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The friendship of Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake starts with a bang.
More precisely, it starts with two eight year olds colliding into each other, pebbles digging under the skin of Clarke's knees and Bellamy's glasses cracking as he crashes onto the pavement.
It starts with a loud crack, glass shattering, and a moment of Earth-splitting silence followed by a shout that is not incredulous, not angry.
Small Clarke Griffin, with her hair braided into a crown on top of her head, can't stop looking at her wrist as she exclaims, "You broke my compass!"
There are two words everyone in the world swears by and they are soulmates and compass. Because people are lost and they are broken but they have their compasses to guide them home.
Bellamy Blake's jeans are ripped where Clarke's knees are scraped, and he stares at the golden-haired girl, his mouth parting in silent horror.
"You broke my compass!" she accuses again, letting go of her wrist to get up from the ground and shove at him.
They are too young then to understand what it means, but they know that it matters more than they'll ever know.
When she pushes him back on the ground, the same cracking sound breaks Bellamy's heart and there's a piece of glass right next to his tattered chucks.
His compass isn't moving and now it's Clarke's turn to gape in silence.
"I guess that makes us even," he shoots back, malice filling his voice. And because he is eight and he doesn't remember the last time he'd looked as clean as this girl does, he adds, "Princess."
Raising her jaw petulantly, she offers him a hand and he takes it, lets her pull him up. She's shorter than him and an unruly curl tickles his nose when he tries to loom over her.
It's very short lived because she threatens to shove him again and Bellamy can't help but to laugh.
"I like you, kid. I'm Bellamy."
She shakes his hand like she has every intention of crushing his bones and yeah. Yeah, he likes her.
"Clarke Griffin, nice to meet you."
For the next ten years, no one knows how they managed to turn ruining each other's chances of finding true love into a friendship.
But they still did.
*
"Like, it's supposed to be a true north kinda thing," Raven Reyes, resident genius, slurs through half a bottle of vodka and some really shitty gummy bears.
They're all piled up in Clarke's living room, summer air turning them slow and lazy, Bellamy's fingers languid as he untangles the knots in his best friend's hair.
"How does it work?" Clarke's voice rumbles against his thighs, where she's got her head on them. She's like a cat, Bellamy swears. Can't get enough of being petted and will probably start purring any day now.
Raven blinks at her, lips still curled around an obnoxious song lyric blasting from the stereo, and then seems to remember.
"Oh yeah, electromagnetism. Kinda like gravity. God, Griffin, who cares? You're fucked either way."
They have this thing, Bellamy and Clarke, where they tell the story of how they met at parties. Clarke doesn't even have to be drunk to tell it, lighthearted and easy, like Bellamy hadn't done something horrible.
When Bellamy tells it, it usually makes people stare in horror.
Soulmates. They're pretty important. TV shows keep being filmed about them, various takes on soulmarks, compasses, tattoos - the variations are as many as there are soulmates. People love it, the idea that there is someone out there made just for them.
Bellamy always thought it was crap.
"Cute, Reyes," he shoots back, glancing at Clarke to check if she's upset. Judging by her wink in his direction, she's really not.
Seventeen and she's already got enough shit under her belt not to care about soulmates at all.
Raven shrugs, takes another sip of the cheapest and worst liquor they could find. Her bomber jacket makes for a nice pillow when she folds it on the carpet.
"Hey, don't shoot the messenger."
Later on, when Bellamy gets pleasantly buzzed (but not enough to forget to check on his friends), Clarke gets a sharpie out and starts doodling around his compass.
She's odd like that, split between an overachiever who wants to get into pre-med and become a doctor, neat buns and clean skin - and then there are days when she's her other self. Her real self. A human mess in baggy sweaters she stole from him (even though she's got a closet full of actually nice things), frizzy hair held up by pencils and eyes full of stars.
They should talk, probably.
But for now he just frowns, asks her what's she doing.
"Expressing my creativity." She sticks her tongue at him, keeps going.
Soon enough, his compass is barely visible. It's usually protected by a thin, albeit sturdy, layer of glass, but their parents didn't think there was any point in keeping it after the accident.
Now there's just bare markings and a needle that doesn't spin anywhere.
And a drawing of a pink bunny because - why the hell not?
"Do you like it?" Clarke asks, her eyelids drooping, but smile persistent. Wide, ear to ear sort of smile that comes with the good kind of sleepiness.
His mother used to drive them to the beach not far away from Arkadia. Clarke would always fall asleep in the backseat, her head bobbing on the window, and her hand small in Bellamy's. Sunscreen and sand and popsicles with artificial blue coloring. It feels like one of those moments now.
So he smiles back, tucks her into his side and puts away the sharpie for safekeeping. She's going to be looking for it tomorrow morning.
"Yeah, I love it."
*
There might have been a time when Bellamy wasn't in love with Clarke but he sure doesn't remember it.
Ever since that day on the playground, it was as if his soulmate had been lost but the universe awarded him with a new one.
He and Clarke became the king and queen of the playground, roaming around as soon as the school day was over. She could draw well and Bellamy knew a lot of stories which was enough friendship material for two kids.
Sometimes, Octavia would join them, too, but she was mostly interested in checking if she could bite through the metal in the swing set.
And so it was always the two of them at the end of the day. Clarke in her pretty dresses but with a wicked smile and a mischievous glint in her eye that got her hands covered in red dirt and her knees scraped by the end of the day.
And Bellamy, his hands stuck in his trouser pockets, all bravado and no common sense.
He thinks he fell in love with her sometime after he'd told her the story of Achilles and Patroclus, unknowing then of how his mother believed in love so fiercely that she decided to defy a big part of classics society, and Clarke presented him with a drawing the very next day.
(She had a charcoal smudge on her cheek and grass-stained overalls. He remembers that, always will.)
Achilles looked strangely like a girl and Patroclus had too many freckles for what Bellamy had told her and so he just smirked, facing her bashful expression.
"And what's this supposed to be?"
"Ach-ee-lees and Pat-" she stumbled over the words, worrying her lower lip in frustration and Bellamy couldn't stop smiling. "Pat-ro- come on, Bell."
"Patroclus. Yeah, well, they look a lot like us."
Clarke raised her eyebrows at him, able to shame him in just a second. "They were partners. Just like us."
He was twelve and his heart was already swelling with so much affection he could barely keep it in.
Clarke kept looking at him, from strong to unsteady in the seconds ticking away without him saying anything.
Finally, she huffed and reached for the drawing. "Fine. If you think it's stupid, then I'll just -"
"I think it's amazing."
"Really?"
He nodded and Clarke narrowed her eyes at him.
"No shit?"
They didn't swear then, unless it was a very serious matter.
"Yeah, Princess. Absolutely no shit at all."
*
Fourteen and Clarke is lying in his bed in her ridiculous Superman pajamas, curled up on her side, her back to the wall and her face to Bellamy.
"Are you worried?" she asks, voice only slightly quivering.
"About high school?"
She nods, wringing her hands on the pillow beside her. His mother put up glowing stars and planets on his ceiling and he used to tell Clarke all about them.
"Nah. We'll do great."
Her exhale is full of relief and she turns on her back, arms akimbo and her cold feet grazing his knees.
"I might join the art club."
Bellamy chuckles. "Figures."
It earns him a swat to his arm, her cheeks turning a furious shade of red. "Stop being a dick. It's not like you won't join the debate team. You're probably looking forward to actually being praised for arguing."
Sometimes he forgets that she knows him so well; from the first scar he'd ever gotten (upper lip, nine years old, saving his neighbor's cat from a tree, Clarke's mom stitched him up and gave him a lollipop for his bravery) to the first girl he'd ever kissed (Roma, wild and loud, just his type - Clarke winked and pushed him in her direction).
Sometimes he forgets that they wear each other like second skin.
He knows that her hair smells like apples and that there is a scar on her right index knuckle from where she punched Mbege for teasing Bellamy. He knows that she first kissed Wells and they both came out stumbling from behind that tree, looking absolutely mortified.
He forgets that she knows no one is ever going to matter as much as Octavia does and he forgets that he knows why she's always so desperate to pet every dog they come across. Lonely kids always are.
Then she huffs and slams her eyes shut, like she's going to fight sleep until it surrenders.
"You want me to tell you about the constellations?" he offers.
"No. I probably know them better than you at this point."
*
When they are fifteen, Jake Griffin gets sick. At first, neither of them believe it. Men like him don't die, they live long enough for their grandchildren to love them. They get remembered. They get grey hairs and laughter lines.
People like Jake Griffin don't have daughters like Clarke, who collapses on the steps of Bellamy's front porch in the early evening and keeps sitting there until Octavia, on her way to take out the trash, finds her small and curled up on their doorstep.
She has this ridiculous yellow backpack that everyone in their year has signed, but Bellamy's name is still in the biggest letters and it shouldn't make him happy but it does.
"Bell, Clarke's here." Octavia is nine, lanky and scraped knuckles. Too much like Bellamy, with no Clarke to rein her in. But, for all how wild she is, she still worries. "She doesn't look good."
He finds his best friend, barely managing to put on a shirt, running like someone's chasing him because that's what they do these days. He calls and she doesn't answer but she comes to him.
It's just an endless stretch of green hospital hallways and the smell of antiseptic caught in Clarke's hair when he finally wraps his arms around her.
Nine to seven, she pretends that she's alright. She does her homework, eats dinner with her mom and tells her dad what they were up to that day.
Seven to dawn - she collapses under the weight.
"Clarke, hey," he whispers into her hair, careful not to startle her. The blue paint on the stairs is already chipped off but she digs at it even deeper until he stops her. "Talk to me, huh?"
"He's, um - " she frowns at nothing in particular, clutching her backpack to her chest. "My dad is not going to make it."
Bellamy's heart breaks but she doesn't even shed a tear. He finds it strange then but years later, he remembers how she'd exhaled, as if she gave up on trying to hold on. As if even shitty closure was better than surviving like this.
So he starts going to the hospital with her, every day after school. Their homework gets piled up, a two person army crumbling for each other, Bellamy sneaking notes into her backpack and trying not to smile when she finds them and, just for a second, forgets what's worrying her.
Afternoons drip into evenings as they ride the bus, Clarke's hand tiny in his. They share a pair of earbuds and listen to music about soulmates and roadtrips and friends' laughter rising high into the ether, until it combusts into stardust.
Clarke falls asleep on his shoulder and he hates waking her up. There is always a split second after waking up in which she smiles, oblivious. A split second during which she forgets about reality that always has her slouching forward, begging him to take her home.
On the day of Jake Griffin's funeral, Clarke runs. She gets as far as Polis, two towns over, and he finds her sitting on the curb in front of a bar, wearing his flannel shirt.
"They wouldn't let me in," she explains. Then she smiles ruefully at him and adds, "We paid too much for those fake IDs."
They ride the bus like they used to, her legs tangled with his. She doesn't ask what the funeral was like and he's still wearing a tie.
He's not sure how they survive but he thinks that buying himself a truck and driving her out into the desert, her screams echoing along the starry sky, helps.
*
Bellamy is there when she kisses Finn Collins and meets Raven Reyes. He is there as she gets ridiculously drunk at sixteen, holding her hair and watching mascara trickle down her cheeks.
"What's wrong with me?" she asks holding onto his shirt so tight like it's going to blow her away if she lets go. "Is it because we fucked up our compasses? Is that why this is happening? Am I broken?"
It's funny, how heartbreak is so fucking quiet and so loud at the same time. There are glasses shattering and war drums beating, and it's all inside his head.
But he circles her wrists, shakes them until she's looking at him with glassy blue eyes that resemble a storm now.
"Clarke, listen to me. This happened because he's an asshole, not because there's something wrong with you. God, you're not broken. You're the most wholesome person I've ever met."
He drives her home and goes back to the party. Everyone's left and there's still blood on the floor from when Raven punched Finn.
There's also Raven, in an armchair in the middle of the front yard, her legs dangling off the armrest and a beer can perched precariously on her knees.
She's got grease stains on her hands and smiles at Bellamy like she can see straight through him.
"You're in love with her, huh?"
He is, he is, but people don't belong to people and all he wants to do is see Clarke happy.
"Not your business."
"No, it's not," Raven agrees, untying her ponytail. "But you could be."
They don't mention that night for a very long time - the red cheeks and angry huffs because it didn't help and summer warmth sticks to their skin in the bed of Bellamy's truck. There are tragedies written in the stars above them but this one isn't worth being remembered.
"Did it help?" he asks her as she pulls her shirt back on.
"Not one bit."
When they finally tell her, Clarke just shrugs.
"It wasn't a good night for anyone."
They leave it at that and keep standing shoulder to shoulder. Raven is brilliant, dreams of seeing the stars up close, and Clarke pets her hair, tells her that she'll make it.
Wells falls in love with Raven and it's not even a surprise. He finds Bellamy one day in the cafeteria, before the girls have joined them, and the person closest to a sibling Clarke's ever had smiles ruefully at Bellamy.
"Is that what it feels like?"
He's not sure how he knows what Wells means but he nods all the same. "Yeah."
"Good." When Bellamy frowns, Wells grins. "I never wanted an easy way out."
*
Time goes by and the compasses aren't anything more than just reminders of how they'd met.
By the time they are eighteen and riding the same train to the same college, Bellamy and Clarke don't even think about soulmates anymore.
But there are questions, always are. People who've met their soulmates and now want everyone else to do the same.
"Did you try getting it fixed?"
"I know a guy who's had the same thing happen to him."
"Wow, so you guys just, like, stick together now? Sergeant Pepper's No Soulmates Band?"
It doesn't bother either of them because there are still people born without soulmarks or compasses and what's the difference? Everyone moves on.
Clarke switches from pre-med to art after one too many exhausting nights and breaks up with her girlfriend (who Bellamy actually sort of liked, as ridiculous as it sounds).
Bellamy decides to major in history and his eyesight gets even worse.
"Tell me about the fall of the Roman Empire again," Clarke tells him when they're cuddled on the couch and it's weird. They're old enough for it to be weird; her head buried in the crook of his neck, her warm breath fanning across his skin, his hand sliding under her shirt.
"It all started with Constantine I in 313 BC."
Their little empire crumbles to ash and dust when Bellamy's mother dies.
*
The Blakes' old blue house must know that Aurora Blake died because it doesn't stop giving him shit when he moves back in.
He replaces the history textbooks with adoption forms and CPS workers’ rants become the soundtrack of his life.
Octavia doesn't talk. Most of the time she just glares, caged look in her eyes, like she's a wild animal ready to gnaw her leg off to get out of this prison.
Bellamy tries and tries and gives up. Nothing is the same when there's no Aurora to braid her hair and sing at the top of her lungs to music he used to make fun of.
Clarke holds his hand at the funeral, stands wrecked at his doorway as he asks her to leave after.
"I can't do this right now," he tells her, his eye catching every single flaw in this house.
His life used to be so bright and now it feels like a fucking lie.
"I'm still your friend, Bellamy. You know I'm here for you, right?"
He nods, closes the door, turns away. The curtains stay drawn until he feels a little less like dying.
He gets a job in the bar downtown. Pays the bills. Makes sure Octavia is doing her homework. Rinse and repeat until he can't stop slamming the door of his truck because this is not how it goes. This is not how it goes, solitude and desolation, his reflection in the mirror mocking him every day.
Clarke texts sometimes and he pretends like it doesn't make his heart flip. This is no time for a romance but he still rereads her messages, glimpses into a life he could have led.
Mom called today. She said she saw you around town. Apparently, you don't look like shit. Impossible.
He can almost imagine her worrying her lower lip after she hits send on that text because it's followed by:
I'm sorry, I was joking. I'm glad you're doing fine. Let me know if I can help.
I'll be in Arkadia for the weekend. Want to catch up?
They closed the Chinese place we always got takeout from. The owner decided to retire early. His second wife is still looking for him.
Happy New Year!
I got a job in a coffee shop downtown today. The barista is totally your type, tall, dark and handsome. His name is Lincoln and he's an artist, too.
When they were sixteen, Bellamy kissed a guy and liked it. Clarke laughed for hours after he'd told her, a mirthful kind of laugh in her bright pink sundress and lips curled around a bottle of Coke.
"So you thought I was gonna freak out?"
Bellamy shrugs, feeling out of place, out of touch. Her legs are a mile long and he'd like them wrapped around his waist much more than he'd liked Murphy with his cynical ‘love's a bourgeois construct’.
"Didn't know you knew a word that long."
Murphy smirked at him, brazen and reckless, like all of them were.
"I guess I'm more than what meets the eye."
So he tells Clarke about sitting in the parking lot of a drug store with John Murphy, who's already got a rap sheet and tastes like gasoline, and she listens.
"It's okay, Bell. I like girls, too."
They figure it out together because that's what they've always done. And bisexuality feels more like another badge to add to the wall of their friendship.
But he doesn't care about artists or philosophers or girls who poked holes in quantum theory or guys who made him laugh and forget. Not anymore.
When Raven ends up in a car accident, everyone flocks back to Arkadia and Clarke doesn't acknowledge the fact that he hasn't responded to a single one of her texts. They exchange a look and that's that, rushing into Raven's hospital room, presenting a united front.
"Oh, good," she grins, high on painkillers, "mom and dad are here."
They are twenty and Bellamy still laughs at the mention of the old nicknames. Wells shoots him a thankful look and links his fingers with Raven's.
They're all in the room when the doctor tells her that her left leg is gone.
They're all in the room when she grits her teeth and breaks a glass because - "Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this!"
They are all in the room when they smell heartbreak and grief and despair. It never gets easier. You just learn to numb the pain.
Raven gets back up in record time, a metal brace strapped to her leg. She can't walk fast but she still sits in Bellamy's backyard and tells him to hurry up with the beer.
"I'd get it faster than you!"
He laughs and shoots back, "Cyborgs don't count!"
They form a weird, desperate club but at least they learn how to grin in the face of their misery. That's something, too.
"We're survivors, Blake. That's what we do. We fucking keep fighting because we don't know when to stop."
Octavia sits on the steps with Raven sometimes, disappearing into the house as soon as Bellamy shows up. They still can't find middle ground between Bellamy taking on a role of a parent and still being her big brother that sneaked her candy before dinner.
Raven smiles at him. "She's a good kid. Just a little lost."
"Aren't we all?"
*
Bellamy remembers the last moment before it all started going to shit:
Fifteen and they're sitting on the roof of Clarke's house, lights on the porch flickering on whenever a stray cat crosses the sprawling yard.
Their arms are covered in doodles and Bellamy pretends that he's offended when Clarke writes 'dork' in bold letters on his hand.
Then she snaps out of her daydreamy gaze, the one that's always there when she's doodling or drawing or doing anything that's who she really is, and looks at him.
"I know what we should do."
They bury a box full of their childhood trinkets (first drawings, popsicle sticks, friendship bracelets and the collar of the dog Clarke never got) in her backyard and she laughs with her forehead covered in dirt.
"I'll have calluses in the morning."
"Yeah, so will I," Bellamy retorts, putting away the shovel and taking a seat on the wet grass. It doesn't bother him much.
(Nothing does when Clarke is sitting next to him, her head on his shoulder and her eyes closed.)
"You know what we should do?"
Bellamy groans, wincing when she punches him in the arm. "Your plans are the worst, Princess. Please stop."
"What the fuck? Name one bad plan!"
"Egging Principal Wallace's house, hiding a cat from your mom for a week, making Octavia think that ghosts are real -"
She stops him with a hand pressed to his mouth, lips pursed. "Okay, you made your point. But this is a good one."
"You either move your hand or I'm gonna lick you."
"Nah, you won't."
Her eyebrows shoot into her hair when he licks her palm and she squeals, wiping it off on his jeans.
"Gross, Bell!"
"You asked for it."
They sit in silence for a while, bodies still shaking because she responded to his palm-licking by slobbering all over his cheek and somewhere along the way, it started being funny.
"We should make a pact," she says finally, searching his face.
"I'm not killing chickens."
"No one's asking you to. I meant a friendship pact. As two fucked up, loveless, bitter friends who promise to be fucked up, loveless, bitter - but together - for the rest of their lives."
His heart does a somersault in his chest but he can't help it, he has to tease her because at the end of the day, they're just two shitweasels who love riling each other up.
"What if I move to Alaska?"
Clarke stares him down, steel and ice in her eyes. "Then you better bet your ass that I'm gonna be right there with you. I'll even get a pair of gloves."
The ultimate sacrifice. Her fingers used to get blue because she refused to wear gloves. Clarke Griffin, his best friend.
And because they're fifteen and melting into each other so seamlessly that they aren't even Bellamy and Clarke anymore, but BellamyandClarke, a force of nature, they make that pact.
Seven days later, her dad gets sick and no one thinks about unearthing that box.
*
Octavia starts talking to him a couple days before her fifteenth birthday.
"Pick – ballet or boxing lessons?"
Bellamy chokes on thin air, halfway through his cereal as she marches into the kitchen. Today is a pink day but she still looks fierce, even in her tulle dress.
"I'd rather if you knew how to defend yourself," he presses out, confused as to how to react. She's standing in the kitchen, getting ready to fight against a hurricane, and then her face sinks when she gets the opposite.
"I want boxing gloves."
"Done."
It takes them a second to start laughing, Octavia closing the distance to bury herself into his arms and the world gets a little better, a little brighter.
Soon enough she gets a job in Raven's garage that no one knows how to explain.
"It's science, Blake, stop bothering me," Raven says when he asks, her head always stuck under one car or the other.
Things get easier with time but Bellamy still misses Clarke. The compass on his arm used to be covered in doodles whenever she was near and now it's just there, leading him nowhere.
It makes him think, of course, because Miller found Monty and Jasper found Maya and Wells decided to tell the world to screw itself and he asked Raven out. He narrowly dodged a wrench she flung his way but she said she'd pay for dinner when he was in town.
And Bellamy's always nowhere, laughing along on dates while wishing he could call Clarke and tell her all about it.
(Sometimes he does. They don't mention the radio silence before and after.)
It's almost a physical ache, as if someone had torn way a very vital part of him. They grew together, learned to describe themselves as "I'm Bellamy and I love history, while my best friend Clarke prefers art." and “I’m Clarke and I’m brilliant, this is my dorky friend Bellamy.”
She does come to Arkadia when she's on a break, curling up with him on the couch and huffing before she takes his head and puts it into her lap, knowing that he'd been wary of doing just that.
"College sucks, you insult people on reddit in your spare time, I paint for no money at all and nothing has changed, Bellamy. Stop being a dumbass."
He doesn't know how they manage to exist in this precarious place. Their friendship is split between Clarke in her frayed shorts painting Octavia's toenails bright pink in the kitchen, Bellamy enduring their teasing, and the bad days. The bad days when he sees her text but can't find the strength to reply.
They exist there for a long time, Clarke always returning to Arkadia with new stories in her pockets and smile just as easy to get as he remembers it from their glory days. The only difference is that now she doesn't have dirt on her hands, just paint.
They exist in a limbo until she moves back to Arkadia, throws a party, and he finds her sitting on the steps of her house, hair weaved into a crown of glittering gold and a sundress short enough to display all the scars their stupidity had earned her.
Her beer had gone warm and Bellamy moves it to sit next to her. She doesn't look up, just accepts it with familiar knowledge that it's just him. She'd know him anywhere. That's how it's always been.
"I don't think I've said it, but - welcome back home."
She nods, a high-pitched voice from inside the house declaring war on all music that isn't country, making them both laugh.
"Yeah, thanks, Bell."
He can taste the wistfulness in her voice and when she tucks a curl behind her ear, he sees her compass.
(Matching cracks in the glass. Matching grins.)
"Did you ever get someone to look at it for you?" he asks because Boston is a big place. Someone's bound to be able to fix it for her there.
"There's no point."
Bellamy raises his eyebrow and she shrugs. She's an illustrator now, wears trench coats to meetings but changes into pajamas as soon as she comes home. They've come a long way but she's still the same unsteady kid when she looks at him.
"I already know who I want to be with. And it's not some nameless soulmate."
He'd like to think of the moment in which her eyes dart to his lips as groundbreaking, Earth-shattering, powerful enough to change the world.
But it's really just quiet. His heart skips a beat and she smiles at him, a little apologetic.
"Why haven't you told me?" he asks, stunned.
"Timing wasn't right."
He was the one who used to say that whatever time they've found themselves in wasn't a time for romance and now he laughs because if he can do one thing - he can fuck himself over.
When he realizes that she looks uncertain again, going stiff under the soft yellow light that makes her look as if the whole world is on fire and she's his safe haven, Bellamy cuts himself off, lets himself look at her properly for the first time in years.
There isn't a scar she's got that he doesn't have a matching one for. There isn't a laughter line he doesn't know the story behind. There isn't a flicker in her eye he can't name.
It feels as if they should get war drums at least, when he puts her bare feet in his lap and slides a hand into her hair. War drums, for how he brushes his thumb across her cheekbone and she closes her eyes.
War drums, if for nothing else, then for the moment she tilts her head and he kisses her, his lips sliding against hers and finding a rhythm as easy as everything has always been when they were together.
He kisses her until they're both breathless, August heat sticking to their skin and cicadas almost louder than their raucous friends in the house. Clarke keeps her eyes closed even when he moves away, a ghost of a smile on her lips as Bellamy tucks that one unruly curl behind her ear again.
"That one was always my favorite."
She bats her eyelids open and smiles at him, fully. Then she kisses him again, wet and dirty and desperate, sliding into his lap and bracketing his hips with her knees like they've done this a thousand times.
In a way, he supposes, they have. It has always felt inevitable, even in the darkest times when they weren't sure they were going to make it. The world could go to hell and they'd still be standing, Bellamy and Clarke, cocky and smirking, as if they didn't get the memo.
Their friends erupt in cheers as she tugs him by the hand into her room, walls still the same shade of blue they chose together, and she laughs when he kisses both of her cheeks, gasps when his lips attach themselves to the skin of her neck.
They've screwed up their shot of finding soulmates but it's alright because Clarke kisses him and it's not fireworks or grand gestures.
It's riding the bus together until it goes back to the first station. It's one waiting at a street corner and smiling when the other shows up. It's private little smiles and misplaced affection, the jokes and the tears. It's leaving when you know you have to leave.
It's coming back stronger.
Bellamy whispers "Since we were twelve" into the skin of her thighs and Clarke brings him up for a kiss, tangling her fingers into his hair.
Clarke says "Seventeen" and he knows just when without her explaining, wrapping her legs around his waist, lazy and sated. Summer always fit them best. Summer was always their time.
They meet the dawn sitting on the roof, talking about all the time they'd missed and neither of them notices when the needles start spinning.
Not until the sky turns a light shade of blue and the birds start chirping, Clarke hiding her face in the crook of his neck because they're sitting there in nothing but their underwear and the postman is waving hello.
The world feels perfect, even with all its ugly parts, and when Clarke whispers, "It's moving" Bellamy doesn't understand.
Then she takes his wrist, too, and starts laughing.
"I can't believe this shit!"
"What -"
His needle is facing her and hers is facing him, like the universe has decided to finally put them out of their misery.
They always were two stubborn assholes.
"Huh," he says finally and Clarke smiles incredulously at him.
"Huh?"
"The whole concept of soulmates can go fuck itself. We chose each other."
The friendship of Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake starts with a bang and ends with a whimper, Bellamy's annoyed one.
She's sitting in nothing but his shirt, Octavia has left for school and he has so much shit to do but Clarke is throwing pieces of toast at him and laughing like it's the only thing she wants out of life.
It ends with a whimper because she's always known that he's the little spoon but now he wakes up with her warm breath fanning across his neck and every inch of her body pressed up against every inch of his.
It ends because good things end so they can make way for the really great ones. Morning coffee with a dash of cinnamon, flopping on the bed headfirst only to have her laugh at him and say that it's okay, kiss the pain in his muscles away.
It ends because, on an August night, they begin again.
And they show no signs of stopping.