”

That he can do. Hell, it seems it’s all he can ever do: focus on Clarke. Everything is a blur, but her image stays crystal clear as she inspects his wounds, takes on his twisted ankle, his sore ribs, and his still bleeding head.

“I’m going to have to lift your shirt.”

It seems like he blinked once but a long time had passed already. Other people are gathered around them, people he doesn’t see or recognize as the world gets fuzzy around the edge when he tries to protest.

“No,” he answers. “M’fine. It’s nothing—no.”

“I have to, Bellamy. You’re bleeding.”

He is bleeding even more now that he fights back and tries to sit up and push Clarke back at the same time. He gives up soon enough, though, when everything turns black around him and he feels like throwing up. He isn’t conscious enough to protest anymore, barely conscious enough to feel Clarke’s cold hands on his stomach and his chest. Barely conscious enough to remember why he didn’t want for her to check at his injuries in the first place.

“I have to treat the wound on your stomach, you’re losing too much blood.”

He can make out Lincoln, Miller, and Monty’s voices around him, whispering, asking questions, giving advice to Clarke, and trying to comfort him. He can see Clarke’s blue eyes, shining with tears and hear her “Sorry, this is gonna hurt” before a hot-wrenching pain burns his skin. He can only see white as he screams to the sky.

“Stay with me, Bellamy,” Clarke begs and he feels the words in his head more than he hears them but still, the only thing he can do is obey.

He opens his eyelids. They’re so, so heavy. Just like the rest of his body. But somehow, he’s flying right over the ground, a warm hand linked to his.

“Clarke?”

“I’m here,” she says, in his head again, “Stay with me, we’re almost home.”

“H— Home.”

Home is where you are, he wants to say. Home is the sunflower on my chest. Home is in Polis with you when you’re gone. Home is sitting next to you in a tent and pretending to read while you’re drawing next to me. Home is in the dreams you spend holding me. Home is the memories of us that you keep forgetting as hard as I’m trying to hold onto them.

“You can’t fall asleep. I need you awake. Bellamy, can you hear me?” echoes her voice in his head and he wonders… If he had been her soulmate, could she have heard what he just thought?

He whines when several hands lift his body to lay him on a hard table. His eyelids flutter. The Dropship. Another fluttering. Miller, Monty, Clarke. Another fluttering. Octavia. Octavia who fights to enter, and Clarke who refuses to let her in. Lincoln stopping her despite his sister’s screams and tears.

“O—”, he breathes.

“I can’t,” cries Clarke. “I can’t, Bellamy. I’m sorry. It’s hard enough like this. I can’t heal you if she’s here watching my every move and threatening to kill me if I—”

He closes his eyes under the pain in her voice. If I lose you, she almost said, but the pain is too much for her heart to handle. He feels it in his own chest. His need to comfort her is stronger than his will to do what he has to do to survive. Already, he’s half asleep, half-meeting her in the in-between world where they can be happy and together. He just wants to hold her. He just wants to—

“Bellamy! Bellamy, hey!”

Her voice is real now. Loud and clear, echoing on the Dropship’s walls and bringing him back here with her.

Clarke waits to have his sole focus, her blue eyes burn into his as she adds: “We’ll sleep after. I promise. We will sleep when you’re okay.”

He nods. This, Bellamy can accept. This, he can focus on while she and Harper, who came out of nowhere, work quickly and steadily on his wounds. Sometimes, it hurts. Sometimes, it feels better. Sometimes, between stitches and bandages, he swears he can feel Clarke’s hands in his hair, her lips on his cheeks, her fingers brushing his mouth, whispering words of comfort in his soul but… It can’t be. It can’t be, because Clarke’s hands, fingers, and lips are busy already, handling instruments, giving instructions, healing him.

After a while, silence falls around them in the Dropship, meaning they’re alone now. Alone together. Before Bellamy can make sense of any of it, she’s here, at the edge of his mind.

“You’ll be okay. You can sleep now. I’ll be here.”

When you wake up, she doesn’t say.

In your dreams, he hopes.

***

Bellamy is alone when he wakes up. He was alone in his dreams too. Not at first, though. At first, Clarke was there with him, just as she promised. But after, when hours blurred together, she disappeared and didn’t come back. It has been a while since it didn’t happen and he’s worried suddenly, about what it might mean.

From how he’s feeling, he can sense that he spent long hours lying here, healing, if not days. He sits up carefully and lets the blanket covering him slide at his waist.

His body hurts everywhere. From his ankle throbbing to his swollen head. The worst is his chest, where numerous bandages cover his stomach, his ribs, his—

That’s when Bellamy realizes.

His soul mark.

His soulmark is covered by another bandage which means the gorilla hurt him pretty bad. Which means that Clarke—

“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, from where she stands by the Dropship’s door, watching him carefully.

Bellamy frowns and she takes a few steps forward. Her lips are pinched and her jaw is clenched.

“Your soulmark…” she starts before swallowing and Bellamy’s heart stops. “I didn’t want to have to do stitches on it, but the medical glue Lincoln gave me wasn’t holding, so I had to…”

He averts his eyes. Why is it hurting him so hard? It’s just a stupid drawing, it’s nothing, it’s—

“Do you want to see?” Clarke asks then, and even with his thoughts trying their best to disregard the mark, he can’t help but nod.

There’s a lump in his throat while she takes the bandage off, barely brushing his skin but sending shivers down his spine anyway.

“There,” she croaks.

Four long stripes mark his chest, from his collarbone to his sternum and across the sunflower over his heart. But even like this, deformed and damaged, his soulmark is still—

“It’s beautiful,” Clarke whispers, and when he raises his head, she’s right there.

He didn’t notice she was standing this close to him. So close that he can feel the way her breath trembles on his cheeks. So close that when she lifts her hand and grazes the drawing in between the angry red scars, the edge of the sunflower’s petals, he can see her fingers shake as well as feel them on his skin.

He doesn’t answer, just let Clarke gaze at his soulmark, the one she left on his skin so long ago. They weren’t friends back then. They didn’t know each other. They didn’t even like each other if Bellamy remembers correctly. And God, he remembers. How she had pointed her finger at his chest and how he had thought at the time that, goddamnit, this girl was making him smile, even though his stature was being challenged by her.

He doesn’t even know what the issue was at the time. Maybe the wristband he wanted to take off her so badly?

He startles and grips her wrist when he realizes she doesn’t wear it anymore.

“Your wristband…”

Clarke doesn’t move to take her wrist back, just smiles tentatively.

“Yeah… I needed it to trade for the ointment that I used on your wounds so…”

Bellamy turns her hand in his, and his eyes catch something. There’s a star here, black on her pale skin, so tiny that he could have thought it was a mole if she had not been standing so close. And then, he notices another, and another, and another, all around her wrist.

She scratches her voice and Bellamy can feel her eyes heavy on him, watching him.

“This is—,” she starts.

“Lyra’s constellation,” he finishes for her, his voice hoarse. “I know.”

“I figured you would. With all the myths you’re always feeding me, it just made sense,” she jokes but he doesn’t smile back, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t speak. He can’t take his eyes off her skin, off her—

“You have a soulmark.”

“I do.”

“But you—you told me…”

Clarke takes her wrist back, sliding it slowly from his grip.

“I know. I lied.”

He clenches his jaw. Bellamy knows he lied too, so he can’t pretend to have the higher ground here but still, it hurts.

“You aren’t going to ask me who my soulmate is?” she asks then, and he almost scoffs.

“If I’m right and you’ve hidden your soulmark under your wristband from the beginning, then I already know who it is.”

She lifts her chin, challenging. “Yeah?”

“It’s Lyra’s constellation, Clarke. Orpheus’s myth is my favorite. I know who your soulmate is just like you know who owns the sunflower on my chest—your favorite flower. The only thing I don’t know is when and—why—why you—”

His throat feels tight suddenly, tears strangling him as they shine in Clarke’s eyes. Because they’re connected like that. Because when one of them is in pain, the other suffers too. Although Bellamy isn’t sure the soulmate thing really has anything to do with that, to be honest.

“The mark appeared the day you grabbed my wrist to save me from the Grounder’s pit. When we all went to rescue Jasper.”

Bellamy swallows hard. She hadn’t said anything. All this time and she hadn’t said anything. He might have lied but Clarke lied first. He just followed her lead to protect his heart when she claimed that she didn’t have a soulmate.

“Why?” he asks again.

She has to have had a good reason for it, right? Maybe she doesn’t love him? Maybe she thinks she deserves better than an asshole from factory station? Maybe she’s ashamed of him? Maybe she—

“Stop. Bellamy, stop.”

He does. He stops thinking, too shocked to utter anything else, even the self-deprecating bullshit he’s always prompt to tell himself. He stops because he realized something.

“You can hear me? All this time, you could hear me?”

“No. Not exactly. But I can feel you. Sometimes.”

Oh. It explains how…

“It’s how you found me in the woods. How you knew I was in trouble.”

Clarke nods but she looks pissed, just like Bellamy knew she would be.

“Yeah, because you took off in uncharted territory even though I specifically told you that we would speak when I got back!”

Too much information in her last words makes his brain freeze with multiple questions.

“Let me finish first, okay?” she interrupts him before he can open his mouth.

Well, if that isn’t annoying…

“No, I want to talk about this first,” Bellamy answers, stubborn. He has hundreds of questions to ask, but this one is more important. “You can feel me? For how long? And how exactly? And how do you know about it? How do you know it’s not just in your mind?”

She sighs when realizing he won’t let go if she doesn’t give him at least something.

“I think we both realized it at the same time, Bellamy.” There’s a slight flush on her cheeks when she adds: “I know you can feel me too.”

He can’t breathe. Is she saying what he thinks she’s saying? That she knew all this time? That she was aware of everything they shared separately but also somehow together?

“I asked Lincoln about it, actually.” Regarding the sex part, she doesn’t say, but Bellamy understands anyway. “He said it was uncommon, but not unheard of. I didn’t mention it was you, of course, not even that I was asking the question for myself…”

Uh, seems Bellamy is back at the issue bothering him in the first place, now.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me, Clarke—”

“Oh come on, don’t act like you are the victim here! You knew too and you didn’t say a thing either!”

“I just—I didn’t even understand what was happening. And then, we became friends, and—I asked you first.”

“Really? What are we, eight years old?”

“You can make fun of me all you want, Clarke, you know it’s true. I asked you if you were going to draw your soulmark in the register and you said you didn’t have one.” He takes a deep, shaky breath, fighting his fear of rejection. “How was I supposed to keep going with ‘oh, that’s too bad because you are my soulmate’—”

“I did it to protect you, Bellamy!” she interrupts him.

The force of her words echoes around the Dropship’s walls but it’s not the only thing that makes him shut his mouth. It’s the conviction Clarke exudes, the pain simmering under the surface of her heart while she tries to make him understand what she decided for both of them with her head, so many months ago.

“Don’t you see that having a soulmate isn’t just a blessing, but also a curse?”

No. No, he can’t see that. Not when the things his soul mark brought to him, despite the heartbreak and the loneliness that covered him like a blanket sometimes, are so solely good. A best friend, someone who just gets him, who sees who he truly is. Someone who shares the burden and the responsibilities. Someone with whom he wants to share so many other things, if only she just—

“Explain, Clarke. Please, explain to me why I’m such a curse.”

“Not you, Bellamy. Just—We made peace with Trikru, but the other clans, and the Mountain, and Azgeda… They were still a threat. What would have happened if one of them had heard that we were soulmates? I couldn’t—I can’t bear the idea of something happening to you. And knowing me, knowing you, I couldn’t risk it.”

There are tears both in her voice and her eyes, and he’s left speechless by her words. He never thought of that and Bellamy guesses that’s why they are co-leaders, in the end. Because what one of them lacks, the other balances for them immediately. Maybe that’s even why they are soulmates too, in the first place.

Now—now that she said it, he understands. Bellamy knows what he’d do if someone was threatening Clarke’s life, knowing she’s his soulmate. Just as he knows what she would do if the roles were reversed.

“If someone had kidnapped me, or hurt me, to get to you,” she adds, her voice now only a whisper, “You would have burned the whole world, Bellamy. Hell to the consequences.”

“I would still do it,” he answers, dark but honest. “But I know what you would choose too. You’d break your own heart for the safety of your people—”

She clenches her jaw and averts her eyes, somehow ashamed of the truth. It breaks something inside him, something that pushes him to put his palm on her cheek so he can look into her eyes. “I know you, Clarke. You’d choose our people and it’s okay. I just wished that you could forgive yourself for that if it happens one day.”

She smiles slightly, and it makes him brave.

“It’s who you are. It’s who I love.”

“Don’t say that,” she breathes, sad.

“What?” he asks before asking, boldly, “You’re saying you don’t love me too”?

He knows the answer. He can feel it in his bones. He’s felt it for months now. This warmth, this softness that surrounds him every time Clarke’s close to him. Every time they dream together. Maybe she doesn’t realize it yet, but she loves him already.

“I spent the whole time since we landed here pretending I didn’t and telling myself I wasn’t allowed to,” she answers with an honesty that feeds his soul. “Give me time, okay?”

He nods. “Of course. Anything you need.”

She looks relieved for a second and then, so, so tired that it makes him understand the reason he dreamt alone these past few days.

“You didn’t sleep, did you?”

She shakes her head. “I wanted to look out for you. You really scared me there, Bellamy.”

Wrapping her in his arms is the most natural thing he has ever done in his life. By how Clarke melts immediately against his chest and sighs deeply, Bellamy guesses that it feels the same for her.

“I’m sorry that I took unnecessary risks because I was a jealous asshole,” he murmurs in her hair, and she laughs on his skin, her breath hot on his scars.

“I forgive you,” she says, and he smiles.

“I forgive you too.”

“And I’m sorry about your soulmark. I’m sure it was a beautiful sunflower.”

He wants to say that it’s not really about the sunflower. Just like it’s not really about the stars on her wrist. It’s about two people the universe decided to throw at each other, and who try their best not to break each other’s hearts while doing their best to survive. It’s belonging together because fate told them so, but fighting to be together anyway. In the end, it makes sense that Clarke’s soulmark was hidden by something, just as it makes sense that his is now scarred forever.

She yawns and Bellamy feels her exhaustion in his bones, adding to his.

“Come on,” he says, “Best way to monitor a patient is to actually sleep next to them, I heard.”

“Right,” she laughs, tired, “Is that your medical opinion?”

“Yes, keeping the doctor close actually improves the healing process, everybody knows that.”

She doesn’t fight him. It’s almost like she longs for it just like Bellamy does. She lets him lie down and joins him on the small bed. There, she slides next to him, pressing her chest against his back in the way she did every night when she was away. When he doesn’t dare to melt in her embrace, she wraps her arm over his waist, linking their fingers together.

“I’ll see you soon,” he murmurs, already half asleep and he feels her smile on his skin.

“I’ll see you soon.”

It’s a promise. One they both intend to keep. As they always do.

***

It’s been a month since Bellamy’s accident when Clarke says the words back. Actually, he hears them in his mind before she can even speak them out loud because they’re asleep when it happens. They share a tent now, so it’s even more difficult to discern the dream from reality when there isn’t any real transition between the two.

One minute they’re asleep, holding each other. The other, they’re waking up, and they’re laying the same way, holding each other in the same way they did in their dreams. One minute, Bellamy hears it, the “I love you,” echoing in his soul, and making his heart skip a beat. The other, his eyelids flutter open and Clarke’s there, blue eyes shining in the morning sun, whispering “I love you” on his lips right before kissing him for the first time.

It never happened before. Them kissing. Despite all the dirty things they’ve done before even knowing what they truly were to each other, they never kissed. And since that day in the Dropship, they stopped doing things altogether.

Maybe that’s why the kiss, light and soft at the beginning, turns deep and heated very quickly. It’s shocking how familiar she feels beneath his hands and lips although he never got to experience it before in real life. Sure, their souls already know each other’s, but their bodies don’t. It should feel different, but it doesn’t. It’s Clarke, still. Warm skin, curves that drive him crazy with want, mouth he could die for.

It doesn’t take long to get naked since they sleep in nothing more but underwear for him and a shirt and panties for her. When they are, it doesn’t take long to work each other up either. Hands, fingers, and tiny sighs, as they keep kissing, keep whispering words of love on each other’s skin. She doesn’t have to beg, he doesn’t have to ask, they both know what the other needs.

Clarke’s back is pressed against his chest when he thrusts inside her in one move. Bellamy wraps her in his arms, one hand on her round breasts, the other keeping her leg lifted, fingers digging in the flesh of her thigh. But he lets his mind wander on her body, visualizes every inch of her skin, and every little thing he wants to do to her. Biting a bruise on her neck, kissing her collarbone, sucking on her nipples.

She arches her back while meeting his thrusts and moans loudly. He realizes, then. She can feel him. She can feel him just as he can feel her hands on his skin where they definitely aren’t. On his back, his ass, his abs, pulling at his hair while the ghost of her lips keeps kissing him.

To say Bellamy never experienced something like this would be an understatement, but like every little thing about him and Clarke, he’s not surprised to see their connection runs deeper than what he ever expected.

She’s there, at the edge of his mind, embracing him, comforting him, teasing him, as she did dozens of times in the secret of her own tent, alone. Except that now, they’re together physically too, magnifying every touch.

His fingers fall on her clit. Bellamy can’t even say if they actually do or if his mind is commanding the short circles he draws, the pinch here, the pad of his thumb pressing there as his thrusts deepen. When Clarke comes, he feels it in every way. The tense of her body in his arms, the moans in his ears as she clenches around his cock. But also, something tightens inside him. Warmth explodes in every part of his body. Pleasure like he never felt, different from his own but also the same, as the wave brings him down too. He shudders, his hips faltering as he comes loudly in her neck.

It takes them a while, after that, to come back to the real world. When they do, it’s to laugh in the silence that fell into the tent. Bellamy pulls out from her and smiles when she turns in his arms.

“Oh my god,” she whispers, her blue eyes brightened by the flush on her cheeks. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” he answers, happy in ways he could never have imagined. “But I definitely want to do it again.”

She kisses him softly, and he loses himself in the touch of her lips shaping his. When he feels the ghost of her fingers tickling his sides although she linked her arms behind his neck, he breaks the kiss with a laugh.

“You’re going to use this to your advantage, aren’t you?”

Clarke nods. “Like you won’t use it to distract me, or to win an argument.”

“I don’t need that to win an argument with you. I always win the arguments we have.”

“You don’t. I just let you win sometimes, because I love you.”

Her words are like the sun settling on his heart.

He suddenly understands the reason for the sunflower that had bloomed on his chest.

“I love you too,” Bellamy answers back.

She says it again, and again, and again. With her real voice first and then, when her lips are too busy to keep talking, with the ghost of her words in his soul.

***

Lincoln is the one who notices it.

They’re sitting next to the fire, that same evening, Clarke in the cradle of his arms, when the Trikru warrior points at Bellamy’s chest and asks:

“What’s this?”

Clarke turns to him, watching the spot Lincoln is showing, over his left pec. He lowers his own gaze and holds his breath. There, across his collarbone, is not just one but a dozen small baby’s breaths, visible with the V-neck shirt he’s wearing.

“What the—”

Bellamy brushes his own skin, but they don’t bulge, and that can only mean something.

“Another soul mark?” Clarke asks, turning fully in his arms, and tracing the petals with the tip of his fingers. By doing so, she triggers sparks and shivers on his skin like the drawing is reacting to her touch. If he was sure before, there’s no way he can deny it now. These baby’s breaths are hers, just like the sunflower over his heart is.

He’s about to ask Lincoln what it means when something catches his attention on the back of Clarke’s hand.

“Look,” he rasps.

There are a few new stars there, forming a constellation Bellamy doesn’t recognize yet. When he grazes them, electricity sparks from the pad of his fingers to her skin and Clarke startles.

When they both turn to Lincoln, he sounds surprised but not shocked, like it just makes sense.

“Blessed are those with multiple soulmarks from the same person,” he says, almost reverent. “It’s very rare, only happens once every couple of centuries.”

“What does it mean?” asks Clarke, linking their fingers, and tightening her hold on him.

“We don’t really know. We have tales. Legends. Myths. But people say that these kinds of soulmates already lived multiple lives before, and will live many other lives after. But that in each one of them, they always, always find each other.”

“How can you be sure?” he asks because as frightening as it feels, it’s also comforting to know that another him and another Clarke, have been through what they experience today. To believe that another him and another her, will have the chance to love each other all over again when they are long gone.

“Because they—you have a special connection. Like no other soulmates have. You can feel each other’s touch. And sometimes, their emotions, their thoughts too. It’s how you knew something was wrong with Bellamy that day, wasn’t it?”

Clarke nods and Lincoln smiles.

“It’s something rare that you share.” A silence, and then, thoughtful. “I’m happy it’s you. I know you’ll honor this gift. Both of you.”

That's what Bellamy intends to do, yes. Today, tomorrow, and all the days after. As long as Clarke allows him to do so. As long as they’re both breathing. He knows that’s what she wants too.

“You have to be careful, though. People might get jealous or afraid. Kings and Queens might want to kill you to steal this gift from you.”

“Steal?”

“Grounders think that when you kill someone, you take their power. To be offered with the promise they’ll meet their soulmate in every other life is the kind of thing many would want.”

Bellamy swallows and exchanges a look with Clarke. In her blue eyes shine everything he’s thinking. How he doesn’t want to hide what they are anymore. How strong he’s feeling when she’s at his side. Invincible. How brave and hopeful her love makes him. She nods, her blue eyes bright from the flames in front of her, feeling his determination and fueling it with her own.

When he speaks, it’s both of their voices that echo in his mind:

“Let them come.”