Soul Fate Determination

by LaughingSenselessly

Clarke Griffin knows a few things about soulmates: They are the people you're fated to spend your life with. They will have a soulmark matching yours. It means they're the love of your life. And no one else, absolutely no one, could be a better match for you than them. At least, that's what people say. - Soulmates AU, except Clarke and Bellamy are not soulmates.

2. fate

A/N: Thank you for the response to part 1! It's funny that i was worried it might be boring since there was a lot of Plot™, because clearly that wasn't the case for most of you. Unfortunately now i'm like "wait…. Is PART 2 gonna be boring now in comparison?" imposter syndrome 4 lyfe!

Heads up for those who appreciate warning: some sexual content in this chapter. Just a few scenes, but they're there, and they earn the M rating.

And of course, huge thanks to my friend and beta reader Sjaan readymachine. As you would say, Sjaan the Comma Killer, you're a Comma Killin' Queen.

---

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The summer after marrying Gina, Bellamy finally gets his first serious job interview in executive security: a spot on the security detail of one Finn Collins.

Raven helped him get the interview.

"You're not the only one with famous friends," she'd said mysteriously when he asked. She was clearly waiting for him to ask how she knew Finn Collins, so although he was curious, he didn't ask, and he could tell it pissed her off. That made him slightly happy.

In any case, he knows Finn Collins. Everyone does. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young movie stars. People have compared him to Jake Griffin as an actor because he has the same boyish charm or something. Bellamy doesn't actually know. That's just what his sister had told him. She'd had a crush on him briefly in high school.

He's nervous on the morning he's set to go to meet the guy. He has to make a good impression. His lack of anonymity and association with the deaths of Clarke's dad and Wells has made it a struggle to find a long term job, so an offer like this is rare.

Gina smooths his shirt over his chest, and smiles up at him. She's dressed for work, too. "The interview will be fine," she tells him, tapping her finger over his chest and tilting her face towards his. "You're good at your job."

"If he doesn't like me, then that doesn't matter."

"Just be yourself."

Bellamy privately thinks to himself that if he does that, he'll come off as an asshole. He doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to first encounters with celebrities.

"I'll see you tonight," he replies instead, and kisses her goodbye. On his drive there, he rehearses what he's going to say. He runs through every interview question he can think of.

When he arrives at the gates of the mansion, he sort of has to laugh. Finn Collins' property makes the Griffins look like paupers. The place is ridiculously decked out.

The rest of Finn's security detail escorts him inside and speak to him first. Their questions are straightforward and pretty much what he had prepared for. At the end, they tell him they'd be happy to have him on the team should Finn offer him the job.

Finally, he's directed to another room to talk to the wild card himself.

As Bellamy walks in, he passes the last candidate leaving the room looking dejected. Finn's reclining on a gigantic couch with a glass of scotch in his hand. He's got his ankle crossed over his knee and is staring into space, looking bored. It's odd to see him like this, in jeans and a simple T-shirt, when Bellamy has only ever seen him looking larger than life on a big screen.

Finn sees Bellamy and seems to snap out of it, leaning forward. He grins lopsidedly, the way he's famous for. Bellamy seems to remember teenage Clarke replaying Finn's scenes a lot when they watched his movie Spacewalker together. Bellamy had poked fun at her for it. Finn wasn't that damn attractive or charming by Bellamy's measure, but it rather feels like the world kept telling everyone he was until they all believed it.

Finn waves him towards the couch across from him. "Finally! Finally, something interesting around here. Have a seat, Bellamy."

Bellamy had been all prepared for a handshake and the polite Nice to meet you he was going to say, but Finn speaks as if he knows him, and it throws him off. He looks around and sinks onto the couch across from Finn.

Finn pours him a glass of scotch and offers it to him. Bellamy takes it out of politeness.

"Go ahead, you can drink." Bellamy doesn't. Finn studies him and raises his glass to his lips. "You know, when I spoke to Eligius about needing a new bodyguard, Anya said you were the best in your cohort. By far."

That's news to Bellamy. Figures Anya would say nice things about him behind his back.

Finn goes on. "But you don't get much long term work, do you? Why's that?"

Bellamy gets the sense Finn is testing him, because he must already know the answer to that question. He answers anyway. "People recognize me sometimes because I grew up with Clarke Griffin. We spent a lot of time together back then."

He says it without inflection. That's the explanation he'd come up with for this inevitable question. It acknowledges their friendship in the past in a detached way while distancing himself in the present.

It's such a fucking lie.

"People can recognize you all they like," Finn declares. "I'm not exactly anonymous myself, so what do I care if people snap a couple pictures of you, too?" He doesn't wait for an answer. He polishes off his scotch. "So, what do you say? Do you want the job?"

Bellamy blinks at the abrupt swerve. That's it?

"It's not a test," Finn says, as if reading his mind. "Raven Reyes got you this interview. She vouched for you, too. I know you're good. Now I just need to know if you actually want the job."

Bellamy hesitates. "Yes."

"Done. Congratulations, you get to ward off all my obsessed teenage fangirls." He gives that lopsided grin again. Bellamy sort of has the feeling he's practiced it in the mirror.

"Whatever you need," Bellamy says eventually, biting back all snide comments he sorely wants to make.

"Well, that's the bread and butter of it. But enough talk about business. You know, I've always wanted to meet your friend Clarke Griffin. I was the biggest fan of her dad when I was a kid." He pauses, studies Bellamy. "Think you could arrange that for me?"

Bellamy's response is automatic and flat. "No."

It's always no. In school, people asked him the same, and he said the same. Clarke wasn't some party animal to parade around.

Finn blinks, clearly surprised at the rejection. Bellamy can imagine he doesn't experience that a lot. He wonders if this will cost him his job. Fired within the first thirty seconds, that must be some kind of record.

"Good thing I don't pay you to be nice to me," Finn muses, sounding more amused than anything. He doesn't fire him. He just tells him that his staff will take care of the paperwork, and that he's going for a two-week long shoot across the country in a few days. Bellamy blinks when he hears the city they're going to.

"Pack light," Finn adds, and dismisses him.

He goes home after signing the papers, but Gina's not back yet from work. He texts her a simple, Good news, makes dinner, then gets to working off his energy by tackling one of their many ongoing home renovation projects, today in the bathroom of their house. The whole place was in a sorry state when they moved in together, but they've been slowly making it a home.

While he's working on installing the new faucet, he calls Clarke.

He has to try twice. She usually doesn't pick up the first time, as he's found out. They only talk two or three times a week now. But she's busy.

Bellamy hasn't seen her in almost three months; not since his wedding at the beginning of May. She up and left and he didn't know where she was until a week later. She'd told him over the phone, in a rather robotic voice, that she'd decided to go to med school and was just spending the summer away from the cameras doing clinical research with a professor at her new school.

It didn't ring completely true to him. Sometimes he feels like despite all his efforts, he lost Clarke when he married Gina. But he told himself this was bigger than him. She was under a lot of stress, of course she was spending time away. While Clarke had disengaged from Polaris, she had been dealing with Abby's court case—and then there's Lexa, who kept trying to get Clarke more involved in the company again. Not to mention the ugly press coverage. It was in Clarke's nature to avoid her emotional problems by burying herself in work, and med school was perfect for that.

But her med school is in the same damn city Finn Collins is going to film this new movie, so he's got a duty to warn her. When she does finally pick up, he fills her in on speakerphone while he installs the faucet.

"I'm just warning you," he says, "Because Finn Collins has gotten it into his head that he can get some acting talent by breathing the same air as Jake Griffin's daughter."

He hears Clarke's amused huff over the phone line. "I can handle Finn Collins."

"I bet you could," Bellamy replies, unable to help himself. "Didn't you have a poster of him in your bedroom when you were thirteen—"

"Don't make me hang up on you." Her playful tone becomes serious. "I'm glad you got the job. I know you haven't gotten other jobs because of me…"

"Quit it, Clarke," he says gruffly before she can go down that road and make him another burden on her shoulders. "I'd give up all those jobs for you."

Her voice is quieter. "You shouldn't." Before he can say anything more, she says, "Finn Collins must be paying well."

Bellamy frowns as he tightens the screws on the faucet even though her assumption is correct. The numbers on the contract had made him feel like he was doing something illegal by signing it. But he and Clarke don't usually talk about money. She's going somewhere with this, he just knows it. She confirms it with her next words.

"Have you thought about going back to school?"

He flinches. "Clarke. I'm almost twenty-four."

"Oh, well that does it. There goes my argument."

Her tone is wry. He glares even though there's no way for her to know he's glaring. "It's not about that. I have to save any money I make now." The time for dreaming is over. He's an adult, with people to take care of. Gina. Octavia, if she ever wanted to go to school or needed anything, although she seems content where she is; she's started working at Eligius, alongside Lincoln in his unit. And of course he has to keep some money aside for his mother.

Clarke makes an exasperated noise on the phone. "I wish just once that you would do something for yourself. You can't use the same excuse you did when we were teenagers. You've got enough money now."

That irritates him. He's got a stable income, but it's still not enough money to do what she's suggesting. "I don't expect you to understand."

"Then make me understand, Bellamy." Clarke sounds frustrated. "Because right now it just sounds like being self-sacrificial has become a habit for you." Silence. "I know you still want to go."

The faucet comes loose again. He doesn't have the right screwdriver. He throws the damn thing across the floor, fuming silently. If he were talking to anyone else, he might hang up.

But this is Clarke. She's not being malicious. She genuinely just doesn't get it. Clarke's privilege is this: she can't understand the need to save money. Even without Arkadia, her father's estate is enough to keep her comfortable for several lifetimes. Clarke has the luxury of thinking about herself.

He tries to find the words but it's very hard to explain to someone who hasn't lived it. If he had to guess just one reason why the world didn't make them soulmates, it would probably be that.

He sinks to sit on the half-tiled floor with his phone in his hand, stretching his legs out in front of him. "If something happened to someone in my family," he says carefully, "but I didn't have the money to help because I spent it on a useless degree, I'd never forgive myself. At least right now, I have a good job. I'm not giving that up."

A silence, and then Clarke speaks again, sounding sad, and that's how he knows she's truly trying to understand. "But you won't be happy."

"I'm happy knowing I have a fund for rainy days."

"I wish you didn't need a fund for rainy days. I wish you could have a fund for sunny days, instead."

He half-smiles despite himself. "A sunny day fund, Clarke? You want to explain what the hell you're talking about?"

"I'm definitely hanging up on you now," she says, but he hears the grin in her voice. As if on cue, Bellamy hears the front door open.

"That's Gina," he says. "Want to talk to her?"

The way Clarke's voice changes at the mention of her name might be comical in another situation. "Oh, I wish I could," she replies, with a false brightness. "You go and tell her the good news. I—I've got some work to catch up on. The next few days are going to be really busy."

That sounds like a hint not to call her. "Alright. Good night."

Clarke disconnects, and Bellamy sighs, deflated.

He gets off the floor when he hears Gina's footsteps in the hall, and goes to greet her.

His smile vanishes when he sees the paleness of her face, the bags under her eyes. She looks at him a little bleakly, and he understands instantly that today was not a good day. He abandons his plans of telling her about the job, the pay, and the champagne he'd taken out in the hopes they might celebrate tonight.

He hugs her, asks her to tell him what happened. Someone died, she murmurs, her arms around him. And when her hands creep to other places, Bellamy stops talking.

In their bedroom, he tries his best to make it better, in the only way he knows he's good for. It works, temporarily. Her eyes brighten with lust for a time. But after she stops moaning his name and he crawls his way back up her body, her eyes dull again, and he feels the crushing weight of failure on his shoulders. Even as a soulmate he's not enough.

—

Gina's in a somber mood for several days. Bellamy lets her be, and then it's time for Finn Collins' trip.

He hates to leave her like this, but this is a job both of them wanted him to get. He can't abandon it now. He bids her goodbye, and goes to board a private jet with Finn Collins.

—

There's a designated area on the plane for the security detail, but Finn pats the seat beside him and declares that he wants to get to know his new bodyguard.

Bellamy braces himself for questions about Clarke, but surprisingly, Finn wants to know about him. Where he's from, what his family's like, what got him into Eligius.

Bellamy answers his questions, then figures since telling Finn Collins his life story is not in the job description, he's entitled to some answers too. So he asks.

Finn shrugs, unbothered, and tells him how he grew up a child actor. That he knows Raven from way back, that they always helped each other out, that her mom wasn't around growing up and neither was his dad, so they sort of depended on each other, and became friends through struggle.

The story sounds eerily familiar. Bellamy automatically glances at Finn's arm, suddenly curious. Both his wrists are blank.

"Makeup," Finn explains. "Too many people knowing an actor's soulmark is a pain in the ass. Fangirls crop up pretending they're your soulmate as an excuse to come talk to you." He shrugs at Bellamy's questioning look. "That's what happened to Jake Griffin, you know, until he met Abby. I figured it would be better to keep it under wraps. But no, Raven's not my soulmate if that's what you're wondering."

"So what's your soulmark?" Bellamy can't help but ask.

Finn winks and stretches his arms over his head. "Wouldn't you like to know."

The intercom turns on to inform them they're about to hit some turbulence and to put seatbelts on. Finn doesn't. He just yawns and asks, "You soulmated?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Bellamy says, and Finn grins.

"Touché. But I can see you're married."

Bellamy runs his thumb over his wedding band automatically.

"So you're either married to your soulmate, in which case you're lucky," Finn goes on, "Or you're married to someone else, in which case you're stupid."

Bellamy is silent.

"No need to look so offended," Finn says with a snort, pouring himself some champagne. "We all do stupid things with people who aren't our soulmate."

—

They land a few hours later. Somehow, there is a crowd of fans already waiting at the hotel. How people get intel so fast, Bellamy will never know.

Finn informs his bodyguards he's not doing autographs today, so Bellamy gets to do his job. He blocks a few of Finn's so-called obsessed teenage fangirls from getting too close to him. They plead with him when he says, "Sorry, Mr. Collins isn't doing autographs today," like that's going to change his decision. He sort of wants to tell them he's doing them a favour, but Finn's tolerance for insults can only go so far.

But then Finn, all jovial from behind him, says, "No, let them through, Bellamy. Don't be such a buzzkill."

Bellamy turns around, eyebrows raised, but lets the excited girls through. As Finn signs a T-shirt, a forehead, and a phone case, one of the other bodyguards rolls her eyes.

Bellamy sees what's going on. By making his bodyguards the bad guys, Finn gets to be the hero saving the day for them. No skin off Bellamy's back, though. If Finn wants to pay him to be the bad guy, the bad guy he will be.

—

There's a lot more logistics with Finn's hectic shooting schedule, and Bellamy barely has time to think or eat for several days.

At one point, Finn disappears from set without telling anyone, and Bellamy panics slightly until one of the other bodyguards tells him, "Don't worry. He does this a lot, gives us the slip just for fun. We just let him do it. Get his kicks in."

"What if something happens to him while he's gone?" Bellamy asks. Officially they're still on the job even if they're entertaining him. And they have to answer to Eligius at the end of the day.

"That's what the tracer we put in his shoe is for."

Bellamy snorts. Finn does come back eventually, wearing a cocky grin on his face, as if he'd gone somewhere dangerous and exciting even though everyone knows he actually just went to Trader Joe's.

Then on Finn's day off from shooting, he announces he's going to a party with some of his actor friends. He won't need his whole detail, as there will already be security there. But he says he still wants one of his guards with him.

He points at Bellamy. "You. New guy. You can come with me."

Lucky him.

Bellamy doesn't think much of it. At least until he's there, at a party in yet another disgustingly opulent mansion with a jaw dropping list of A-listers, and Clarke appears out of nowhere.

She's in a floral, gauzy strapless sundress, her hair down in waves. She doesn't see him and Finn at first, so he gets to study her unabashedly. She looks like she's lost weight, and there are bags under her eyes. She doesn't look quite comfortable with the way she's standing as she talks to one of the partygoers. Her smiles are too brief, her shoulders stiff. At least until she turns and locks eyes with Bellamy.

Her lips part. She stills, her hands running over the front of her dress. She doesn't look exactly glad to see him, but still, his heart lifts. He hasn't felt the weight of her gaze in such a long time. It makes his heart settle. There's something about being seen by her; something about knowing she's aware of his every flaw and mistake, and still looking at him like that. He'd forgotten what that felt like.

He's so enraptured that he almost forgets Finn is even there, at least until he says, "Thanks for agreeing to come, princess. Although it honestly looks like you're happier to see my bodyguard."

Clarke's eyes shift to Finn's with a flicker of annoyance. Bellamy's rather glad suddenly that she agreed to come to this party, because otherwise he wouldn't have had a chance to see her while he was here. Maybe that's even why she agreed.

But no. That's stupid, especially since she's the one who's been more distant lately.

"I haven't seen him in a long time," Clarke says, and takes a step towards him. Bellamy knows he shouldn't break professionalism the way he wants to and hug her, but he still itches to do it. He hopes Clarke will so he won't have to.

She doesn't, though. She just rocks back on her heels. "You look good," she tells him softly, and he somehow hears her over thumping music.

He knows she's talking about his well-being, not his superficial appearance, and wishes he could tell her the same. But she doesn't look well, not at all.

This isn't the place to ask. Painfully aware of eyes on them, he says, "Good to see you, Clarke," and the words feel stupid and foreign. This isn't who they are. They don't normally talk like this, as though they're acquaintances who only catch up when they run into each other by coincidence. As if they hadn't had a very long phone call just a few days ago. It rather feels like they're putting on a production.

Maybe it was a good production, because Finn turns to Bellamy. "You look bored. Why don't you go with the other security people?"

He would've welcomed this suggestion a minute ago, before he saw Clarke. But now he wills Clarke to say he can stay. If she says that, then Finn can't send him away.

But she doesn't, and so he leaves, slinking off to the perimeter of the room.

Roan's there, too, his arms crossed. Bellamy goes to stand next to him because he's chosen the perfect dark alcove to people-watch from. They exchange mutual looks of disdain, which is their usual method of saying hello, and then resume watching their principals. There's not much else to do in here, not when the whole team is surrounding the building and looking for outside threats.

Clarke's got her arms crossed, body language closed off. But Finn—he's got his flirty, movie-worthy smile out as he talks to her, and at several points, he touches her shoulder as he talks. It kind of pisses Bellamy off.

"Careful or you might kill your own principal," Roan says offhandedly, and Bellamy blinks, realizing he'd been glaring.

"Why are you watching me? Maybe I should tell Clarke what a shit bodyguard you are."

"I think she likes the way I operate. She's kept me around six years."

Bellamy scowls. "That's the real mystery." Clarke hadn't liked Roan on day one, but she'd changed her mind very quickly, and he's never been able to figure out exactly why.

Roan seems very amused by this comment for some reason. "Let's just say we sorted out our differences."

—

Clarke calls him later, when he's off-duty and getting ready for bed in his hotel room.

"I'm sorry we didn't talk more at the party," she says anxiously. "It caught me off guard. You just seemed… so serious. You were working. I didn't know how I was supposed to act."

He gets it. This is the first time she would have seen him working. Their different roles in life had never been more starkly apparent and uncomfortable. "What did Finn want?"

"He didn't want anything. Just to talk."

And get in your pants, Bellamy thinks. But he bites that comment back because he's pretty sure that's his irrational side talking. Besides, there's no real reason why he should warn her off. His own personal feelings for the guy don't have any basis. "Was he about what you expected?"

She seems to mull this over. "He was more down to earth than I thought he'd be."

This time he can't help himself. "You have got to be joking."

"I'm serious. For all the awards and films and attention, he's not as stuck up as I thought he'd be. A little obnoxious, sure, but not unbearably."

"Speak for yourself."

"Bellamy," she teases. "I'm starting to think you're not a fan of Finn Collins."

"Now where would you get that idea?" He glances at the clock. It's nearly one in the morning. Finn's got to be at the hair and makeup trailer on set by six. He doesn't want to say goodbye, though. Not when Clarke sounds this relaxed and lighthearted on the phone.

In the end, it's Clarke who ends it, as it usually is nowadays. "I should probably go," she says in a crisp voice. This happens a lot; they'll be easing back into the way they used to be, and then she'll snap them out of it, like being friends with him is a mistake she keeps making. "I don't want to keep you from calling Gina."

"Clarke, I'm not calling her, it's the middle of the night. She's at work."

"Then you need to rest." Her voice is firm, and she's insistent when she bids him goodbye, so he lets her slide away from him yet again.

—

Finn's work trip wraps up quickly, and an exhausted Bellamy finally gets to come home for a day to recoup.

Gina's waiting for him on the front steps when he drives up. She bounds up and wraps her arms around him in a hug. "I missed you," she whispers. "I'm sorry I wasn't all there when you left."

He hugs her back, because he gets it. He gets the way guilt weighs a person down. "There's nothing to be sorry for."

"I got you something while you were gone," Gina says. She takes his hand and leads him inside. She brings him to the kitchen table, and lying there is a book. She picks it up and presses it into his hands. He looks down. It's a worn, leather bound book, the collector's kind you wouldn't find anywhere anymore. The Iliad.

"I found it in a second-hand bookstore," she says. "I remember you told me your mom used to read you stories like this."

He stares down at the book. It's such a thoughtful gift. He's already thinking of bringing it with him on Finn's next trip to re-read during breaks. So why does it make his chest ache?

He knows why. Because of his conversation with Clarke a while back. Because if he had the chance, he would go back to school, and he wouldn't just read during breaks. He would read all the time. And he would go to classes and read some more, and he would read until he got sick of readings and complained about it while secretly revelling in the fact that he was there, that he was going to school, that he was actually getting to do this.

He hates the way Clarke reminded him of this fantasy. He hates Clarke's ability to make him dream, to make him want things for himself. It just makes it more painful to come back to reality.

"Do you like it?" Gina asks at his silence.

Her voice startles him back to reality. She sounds a little uncertain, worried even, as if she might've done the wrong thing. "Course I do. Thank you," he replies, and puts the book aside to kiss her well enough to make her forget his expression.

—

Several months pass. Bellamy settles into his new work, which involves a lot of travel. He makes sure to make it up to Gina whenever he's gone for a long time. But, she doesn't seem to mind.

"Sometimes when you're not around, I look up Finn Collins on gossip sites," she tells him one morning in bed. At his scandalized look she starts laughing. "Not to look at him, silly. The paparazzi usually get you in their pictures too. And then I get to look at you and not miss you as much."

His heart grows about ten times bigger at the softness in her voice. What she sees in him, he still doesn't know. But he's glad it makes her smile.

Meanwhile, Clarke is deep in her first semester of med school, and they talk even less now. He misses her, but he doesn't dare call her more than once a week. He doesn't want to become overbearing and make her push him away even further.

One morning, he's getting ready for work—Finn's got a movie premiere tonight, which guarantees some action—and Gina comes up behind him, wrapping her arms around his middle.

He relaxes back into her. She kisses her cheek, and he closes his eyes to it, at least until she says, "We've never talked about having children."

His eyes fly open. He disengages carefully and turns around in her arms. "Where is this coming from?"

"Nowhere. We just never talked about it. And I want to. Do you?"

Bellamy hesitates. They've been together for years. Married for over half a year. He supposes it had to come up sooner rather than later. And he'd be lying if he said half the reason he was saving his money wasn't for that.

Gina takes his hand. "You'd make such a good father. You've got a way with children."

He thinks back to his teenage years. He and Octavia clashed a lot then as he tried to stop her from doing stupid teenage things, and Clarke had poked fun at him for acting like a dad. Octavia had made the comparison too. He vividly remembers her screaming at him once. You're not my father! And if you were you'd be a shit one!

He can't help but release a half-laugh as he rubs his face. "I'm not so sure."

Gina clearly wasn't prepared for his hesitation. She blinks, her smile fading a bit. "Okay, well." She kisses his cheek again. "Just think about it. We have lots of time."

—

And he does think about it, the whole day at work. Him. A parent. With Gina.

The thought scares him shitless and it's not just because of his track record with Octavia.

He's still trying to puzzle out exactly what it is in the limo to the premiere, sitting across from Finn, who's all decked out tonight in an expensive tuxedo, his hair carefully styled, scrolling through his phone. Bellamy's only distracted from his thoughts when Finn says, "Whoa, Clarke's mom is going to prison after all?"

Bellamy must look shocked, because Finn adds, "I just saw the news." He holds up his phone.

Abandoning decorum, Bellamy grabs it out of his hand to take a closer look. His stomach drops. Five years. Clarke's mom is going away for five years. She must be devastated.

"Note to self," Finn says. "Hotshot lawyers can't get me out of everything." He chuckles. Bellamy kinda wants to deck him, at least until he becomes serious again. "Shitty situation. I hope Clarke's doing okay."

Bellamy hands his phone back, eyeing him. He makes it sound like he knows her well. He makes it sound like he cares about her.

"She gave me her number. We talk sometimes," Finn explains, then pauses to shoot him a winning grin. "Not everyone hates me as much as you do, Bellamy."

—

Bellamy gets home that night quite late. It's two in the morning, and the house is dark. He sits in the kitchen and boils water for tea and debates calling Clarke now. She's probably lying awake with her thoughts.

He finds himself pulling out his phone. If she doesn't want to talk to him, she won't pick up. It won't hurt to call.

Just before he can, though, Gina's voice behind him makes him jump.

"I heard about Clarke's mother."

He turns in his chair. Gina's standing behind him, in her uniform.

"Gina," he says, feeling guilty inexplicably. "I thought you had a night shift."

"I do. It's been a slow night at the station, so I thought I'd drop by to pick up something to do." She holds up a book and studies him, her eyes soft. "Are you going to call Clarke?"

He nods. "You wanna stay for it?" He always invites her to stay, to come with him, to be around when he's around Clarke. Just in case she wants to. She never has taken him up on it, not once.

Gina is silent. "You've been working seventeen hours. Couldn't you call after you got some sleep?"

He is very tired. There were plenty of overzealous fans to manhandle who were trying to get at Finn during the premiere. And he could probably fall asleep right here. But not before he tries to reach Clarke.

GIna seems to parse that out without him saying a word. She purses her lips, like she's biting words back, but then she takes a breath.

"You always go running to her. Do you think she would do the same for you?"

He can't speak. Because he doesn't know anymore. But also because he didn't expect Gina to say that. In all their years of being together, she's never said a word against Clarke.

Gina hugs herself. "I just worry about you sometimes."

"Gina."

"No. We need to have this conversation. Clarke can't be your first priority forever, Bellamy."

He stares up at her, pleading desperately and silently for her not to start this. "You told me," he says, nearly choking on the words, "when we first met, you said I wouldn't have to choose."

"Not between me and her. But you're still going to have to choose. Her, or your family." Gina drifts closer. "If we had children, they'd have to come first. Before anything or anyone else. You know that, right?"

He's bewildered. "Of course I do. And they would." He means it without a doubt. He would be all in.

"But would you resent me for it?"

"Why would I resent you?" She's silent. He rises from his chair to take her shoulders. "What does that mean?"

Gina takes a deep, shuddering breath.

"It means I think you can't help it that Clarke's got a part of your soul. A part I can't touch, even with this." She holds up her wrist, and her crown tattoo. "And I think the reason you're afraid to have children with me is because it will take you away from her. Tell me I'm wrong."

He can't.

She walks out.

He follows. "Gina—"

"I have to go, Bellamy. I have work." Her voice, even after all that, is still gentle, and that's what is most devastating. When she turns to look at him her eyes are full of unshed tears instead of hatred like he deserves. "I'll see you in the morning."

She leaves him on the front step, staring helplessly after her.

—

He doesn't end up calling Clarke. He crawls into bed and tries desperately to think of anything but her. But he can't.

She's in his head, in his heart, in his soul. The impact she's had on his life is something he's not sure he could ever explain to anyone. Loving her is as natural as breathing. Just as vital too.

And he knows he's a horrible husband for that.

—

The next morning Bellamy only wakes up because his phone is ringing. And ringing. And ringing. Groggy-eyed, he fumbles around on the bedside table for it. It's Gina's cell.

He brings it to his ear. "Gina, I'm—"

"Bellamy?" He freezes, halfway to sitting position, because the voice on the other end is not Gina. It's someone else. It's one of her coworkers at the fire station. Why is one of Gina's co-workers using her phone?

Something is very wrong.

When he doesn't answer, the voice on the other end says, "Bellamy, are you there?"

He swallows. "Yeah," he says, "yeah, I'm here."

"Bellamy, I'm very sorry." A pause. The voice is soft, and sad. "You might want to sit down for this…"

—

Clarke is having the worst sort of morning.

First, she got chewed out in one of her clinical sessions for not doing the reading, although in all fairness she'd done the wrong reading. She was distracted, and cried out after talking to her mom, and just emotionally exhausted. Her mom's got five years in prison. Dr. Singh's got twenty, because she orchestrated the whole thing. But still. Five years.

Clarke waited for Bellamy to call her all night. He didn't, and she cried some more, because once upon a time he would've, and then she forces herself to stop crying because this distance is exactly what she'd tried to build, so she can't complain about it.

Then, during lunch she went to the grocery store with Roan, and picked up a tabloid because she is a masochist apparently. People were speculating about how she's cracking under the stress and sources close to Clarke tell us she's been experimenting with hard drugs but at least she's lost weight! She looks great!

It's such garbage. She wonders who would've told them she was doing drugs. Which she isn't, by the way. At least not since that one time with Niylah months and months ago, when it was her father's birthday and she was remembering their tradition of going out for ice cream together on birthdays. Once upon a time she'd have talked to Bellamy about it but, well, Bellamy was recently married and she didn't want to bother him—

She doubts Niylah would've told the press anything. Niylah's a pot-smoking girl who sells canned jam and paintings out of her trailer and is fully content to live alone on the edge of the forest forever. She doesn't seem the type to run to the media. But what does Clarke know? They're just fuck buddies.

As if her day wasn't already ruined, when she returns to the university to study for a bit before her next small group session, she finds Lexa Woods herself sitting in the atrium of the medical building.

"What are you doing here?" Clarke asks dully.

"I have business in town. I thought I'd come see you while I was here." Lexa clasps her hands on the table.

Clarke doesn't bother to ask how Lexa knows she comes here to study. If there's one thing Lexa is good at, it's getting intel.

"Clarke, I still want you to be part of the company."

Clarke laughs a little hysterically. "I'm not talking to you."

"Yes, you are. You want to hear what I have to say. I was sorry to hear about your mother."

Clarke grips the edge of her book rather hard. Roan shifts closer; not, she knows, to protect her, but to protect her from doing something stupid.

"I really was," Lexa goes on. "I called her to see how she was doing. I'm going to do everything in my power to help her."

Clarke's well aware of this offer. Abby had told Clarke as much over the phone. "We don't need your help."

"Please, Clarke." Lexa's green eyes are wide, earnest, and Clarke hates that she looks so remorseful. What gives her the right to plead with Clarke after what she'd done? "Tell me what it will take for you to forgive me."

"Hell freezing over. Now leave."

Lexa stands her ground. "Clarke, I know we're not soulmates, but—"

"Yes, I'm very aware now that we weren't even close to soulmates."

"—it doesn't change the way I feel. I regret what I did. If I could do it over, I wouldn't have done it, even if it meant losing Polaris. I've realized now that the company's not as important… not as important as you."

The silence between them is loud.

"You should've realized it before," Clarke snaps. She doesn't want to risk getting her heart and soul broken again. It's not worth it. The universe told her that quite clearly when it put a second soulmark on her wrist, but she'd ignored the warning. She won't make that mistake again. Even if she still doesn't understand the purpose behind it all.

Lexa seems to grasp that Clarke's not budging. She nods slowly, and gets up to leave, but then Clarke is struck with a sudden thought.

"There's one thing you could do for me." Lexa turns around. Clarke crosses her arms. "Give me Dr. Singh's old lab. The soulmarks research. All of it you can get your hands on that the court case left behind."

Lexa seems startled. Clarke has startled herself by asking. But the thing is, she still can't let it go. What she knows about Dr. Singh's old research from reading articles had intrigued her. More than anything, Clarke just wants answers. She wants to understand why the universe did this. She wants to understand why some people get second soulmarks and others don't. She just cannot roll over and accept fate without trying to figure it out first.

And maybe that would give her some peace.

Lexa blinks slowly. "And if I do that, you'll forgive me?"

"No," Clarke says, and picks up her books to find a new place to study. "But I'll stop planning my revenge."

—

The next few days are uneventful, or about as uneventful as Clarke's life gets. She goes to her classes and doesn't socialize with anyone, just comes home and studies, or at least tries to. Her phone blows up more than usual. Everyone is trying to check in on her to see if she's okay. She always checks who's calling, but she never picks up. She's still waiting for one person to call.

Then one day she gets a call from someone unexpected—Bellamy's sister. Clarke stares at the phone and debates whether to answer. If Octavia is yet another person calling to offer condolences, she's not interested. But then again, that really doesn't sound like something Octavia would do. So there's got to be some other reason she's calling—

Clarke snatches up the phone so fast she startles herself. "Hello?"

"Was beginning to wonder if you'd ever pick up," Octavia says. "Well? Did you hear?"

Her words are curt, angry. Clarke rubs her eyes. "Hear about what?"

Octavia's voice becomes distant, like she's removed the phone from her ear to talk to someone else in the room. "She doesn't even know, Mom."

Clarke frowns. Octavia's back in town with Aurora? What on earth could make Octavia come back?

Octavia comes back on the phone. Clarke asks, "What is it that I don't know?"

A thick pause. Then, in typical blunt Octavia fashion: "Gina's dead, Clarke."

Clarke wonders if she heard her right. That cannot be true. She did not hear that. "What?"

"Gina died."

Maybe this is a dream. Clarke still cannot completely grasp this idea, that Bellamy's soulmate died. It can't be true. She wants so badly for it not to be true, for his sake.

Octavia keeps going. "She died on the job a week ago and my brother is acting insane."

"What's he doing?" Clarke whispers, dreading the answer.

"He's doing the same things, Clarke! That's the problem! He goes to work like everything's fine and comes home and does nothing, then gets up and does it all over the next day. He won't talk about it to anybody but I know he's not eating or sleeping."

"Why didn't—why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Well, I'm telling you now, aren't I?" Octavia snaps. "I told him he was being stupid, and then I threatened to call you and get you back in town and force him to talk to somebody. He got mad at me, told me I shouldn't dare put something else on your plate, so. I figured that was a good sign that I should."

As Octavia speaks, Clarke is already ripping shirts off their hangers and throwing them haphazardly into a suitcase. "I'm glad you told me."

"Yeah, well." Octavia still sounds pissed, but Clarke's known her long enough to know that's how Octavia gets when she's sad. "You could at least call him. I know you're studying to be a hotshot doctor or whatever, but my brother could use a five minute phone call, if you can spare it these days."

Clarke digs her teeth into her bottom lip for a second and then says, in a measured voice, "Of course I can. He's my best friend."

"So prove it," Octavia replies. And hangs up.

—

Clarke goes to her program directors and tells them she needs time off. Things are difficult with her mom, she tells them. With everything going on with the company, the stress is getting to be too much. Thankfully, they're understanding. She gets a month off, and if she needs more, she's told quietly, she could take a year, and pick up where she left off as part of the incoming class.

She calls Bellamy. He never answers, although she leaves plenty of messages.

Clarke gets on a plane back home. The trip was a long time coming, anyway; she needs to see her mother, make sure she's okay. And Kane, if he needs any help with managing the Arkadia subsidiary. Although Clarke has no desire to be involved with the company anymore, she knows it's still her duty to an extent.

As soon as she lands, she calls Bellamy again. Again, no answer. Well, that won't stop her. She knows where he lives.

Unfortunately, some people spot her at the airport despite her gigantic sunglasses, and come up asking for photos. Roan steps in front of them, shaking his head, but they point their phones at her anyway. Clarke's certain everyone on the internet will know she's back in her home city soon enough.

"Make sure we aren't followed before you start going to Bellamy's house," she instructs Roan in the car. He's done a good job sinking back into relative anonymity for the few years they've been separated, and she doesn't want to ruin that. Roan nods.

On the way, Clarke calls Aurora and tries to get more details about what happened. From the sounds of it, Bellamy had gotten into a fight with Gina before she left for work, although no one seems to know what the fight had been about. Gina and her team had been called in for a fire that had seemed manageable at first but spiralled out of control. There were children in the building, and against advice Gina had gone in to make sure there were no others.

She had dragged out another child before collapsing, and later died from smoke inhalation.

It's tragic. Gina died a hero. And Clarke just knows in her bones from hearing that story that Bellamy's blaming himself for it somehow.

In any case, it sounds like Gina's best friend is arranging the funeral, and Bellamy's paying for it all. That's happening in a week's time.

Eventually, Roan pulls into the driveway of their little house. It's a decently old place, built thirty-something years ago on a narrow street where the trees on peoples' front lawns are so old and big that they tangle with each other's branches from across the road, causing a canopy effect. Bellamy and Gina's tree is the prettiest one, by Clarke's measure.

The Rover's in the driveway, too. Bellamy's in there.

Clarke jumps out of the car before Roan's even turned off the engine, runs up the front steps, and rings the doorbell. She strains her ears. She doesn't hear a thing. She rings it again, and again and again, enough to be irritating.

She gives up on the doorbell after a while and knocks instead. "Hey!" she yells. "Open up." She bangs on the door a few more times. No dice.

She calls him again. Hopefully she can annoy him enough that he'll come out just to bite her head off. But again, it goes straight to voicemail. It's worrying. She chews her lip.

She presses her face against the window in the storm door because she's nosy like that. His boots are lined up carefully on the mat, his jacket hung up on a hook. A pair of Gina's shoes have been lined up right next to his—not her work boots, because those are the ones she died in—but some pair of tennis shoes that he must've put there. For denial's sake.

Clarke shakes her head. Bellamy is not budging, not tonight anyway. She pulls out her phone as she walks back to Roan's car. She's got a new idea.

—

A day after Clarke shows up at his house and then leaves, Bellamy gets dragged along with Finn for a few days' trip to Dubai for some business, or for a photoshoot, or something. Bellamy barely pays attention. He's just going through the motions.

If he slows down, he'll break, and he just—he can't. He's paying for the funeral, so he may as well make some money while he can. He's very glad he was saving for that rainy day fund. This is about as rainy as it gets.

So he keeps working, and getting people out of Finn's face so he can do his business, and he does it all completely numbly. Finn has no idea, of course. Finn only knows Bellamy's requested a few days off when they get back. He doesn't know it's for his wife's funeral.

Even thinking about it makes him want to lie down in bed and never get up again. Which is, of course, why he refuses to sleep there anymore. He keeps replaying their last conversation in his head. He keeps seeing the tears in her eyes when she left. He keeps thinking about how she was trying to save children when she died.

"I'm free from work until one this afternoon," Finn announces as they stride through the foyer of the opulent hotel they're staying in.

Bellamy raises an eyebrow. Finn is wearing a tailored designer suit and spent half an hour on his hair this morning. None of the other bodyguards ask, so Bellamy does. "Then where are we going?"

"I have a lunch date." Finn flashes his trademark grin. Of course. Finn's ability to pick up girls in any city he goes to is just another mystery Bellamy can't figure out.

On the way, the whole guard detail puts their heads together and assesses the restaurant Finn's chosen. Exits, possible threats, good vantage points. Bellamy's assigned the main corridor to guard. Now that Finn's gotten over the novelty of a new bodyguard, they rotate through who's going to stay next to him in situations such as these.

He settles in there, leaning against the wall and waiting for Finn's guest to arrive. His earpiece buzzes with a voice. "She's here. Headed your way."

He pushes off the wall, clasps his hands in front of him, prepared to politely invite Finn's guest in. But his stoicism drains out of him when the door opens and someone lets Clarke in.

His jaw drops a little. He's just not prepared to see her, yet again. He hasn't seen her since that A-lister party in the summer. She's wearing a sleeveless green sundress that hugs her body, her hair down and curled around her face, makeup on. It still doesn't hide the tiredness in her features. But what the hell is Clarke doing here? And more so, what is she doing on a date with Finn Collins?

Clarke looks him up and down, her eyes catching on certain details; and Bellamy wishes he'd forced himself to shave today, or thought to iron the stray wrinkle in his shirt, or polish his shoes or take even the most cursory look at his hair—and he would've, if he'd known he was going to see Clarke today. But instead Clarke is standing here and silently cataloguing every small thing about his appearance that tells her something about him he doesn't want her to know.

Then she frowns. "You're not coming in with me?"

Bellamy is afraid to speak. When he doesn't answer, Clarke's eyes shift past him, into the dining room. She raises her voice.

"Finn, why's Bellamy out here?"

"I don't know," Finn calls back from inside, sounding confused. "You'd have to ask my chief of security."

"Well," Clarke says, "Give me a minute." She slides the door shut without waiting for an answer and faces Bellamy. They're alone in this particular corridor, and Bellamy suddenly understands everything in a heartbeat.

He's angry. "Don't tell me you came all the way to Dubai for a date with Finn Collins, just to talk to me."

"Well, you didn't give me much choice." The set of her jaw is defiant. "Next time, open the door when I knock."

"You're out of your damn mind, you know that?"

"This was the only way I could check in on you before the funeral."

He inhales sharply. She tilts her head, stepping closer, and the scent of her perfume washes over him. The heat of her body, close to his. This corridor doesn't feel big enough for the two of them.

"How are you doing?" she asks softly.

"I'm fine."

"Really? Because I definitely wasn't fine when my soulmate died."

His eyes are burning; he blinks it back. He can't do this with her. Not when he's now certain that his love for Clarke is what got Gina killed. "Finn's waiting for you in there."

Then she reaches for him. A hand on his arm. "I'm not leaving until you agree to let me in when you go back home."

"No."

"Bellamy."

"I don't need you anymore," he snaps, and watches her flinch. It hurts him, too, and he sort of likes that, in a twisted way. He likes confirming to himself that he's a horrible person. In the same league as the men who beat his mother, if not worse. "I don't want you around. Now go enjoy your date with Spacewalker and leave me alone."

She absorbs that, the vitriol he packs into every word, and then looks up at him even softer.

For fuck's sake, he thinks despairingly. How does she always know? He can't keep up the angry facade for long enough. He feels it crumbling, and she simply puts her hand on his jaw when it starts to, when he can feel tears again burning at his eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she says gently. "Gina was… she was one of a kind. In more ways than one."

He feels his shoulders shudder without cause. He takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut for a second. "Please, Clarke. Not here."

He doesn't know what exactly he's begging for. The longer she gazes at him with those big, blue, understanding eyes, the faster he loses control.

"I won't," Clarke says after a second. "But promise me we'll do it when we get home."

He grinds his teeth. She wants to unravel him. She wants to examine him and figure out what he's feeling. No way is he letting her do that.

She goes on, voice steely. "I'm going to stay until you do. My faculty gave me a month off. But if you keep being stubborn, then I guess I'll just have to stay longer. I'll give up my seat in the class."

He glares at her. Her gaze is unwavering, resolute. He has a feeling she'd do it, too. She would leave her new career, drop out, just to spite him if he doesn't relent.

He can't let her give that up. "Fine," he snaps, and her eyes flash with triumph. "You and I come home after this, we have it out. Then you go back to school."

She nods. Bellamy stiffly opens the door for her again. She steps through.

He pushes it shut a little harder than he needs to.

He spends the next hour leaning against the door, straining his ears. But it's hard to understand any conversation. He hears them talking, but their voices are indistinct.

He definitely hears Clarke laugh at one point, though. A really loud laugh. He wracks his brain, trying to think of a time he's made her laugh just like that. He can't think of one.

Then it's over and he hastily gets back in position as Clarke comes through the door with Finn. She pauses at his side. "I'll see you later, Bellamy."

It hangs in the air like a threat. Finn looks between them like he really wants to understand what the hell is going on with them. Bellamy would like to know that as well.

"Yes, you will," he says curtly, because he knows she's not going to leave until she has final confirmation that he's agreed to her deal.

She smiles and brushes out the door with Finn, leaving him with only the lingering scent of her perfume.

—

As he hears from Finn later, Clarke took a plane right back home after their date.

"I'm not an idiot," Finn says. "I know she came to talk to you. She basically told me, but even if she hadn't, it was obvious."

His eyes are on Bellamy, curious. No doubt wondering why Clarke flew to a different country to go on a date just so she could talk to her friend. Bellamy remains tight-lipped, and eventually Finn gives up trying to get answers from him.

They fly back home eventually, and Bellamy finally has his time off.

Of course, it's not really time off; it's time for Gina's funeral in two days. He spends the first day with Gina's firefighter best friend, helping her with last minute arrangements with the funeral parlour and guests. When they're done and she's escorting him out, she quietly tells him Gina talked about him at work all the time.

"She really adored you," she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. Bellamy thinks she's trying to be comforting. Instead, the guilt that overtakes him nearly makes him cry.

He doesn't, though. He just tells her to send him all the bills.

The next day he has no obligations whatsoever. It's the day before the funeral and he fully intends to spend it inside the house, alone, doing nothing. He'd told his mother and sister as much.

Except around noon he spots Clarke walk up the driveway, and he remembers his promise to her. He heads to the door with an air of defeat, trying to mentally prepare for her interrogation about what happened that night—because he hasn't told a soul.

But that's not what happens at all. As soon as he opens the door she just walks up to him and hugs him, hard.

It startles him, how tight she clings to him. Then he wraps his arms back around her, lets himself cling to her, too. He doesn't give a damn that the front door is still open, that Roan can see them clearly from the view of the town car. He doesn't give a damn about anything today.

They stay like that in the front foyer for god knows how long. It's a car alarm down the street that jars them out of it eventually. Clarke turns to wave a pointed goodbye to Roan, who seems to hesitate before getting back in the car. Bellamy closes the front door to lead her inside.

She dumps her purse on the table, and pulls out of it a box of teabags. "Sit down," she orders him, and he does, sinking into a hard-backed chair in the small kitchen. "No," she says. "Not there. There." She nods her chin at the couch in the adjoining living room.

He does. He hears her put on water for tea. A few minutes later, she joins him with two mugs. They sip in silence. Bellamy waits for her to talk. But she doesn't; Clarke turns on the TV, to the History channel, which is playing some documentary he's already seen before. But he watches it again. He lets himself sink into it for a while.

As they watch, somehow he finds himself leaning into Clarke's side, and she draws his head onto her shoulder, wrapping her arm around him.

They stay like that long after the documentary is over, and the next one has begun. Rain patters against the windows. It lulls him. He dozes off.

When he wakes, it's because she was trying to get up. "Sorry," she whispers. The living room is darkened; it's late. "I just have to go to the bathroom."

It's the first words either of them have uttered in hours. He looks at the clock.

"You should get some sleep for tomorrow," she adds.

He nods woodenly.

"I'll go," she says. "I just have to call Roan."

"Alright."

A pause. "Or I could stay."

"Yes," he agrees instantly. He suddenly can't stand the idea of being alone with his thoughts tonight.

Clarke tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her eyes warm with understanding, and nods. He directs her to the master bedroom bathroom, since the ordinary bathroom's plumbing still isn't working. Bellamy no longer has the heart to finish the renovations he had started with Gina.

When Clarke comes out, he's got the guest bedroom made up. They both stare at the bed. Bellamy dimly remembers when he and Gina bought this house, they'd thought this room could make a nursery some day.

"You can sleep in here," he says.

"Okay," Clarke whispers. "Thank you."

He pauses. "Or you can stay with me on the couch."

"Yes," she agrees instantly.

He takes the comforter off the bed, takes her hand and leads her back to the living room, where he drapes the blanket over them both. It's not a great couch for sleeping. Not quite wide enough for two people to lay side by side. Nothing like the ones Clarke has in her home. But they wriggle until they find an okay sleeping position. Imperfect, but they make it work, just like everything else about them.

—

He doesn't remember much about the funeral of his soulmate. Just that he's sad, but he doesn't cry, although his mother does.

—

Clarke doesn't leave after the funeral. In fact, she sort of moves in.

Bellamy's glad she seems to know he wants her there, because there's no way he could ask her to stay without feeling even guiltier.

She stays by his side through visitors, people offering condolences, and family. And she stays over most nights at his house, too. Her overnight bag sits in the guest room although they always sleep in the living room together. Neutral ground.

During the day, they're usually apart. Clarke's still studying for her finals. And Bellamy works a lot still, but Finn's schedule is a little more relaxed until the new year, so he says. Not a press tour, even. Bellamy's not complaining; more time with Clarke at home in the evenings and on the weekends. He keeps a countdown in his head to when Clarke has to go back to school.

Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don't, but she does make it better, in her way. On her first weekend with him, she announces they're going to finish the remodelling of the bathroom. Together, they put down tiles, repaint the walls, and install that damn faucet. He touches up the high parts of the wall she can't reach. She hands him tools when he's trying to fix the pipes under the sink.

At night they sleep, or try to at least. Sometimes the nightmares keep them up.

One night he opens his eyes at three in the morning because Clarke's gone from the couch, and his heart leaps in panic—what if she up and left?—but then he hears her talking, muffled, from just outside. He gets up and goes to find her.

She goes silent when he opens the front door and pokes his head out. She's not on the phone, so for a second he can't figure out who she was talking to. But he takes her in, sitting on the lawn, the frosty grass. "It's freezing out," he tells her. "At least put on a jacket."

He can't be sure but he thinks Clarke blushes like she's been caught doing something. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

He studies her. When he'd opened the door, her head had been tilted towards the sky. It's clear out, not a cloud to hide the stars. He slowly puts the pieces together. "Were you talking to Wells?"

She bites her lip. "Yes."

She looks nervous, like he might judge her for it. In truth he's glad she has found a way to keep Wells with her. "What do you talk about?"

Clarke hesitates, and he realizes he must have overstepped. This isn't his business. "Never mind," he says gruffly, taking a step back inside. "You don't have to tell me."

"No, wait," Clarke says, and pats the grass next to her. "Come here."

He grabs his jacket and hers. "Let's sit on the Rover." Clarke must be freezing her ass off in the frost.

They clamber onto the Rover's hood together, and lean back against the windshield. They gaze at the same star.

"Did I tell you about the time Wells broke someone's nose?" Clarke says suddenly. His eyebrows raise.

"Now this I gotta hear."

She tells him how Wells had always had a high tolerance for bullshit, but not when someone talked shit about her. He'd tackled a kid two grades above him to the ground and ended that quickly enough. "People thought because he was good, that he must be weak too. They always got the surprise of their lives."

That sounds about right for Wells Jaha. There were a lot of surprising things about that guy. Bellamy tells her how shocked he was when he found out Wells actually had read many of the classics Bellamy loved. They'd spent hours in the library that first time, reading.

"I was so happy that you two liked each other." Clarke's voice is fond, and Bellamy smiles a bit, not bothering to deny it. They gaze up at the sky for a long while.

"We could always get Gina a star, too," Clarke whispers, but he shakes his head.

"No." That just feels wrong. This is Wells' thing now. Besides, he has no problems at all keeping Gina in his thoughts currently. The problem is mostly that she won't leave.

"Tell me something about her," Clarke says, and he blinks.

"About Gina?"

"Yeah. Something. A happy memory."

He closes his eyes and searches in himself for something that isn't wrapped in the barbed thorns of guilt and grief. It's harder than it should be.

But eventually he finds a simple memory. He tells her about the roses Gina had planted in the front yard when they first moved in, an attempt to make the place look more inviting.

"Still looked like shit," he says, "And I told her that, and she said, 'But now it's shit with roses.'"

Clarke half-laughs, delighted.

"I can't even imagine Gina swearing. Bet you loved that."

Bellamy sighs. "Damn right I did."

—

The last week of Clarke's vacation comes. He's painfully aware of it. He doesn't want it to end. It's comfortable and safe with her around. Ironically, the guilt doesn't eat at him as badly when she's around, even if she's half the reason for it.

On that last Thursday morning, they yawn periodically as they move around each other in the kitchen. He's got rhubarb cooking on the stove to put in waffles, a recipe Octavia used to love growing up.

Clarke's making tea, her towel thrown over her shoulder in preparation for a shower, when she says, "I won't be here tomorrow."

He turns around, trying to hide his dismay. He's getting pathetically clingy. It's just one day, he tells himself sternly. She's got a life, you should be glad she's only gone for one day. Of course there's other things she needs to sort out during this month-long break of hers.

Clarke's back is to him when she says, "I'm going to visit my mom. In prison."

He can see right through her casualness. "Alright." He pauses. "Do you want me to come?"

She shakes her head. "I have to do this by myself."

He nods, and because things are too silent, he puts his hand deliberately on her back. Just as a reminder that he's here. The tension in her instantly seems to melt away, and she leans her hands on the counter, her head bowing. They stand like that for just a minute, until finally Clarke pushes away from the counter, and leaves for her shower.

He makes the waffles while she's gone. As tends to happen with this recipe, some of the runny rhubarb splatters on his shirt during the cooking process. So once he's done, he puts the waffles in the oven to keep them warm and retreats to the master bedroom to find a clean shirt.

He's rooting through a drawer in the dresser by his bed when Clarke steps out of the bathroom.

She starts. "Oh."

He freezes with his hands still clutching a shirt. He usually doesn't go into the bedroom when she's in the shower, for this exact reason, but he also hadn't expected she'd step out so soon.

He looks up and his mind blanks. She's wrapped in a towel and nothing else.

Desire hits him like a truck, without warning.

Clarke stares at him, clutching the knot of her towel, and he knows she's seen it. Not only that, but she's responding to the way he's looking at her. He can see it in how she bites her lip, how colour rises to her cheeks and spreads slowly down her neck and to the tops of her breasts; how her thighs under the towel shift as though she's pressing her legs together. The dark look that overtakes her eyes, as though she's thinking about it too. What it would be like.

God, how he wants to reach over and tug at the knot holding it all together. To see the towel flutter to the carpet and... and…

He shakes himself, appalled. How screwed up is he, that he is having these thoughts on the bed he shared with Gina just a few short weeks ago?

He turns his face away. "Raven's right," he says to himself.

"About what?"

He shakes his head, a bitter smile on his lips. "Gina was too good for me."

Clarke draws closer, wrapped only in that towel, and fuck, she's unbearable. Even though he's not even looking at her, he's hyper aware; there's the scent of her soap, the weight of her body bowing his bed down as she clambers onto it. The sound of her bare skin sliding over his sheets as she crawls next to him nearly drives him out of his mind.

He's wrestling with self-control when Clarke takes his face in both her hands, forcing him to look at her. "No, she wasn't," she says clearly. "You're good, too."

Her voice is husky. It does strange things to his body. Her clean, soapy smell makes his heart beat furiously, along with the knowledge that she is wearing nothing under that towel.

Clarke tilts her head to gaze into his eyes. "You're so good, Bellamy."

He gives up. The guilt and the lust become one.

"I'm tired of being good," he tells her. Then he puts his hand on the back of her neck and pulls her towards him.

Clarke freezes up for a second when he kisses her, but only for a second. Then her lips soften. She kisses him back, and it ramps up far quicker than he had intended—and suddenly they're just going at it, zero to a hundred in three seconds flat. She wraps her bare, still damp arms around his neck, and he pulls at that ridiculous knot on her towel, unravelling the damn thing.

It falls and gathers at her hips. While they kiss, he slides his hands up the smooth expanse of her back, to her shoulders, to her neck, to tangle through her wet hair while she presses herself against his chest. She's warm and soft and still wet in the hollows of her body and—It just isn't enough for Bellamy. He surges forward, pushing her back until her back hits the bed and he can toss the towel out of the way completely.

Clarke's breathing hard, her wet hair splayed all over the comforter. Her body, too. She stares right at him, looking just as feral as him but waiting, waiting for him to take the long look he's been aching to have. He's pretty sure she even arches her back for him.

He knows he's got a ravenous look on his face but he can't bring himself to care. All that flushed skin, from her head all the way down to her toes, uninterrupted by lines of clothing. All those soft curves for him to touch. He doesn't know where to put his mouth first.

Still mulling it over, he crawls fully on top of her, and the position strikes him as bizarrely familiar. A moment later it clicks—they were just like this on the rooftop as teeenagers, kissing innocently.

Well, there's nothing innocent about them anymore. Nothing fucking innocent about it at all when he gets his hands on her, squeezing her breasts together and revelling in the sound of her moans, in the way her legs wrap around his middle and urge him down. There's nothing innocent about the way she tugs his hair when he rakes his teeth down her throat and lower, when he captures her nipple in his mouth and sucks punishingly hard.

"Bellamy," she cries, and she's said his name countless times over their lives, but never quite like that. It drives him wild. His grip on her becomes surely bruising. He wants more.

So does she, apparently. Her small hand trails down his abdomen, to the waistband of his shorts, then lower. He gasps and jerks away from her touch involuntarily. He needs a fucking minute here.

She hooks her finger into his waistband, tantalizingly close. He rises slightly off of her to brace his hands on either side of her head and they watch each other, both breathing hard. Her legs around him loosen, and he can feel the evidence of her arousal in how she's dampened the fabric of his shirt. Adrenaline courses through him. God, he wants her so badly. Right here on this bed. He wants to push inside her and watch her face as he does it… and she looks like she wants it too.

Bellamy has seen his best friend in many ups and downs, many states of emotion. He's seen how Clarke looks when she's laughing and crying and shouting and everything in between. He's seen her both heartbroken and happy. He thought he'd seen it all. But it strikes him here that there is a part of her he has had no claim to up until now. He still has no idea what she looks like when she's coming undone. And he's greedy for it. He wants that final piece of her, too.

He palms her breast again, just to see the expression on her face, to hear the startled sound that escapes her. The light glints off his wedding band, still on his hand, and he pauses to stare at it for a second. It hurts him to look at. The hurt he deserves, the hurt he wants. See what a horrible soulmate you were. See the truth.

Clarke turns her head to follow his gaze, and sees it too. Her lips part. "Bellamy."

She says his name like a warning. He wants it to go back to how it sounded before. He leans down again, but she pushes at his chest, making him stop.

"No," she murmurs, her voice still husky. "No." She's pale suddenly, and he can see her mind working. Figuring out exactly what he's doing, laying her out naked on the bed he shared with Gina, with his wedding band on.

It's confirmed when she says, softly, "Bellamy, I'm not letting you use me to prove to yourself you're a monster."

The words are like a bucket of ice water.

He laughs but it sounds empty. He clambers off her and leans against the headboard. "Trust me, Clarke, you didn't even need to be around for me to prove that."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

She sits up, too, naked and tousled and flushed and—he averts his eyes. The towel's on the floor where he's thrown it. The shirt he'd been about to change into before this all happened is still on the bed, though, so he grabs it and tosses it in Clarke's direction.

She huffs but puts it on. Once he can hear that she has, he looks back at her, and the sight of her draped in his shirt is almost worse, but he can't well tell her to take it off again. He drops his face into his hands with a frustrated groan.

"Are you going to answer my question?" Clarke asks after a rather long minute.

Head still buried in his hands, he mutters, "You know what it meant."

"No, I don't. I need you to explain it to me. And I need you to look at me, too."

Her voice is strong, commanding, and helplessly he lifts his face up again. She's got her knees tucked under her, arms wrapped around herself, and thankfully staying on her side of the bed. Her eyes are intent on his, her entire body still, waiting for him to speak. Telling him without words that he has her full attention.

She deserves an explanation after what he just did to her and he knows that. He just doesn't know where to start.

"Gina and I got into an argument before she left that night," he finally says. Clarke nods.

"I know."

"It was about you."

Her eyes widen infinitesimally. She bites her lip, lashes sweeping down, as though considering. "Tell me," she says finally.

He does. He proceeds to tell her everything Gina had said to him that night. About children and love and the part of his soul that Clarke has. He's memorized every word perfectly, because every night her ghost whispers them into his ear as he's trying to sleep.

Bellamy tells Clarke all of it and leaves nothing out. He sees realization dawning in her eyes. Surprise, too.

When he's finished he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and Clarke says, in a tender voice he doesn't deserve, "You can't blame yourself for this. You loved her. Don't pretend like you didn't do everything in your power to make her happy."

"Well, that didn't help much in the end, did it?" he mutters. "She still left that night crying." He's been cheating on Gina emotionally for so long he's sort of amazed he hadn't realized it until now. Gina probably went back to work that night wondering why she, his soulmate, wasn't enough for him. She would have become distracted with the question while on the job…

"If I had just loved her enough—" he begins, but she cuts him off sharply.

"Don't, Bellamy. Don't go down that road. I've been there before and it's not good."

Bellamy doesn't say anything more. But he knows the same question haunts her to this day. There's no real answer to it, and that's the worst part. They just have to live with it.

He clambers off the bed. "I made waffles. Come on."

—

A few minutes later, Clarke emerges from the guest bedroom with her own clothes on, hair drying. He relaxes slightly. Although he doesn't think he'll ever forget the image of Clarke naked and moaning beneath him. He has a feeling he'll be revisiting it in the shower later, however fucked up that it is.

Clarke looks down at the kitchen table, which he's set with plates and maple syrup and whipped cream and fresh berries and glasses of milk, then up at him. "Is this supposed to be your apology for groping me back there?"

He nearly sprays his tea everywhere. "I wasn't—groping—" He stops when he realizes she's giggling silently, and also because there's no point in denying it. Here in the sunny kitchen it strikes him as funny, and then he's grinning too. "Yeah, yeah, have your damn laughs. Well? Is it a good enough apology?"

Her eyes dancing with mischief, she tears off a piece of waffle, popping it in her mouth. "I'll take it."

They sit across from each other at the kitchen table and eat, and every so often, he'll catch her eye and they'll both start laughing again.

—

Twenty-four hours later, Clarke's sitting at a cool metal table, waiting for her mother to come out and see her.

This is her first time visiting her mother in the prison, and she's nervous. She eyes the other women coming out to see their visitors. Abby Griffin is a well known name, and being well known can't be a good thing when you're new to places like these.

While she's waiting, she lays her hands palms up on the table. Her chess rook soulmark stares back at her. Her gaze shifts. Her right wrist is carefully blank, of course; she'd re-applied concealer on it this morning, as she does every morning immediately after her shower.

God, how lucky was she that Bellamy hadn't seen it yesterday?

That was her first clue, actually, that him kissing her and touching her wasn't completely about them. If Bellamy was paying attention he would've noticed her second soulmark immediately. But she'd wrapped her arms quickly around him and he had been more focused on other parts of her body, anyway.

She shivers a little at the memory, crosses her legs under the table. The time they'd kissed as teenagers is something she occasionally looks back on, and she always feels warm at the thought. She feels a little more than warm thinking about this though.

She'd actually had trouble looking at him in the kitchen afterwards; he just looked so good, standing in the same T-shirt he'd given her to wear minutes before, the shorts she'd slipped her hand halfway into. His hair still tousled from her hands. She had always loved his curls. Soft, with just the right amount of scratch. It had made her think of what it might feel like on the insides of her thighs.

She'd had to make a joke at that instant to stop herself from climbing him like a tree.

There's movement at the doorway, and Clarke half-stands to see her mother being brought in. She's wearing drab, brown prison issue clothes. Her wrists are bound in front of her. She looks gaunt.

"Clarke," she whispers, and sinks into the seat across from her. Clarke matches her. She tries not to move a muscle, not in her body, and not in her face. Seeing her mom like this is killing her.

Abby's eyes fill with tears. Clarke tries to smile.

"Mom, don't. Don't."

"I'm sorry, Clarke."

"It's not your fault. It's Lexa's."

"I'm the one who did the crime. And now you have to live with it, too, so I'm sorry."

A long pause. Clarke wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, realizing too late she'd put on mascara.

"Kane's told me what's happening at the company," Abby says. "And that you've agreed to take on a role. I'm glad."

Clarke doesn't tell her the only reason she's doing it is for the soulmarks research. She doesn't want to talk about that at all. "How are things here?" she asks, and watches her mother's face fall. "Are people treating you okay? Can I do anything for you?"

Her mother doesn't answer any of her questions. "It's only five years, Clarke." She seems to be talking to herself more than Clarke. "Just five years. It'll be over in no time."

She refuses to say anything more about it.

—

Clarke returns home that night feeling hollow. It's nearly ten at night; the porch lights of Bellamy's house are on.

"Night," she says mindlessly to Roan, and starts to get out.

"Are we headed back to your school on Sunday?" Roan asks. Clarke sighs.

"I guess so. Take Saturday off, I'm staying home." She always relieves him of duty when she's at Bellamy's place. Roan had tried to argue it once, that just because Bellamy was trained didn't mean he was mentally on the job while at home. But she'd waved it away. She trusts Bellamy. Full stop.

Bellamy's front door opens before she even reaches it, and Bellamy's silhouetted in the hallway, wearing a tan T-shirt and sweats. Without really meaning to, she breaks into a jog to hug him.

He catches her. Clarke puts as much as she can into that hug. She was gone for just one day, and it already feels like it was a lifetime. She has no idea how she's going to go back to how it was before.

She feels him exhale, his hand press into her hair. Then he pulls away to search her eyes intently.

She tries so hard for stoicism, but god, it's so hard. "She's not okay, Bellamy," she whispers. "She won't tell me how bad it is but I can tell it's bad in there and there's nothing I can do, and—"

He smoothes her hair away from her face, and leads her inside. "Okay."

She can't stop now, though. The door closes behind them and she keeps going. "There were paparazzi outside when I came out asking me about her, what I was going to do, and I don't want to think about that. They say that prison has a bad reputation when it comes to newcomers. I'm terrified for her. I just don't know what to do. I can't help her." She pauses because he's silent, and god, what is she doing, putting her problems on him when he's got his own? "Never mind. Let's just go to sleep."

"I've got a better idea," Bellamy says, and she realizes he's still watching her, his hands propped on his hips.

"Which is?"

"Not sleeping."

She blinks, her mind going back to yesterday morning—

Bellamy exhales, and she can tell he knows what she's thinking. A sticky moment. Then the corner of his mouth curls up. "Get your head out of the gutter. I mean let's go out."

Clarke feels herself flush, but she's not touching that one with a ten-foot pole, although they're already past it. "Go out? Right now?" She glances at the clock. "You mean go clubbing?" She hasn't done that in forever. Celebrity clubs are cesspools.

He shrugs. "Yeah. We both know we're not sleeping tonight anyway."

That much is true. Clarke was fully prepared to lie awake with her thoughts until the sun rose. Going somewhere and getting lost in a crowd and forgetting herself sounds like the most amazing thing right now. But… "I'll get recognized."

"Give me some credit, Clarke." He leans closer to her, a glint of the teenage, rebellious Bellamy of old in his eye. "I've snuck you out before."

—

A little while later, they get in the Rover. Clarke's put on a little black dress which does fantastic things for her cleavage, and she knows he noticed. Not because he was looking, but because he very deliberately wasn't. He did that when they were teens, too, when she came out in her bathing suit, or a deep cut shirt. She thought he was just being respectful. Now she suspects it's actually a self-control thing. That thought sends a dangerous thrill through her body.

While Bellamy's driving, she looks at him under her lashes, leaning her elbow against the window and propping her chin up with her hand. He's in a collared plaid shirt, buttons open over a white tee, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hair curls around his ears, his jaw gleams, freshly shaved and showered. He looks hot as fuck.

Clarke's had thoughts like this before. She knows he's had thoughts like this before too. She tells herself that's okay. They're adults, and have always had some chemistry despite their differing soulmarks. Clarke isn't planning on ruining their friendship, but she can sit here and appreciate, can't she?

She tears her eyes away and adjusts her red wig. "I can't believe you still have this."

"I can't believe it still fits," he remarks, giving her a side glance. "It kind of makes you look like a stripper now."

"It does not!" she gasps, even though she's secretly thrilled by the playful mood he's in tonight. She's not seen him grin this wide in a long time, and—god, she loves him, and she's so happy to know that this part of him still exists.

He's still smirking, so she pushes his arm. "If I look like a stripper, that's your choice in wigs."

"Or maybe my choice in company."

She snorts and picks up the six-pack on the floor between her feet. He'd brought it for her. "You're such an ass."

They pull onto the side of a busy, downtown street, into a parking lot, and he tells her the club he's thinking of is just two blocks down. She offers him a can. He shakes his head.

"I have to drive us back."

"Oh, so I can drink but you can't?" She scoffs. "We'll take a cab. I'll call Roan and get him to pick up the Rover. In the middle of the night," she adds, because she knows Bellamy will be pleased at the prospect of inconveniencing her bodyguard.

Sure enough, he accepts the beer. They tip their cans back as one and drain them. Then they get out.

The sidewalk is busy, the city nightlife thriving on a bustling Friday night. Anxiety gets to her despite herself, and she clings to Bellamy's side. He wraps his arm around her waist, tucking her close to him. "Keep your face turned towards me," he whispers, and she does. It's not exactly a chore.

They pass couples and food vendors and neon signs and finally stand in line at a club, where Clarke gets even more anxious, because the bouncer is sizing everyone up.

But when they get to the front of the line, the bouncer breaks into a wide smile, opens his mouth to speak, but Bellamy beats him to it.

"Can I call that favour in, Riley?"

Riley's eyes land briefly on Clarke tucked into his side. "You got it," he says immediately, and ushers them inside.

Clarke means to ask who he was, because she's never seen him before, but then the bass of the music swallows them up, and there's no real room for conversation.

—

They drink some more. Clarke buys them shots, and he lets her spend her money. She suspects this is only because it's hard to get into an argument about it when you can barely even hear each other.

It's a crowded, casual club, full of sweaty, gyrating bodies, strobe lights; the cheap shit. Even in her thin dress she's getting hot. She fans herself and Bellamy shucks his plaid layer off, leaving him in a sleeveless undershirt, his muscled arms bare.

She fans herself some more.

"You're not going to find that shirt later," she yells at him, as he tosses it on a stool.

He raises his eyebrows, like, does it look like I care? And then leads them both to the dance floor.

They keep close to each other and Clarke loses herself to it for a little while, to becoming part of a crowd, to the sweat dripping down her spine, to the heat of Bellamy just behind her, crowding her in but also protecting her.

At some point she loses balance, her high heel tipping to the side, but Bellamy's hands catch her around the hips, stopping her from a sprained ankle, and haul her back up.

She instantly puts her hands on his, keeping them there, on her hips. She turns her head a little towards him, and his face is right there in her peripheral vision.

She tilts into him, thoughtless, raising her arms to the ceiling, swaying to the beat of the music. Her hair's sticking to her face. He pulls it back, fingers brushing the nape of her neck, and then his cheek presses against hers as he tugs her into him. They dance like that a while.

She turns around in his embrace to find his gaze is half-lidded, lips parted, cheekbones gleaming. His shirt's damp with sweat and pressed to his skin, so when she threads her arms around his shoulders, she can feel the muscles in his back shifting under thin fabric. Her heart settles in her chest. She's safe right here with him, in the world that is his arms, and the real world is very far away. It's exactly what she wanted tonight. To be alone with him in a crowd full of people.

"I'm glad you exist," she tells him, and he bends his head, clearly because he didn't understand over the music. She leans up on her toes to repeat it, threading her hand into his curly, messy hair, her lips brushing against the shell of his ear. "I'm so glad you exist, Bellamy Blake."

She hasn't even gotten through his full name before he turns his head slightly and his lips are on her cheek, so quickly that she only registers he kissed it after he's retreated again. Butterflies erupt in her stomach.

He wouldn't say it back because that's not his way; he rarely says what he feels about her out loud. But he says it louder in other ways. Such as the look in his eyes when she's pulled away from his ear. And then the way he presses his forehead against hers, and holds her tight. She clutches onto him equally tight. Like they're each other's tether to the world and all the good things in it.

They dance the night away without a wink of sleep. Somehow it still feels like she's dreaming.

—

The next day does not feel like a dream.

"This hangover is your fault," Clarke groans.

"Well, sorry then, princess," Bellamy mutters from his side of the couch. "Didn't realize I forced you to do four shots of tequila in a row."

Clarke shoves his legs off her. They got sort of tangled up last night when they collapsed here. Bellamy grumbles but gets up. She watches him stretch and rub his eyes. The truth is they're both hungover and grumpy and it's noon and it's criminal that the sun should be shining this intensely.

It's Saturday. She has to travel back to school tomorrow. She really does not want to move, though. Her head is pounding.

"Did I throw up last night?" she asks. "I feel like I threw up last night."

"I feel like I got run over last night."

"That's probably what happened," Clarke says. "Roan came to get the Rover and just—" She mimes putting a gear shift into reverse.

Bellamy's eyes glitter with amusement. "Bet he was at least thinking about it."

They share a smirk. The truth is she should give Roan a bonus for what happened last night. She'd called him at four in the morning and he'd answered, all anxious and afraid even though he was off duty. He'd thought something had happened.

Then Clarke started talking, nearly incoherent, and he had to get her to repeat her instructions several times. And then when Bellamy said something about Roan suffering from hearing loss, Roan overheard and sighed.

"I get it now," he said. "I'll pick you up."

"No, we'll take a cab, just pick up the Rover," Clarke had said.

"Clarke, you're drunk and so is Bellamy. You're going to do something stupid in the cab and the driver will tell every tabloid they can find, and then I'm going to have to deal with you crying about it for the next month. Tell me where you are."

Clarke doesn't remember much else. But she's still grinning. Last night was completely idiotic and a bad decision and she never wants to do it again, but. She'd felt carefree, happy.

Her phone buzzes from the coffee table. Bellamy yawns and shuffles off to the bathroom as she grabs her phone.

Finn Collins. Why did I find out my bodyguard's wife died from a TMZ article?

Clarke sits up so fast she feels dizzy. She types back a quick reply. What?

His answer comes back a minute later. You really need to set up Google Alerts on yourself, princess. And for what it's worth, what they're saying, I don't believe it.

She goes to her internet browser and Googles her name. The articles pop up immediately. CLARKE GRIFFIN SIGHTED WITH OLD FLAME?

She skims the article itself. Clarke Griffin's been MIA for a while now, but clearly she's been up to a lot!

An inside source at nightclub Alpha Station tells us that Clarke Griffin herself showed up last night with a certain childhood friend some of us still remember very well—Bellamy Blake. Now, it's been a long time since we heard anything about him, but according to our source, Blake's soulmate (and wife) tragically died just over a month ago. The people around Clarke Griffin sure seem to drop like flies!

We didn't get a photo from Clarke and Bellamy's night out, but we hear things were getting steamy between the two old friends. Clarke really didn't wait for Blake's bed to get cold! But, who could blame her?

There's an old candid photo of a scowling, nineteen year old Bellamy to make their point. Clarke scrolls to the comments.

She can't get through more than a few before she stops, feeling more nauseous than ever.

She hears Bellamy coming back.

"Clarke, you want coffee? Or tea? Or…" she hears him rummaging around. "Aspirin?" When she doesn't respond, he says her name again.

She wipes her eyes. "Yeah, I'll take one."

He comes around with two mugs and then stills. "Clarke, what's wrong?"

She feels her face crumpling, but she just looks up at him and shakes her head, rapidly. He sets the mugs down and puts a hand out for her phone, which she's still holding. She gives it to him and lets him read.

Of course the press found a way to taint what had been one of the most carefree, happy nights in recent memory. A memory she'd been looking forward to treasuring, is no longer hers. Now it's the tabloids' to speculate over how she's taking advantage of a grieving man.

And are they really off base? Now she's overthinking her tipsy thoughts about Bellamy's attractiveness on the way to the club. She's thinking about how she encouraged him when he kissed her in the master bedroom. It puts everything into a new light that sours it completely.

"How did they even know?" Bellamy mutters, then answers his own question. "Fucking Riley. Kid never knows when to keep his mouth shut."

He looks over her, and she's not even bothering to wipe at the tears in her eyes. He sighs, sets the phone on the table and puts his hand on her shoulder. It's usually a comforting weight, but right now it makes her hunch; she feels dirty. He shouldn't be touching her.

"I don't care what the tabloids say," Bellamy tells her. "You and I know that whatever they're writing about us isn't true. That's all that matters."

"No, it's not," Clarke cries, and he blinks in surprise. Because he doesn't get it, and how could he? "It matters to me, Bellamy. I can't just ignore it. It affects my life. Just look at the comments. Everyone reads these stories. And almost everybody I've ever met had an opinion about me already, including you." He flinches a bit but doesn't refute it because well, they both know it's true. "It just gets worse over the years. I had to convince my school just a few months ago that I wasn't abusing opioids because TMZ had a story on it. That's not even the worst of it. People think I'm a psychotic murderer who chose not to save her soulmate's life and does drugs and has too much casual sex and gave up her family's company and got her mom thrown in prison and now I'm going to be a bitch who wrecked your life and disrespected Gina and…"

"Clarke..."

"... and sometimes they're right, and that's the worst part," she finishes. "They just broadcast how ugly I am to the entire world and everybody just eats it up."

Bellamy doesn't ask her about which parts they're right about. He doesn't speak at all for a long moment, and then finally he draws her to him in a hug.

'I'm going to kill Riley," he says, and she sniffles a laugh into his shoulder. He gets it now, she thinks. Why she could never stop reading tabloids, stop listening to what people said about her.

She's so done with it. She's exhausted from the world. Don't they deserve a fucking break?

An idea comes to her.

If she's honest, it's an idea she's thought about this whole month, ever since her faculty had told her it was an option.

"Bellamy," she says suddenly, pulling away. "I don't think I'm going back to school."

His soft expression melts away and he gives her a hard look. "You promised me you wouldn't do that."

"Not for that reason," she replies, and the more she thinks about it, the better the idea feels. "But maybe for a different one. My faculty said I could join the next incoming class if I needed it. I think I do need it. I think we do."

"Clarke, I don't—" He swallows, leaning away from her now, "you don't need to stay here for me. I can handle things. You've already helped. Don't do this for me."

His voice is quiet. But she's not fooled. He's begging her, and he doesn't do that often, and it tugs at her heartstrings. But she smiles and puts her hand on his cheek, because the idea is taking flight in her imagination.

"I know you'd be fine handling things if I left right now. We'd both manage. But—I don't want our lives to be just about handling the next crisis, Bellamy. I don't want to settle for being just 'fine' anymore."

She watches the words land, the way he blinks.

"You and I haven't had a break since things started happening." When Wells and her dad died and then things just piled up. The company, her mom, both of their many heartbreaks, the press. "Now we have a chance to just… just go. Just run away from the world for a little while. A few months, that's it. When are we going to have a chance like this again? You and me. Like last night but no hangover and no paparazzi."

He's already shaking his head halfway through her spiel. "I have a job, remember? Your boyfriend Spacewalker. I have to give months' notice when I go on leave."

"He's not my boyfriend." She chews her lip and mulls it over, then brightens as she thinks of a solution. "I'll ask Roan to replace you for a while on his security detail. I'll pay him extra. He'll go for it."

Bellamy sits back on the couch, his brow furrowed. He's got a different look in his eye now. Like he's actually thinking about it. That for the first time in their lives, they could both be completely untethered.

But his skepticism remains. "Where would we even go?"

She grins. "I think I know a place."

—

She asks Roan the very next day, as they're driving to the old Arkadia headquarters—now with the Polaris logo on it. Roan listens in silence to her offer, the pay, and doesn't even comment on the implication that she and Bellamy are going off the grid together. Then:

"I'll do it," he says, and she exhales in relief. "But this seems like a good time to tell you I'm planning to leave Eligius within the year."

"What?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Thought I'd be your bodyguard forever?"

She sits back in stunned silence. The truth is, Roan's been a part of her life so long, she's sort of took that for granted. That he'd always be there to protect her, to annoy her, to watch her grow up. Of course she knew he had his own life too, and every time he took a leave of absence she was reminded of it, but still… she doesn't know how to respond.

"My buddy Ontari works a job in wildlife protection, up in the Arctic circle. She got me interested. It's just time to change it up. No offense, obviously." His voice is wry.

"None taken." Clarke struggles to say something else through the weird ball of emotion in her throat. "Maybe up in the Arctic you'll finally find someone with your 'icicle' soulmark." She uses air-quotes. "Like a polar bear."

"You can just say 'thank you for your incredible service all these years, Roan.' Say it with me. It's not hard."

"It is very hard, actually." She means to say it like a joke, but her voice comes out sort of wobbly. Because saying goodbye will be hard.

He seems to notice. "Relax, Clarke. I won't leave until I find you a replacement. A good one, someone I trust."

It touches her, that he'd go to those lengths. "Thank you," she says sincerely, and he nods, and it's all very heartwarming, at least until she reaches to change the radio dial.

He slaps her hand away. "Don't push it."

—

She goes into the Polaris building, where the marks of the ARKADIA logo plating still haven't faded from the walls, and heads down to engineering.

Thelonious Jaha is in his office and looks up with a smile when she walks in.

Jaha left corporate leadership completely when Wells died. He now spends his days working quietly down here, and Clarke is glad for it now. "Did Lexa send you the research I told her to?" she asks him.

He nods, slowly. "I still have to advise against this. People will find out you're revisiting these files. Your mother went to prison for them."

"Not these ones."

"Technically," he concedes. "Which is why they're still here. But they're part of the same project. And going down this road again might lead you to the same place."

She's starting to get annoyed. "Well, I can't just close my eyes and pretend this research doesn't exist. Not when there might be answers in there."

"Answers to what?" She's quiet. "Soulmarks? Clarke, there's ideas on their mechanism and patterns, but there aren't truly answers to soulmarks at the end of the day. Sometimes you have to accept that certain things will always be out of your control."

"No, I don't," Clarke snaps. "Now, please start working on these. I'm going to be out of town for a while, but you can call me if anything comes up."

She spins on the heel and leaves his office, but she feels the weight of his thoughtful gaze on her back the whole way up the corridor.

—

Finn's less than pleased when she calls him.

"Wait, I thought the tabloids had it wrong. But they didn't? You're going off with Bellamy?" He makes it sound like a disease.

"I never said that," she says impatiently. "I just said Bellamy is taking a leave of absence because of Gina's death. And I had to argue with him to get him to do it. He was planning to stay and work his job for you." Finn's silent. Clarke goes on. "Now, just answer the question. Will you accept Roan as a replacement? I'm even offering to pay his salary, Finn. He's good. Take it or leave it."

Eventually Finn sighs. "Whatever you want, princess. But you owe me a drink for this."

—

"We're here," Bellamy says. "Are you sure this is the place?"

Clarke looks at the information Monty had texted her, then up at the sign. GREEN STATION FARMS AND NURSERY, it reads. They've been driving up a road seeing nothing but canola fields for so long that she'd started to wonder if Jasper and Monty were just playing an elaborate prank. But no. It's real. There's a dirt road through this entrance and in the distance, a log house with a wraparound porch, with an adjoining building and large greenhouses that stretch into the distance. "This is it."

Bellamy takes the Rover down the dirt road and parks next to one of the greenhouses. At that moment the front door of the house opens and Monty steps out, his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets as per usual. It's been raining; January is wet and cold in this area.

"I never thought you'd actually take me up on my offer," he says to Clarke as she jumps out of the Rover. Clarke smiles and hugs him. It's been a long time since she saw him.

"Don't you have a Master's degree to get back to?"

"I'll start my semester once I get you two settled," Monty replies, and glances behind her. "Hey, I'm really sorry to hear about Gina. I only met her during your wedding but she was really nice. Caught me stealing mints off every table and gave me a whole bag. It can't be easy to lose your soulmate."

Bellamy just sort of nods without making eye contact. The gesture might come off as rude to some but Clarke knows it's only because the kind words have caught him off guard.

"Let me show you around," Monty says. "If you two want to work here, I have to make sure you know the ropes."

—

Monty brings them inside to introduce them to his parents, who welcome them warmly. Hannah Green aggressively insists they have a snack even though they're not hungry.

"It was so nice of you to offer to help with things while you're here," she says. "We could use some help in the nursery during this season. Most of our field workers leave this time of year."

"It's the least we could do," Clarke replies.

Monty then takes them to a tiny cottage on the property, a ten minute walk away from the main house. On the way he talks about his Master's thesis, which is about bioengineering algae or something, Clarke doesn't really understand. Bellamy asks him lots of questions, though, and she can tell he's interested.

She aches for every opportunity he's lost.

Monty opens the cottage door for them. Immediately inside there's a kitchen and living area crammed into one, and a bathroom that is only slightly bigger than a closet. "During the on-season, we usually have field workers living here," Monty explains. "But it's yours this year." He pauses, looking between them as he points to the stairs. "There's two bedrooms up there."

He doesn't sound certain that they're going to make use of both.

The next stop is into one of the huge greenhouses. Clarke blinks at how gigantic it is, like a warehouse.

At her surprise, Monty says, "We've got three hundred thousand square feet of greenhouse space. Yeah, you could say it's a lot."

He walks them through some of the aisles. This place is full to the brim with life. As he goes, he points out different plants—chrysanthemum, english daisies, forget-me-nots, pansies and violas, kale and vegetable starters—they sell it all in a store not far from here. "But we won't get you working in the store for obvious reasons," he says with a snort. "Nah, we'll get you doing the grunt work. Watering plants, moving soil around, whatever we feel like making you do."

As it turns out, Clarke and Bellamy are both absolutely useless when it comes to nursery tasks. "You can't just yank the berry off, it's going to explode," Monty says with a somewhat exasperated air when he's showing them the blueberry plants. "You have to roll it into your fingers, gently."

"I have no idea how to do that," Clarke says. Bellamy beside her looks at his own berry stained fingers. They're not good at things like this. They're good at: fighting for their lives, fighting for their sanity, planning funerals, moping at weddings, and making horrible decisions that hurt people around them. Clearly those skills aren't transferable here.

Monty shakes his head. "Well, you'll learn."

—

And they do.

Monty bids them goodbye at the end of the weekend, and Hannah Green takes Clarke's request to be kept busy quite seriously. Every day they wake with the sun, and work in the greenhouses all day, where it gets surprisingly hot even with the cooler season. There's always plenty to do. If there's not, Hannah sends them to Jasper's family farm on the adjoining property to help with their planting.

Clarke gets used to the sight of dirt under her fingernails, gets used to the ache of her arms from carrying things around all day. She and Bellamy are both so tired at the end of each day that they start sleeping in the same bedroom, a tangle of exhausted limbs under the covers. Then they get up the next day and do it all over.

Still, it's a different kind of tired. A good, rewarding kind. The kind that makes her feel like she's doing honest work for the first time in her life.

A month in, she's on a ladder watering flowers, swatting away bugs and sweat dripping down her back. She hears the distinct rumble of Bellamy's voice far away. She automatically pauses to glance behind her. She sees him across the greenhouse, talking to Monty's father with two huge bags of soil hefted on his shoulders. And she's overtaken with a light feeling of simple, uncomplicated happiness. That she's here with him, that every evening, including this one, she'll go home with him and they'll make dinner together and then curl up under the covers and talk about their days until they fall asleep.

"What are you grinning about?" he asks her later, when they pass each other on their respective errands.

"Nothing."

"Well," he says, somewhat grumpily, "We've got a problem."

The way those words make her brain leap with anxiety, kicking into fight or flight mode, is instant. He pauses and seems to see that. "Not that kind of problem," he says quickly. "It's just, apparently there's a fox getting in and trampling plants. You have no idea how many seedlings it's gotten into."

Clarke's heart rate slows again. She could almost laugh from relief, that this is now their biggest problem. She kind of loves it.

"It must be getting in through somewhere," she says. "Let's just find where."

They spend a whole day looking for the rip in the greenhouse wall that's been allowing it in, and their giddiness when they find it is a high like Clarke's not had in a long time. They go to the shed and behind an old kite that's seen better days, and some shovels, they find some tarp they can patch it over with.

Then they go back to the cottage, where Monty's father has installed for them a tiny, twenty-inch television. It's practically a relic. They flop onto the kitchen floor and watch old movies play until the sun sets and they realize they didn't even make dinner.

It's one of the best days of Clarke's life.

—

One day, Bellamy comes to her, frantic. "I've lost my ring."

"Your what?"

"My ring, my wedding ring."

Oh. She sets down the trays of vegetable starters she'd been about to bring to the front. "Where'd you last see it?"

"I put it in my pocket," he taps the pocket of his cargo shorts, "but there was a hole in it. Clarke, I have to find it—"

She touches his cheek. "I know."

He exhales and nods, and they search. They search all morning and all afternoon in between tasks, and then they spend all evening looking. Cicadas are chirping in the long grasses outside when Clarke comes to find him.

He's just outside one of the greenhouses, staring into the distance. The wind ruffles his hair, his shirt.

"We'll find it tomorrow," she says gently.

His face is inscrutable. "No, we won't."

"We'll ask Hannah to keep an eye out for it."

He's silent, somewhere far away, but when she takes his hand and leads him back to their cottage, he doesn't resist.

—

The weather warms. More workers come to start planting for the upcoming summer season.

"You don't need to worry," Hannah tells them kindly. "These aren't the types of people who run to the press."

Still, Clarke is nervous. One word, one sneaky photo, and her cover here is blown.

Later, Bellamy asks her in the privacy of their bathroom, "You sure you want to trust these people? We could always go back. We've been here three months."

He doesn't sound like he wants to. Clarke sure doesn't want to either. She spits toothpaste into the sink.

"No," she says casually. "I believe Hannah."

He seems to relax a little, and reaches over her head to grab his own toothbrush. "Then we stay."

—

Clarke wakes one spring day and can instantly tell it will be a bad day. It's the anniversary—of her father's and Wells' death. She turns on her side only to find Bellamy staring back at her, already awake. She can tell just by looking at his expression he knows exactly what day it is.

Bellamy gets up. "Come on," he says when she doesn't move.

"I don't want to work today." She knows the Greens wouldn't care if she took the day off to mope. She usually does on this day, every year. She just has to get through it. Then she can wake up tomorrow and return to life.

Bellamy doesn't push her anymore. He leaves the room. She listens to him go downstairs, hears the water running, the sounds of his footsteps. She hears him walk to the front door, hesitate, and then leave.

She feels very utterly alone in the cottage.

After a minute, she flings the covers off.

In the kitchen, Bellamy's left her a plate of eggs and toast. She sits down and eats woodenly as she looks out the window. Thick clouds. It'll storm tonight.

Something drops in the pit of her stomach. She won't be able to see the sky, the stars. She won't be able to talk to Wells. Still staring out the window, she stands to wash her plate, and knocks over the cereal box. It tips and spills cereal onto the floor.

Great. She gets the broom and sweeps it up, then gets on her hands and knees to make sure she didn't miss anything under the stove.

It's only because she's there that she spots a glint of silver from just under the fridge. Bellamy's wedding ring. It must've fallen from his pocket even before he went to work in the fields that day.

She fishes it out and heads outside. The wind blasts in her face ferociously. It blows at trees in the orchard so strongly their trunks are bending.

She finds Bellamy in the greenhouse, lugging around the watering hose. He stops when he sees her, and his eyes warm. He must not have been sure she would leave the cottage.

She comes up to him and holds up his ring. "Look what I found under the fridge."

He zeroes in on it, stills. He takes it from her, balances it in his palm. Stares, expressionless. "Thanks," he says finally, voice quiet.

Bellamy doesn't put it back on, she notices. He puts it on his keychain instead.

They work mindlessly throughout the day. Clarke starts to become glad Bellamy convinced her to come out—she's still thinking about that night, but it's much harder to get pulled under by it when she's keeping busy.

Still, it's not easy. During her lunch break, she plops down on a bag of fertilizer to eat her sandwich. She's mid-chew when she starts crying, silently. Bellamy finds her like that, sinks to sit next to her and slowly unwraps his own sandwich.

She's probably a pathetic sight, tears on her face, sweat streaked shirt, knots in her hair from the wind.

"I won't be able to see his star," she murmurs, and Bellamy follows her gaze skyward.

"He'll still be there."

They eat in silence, shoulder to shoulder. Then Hannah calls out that there's a new shipment of supplies, and they get up in unison to help with unloading the truck.

Clarke finds herself tired out more easily today, and later that afternoon she leaves early. She goes back to the cottage. There's whiskey in the cupboard. She drinks a glass, then puts her head down on the table, waiting for sleep to drag her out of this day and carry her into the next.

But it doesn't. She just thinks about Wells, and her father, as she usually does. She thinks about what she did and what she could've done. She thinks about her father lying in a pool of his blood, of Wells' determined face, of Bellamy with a gun pressed to his head.

The light coming through the window gradually dims as the afternoon wears late. Finally, she hears Bellamy coming in, wind whistling behind him before he shuts the door. She opens her eyes and they stare at each other.

Bellamy goes to sit next to her and pours himself a glass of whiskey. The both of them are dirty and sweaty. But Bellamy, like her, must be too mentally exhausted to shower right now.

She props her chin up in one hand and studies him. His curly hair, getting long again—Hannah will have to give him another haircut. Bellamy had asked Clarke to cut it once and she'd refused, too afraid she would mess it up.

The freckles she's memorized scattered over his nose and cheekbones. The scar in his lip, the full Cupid's bow. The sweep of his lashes, the shape of his eyes that she's always loved, that convey so much even when he says very little.

Like right now, he looks sad, but also strangely content as he gazes at her. She gets it. Today is bad every year, but it's nice to spend it with someone who understands.

Bellamy swirls his glass. "Want to hear something screwed up?" he asks, without looking at her.

Clarke waits.

"Part of me was hoping we wouldn't find my ring."

She stares at him, surprised but also not at all surprised to hear this. He smiles grimly.

"Told you it was screwed up."

That gets her talking. "No, it's not. You're allowed to have mixed feelings. You don't have to be a grieving widower forever. Gina wouldn't want that for you, anyway."

She watches that land, but then he turns it around on her. "Would Wells want that for you?"

She bites her lip and looks away. "I don't know what he would want. We were so young when he..."

She blinks back tears, and he doesn't push her anymore. He brings his glass to his lips. Clarke finds herself preoccupied with his hand, his muscled, veiny forearm. She watches him swallow, the way his Adam's apple bobs. She follows the lines of his throat to his collarbone and where they disappear under his shirt.

Her thoughts start to slide helplessly in a certain direction that she usually has the presence of mind to stop. He seems to notice when he looks at her next, because he stills.

"Clarke."

His voice is a little deeper than usual. Before he can say anything more, she says, "Want to hear something screwed up?"

He waits, eyes impossibly dark.

"I keep thinking about that morning, in your master bedroom," she whispers, and he sucks in a breath. She should stop here, she knows. But she keeps going, like a confession she just has to get out, lest it eat her up inside. "I think about it every day. What I'd have done if we were anywhere else than in your and Gina's bed. I'm thinking about it right now. On the anniversary that my soulmate died. Isn't that just the worst thing—"

He sets down his glass before she's even finished talking, leans forward and captures her lips with his.

The kiss is soft, sweet, a far cry from that morning in that master bedroom. His hands slide around her jaw to tilt her face up to him. She doesn't know what to do with herself for a moment, but then her body gets with the program.

She rises from her seat, breaking from his lips for just a moment before sinking back down on his lap, throwing her legs on either side of him. She kisses his lips, his cheeks, his jawline, his neck, everywhere she can reach, really. She just really loves him. She wants him to know it somehow.

Emotion threatens to overwhelm her. She wraps her arms and legs around him like a koala and presses her face into his shoulder. He doesn't miss a beat. His hands slide up her back, keeping her against him. She feels his cheek press against her hair. They sit like that for a long time. She loves being close to him. She wants to be even closer. She wants to lose herself in him.

Perhaps Bellamy feels the same way, because out of nowhere he says, "We don't have to be soulmates to fuck."

His voice is rough, scraping sweetly against the most sensitive parts of her. She forces herself not to fold immediately. She refuses to be another one of those people who use him. "Why are you saying that? Because I need it?"

"No," he says hoarsely. "Because I do."

She pulls away to look at his expression, to study what she sees there. He doesn't have that dark, guilty look in his eye from the master bedroom. He just looks back at her steadily, and she makes her decision then.

When their lips meet again, it does not stay innocent. His tongue is insistent. He tastes like alcohol and burns like fire.

His hand slides down her side, to her hip. And into her leggings. She rises a little on his lap to allow him better access.

His fingers brushing against her make her break from his lips with a sigh.

"Bellamy…"

He surges forward to kiss her again, even while his fingers twist and delve between her legs. It's hard to concentrate on kissing while he's winding her up like this. She keeps breaking free from his mouth, only to be recaptured again. He's overwhelming her on two fronts and she is dizzy from it.

Then he becomes clever, pressing repeatedly against a place inside that makes her mind blank. She gasps against his mouth, feels the curve of his smile before she breaks away and rises on her haunches, rocking into his hand.

The thing about them doing this is how quickly Bellamy seems to adapt, figure out what she likes, faster than any other partner she's had. Every incomprehensible sound she makes he responds to, somehow changing his angle, the strength of his touch, knowing exactly what she needs. Knowing her intimately, and now familiarizing himself with her in a whole new way.

It's almost embarrassing how quickly he brings her right to the edge.

While she's gasping, he casually pulls his hand out of her leggings. Sucks on his fingers, and arches a brow.

"Shut up," she pants even though he hadn't said anything. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him sloppily, then whispers in his ear. "Let's go upstairs."

His hands tighten on her thighs. "I don't have a condom."

"I have an IUD."

He stands in one swift movement, bringing her with him. She squeaks, locking her legs around his waist, her arms around his shoulders.

They find their way to bed together.

Heat simmers under her skin. Her hands creep under his shirt, slide up his muscled chest, feel his furiously beating heart. Pulls at his shirt until he pulls it over his head, and the rest of their clothes come off in quick succession. She sits up, cradling his hips, and runs her hands up and down his muscled abdomen. Her hands are so pale against his skin. She likes staring at the contrast between them.

"Had your fill yet?" he asks dryly, maybe even a hint of old cockiness in there too.

She's been waiting years for this. "What, I don't get a turn to grope you?"

"Not this again," he complains, but with a small smile on his face. She giggles, cuts herself off when he surges up into sitting position, nearly throwing her off if it weren't for his grip on her hips. He swivels so he's at the edge of the bed, and she swings back on his lap, just like downstairs, except better. Her body is rip-roaring with what it's really been wanting—Bellamy Bellamy Bellamy. In every way, in more ways that she already has him. She's greedy for her best friend and she wants him all to herself tonight.

They go still right at the critical moment. Time hangs suspended. Rain patters against the windows.

"We don't have to do this, you know," Clarke whispers in the dark. She's suddenly afraid, in the same way that sometimes getting exactly what you've always dreamed of is scary, because then you have so much more to lose. "Tell me the truth. It won't hurt me."

A dark chuckle. "Clarke, the truth hurts me."

Before she can sort that out, he lifts her hips, and her body takes control, primitive, seeking his. And then they are, finally, together. In the way they have never been before.

And they clutch onto each other for a second, stunned at what they've done, what they're about to do. Clarke hasn't had sex in a while, so it burns her body, but the hurt of it, of him, is perfect. She grabs his shoulders and he presses his face into her chest, breathing raggedly. Skin to skin. For once, there is not a single thing between them.

Her definition of home shifts in this moment. Irrevocably. But that isn't something she worries about right now. She just kisses him. And the rest of the world dissolves for a little while.

—

Clarke wakes mid-morning, and the sad sheen the world had taken on yesterday has fallen away, replaced with the sounds of wind whistling by the window. It's still just as crappy weather as it was when she fell asleep. She throws an arm to the side, expecting to make contact with Bellamy's shoulder as it usually does. But instead she hits the mattress.

She looks over and finds that he's gone.

Then memories from last night flood back. Oh god. She and Bellamy had sex. And a lot of it. She can feel it in the stiffness of her body.

But it's just that once wasn't enough. They had cleaned up afterwards, almost cordial, and then found the darkness, the sadness creeping back into the room, and had reached for each other again. And again. It had felt too good to stop. Until they were just too exhausted, and sleep pulled them under.

She hears the door of the cottage open and close. So he was outside, then. She hears his footsteps and instinctively throws the covers back over herself. She still hasn't figured out quite what to say.

His footsteps stop at the doorway. She doesn't stir, hoping he thinks she's asleep.

He says, "Get up."

Silence.

"I know you're awake, Clarke. Now get your ass up."

"No." Her voice is petulant.

"Then I guess I'll just go fly this kite by myself."

She pulls the covers down to see him holding a gigantic, old-fashioned kite. He's fully dressed in his worn-out jacket and cargo pants. "Where'd you get that?"

"It was in the shed."

She dimly remembers it from when they'd ransacked the shed looking for something to patch the hole in the greenhouse wall with. "Well, why now?"

He sort of glares at her, and she re-focuses on the kite, realizes it's even shabbier than she realized, mismatched fabric patched on—and wasn't the dowel holding it together in the middle broken before?

It clicks. "You fixed it," she breathes. So this is what he's been doing with his morning. Keeping his hands busy, his mind too.

He looks down at it, and a flicker of—embarrassment—seems to cross his features. "Never mind," he says gruffly, turning.

She flings the covers off. "No, wait. I'm coming."

"You don't have to if you don't want to. If you think it's stupid—"

She swings her legs off the bed. "I am flying that kite, so it's your choice if you come with me or not."

He looks at her, and his smile starts to return. She remembers right then that she's naked. His gaze rolls over her in a leisurely fashion. She doesn't hide herself. She waits for his eyes to meet hers again.

When they do, she almost thinks it's going to be an encore, at least until he says, "I'd suggest you put some clothes on first." He ducks from the pillow she sends sailing at him. Chuckling. "I'll be outside."

—

The wind is still strong, warm and dry; chinook weather. When she steps out of the house fully dressed, her jacket zipped up to her chin, a gust knocks her forward half a step.

"Careful," Bellamy calls. She turns to look at him, hair whipping around her face.

"Where are we going to fly this thing?" she yells. He points off into the open fields of long grass not yet tilled.

They wade out into the long grasses, far away from the greenhouses and cottage and tractor and other equipment that the kite string could get caught in. It's the kind of weather that can't quite decide what it wants to be—occasional raindrops fall on them for one minute, then are gone the next, leaving sunshine, then cloud cover, then it all starts over again. The only constant is the strong wind that will fly this kite with ease.

Bellamy offers her the kite, but she shakes her head and pushes it back at him. "You fixed it, you fly it."

"I always have to do the hard work, huh?" He unspools it.

"Well, obviously," Clarke says. "Isn't that what the regular people do?"

He scoffs. "Yeah. Us regular people. But look at you now. You're one of us."

She looks down at herself, the dirt on her hands, the grass stains on the knees of her jeans, and tugs at her knotted hair. She does indeed feel very far from heiress, celebrity, infamous Clarke Griffin. Standing in a field of grass, flying a kite with Bellamy Blake, is about beautifully normal as they could get.

Bellamy slowly unspools the kite until all the string is out, the kite is far from them, and it's just a small rectangle in the sky. He hands it to her.

It's harder than she thought, with the strong gusts of wind that try to lift her off her feet and yank the kite away.

Bellamy stands back and watches her as she starts laughing. "Bellamy, how do you control this thing?"

"You've never flown a kite before?" He sounds aghast.

"No!"

"It's not that hard—"

Another strong gust of wind pulls at the kite, so hard that she feels the string slipping out of her fingers. "No!" she shouts, and clings on tight, but the wind isn't letting up this time. She's caught off balance.

Then Bellamy's there, behind her, catching her with his arms around her middle. Her feet dangle off the ground, but he holds her to him, and he's sturdy, immovable by nature. Clarke gets a better grip on the kite and they watch it blow around, a hundred feet above them. Tossed around by the wind. But tethered to the earth by her and Bellamy's hands.

Bellamy chuckles against her ear, against the whistling air around them.

"What?"

"You can't even fly a kite."

She elbows him, but she giggles along with him, at least until the occasional raindrops that have been spraying them suddenly become far less occasional.

Bellamy curses. "Reel it in."

She quickly obeys. By the time it's back in their hands, the drizzle has become a downpour. Bellamy sets her down and they race back through the grass, trying to beat the storm.

—

They don't beat the storm. They stomp inside the cottage, completely drenched, winded. But grinning from ear to ear. It's the best way she could've spent the morning.

His smile warms her inside. Fondness grows in her chest until she feels like she might burst with it. She wants to tell him how much last night helped her. How on every other anniversary of the event, she's cried and drank and tried to keep at bay dark thoughts. But last night, she didn't think once about the fact that she couldn't see Wells' star. She only thought of Bellamy.

"Bellamy," she says, "About last night—"

"I know," he interrupts, and his eyes are soft, holding her gaze. "Me, too."

—

Several days later, it's Bellamy's birthday.

Clarke's excited to spend it with him. She tells Hannah, and the older woman helps her make a cake in the bigger house kitchen. They top it with sticky cream icing, and piles of fresh strawberries picked from the greenhouse that morning. Clarke beams at it, proud of their work.

"What are you going to give him as a gift?" Hannah asks. Clarke's smile fades a bit.

"I don't know." The truth is, she hardly ever gets Bellamy birthday gifts. He doesn't like it when Clarke buys him things. And she's not a thoughtful gift giver like he is. Nothing she tries to think of seems to match the enormity of what he means to her.

So instead she goes out to the fields and picks a bunch of wild flowers to go with the cake.

The Greens have them over for lunch, and surprise Bellamy with the cake. He seems taken aback. Clarke stands on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek, then presents him with her carefully tied bunch of flowers.

"I'd buy you something, but—"

"I don't want you to buy me anything." He accepts the flowers. He gazes into her eyes, and through Clarke's peripheral vision she sees how the Greens turn away for a second, giving them a second of privacy. His voice becomes quiet, for her ears alone. "This is perfect."

And it is. At least, until that evening. Bellamy calls his mother, and Clarke leaves the cottage to give them space to talk. But when she comes back, she can tell it didn't go well.

"What happened?"

Bellamy shakes his head, a dark look on his face. "She had a relapse."

Clarke's heart falls. "Oh, Bellamy." She touches his arm. "Do you… want to go to her?"

"Her relapse was a month ago," he says, and it clicks why he's angry. "She's only telling me about it now because she's over it. For now."

Clarke chews her lip. Bellamy looks very far off. She's sure he's remembering being six years old and afraid when Aurora drank too much. She's sure he's wondering if one day he'll be there again.

It sort of makes Clarke angry at Aurora, perhaps a little irrationally. That she ever put that burden on her son's shoulders in the first place.

They go to bed, silent. Bellamy's back is to her, but she can practically hear him thinking. She rolls over and wraps her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his back. He relaxes back into her arms. Slowly. And they drift off.

—

In the morning, she wakes to find their positions reversed. Bellamy's spooning her. And he's hard against her back.

This is of course not the first or second or even twentieth time this has happened. It's natural, it's fine, they've never gotten embarrassed about it. But today she just thinks about how he'd fallen asleep sad. She doesn't want him to wake up that way as well.

She turns around in his arms as slowly as she can, not wanting to disturb his sleep. She watches his eyelashes flutter against his skin, the way he readjusts his hold on her automatically, but doesn't seem to be fully awake. His face is relaxed like this. He looks younger when the world isn't weighing on him. She wonders what he's dreaming about.

Still gazing at him, she brushes her knuckles against his cheek, and he seems to lean into it. But her hand slips away, and he settles back into the pillow.

She puts her hand under the covers between them, skimming over him until she finds the waistband of the soft, grey sweatpants he fell asleep in. She brushes her hand against him.

A sigh escapes his lips.

Clarke dips her hand into his pants. His hips jerk automatically into her hand. She watches as his drowsy eyes open.

"Awake now, are you?" she murmurs, mischievously. Bellamy seems incapable of speech. She strokes him a few times, watches the flush rise over his face. Brown skin glowing in the sunlight through their window. He's beautiful, she thinks while she touches him. So beautiful it makes her ache.

He finally manages to choke out her name. "Clarke…"

He's never said it quite like that. She wishes her name was longer, so she could hear him trip over every syllable. But this will have to do.

"Shh, Bellamy." She kisses the line of his throat, then his collarbone, and down, down his body she crawls.

He seems to wake up more when she's lifted his shirt to kiss the V of his hipbone, and realize what she's doing. His hands clamp down like vices on her shoulders, trying to stop her descent.

"Let me do this," she murmurs against his sleep-warmed skin, pulling at the drawstrings of his pants.

"Clarke... you don't have to... Ah..."

His voice dies away when she gets her mouth on him.

Occasionally, while she's doing this, she'll stop and look up at him. His eyelashes flutter, head tossed sideways into the pillows, jaw clenched in effort not to make a sound, Adam's apple bobbing, the lines of his body taut and growing tenser with every touch of her lips, her tongue, her palm. His hand fists in her hair. She feels a rush of heat between her own legs. Can't help it. There's something incredibly sexy about watching Bellamy enjoy himself. That she's the one making it happen makes her heady.

He tries to tug her up near the end, but she's relentless. She wants to hear him come apart under her, and he does.

Afterwards, he's trembling, and she's wiping her mouth with the back of one hand while fixing his pants for him with the other. He reaches for her. She pushes away from him, even though her body aches for his touch.

"No," she says. Firm. She doesn't want him to feel like he has an obligation to her now. "No strings attached."

"I want to."

He rolls onto his hands and knees to grab her. She scoots away like a crab, but a bolt of inspiration hits. She stills. And deliberately, she parts her legs as she does. She's only wearing panties under this long night shirt, which is now spread over her knees. His eyes sweep down. Come back up much more desperate. She bites her lip, lowers her lashes in invitation.

Holding her gaze, Bellamy reaches between her legs. She spreads them further and lets him palm her there, his hand warm and big and rough over her panties. A sigh escapes her. Just the touch makes her want to rut into his hand. She doesn't, though. She has an agenda now.

She takes a deep breath and rolls out of bed.

He growls in frustration. "Come on, Clarke—"

"No time. I'm taking the shower first." She flees from the room. She wants him thinking about it. About what she did, about what he wants to do. She wants to drive him so crazy that at least for one morning he only thinks about her, and not about the things that make him sad.

She locks herself in the bathroom and gets herself off in the shower.

—

And so it becomes easy. Just like that.

They don't have sex on a daily basis, or even on a weekly basis. But whenever dark memories start to creep in on them, or there's something on their mind, they reach for each other. It becomes what they do.

—

Bellamy isn't going to overthink what he has with Clarke. It's good, and it's exactly what he needs right now. But it only belongs here on this farm.

Spring becomes summer, and he's quite aware of the fact that soon enough autumn will come, and they'll have to leave no matter what. But not yet. Not yet.

It's a hot, humid day when the Greens invite them over for lunch. They finish their work in the orchards early and walk side by side back to the house, through rows of canola.

Out of nowhere, Clarke just reaches down and slaps his thigh holster.

"You still carry your gun around? What, you think a sack of manure is going to jump out and attack you?"

He catches her hand before it can withdraw, clasping it in his own as natural as anything, and they keep walking hand in hand just fucking because. Bellamy knows this is corny as all hell, which is why he'd never say it out loud, but he loves holding Clarke's hand. "Doesn't feel right without it. You never know when…"

He stops before he can ruin the sunny mood. Clarke doesn't say anything for a long minute.

"I want to practice. Could we?"

He blinks. "Practice?" He doesn't say what he's thinking—that she shot it perfectly fine that night so many years ago.

"I'm rusty." Her voice is deceptively light, but her fingers have tightened around his. Just in case. Even here, in the rows of canola in the middle of nowhere, they can't quite escape their pasts or their futures.

So they go out to the open grass, and he sets up a target on the clothesline with a bit of burlap sack he'd found lying around in the greenhouse. He draws an X with a marker in the middle of it, then pulls his gun out, shows her the parts, how to handle and hold it, how to stand when firing. He shoots and the middle of the X billows back.

She's strangely silent, and he worries maybe he's overexplaining. She probably still remembers most of this. He turns to her, fully intending to hand over the gun, but finds her biting her lip, hands clasped behind her back, hair blowing into her face from the breeze but still not quite hiding the dark look in her eye.

No. He tries to think of canola, manure, cabbages, anything but what he's thinking right now. Because this is something they don't do—don't have sex for fun. That would step over the carefully drawn line. "You wanna try?" he asks gruffly.

She accepts the gun. He helps her adjust her stance and her grip, then takes a pointed step back. She shoots. Hits the tip of the X. She lowers the gun, a small smile on her features.

"Not bad," he says.

"Remember when you couldn't even get a mini golf ball into a hole?" she asks.

"You're such a comedian."

Clarke tries a few more times, and then it's time to go for lunch. Since their hands are grimy, Bellamy grabs the water hose from where it's coiled next to the house and they take turns spraying each other's hands, then passing a towel between them.

When she passes the towel to him, he notices there's something on it. He looks closer. A smear of something on the white fabric. It's peach coloured and pale and very much looks like… like… the colour of Clarke's skin.

His eyes immediately dart to Clarke's hands. She's shaking them out, getting rid of the leftover damp. She's looking off towards the road, so she doesn't notice him studying her.

Her right wrist. There's a blur of—something.

Lightning fast, he grabs hold of her arm.

He's got her attention now, that's for sure. "What are you doing?" She tries to tug away from his grip, but he doesn't let go.

"What's that on your wrist, Clarke?" he asks slowly.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He's not fooled. Her voice is a little higher than usual and besides, he's not a moron, despite what Clarke apparently thinks if she's still trying to hide this. She tugs at him again.

"Let go of me, Bellamy." Her voice is loud, commanding.

He lets go. She shrinks back, seeming relieved, at least until he grabs the hose again and aims it to full blast straight at her arm.

She shrieks as half her shirt gets soaked, but he doesn't care, he's fucking angry, because he knows exactly what he's about to see under all her carefully applied makeup. He throws the hose aside after a second and grabs her arm again, rubbing at her wrist with the towel until it all comes clean.

And there it is. A clock face with the hands turned towards twelve. Dark, bold, simple.

A second soulmark.

He lets go as if it had burned him, drops the towel too, and stumbles three steps back. Clarke's clutching her arm, too, her eyes wide. Half her hair's wet from the water's spray.

"Bellamy. I can explain."

"Can you now." He sounds far calmer than he feels.

"Yes. I can."

"Well, this should be good."

He crosses his arms. Clarke's mouth opens and closes several times. She looks around as if an escape from this situation might present itself.

When she still hasn't said anything, he asks, "How long?"

Her eyes dart away.

For fuck's sake. "How long, Clarke?"

She swallows, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and takes a breath. "It started appearing right before you met Gina."

He drops his hands and looks up at the sky, chuckling darkly because what other reaction is he supposed to have? "Right. So you've been hiding this from me for more than four years."

"I wasn't just hiding it from you. I didn't tell anybody."

"Oh, good. That makes it so much better." He can't explain why he feels so betrayed. It's her soulmark, her soulmate. But it's such a huge thing—supposedly the two of them are best friends and she'd hid it from him? Why?

"I was going to tell you," she bursts, taking a step closer. "When I came home for winter break after my first semester away at school, I was so excited to tell you, but—"

Clarke stops there, halts so suddenly it's like someone had simply pressed pause on her voice. He waits, but she doesn't continue. "But what, Clarke?"

She closes her eyes, a faint echo of past pain rippling over her features for a second before she opens them again. "But you had just met your soulmate," she whispers, and he stares at her, confused.

"So?"

She doesn't reply. She just hugs herself and holds his gaze, her lips pressed together but quivering. They stare at each other for several moments, and then quite suddenly, the realization crashes into him, knocking him back another step.

Oh.

"You thought it'd be me," he whispers.

Her eyes fill with tears. She nods.

He can't breathe.

Neither of them say anything. The only sounds are the occasional car driving down the gravel road, the tinkling of the wind chime, the fucking hose still going at full blast at the side of the house.

Then the door to the house opens, and Hannah pokes her head out to call to them. "Are you two coming in for lunch?"

Bellamy has forgotten how to talk, but Clarke answers without breaking their stare. "Yes, just a minute, Hannah, thank you."

The door swings shut. Bellamy wants to give his hands something to do, so he walks over to the hose and kneels to shut it off. He hears Clarke come closer, standing next to him.

"I wanted it to be you, you know."

He blinks back a burning in his eyes. This may be the first time it has ever been acknowledged out loud between them. "We don't have to talk about this."

"I think we should. If we're ever going to move on, we should." Her voice sounds nearly strangled.

He doesn't want to move on. He likes what they have. He likes the vagueness of almost, just about, maybe. He doesn't want the answer solidified to never.

Which it will be if they talk about it. If there's one thing life has taught him—what his father, what all Aurora's boyfriends have taught him—it's that things don't work out if you're not soulmates. He can't hurt Clarke like that. He refuses to even entertain the possibility, especially when fate has already given her another person who could make her happier than he could.

Yet another pointed sign from the universe that he and Clarke were never going to work.

He stands up. "Hannah's waiting for us."

"Bellamy—"

"It's alright, Clarke. Whatever happened is in the past now." His voice is hard and angry and he can't stop it from being that way. Without waiting for a response, he marches up to the door of the house and knocks.

Clarke follows, and Hannah lets them in.

If they're a little quiet at lunch, the Greens don't notice. They also don't comment on the fact that half of Clarke's shirt is wet. They feed them, ordering them to take seconds of everything, and it's delicious although Bellamy's lost his appetite and Clarke looks a little green. They still eat.

At the end of the meal, Hannah says, "Clarke, would you like to do a grocery run for us?"

Clarke lifts her eyes from her plate, and Bellamy watches her force a smile onto her face, and make it look easy as anything. "Of course."

The Greens could do their own grocery runs, of course, but Clarke had once said she would like to get off the property once in a while, so sometimes she and Bellamy take the Rover to the nearby village and run errands. The townspeople skew on the older side, and their stores are small and locally owned and don't own a single tabloid.

Hannah gives them a grocery list and sends them on their way.

—

They're quiet the whole half hour drive to the village.

In the store, they grab separate baskets and split to grab items. Bellamy goes through his half of the list with military efficiency, his mind somewhere else.

He almost wishes he hadn't uncovered the second soulmark. Now he can't stop thinking about Clarke's mystery soulmate out there somewhere, who Clarke is going to meet someday and fall for. It's so difficult to imagine, but. There's no way out of this predicament without breaking either Clarke's heart or his.

So he's just not going to think about it.

He slams the cooler door so hard it rattles. Then he goes to find Clarke.

She's standing at the back of the store, her basket only half-full, staring up at a poster on the wall. An old, vintage movie poster that must have been put up recently. It's an old film of Jake Griffin's. He's in a suit and tie, holding a gun up to the camera. Bellamy goes to stand next to Clarke.

The shopkeeper, sweeping in the next aisle, notices their interest and comes closer. "Yeah, that's a good one. Only thirty bucks, that poster, if you want it."

Clarke shakes her head, tugging her cap down. The shopkeeper shrugs.

"Fine by me. I might buy it myself. I was a big fan of his. Shame he went and got himself shot in real life." He chuckles to himself and moves on in the aisle.

Bellamy can see Clarke retreating into herself. Instinctively, although he's still angry at her, he grabs her hand and squeezes.

She squeezes back. Then her head comes up and she looks out the storefront window.

Some part of him is very attuned to her sense of danger. His hand is on his gun immediately, and he looks where she looks. "What?"

She's frowning. "I thought I heard a camera." And he scans the street, but sees nothing, no one suspicious, no one looking at them. Only a few old retired couples walking around.

Before he can say anything, she's moving. Out of the store, leaving their groceries behind. He drops his basket and follows her.

She's rooted to the sidewalk when he joins her, looking pale.

"What'd you see?" he asks. She shakes her head, slowly. Still, now his hackles are raised and it's hard to back off. He puts his hand on her back.

"Let's get out of here."

They collect the rest of their groceries and load up the Rover.

On the drive back, he watches her from the corner of his eye. She stares down at her clockface soulmark. He tries to figure out her expression. He can't.

When he's turning through the gate into Green Farms, she says, "I haven't met my second soulmate yet."

He smiles bitterly, resting his forearms on the steering wheel as he drives up the dirt road. "Obviously."

"I'm just saying, nothing has to change between us."

Yet. Before today, he'd thought she only had one soulmark, same as him, both soulmates dead, and—he didn't know what he'd thought, but it certainly wasn't this feeling in his chest now. Like time is running out.

"I wonder who your soulmate is," Bellamy muses aloud. "Could be anyone. A CEO. A socialite. A singer. Maybe even a regular person, if they're lucky."

"Stop it, Bellamy."

He knows he's being childish but can't bring himself to shut up. "No, I'm serious. You should ask the milkman to show you his wrist next time he delivers. Just to be sure he's not the love of your life."

She crosses her arms and looks out the window. If it were anyone else, they'd probably snap at him by now. But Clarke's patience for his bullshit is infinite. Yet another reason why he doesn't deserve her.

He parks, and they unload supplies from the back of the Rover and bring it into the house in a rather tense fashion. Then they drive back to the cottage and unload their own groceries. She asks him a few things, and he snaps at her, and he catches the look on her face as he turns away—her eyebrows raised, lips thin.

He goes to close the Rover's back door, but she catches his arm. He turns to look back, only for her to surge forward and kiss him.

It jolts him a little. Clarke takes advantage of his surprise, pushing him back a step, his back hitting the Rover. He feels like she's trying to tell him something with her lips.

When she slides her hands up his chest he gets with the program.

He picks her up around the waist and pivots, places her on the edge of the Rover's open back, where they've just taken the supplies out. She tugs him forward by the belt loops, and he catches her wrist, wrenching it away before she can touch him more. Out in the open? Really?

They still, breathing hard, staring at each other. She's got a game here, he thinks. To make him forget that he's angry.

Her eyes are a dark, stormy blue like the ocean, her sunspun hair pulled into a messy ponytail. Her chest heaves as she watches him. Her lips slightly parted and swollen from their kiss. In this moment Bellamy cannot fathom why the universe decided she wouldn't be his.

He presses two fingers into the pulse of her wrist. "Who do you want to fuck you?" he asks quietly, in a voice he doesn't quite recognize as his own. "Me, or your soulmate?" He digs his fingers in a little more, right into the clock face soulmark.

Her pulse goes wild under his fingers. "You." Clarke's voice is husky. With her free hand, she caresses his jaw in a way that drives him a little wild. "Is that all you wanted to hear?"

No. He wants to hear her scream his name. Only his. He doesn't say that, though. When she takes hold of his collar and tugs, he follows her lead obligingly, letting her pull him into the Rover, on top of her. It's several degrees cooler in here, and dark.

She loops her arms around his neck. "Let's forget about the soulmarks."

"I can't do that," he replies. He puts his hand on her neck. "You said you wanted your second soulmark to be me, right?"

Clarke nods, her gaze dark. "So much."

"Then you could've just asked me for one."

Then he gently bites the delicate skin of her throat and sucks hard.

She doesn't expect it, he can tell from the bucking of her hips against his, the startled gasp that's knocked from her lips, the rake of her fingernails against his back. He keeps the suction up and when he lets go, he's satisfied to see the skin deeply reddened.

He only gets to see it a second, though, because then Clarke drags his mouth back to hers.

And well, the back of the Rover isn't exactly the most comfortable place for a fuck, but they get on their knees and make it work.

—

The next morning, they head downstairs to the bathroom to brush their teeth together. They still when they see each other in the mirror.

Bellamy's viciously delighted to see the dark bruises stark against her pale throat. But he can see now that she'd left a few on him, too. He has to laugh under his breath at the sight.

They match, for once in their lives.

Clarke reaches for her tube of concealer, holding his gaze in the mirror, and he watches silently as she dabs it on her second soulmark, as she must have done every day for the last many years. He waits for her to do the same for those hickeys.

She doesn't.

—

A few days later, Bellamy is helping Monty's dad load a supply truck full of trays of vegetable starters for the store when he gets a text from, of all people, Murphy.

I thought you said you and Clarke Griffin weren't banging?

Bellamy's literally about to block his number—seriously, why send him this?—when he realizes there's a photo attached.

It's a photo from a few days ago, in the village, taken from just outside the store. Bellamy's got his cap tugged low, and Clarke's hair is in its ponytail it was in that day, but the reason he winces is because he's holding Clarke's hand. It was right after she'd seen that poster of her father.

Someone had snuck a photo of them after all. And posted it on the internet. Great.

"What's wrong?" Monty's father says, and peeks around his shoulder. "Ah."

Bellamy pockets his phone. "Let's finish loading up."

"I can take it from here," the older man responds, a gentleness in his voice. "Why don't you go take a break?"

Go to Clarke, he means. Bellamy decides to take the advice. It's probably a good idea to get ahead of this. Clarke gets upset enough on her own when people spring paparazzi photos on her.

She'd gone for lunch, so he heads to the cottage.

Clarke wheels around in the kitchen when he walks in. He frowns. The TV is off. The only reason this is noteworthy is because it was on ten seconds ago. He'd heard the indistinct voice of a newscaster as he came up to the door.

Clarke is looking at him with a steely, frantic look in her eye. He knows that look. His gaze falls on the remote control on the table. He goes for it.

Clarke practically dives for it at the same time, but he's faster. He snatches it up, and Clarke actually sidesteps in front of the TV and spreads out her arms.

"Bellamy, wait," she begins, her voice like a whip. He ignores her and jabs the power button on the remote. Unfortunately, the batteries on the stupid thing are close to dying, so he really does need her to move for the TV to come on.

He glares.

"Bellamy—"

"Get the hell out of my way, Clarke."

"I can explain."

"You can explain after I see whatever you're hiding. You know you can't keep it from me forever." She's silent. "If it's already on TV, I can search it up on my phone, too. You want me to do that instead?"

She lowers her arms in defeat. He turns the TV on.

The first thing he sees is the headline. BREAKING: POLARIS HAS SECRETLY CONTINUED ARKADIA'S SOULMARKS RESEARCH.

He catches the reporter at the end of her spiel.

"—reached out to Polaris about this, but no official statement has been made. But it's only a matter of time before Clarke Griffin will have to come out of hiding and provide answers to the very concerning questions raised by these revelations."

The newscaster turns to a new topic. Bellamy mutes it and turns slowly to Clarke.

"Bellamy—"

"You're still looking into the research that got your mom thrown in prison."

She hesitates, but then her resolve seems to harden, and she lifts her chin, eyes blazing defiantly. "Yes. And I'm not going to apologize for it. Jaha and I have been following every rule in the book. We're looking for patterns in pre-existing data on soulmates. We're examining soulmark tissue from cadavers. There's no ethics violations, so you can stop looking at me like that."

He can feel himself growing angrier by the second. "It's not about that! It's about optics, Clarke! People are going to look at this and think you're doing the same thing Abby and Dr. Singh did. They're going to look at you hard. You're going to have to answer to them. Are you ready for that? So soon, after everything? Do you trust Lexa not to throw you under the bus?"

She looks away. He shakes his head.

"You need to stop this, Clarke. Right now. Call Jaha and tell him to shut it all down."

"No."

"Why?"

"You know why."

He does, but it's not worth it. He knows she thinks having answers would help her move forward. He can't relate. Clearcut answers would just rub it in his face, all the ways in which he was inadequate to love Clarke Griffin.

But, he can tell from the look in her eye that nothing will stop her. That's Clarke, all right. She'll get attached to a goal and nothing will stop her. He finds himself growing suspicious.

"What else are you hiding from me?"

"Nothing!" She chews her lip, brows furrowing. "I can't think of anything else."

The fact that she's genuinely trying to remember if she's been lying about other things is both exasperating and also ultimately what convinces him that she's not. His anger dissolves into tiredness.

He shows her the picture Murphy had sent him on his phone. "Well, we have another problem."

She takes a look. "Oh, no. Bellamy, my soulmark."

He looks back at it. He hadn't noticed it before, but the camera had caught Clarke's right wrist. The clock face is clear as day in the photo. Her cover is blown.

His stomach drops. The one time someone had gotten a photo of her in these past few months and it's when her second soulmark was unconcealed. This is entirely his fault. If he hadn't wiped the makeup away…

"No wonder my phone's been blowing up with texts," Clarke says. She looks at him, a grim look in her eye. "Bellamy, I think it's time we went home."

He was afraid she would say that, even though he knows she's right. They've already spent so long here. She has to clean up whatever's happening at Polaris. And now that photo is out. It's only a matter of time before the press follows the trail here. They can't do that to Monty's parents, not when they've been so hospitable, so welcoming these past six months.

He sighs. "I'll start packing."

—

It's Clarke's job to let Hannah know they're leaving within the week. It's a little sooner than she'd hoped—she'd wanted the whole summer here—but she supposes they've taken advantage of the Greens' hospitality too long. Then she calls Monty and lets him know, too.

"Well, I was still right," he points out. "The paparazzi didn't find you at the farm, did they? They found you in the village."

Clarke rolls her eyes. "I guess you're right." She thanks him again, and ends the call, and stares at her phone. The thing is, she's so sure the person wasn't just a paparazzo.

A chill runs up her spine again as she thinks of it. Out the window of the grocery store, she'd heard the faintest click. She'd looked up and seen a flash of blonde hair, a blue blur in the crowd. She'd gone outside to look for her, but she was no longer there.

But in the split instant Clarke had seen this person from inside the shop, she could swear there was something very familiar about her outfit. She'd had to Google it later to confirm her own suspicions. It was a blue henley and jacket combo, Clarke's outfit during her one and only movie role. That woman who had taken a picture of her had been wearing an exact replica.

Clarke had told herself this was nothing but an overzealous fan. She's run into those before. Which is why she hadn't told Bellamy when he asked. But she can't shake it, and it makes her look over her shoulder every time she sets foot outside the cottage.

—

Their remaining days at the farm go by too fast. Suddenly it's the day before they're planning to leave. Clarke and Bellamy help out the Greens one last time in the greenhouse with picking berries that afternoon. There's a sense of ending to all this. She's going to miss it. The heavy lifting, the sweat on her back, even the dirt under her fingernails. She's going to miss feeling anonymous.

"Clarke," Hannah calls from the entrance, drawing her attention. "Someone's here asking for you."

Clarke sets down her basket. Paparazzi have already found her, then. She opens her mouth to tell Hannah to send them away, but Hannah adds, "I think you'll want to see them."

Her voice sounds very strange.

"Why?" Clarke asks slowly. "Who is it?"

"Finn Collins."

Clarke's mouth drops open. Finn?

Without really being completely aware of it, she's moving forward, past Hannah. She feels Bellamy at her back, following.

There's a sleek black luxury sedan parked out front, looking starkly out of place. Finn's leaning against it, and when he sees her, he pushes off.

She comes closer and something in his eyes is crazy, desperate. "I found you," he breathes, and Clarke's brow furrows.

"Finn, what—"

He yanks up his sleeve, and Clarke's eyes fall helplessly to his wrist, where a clock face with the hands striking twelve is clear as day.

—

An hour later, Clarke enters the cottage for the last time.

She takes in the kitchen, which she and Bellamy had scrubbed clean in preparation for leaving, wanting to leave it spotless for their hosts. So many memories here. And upstairs, too…

She drags her feet up.

Bellamy's waiting for her in the bedroom they've shared for months, sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees. Their suitcases lie on the floor in front of him, open, mostly packed. He doesn't say anything, but sadness rolls off his hunched shoulders.

They knew this would happen someday. Neither of them had expected it to be so soon.

"Well?" Bellamy asks when she doesn't speak right away.

"I sent him away," Clarke replies. She'd chewed him out for even coming here when he could have called, and he'd said she wasn't answering his calls.

She couldn't really deny that. She's been ignoring a lot of calls while she was here. Finn went on to explain that he couldn't wait for her to call back after seeing that photo, that he had to see her. He'd pulled some strings, asked around, used his vast resources to figure out where she was. And came for her.

"I knew there was a reason I felt so connected to you," he'd said, gazing at her. "Don't tell me you didn't feel it too."

She had looked away, still in shock. She'd thought back, analyzing all her previous interactions with Finn Collins in a new light.

As a teenager, she'd practically been half in love with him, but so had half the people her age back then. That was in the way people get obsessed with their favourite characters. She hadn't thought much of it at the time, because why should she, but there must've been something more.

Then she thought about how she'd given him her number when he'd asked, despite the fact that she rarely handed it out to socialites. She hadn't really known why she was doing it at the time, either. Just that Finn was entertaining in some way. It wasn't that deep.

But according to fate, maybe it actually was.

Finn was still waiting for her to answer, and she'd said, "You need to leave, Finn. I can't just up and go yet."

"Why not?"

"Because I need to pack my things and say some goodbyes. I've been here half a year, Finn. There's a lot I have to do before I leave." Finn had stayed rooted to the spot.

"You're my soulmate, Clarke. I've waited a long time to get to know you."

"Then you can wait a little longer."

So Finn had left, with one last lingering look at her.

And now she's here, with Bellamy.

Clarke thinks about what Dr. Singh had told her about her research a long time ago. There's a sort of stepwise cascade that occurs to put them down one road or another, and after that they can't go back. Their fate has been determined. Clarke has to wonder which road she went down that led her to Finn Collins. And why she didn't pick the road that would've led to Bellamy.

She studies him and tries to compare him and Finn. There's really no comparison. She hardly even knows Finn. Bellamy, she's known her whole life.

She takes a deep breath and considers something terrifying. "I don't have to go with him."

"But you should," Bellamy says, bitterly. "Because I can't be to you what he is, Clarke." He shakes his head. "I should've known he was your soulmate."

"What's that mean? You don't even like him."

"That's my point."

She sighs. He watches her.

"You don't seem very happy for someone who's soulmate turned out to be a famous movie star."

"I hardly even know him. You know I'm not that shallow."

"Your soulmark says something different."

She knows he's in a mood because he's sad, but she can't just take it anymore.

"You're acting like any of this was in my control. That's not fair, Bellamy." Her voice cracks, and his expression softens. "I didn't want this to happen."

She looks away from him, out the window, and then he's off the bed, standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders.

"Clarke. I'm sorry. I know. I know."

She puts her hands on his, stares into his solemn brown eyes. Behind him, the suitcases they packed mock her. "I don't want to go," she whispers, childishly. "Bellamy, I don't want to go."

She doesn't even know what she means—that she doesn't want to leave this farm, doesn't want to go to the company, doesn't want to go face the press, doesn't want to go to Finn. Maybe all those things. She wants to stay in this dream life with Bellamy forever.

Perhaps he understands, because he leans his forehead against hers, and they both draw in ragged breaths.

Maybe if she didn't have a second soulmark she could imagine trying with him. But she does. The universe gave her another, and even then it wasn't Bellamy. Fate has given her yet another clear warning that she and Bellamy were not meant to be, not even now.

Lexa and her—didn't work out. Lexa broke her heart, and her betrayal still hurts to this day. Clarke tries to imagine a similar betrayal from Bellamy. She cannot imagine him doing such a thing.

Maybe it wouldn't happen like that. Maybe she would betray him instead. Maybe one of her lies or secrets would become one too many and he'd leave and she'd have to learn to live without him. But Bellamy's so ingrained in the DNA of her life; she can't cut him out without cutting herself to pieces too.

God, her life is a mess. If only she'd been more careful out in the village, that girl wouldn't have gotten a picture of her. She could have lived in this dream a little while longer.

"I met your friend Raven at your wedding," Clarke blurts suddenly, and Bellamy pulls away. "She had a raven soulmark."

He waits, clearly wondering where this came from.

"I think I know her soulmate." Bellamy blinks, and Clarke hugs herself. "There was a TA, back at my university… but I didn't tell her." Which is unheard of. It's socially expected, really, that if you know someone's soulmate, you tell them.

"Why not?" Bellamy asks quietly.

"Because maybe Raven was with someone already. Maybe she was already happy and in love."

Bellamy scoffs. "Trust me, she's not. Wick, Zeke, Murphy—every relationship she's had ended in disaster. Mostly self-inflicted."

The way he says it makes her laugh, and fuck, she's going to miss talking to him every day for hours. She forces herself to focus. "The point is, I thought, why should I interfere with their lives? Why should I try to break the relationships they've already got? Why not just leave them in peace?"

A long pause. Then, somberly: "I wouldn't have told them, either."

They stand there for a long minute. Completely silent, an acknowledgment between them of things that could've been, had things been different. Hard choice, hard choice. Weren't soulmarks supposed to make everything easy?

Emotions threaten to overwhelm her. And as has become habit, she reaches for him.

He startles a bit when she presses her lips to his. But he snaps out of it quickly, turning his head away.

"Clarke, don't." He sounds anguished.

She drops her hands to her sides, knowing she probably looks pathetic right now, trying to come on to him.

A muscle in his jaw jumps, his face still turned away from her as he speaks again. "You have a soulmate, Clarke. You know I don't like it but I'm not going to ruin that, I'm not going to ruin us—"

"I know."

"Then don't ask me to."

"One more time," she says, and starts to cry. "One more time, and then I'll go with him. I'll go be with my soulmate. Please, just one more time with you."

Her words are barely even audible by the end; her voice has lost steam. She needs a goodbye, even if they are only separating so they can always be together.

And he must need it too. Because then he's in her space again, taking her face in his hands, something desperate in his eyes. "Alright," he murmurs, almost to himself. "Alright. One more time, with you."

She takes his hand from her face, interlaces his fingers with her own. As their mouths meet again, Bellamy's hands creep under her shirt, skimming up her stomach, to trace her bra. He can always tell which one she's wearing by touching it under her clothes, and then he knows exactly how to unclasp it. This one she had bought recently, is blue and lacy, and hooks from the front. He makes quick work of it before Clarke can help him. It's the most ridiculous, pathetic thought, but Clarke decides right there that she won't wear this bra ever again, because then it will only ever have been touched by him.

There's a strange reverence with which they touch each other, their journey to the bed. A sense of finality to the way they kiss, to the way they slowly, slowly take their clothes off. Trying to make this last as long as possible.

They make out in bed for as long as Clarke can stand. His mouth is so familiar now. She's gotten used to kissing him, knowing the exact angle she needs to tilt her head for them to fit perfectly together. She's gotten used to putting her hand to his jaw, feeling it work under her hand when they're really going at it.

Bellamy starts to crawl down her body, but she stops him. "No," she whispers. "I just want you inside me tonight."

She settles on her back, pulling him on top of her, because she wants it like this. She spreads her knees, welcoming him to settle between them. He props himself up on his hands to look down at her. She nods to him.

They sink together again, one last time.

He buries his face into her neck and rocks into her, setting a rhythm, but no, she finds. No, it's not slow enough. She digs her fingers into his hips, stilling him until he understands, and yes, this is better.

She wants it to be slow even though every part of her screams at her to make it fast. She wants to feel, truly feel, every inch of him as he pushes in to the hilt and out of her.

Because this is her only chance to commit him to memory. Her eyes fall shut, heels dig into his sides, her fingers into his hair. She tries to urge him deeper, to get him to burn an imprint of himself into her body. She never wants to forget the exquisite ache of her best friend inside of her, warm and big and stretching her out and—she has to consciously drag a breath into her lungs, because her mind has completely forgotten that her body needed anything but him.

She starts crying anew because, god, she both loves and hates how good it feels. She doesn't know if she'll ever feel this good again.

Bellamy's fingers slip between them, brushing against where she's most sensitive. She tries to pull them away. "N—no, no no no, not yet," she yammers near-incoherently. "I don't want it to be over."

He kisses her neck. "It won't be over, Clarke."

He brings her over the edge, and she crashes down in waves, but he doesn't stop, he keeps pushing into her with those same slow, restrained movements, until she feels it building again. He's trembling with effort, and she can feel him start to lose control, and she lets him, because she's tortured him long enough.

She wants to watch him unravel, so she tugs at his hair until he lifts his head from the crook of her neck. He meets her gaze. His brown eyes are wide and shiny and hungry. She clenches around him and watches his lashes flutter.

"I thought you didn't want this to be over," he groans. She doesn't relent, digging her heels into his lower back, urging him on until his control shatters completely.

Afterwards, when they're lying next to each other, she blinks up at the ceiling and whispers, "It had to be over sometime."

—

The next day, while loading up the Rover with their things, Bellamy gets a call from Eligius. They want a meeting with him at corporate headquarters as soon as possible. Great.

He agrees to a set time and date, then gets off the phone when Clarke leaves the cottage, shutting the door slowly behind her. Her face is expressionless. He imagines he's the same.

They climb into the vehicle wordlessly, and the silence in their long trip back home is a stark contrast to the trip that had brought them here. But a lot has changed.

He finds himself side-eyeing Clarke often during the drive. She rubs at her right wrist a lot. She's stopped putting concealer on it.

About forty-five minutes before they arrive home, the Rover breaks down on the highway.

Bellamy supposes he should've expected this. It's not the first time. The thing is damn old. He hops out to pop open the hood. Clarke comes to stand next to him while he pokes around fruitlessly. After he tries a few things, he knows it's hopeless. He's going to have to call someone to tow them.

"That's okay. They'll fix it," Clarke says encouragingly. He wipes the sweat from his eyes.

"The last time this happened, Raven said this thing was on its last legs. It's not getting fixed. It's junk."

"I'll get it remodelled for you," Clarke says, but he shakes his head, angry.

"I don't want it. It did what it needed to do while I had it. Some things you have to leave in the past."

She's silent for a long moment. "How long do you think it'll take the tow truck to get here?"

He shrugs. "A couple hours, probably."

She chews her lip. He knows why she's worried. She'd had an emergency meeting with Polaris board members set for later today, to talk strategy for how to manage the press.

"Go," he tells her while he dials the automobile association. "I'll wait for the tow truck. You get someone to pick you up."

Her voice becomes low, desperate. "I can't leave you."

Why does it always feel these days like they're having two conversations at once? "I'll be fine."

She stares at him a second more. He stares back, unflinching.

Finally, Clarke pulls out her phone and he half-listens to her talk to Kane, at the same time that he gets connected with the automobile association.

When they're done with their respective phone calls, they climb back into the Rover and sit in silence until Kane's sleek SUV pulls up to the curb. Clarke looks at him one last time as she opens the passenger side door.

"Bellamy—"

"Go, Clarke."

"I was just going to say," she whispers. "Thank you."

That hits him like a sledgehammer to the chest. Even if he doesn't know exactly what she's thanking him for.

Clarke doesn't explain, either. She just gets out of the vehicle.

The urge to reach for her is almost too strong to resist. He tightens his grip on the wheel and reminds himself why they are doing this. To stop themselves from ruining each other.

But, as Clarke walks away from him, he can't shake the feeling that it's far too late for that.

.

.

.

---

A/N: pros of leaving a review: golden opportunity to beat me up, it'll make me happy, i'll adore you even as you punch my metaphorical teeth in

cons: ?

(stay tuned for part 3, coming soon!)
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