prompt: canonverse, bellarke accidentally get matching tattoos and it takes them a minute to realize all the grounders think they’re married now for anonymous
summary: 3 times the grounders thought they were married and one time they actually were
word count: 9568
Clarke finds him perched on the large rock that juts out on the shore, staring at the ocean. It’s high tide and the waves lap at her feet as she wanders out to meet him, soaking the hem of her pants that she neglected to roll up. Down here the sound of drums and happy shrieks from their little village is all but swallowed over the crash of the waves.
She climbs up the rock easily, grimacing when her feet land on the cool slick of algae at the bottom of its sides, and sits next to him, letting her legs hang. She’s high enough that if she were to jump off she’d create a sizeable splash in the water below.
“Not enjoying the party?” she asks, trying to wrangle her hair back into a bun. It was nice having it down and loose around her shoulders for the party, but now it’s a nuisance, the ocean wind blowing it into her mouth and eyes.
Bellamy barely spares her a glance and takes another swig from the bottle he holds on his lap. Moonshine from the smell of it. The really good stuff that Monty doesn’t serve to the public.
“Enjoying it a bit too much probably,” he snorts. “Came here to clear my head.”
“Can’t clear your head if you’re still drinking,” she comments before reaching over to snag the bottle from his grasp.
He knocks his shoulder into hers. “Always looking out for me, huh.”
“Someone has to,” she shrugs before taking a sip from the bottle. It burns on its way down but it’s nothing like the paint thinner they used to have back in the early days. This one just warms her from the inside out.
Bellamy just hums in response before pulling her hair loose from the bun she just managed to put it into. “I’m beginning to think that I’m getting too old for these things,” he says as he cards his fingers through her hair. Her eyes flutter shut at the scratch of his blunt nails against her scalp, the slight pinch of pain when he tugs through a knot.
prompt: Please write a soulmate fanfiction with a link or bond. for anonymous
a/n: This ended up being about soulmarks, so I did end up changing the prompt a little. Enjoy!
word count: 6157
Clarke finds her soulmate on her seventeenth birthday.
She's curled up next to her best friend, legs tucked under his in a way only familiar to them, as they wait for the clock to hit midnight. Both of their eyes are on her wrist, excited to watch as the lines swoosh and swirl around the blank patch of skin. Her heart is thudding uncomfortably in her chest and she's not sure if it's nerves or excitement, perhaps a little bit of both. Bellamy is tapping his fingers in rhythm on his own thigh while Clarke watches the tendons of his wrist carefully, the bold compass stretched across them moving with each tap.
“You good, Griffin?” he asks when he catches her eye.
She smiles tightly, “Yeah, just kind of nervous.”
“Just nervous?”
He could tell something had been bothering her all day but she tried to play it off as not having gotten enough sleep. Truthfully, her stomach’s been in knots all week, mind racing as the time for her compass to appear approached. What it didn’t work? What if she never found her soulmate? What if she did and she didn’t like them? What if, what if, what if…
Ever since they learned about them, Clarke had always wondered how it worked. How could the universe just know who you’re supposed to be with? What if, hypothetically, there is someone else she wants to be with? And this hypothetical person just so happens to already have a compass pointing east?
“You didn’t have to come over,” She says quietly.
He nudges her shoulder with his. “Are you kidding? Wouldn’t miss it. We made a pact, remember?”
prompt: Ok how about a canonverse or modern au in which Clarke finds out that Bellamy's hair is really soft? Then she can't help herself but stroke it all the time and Bellamy, well, he doesn't handle it well for anonymous.
word count: 4906
One night in mid-October, Bellamy falls asleep with his head in Clarke's lap, and she starts to card her fingers through his hair. Outside, a hard wind blows against the sides of the house. Intermittent strong gusts, rising up from short, still pools of silence in between, rattle the windows, threaten like angry spirits at the seams and cracks of the old wooden walls. An eerie sound. Too loud for the middle of the night, too strong for the city, as if they were far away in the unknown and all alone with the wind. Clarke wonders how Bellamy's roommates can sleep through the noise. How Bellamy can.
The house—Miller's, an inheritance—is tall and narrow, set on an angle at the near-top of a hill. Sometimes the stairs creak, or the bedroom floorboards; the faucet in the second-floor bathroom always hesitates before it turns on, and the hot water knob squeaks and whines. Bellamy's bedroom looks out on the alley between Miller's house and its neighbor, and never feels full sunlight, but only a shifting pattern of shadows across the long span of the day. Clarke has passed winding summer afternoons there, alight with breezes through the open window, and early winter evenings, turning on every last light against the growing gloom, the latest snow building up against the sill.
Before Bellamy fell asleep, they were watching a movie, and their bowl of popcorn, now mostly kernels, sits on the coffee table next to a dog-eared paperback and somebody's misplaced keys. The table, and the popcorn, and the book and the keys, and Bellamy's face, are all ill-lit by an artificial blue light from the television screen, and the rest of the room is dark and quiet, and they are alone.
And only Clarke is awake, in the whole house, in the whole world. Only Clarke and the wind, blowing, whistling at the edges of the windows and the doors. The movie's almost over and it's late and she should be getting ready to go home. But she's tired, too. Her head feels heavy and ungainly on top of her neck, and her legs have fallen asleep, from Bellamy's sleep-heavy weight on them.
She and Bellamy have stayed up late watching movies before, sometimes as part of the group, with his roommates and their other friends, sometimes alone. They've fallen asleep together on the couch, or him on the couch and her in one of the armchairs, curled up with her legs underneath her and her hands tucked in against her chest. But never like this. Never with his head on her lap. She starts playing with his hair, not on purpose, but because she needs a place to rest her hands, because she has one on the armrest and one resting lightly at the top of his arm, but she can't stop thinking about the warmth of his arm, the softness of his t-shirt and the hard muscle beneath.
prompt: Could you maybe do something with Taylor Swift's song: Dress? Maybe something with Clarke buying a new dress for a night out and the song comes up when she is dancing with her BFF Bellamy? for @pandorathefirst
word count: 4470
Clarke returns to the ballroom on quiet feet, then stands just inside the doorway, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. The space is lit only by the low, flickering candles on the tables, the fairy lights framing the windows. Guests like fancy-dress ghosts gather in pairs and groups, talking, drinks in hand, while others take to the dance floor in the center of the room.
A few minutes outside on the balcony, in the cold, clear autumn night, has done her good. She felt the sharp chill of the season on her skin, tilted her head back to take in the cloudless sky and the few bright points of light that are the reflections of stars. She wondered at the threat of early snow in the air. The indoors was becoming too stuffy, too close. Outside she felt like she could breathe again and now, back here, the warmth of so many people gathered all at once sends a pleasant feeling up her bare arms and her neck.
Now she watches as the band breaks at the end of their first set, as the people on the dance floor scatter and disperse. Miller slumping down into the nearest chair, struggling to pull loose the knot of his tie. Roma and Brie leaning on each other as they pull off their heels, throwing them out of sight beneath the overhang of a tablecloth. Jasper and Monty heading over toward the cake, already sliced and arranged on small china plates at the far end of the room. Whatever quiet threatened as the band set their instruments aside has fallen away again, replaced by the loud pop beats from the stereo. Clarke catches sight of the newlyweds still on the dance floor, twirling in a circle, smiling, laughing, and feels a warm affection rising in her chest.
Maybe if she could, she would stay here on the outskirts for the rest of the night, simply observing, not out of shyness but out of a sense that these moments are not meant for her. She's wearing a new dress, and she's not used to the way it clings along the curves of her body, not used to the sway of the skirt around her legs. What did she think would happen? What did she think she would feel in this moment? What was she expecting from a new outfit and a late night and a fancy hotel, the sparkling of tiny lights, a faint view of the skyline through windows that, after dark, serve only to reflect the festivities themselves in faint, blurred images?
Romantic fantasies feel not even like indulgence, but like silly distractions, the mistakes of the past or of a younger self.
She slips her way around the tables, excusing herself past people's feet, until she reaches the edge of the dance floor. She intends to find her table again and sit down, but before she can, she sees him, and stops short.
prompt: This is typical but maybe distracting kiss while playing a video game? Person A is competitive, 100% focused on winning and person B starts to plant kisses, all because of the competition, no one is in love here, it's a cold, calculating strategy. for anonymous
word count: 2204
Sharing an apartment with a Youtuber has its pros and cons. For instance, her roommate has — on numerous occasions — demanded to film alone in the living room for hours, because “it has much better lighting.” At night, she often hears him groan loud in frustration while editing, which would be funny if she didn’t have to wake up early for class most mornings.
However, the pros outweigh the cons, at least as it is right now. They’ve been living together for almost a year now, and since she told him that she didn’t mind being a part of his videos every once in a while, he has involved her in his creative process. Unlike a lot of YouTube channels, Bellamy Blake’s offers a wide range of different content, such as:
cook with me: grilled chicken breast (with a twist)
vlog: a day at the bookstore + haul
history has left us: queer!Achilles (Pride Month special)
If his subscriber count of 3.2 million is anything to go by, this kind of content is great entertainment for everyone watching. Hell, Clarke even watches his videos despite the fact that she lives with him and could easily just sneak into the living room to watch him film. Still, she attempts to stay away, because Bellamy doesn’t tend to stare over her shoulder as she draws one of her pictures.
Sometimes, though, her thriving curiosity gets the better of her. When he first noticed her piqued interest, his dark eyes crinkled at the corners and he told her, “Princess, if you wanna know what I’m doing then you have to be a part of it.”
At first, Clarke had wondered whether having her show up in his videos was just gonna be a cheap clickbait trick, so that he could include her in the thumbnail and write a title called ‘vlog: Santa Monica with my girlfriend’, but he didn’t.
Instead, he turned the camera on her face as they were walking down the peer and said, “Oh, by the way guys. This is my roommate Clarke. She’s tagging along.”
He had probably expected her to not say anything, maybe give a shy little wave in response, because that’s what usually happens when people are camera shy. Clarke’s actual reaction was so far from that. In teasing, she stuck her tongue out at him and retorted, “Oh please, you’re the one who’s tagging along. I need someone to help me decide which Bath Bomb to get.”
That is the start of Clarke’s appearance in Bellamy’s videos, and since then she has only showed up more, for longer periods of time. A couple weeks ago she assisted him while he did the ‘Blindfolded Book Challenge’ by picking various classics and non-fiction works from his bookshelf.
After that video was posted, he told her not to look at the comments, which only made her suspicious, because he’d never advised her to stay away from the comment section of his videos before, and for a moment she thought that his viewers were perhaps making fun of her or something. Despite that the possibilities made her somewhat nervous, she couldn’t hold herself back.
The most popular comment jumped out at her:
[Top Comments - click to show]
Dani Larsson: y’all can’t tell us you’re not dating after this.
781+
Gulping, Clarke clicked on the replies and found the first couple ones to be:
Lydia Marcello: yea, just look at 13:52. That shoulder-lean is the least platonic thing I have seen in the modern era.
123+
Furrowing her brow, Clarke went to the timestamp to see what the girl was referring to — and there right before the end of the video as Bellamy said, “I guess that’s it for the Blindfolded Book Challenge. Thanks for watching!” — he pulled Clarke against his side, making her lean her head against his shoulder for a second, smiling.
After forcing her eyes off the frozen frame, Clarke looked at the comment below Lydia Marcello’s only to find:
TJ Byrne: Well, if he’s not dating her, I would love to tap that.
2+
While the comment didn’t bother her much, it sure as hell seemed to have bothered Bellamy (and a lot of his loyal viewers), because he had actually responded:
Bellamy Blake: @TJ Byrne: Too bad. Sexist white Internet creeps aren’t her type.
201+
Clarke had to bite back the urge to laugh. Also, it was difficult to ignore the clear voice at the back of her head who kept telling her that men with bronze, freckled skin and lots of sharp edges is her type. Still, she has only ever seen one person who looks like that.
A person, whose laughter could light up the entire world, who places pencils behind his ear and hums while he cooks.
***
One late afternoon she returns, violet and vermillion paint caked beneath her fingernails, to the sight of Bellamy sitting cross-legged on the couch, his trusted laptop in front of him and square glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. As always, he looks up when she enters the living room.
“I’m gonna cook dinner. Chicken Alfredo pasta, does that sound good?”
He beams, most likely with as much surprise as amusement, because she’s rarely the one who prepares meals. Still, she wants to prove to him that she’s learned quite a lot from watching his culinary-themed videos.
“Very,” is his simple comment, though the lone word manages to convey his enthusiasm. When she turns to walk into the kitchen, he suddenly adds, “Hey, Clarke, would you mind being in a video later?”
The curiosity in her mind sparks like colorful fireworks. “What kind of video?” Given the complexity of Bellamy’s content, it’s impossible for her to have the faintest idea… Maybe it’s another challenge video? A casual vlog? One of his informative history sessions?
Then he explains that his viewers would love his nostalgia series to feature a gaming video. “I have Mario Kart for my old PlayStation, so… I thought it’d be more fun if we played it together. You know I love how competitive you are.”
That last bit seems to be coated in fondness, the words soft — a stark contrast to his usual teasing tone, and it has color rising to her cheeks, undoubtedly. In order to hide the blush, Clarke turns away, but not without saying, “Of course. That sounds fun,” over her shoulder.
To her joy, Bellamy eats two large portions of the Chicken Alfredo pasta and praises her for using vegetables and spices that complement the creamy sauce. Hearing him say this makes her heart feel warm.
Together, they do the dishes while listening to ‘Cigarette Daydreams’ from one of Bellamy’s vinyl records. Most of his collection he inherited from his dad, but he adds a newer record once in a while. Afterwards the struggle with setting up the lights in preparation for filming — since the sky has now darkened, they need to improve the lighting in the living room.
Before they can turn on the camera, they have to plan a quick intro. Of course, Bellamy will do the most of the talking, since it’s his channel, but he tells her that he doesn’t want her to hold anything back, especially not during the gameplay itself.
It feels like an eternity has passed. At last, Bellamy clicks record, takes a seat next to Clarke and says, “Welcome back guys! I looked at your requests and quickly had to realize that you all want to see me play a video game,” he runs his fingers through the back of his hair, “As you will probably find out, I suck at gaming. I’ve killed a Sim once, and it was not on purpose.”
Clarke mouths, “He has,” hoping that the teasing it will amuse some of his viewers.
“Anyway, I dragged the Princess along for this one. She’s gonna crush me as Peach.”
Chuckling, she replies, “Oh, I sure am. No more of that ‘damsel in distress’ Peach. Those days are over, and you’re gonna go down.”
Even though they didn’t plan it for the intro, they look at each other, faces inches from one another to signify the “stand-off” that’s about to happen. However, within a couple seconds, they both crack up.
As it turns out, Bellamy is not actually bad at Mario Kart, which seems to surprise him way more than it does her. Within ten of playing minutes, he’s in 3rd place, but he makes the mistake of gloating, “Now, who’s gonna go down, Princess?”
Maybe they should stop using that expression…
Oh, well. “You still are,” Clarke laughs just as she uses the Starman that she’s had up her sleeve for a couple minutes, and while it does help her overtake a lot of players, she’s only gets to the fourth position, right behind him.
Bellamy does what he can to maintain his lead. Out of the corner of her eye, Clarke sees him lick his lips in concentration, and the sight damn near distracts her. Quickly, she collects herself, and while it’s difficult to keep up with him when she has to stay on the course, she’s tailing him.
When he bumps his shoulder against hers in teasing, moving his controller just to annoy her, an unfamiliar sensation sparks in her ribcage, causing her to lean closer and press her lips to his neck, right below his sharp jawline. At first she feels him freeze. Scared that she has overstepped an invisible boundary, she draws back, but he…
He is smiling. “You think you can distract me?”
“I can’t?” Turning her attention back to the television, Clarke smirks as her heart flips itself over and over.
Now she thinks she notices the faint pink tint in his freckled cheeks, but it might be her eyes playing a trick on her. With much confidence, Bellamy says, “You gotta keep trying…”
Right now, they’re doing the final lap around the course, still tailing each other, brushing each other like they are in real life. It seems as though he just gave her another challenge — one, which she is even more determined to win. Therefore, she giggles slightly, kisses his throat again, a little lower this time, then his shoulder and the back of his ear.
He releases a strange sound that must be somewhere between a groan and a chuckle. Unsuccessful, he tries to brush her off, but she can feel the heat that’s rising to his skin by the second.
Just when she leans in for the sixth kiss, he groans, tossing his controller to the side. She doesn’t recognize the emotion flashing in his earthy eyes, but she is not afraid of it. Bellamy murmurs intelligibly before giving her a gentle push to the floor — out of the camera frame — on her back, she watches his face move closer to hers than it ever has until she can almost sense the amazing warmth that pours from his features. Taking a slow breath, he nuzzles her, which has her entire chest feeling like jelly.
When their lips meet, it’s as if the living room is filled with light, though it must be nearing midnight. The happiness bubbles in her stomach, runs through her veins to mix with her bloodstream. Burying her fingers in the dark, soft curls of his hair, Clarke deepens the kiss a little, causing him to smile against her lips.
“I’m gonna have to edit this out.”
She laughs at that statement. “The video is useless now, Bellamy. We’ve both fallen off the course before the finish line.”
“Well, it was worth it.”
As opposed to sleeping that night, they sit on the bed in his room eating dry Coco Puffs while talking about where to go from there.
What they end up doing is reshooting the Mario Kart video the next day (Bellamy wins, much to her dismay), then spend the next eight months trying to hide their relationship from his online following, which is easy when she can simply not be present in his videos.
His viewers, however, are far from stupid. The first video that she appears in after the Mario Kart one is a casual writing vlog, where she brings him a cup of black coffee after his all-nighter. And it’s one tiny detail that Bellamy missed in editing that effectively exposes them:
[Top Comments - click to show]
Christine Hollinger: oh my god, he murmurs ‘thanks, babe’ at 8:46 asdjffikoxxkak… Y’ALL
863+
theo lewis: *platonically calls my roommate ‘babe’*
219+
After that, they have to come to terms with the fact that their secret is out, and because Bellamy doesn’t want to trick his followers, he decides to make the announcement (albeit casually) in his next video, which is a brief daily vlog. Bellamy turns the camera towards the balcony, on which she is standing, looking at the sinking sun.
“Isn’t she beautiful? I’m so lucky.”
No forced, half-assed video of them explaining how they got together, no cheesy girlfriend tag — just a simple yet revealing comment. Their relationship is not clickbait; it’s not something that he’s going to use to gain more followers. It’s too important for that.
prompt: "that's starting to get annoying" for anonymous
word count: 1063
If there's one thing Clarke loves about her best friend, it's that he doesn't give two fucks about keeping up with fads and trends.
He never understands any of the memes that make their way into the group text. He thought the flossing trend was a very specific, contagious form of seizure. If asked, he couldn't even begin to explain Pokemon Go.
But of all the bandwagons in all the world, Clarke really should have known that the only one Bellamy Blake would succumb to would be Hamilton.
"History has its eyeeeees! Onnn! Youuu!"
She grins, pressing her phone tighter against her ear as she passes the closed bathroom door.
"When did you get a cat?" Monty asks through the line. "Also, why did you get a dying cat?"
"I wish it was a dying cat," she snorts, padding into the kitchen. "That's Bellamy."
There's a brief pause. "Bellamy can sing?"
"Clearly, Bellamy can't," she says dryly. It's been a week since they got back from New York City. One week since they got back from celebrating Wells' graduation from law school.
One week since they've seen a certain musical about a founding father who was "young, scrappy and hungry."
"Has that been going on every day?" Monty asks, his tone mild.
Clarke smiles to herself as Bellamy hits a particularly dramatic, soaring note, the roar of the shower no match for his straining baritone. "Pretty much, yeah."
"Not to be indelicate," Monty says, "but how can you stand it?"
She shrugs, even though he can't see it. "It's cute. He's excited about something. How often do you see Bellamy excited about something?"
prompt: Bellarke as Jeff and Britta in the Community episode, Modern Warfare. (A summary if you're unfamiliar- J & B are in a Spanish study group in community college, all year they've had a sexual tension filled frienemy relationship. There is a campus wide paintball game, they are two of the last students in the game, Jeff gets injured, as Britta patches him up, they joke that the study group would love this, the 'wounded soldier' fantasy. Leads to a kiss, then sex. Back to paintball betrayals.) for anonymous
word count: 2181
As far as weird schools go, Ark Community College really does take the cake. The lines between social cliques are hard to navigate, the administration is constantly running low on cash but somehow always manages to keep the fencing club funded, and Bellamy's pretty sure that Cultures and Civilisations 311 is nothing but a doomsday prep class in disguise.
Forming a study group was never part of the plan. He'd really only done it so he would have an excuse to spend most of his time with a book, avoiding other people under the cover of a seemingly legitimate excuse. He'd walked into the library one day, saw the blonde girl from his Spanish class—Clarke—sitting at a large table all by herself, and found himself asking if he could join her before he'd even really processed it himself. The next day, Miller plopped down next to him with an uncracked Spanish textbook, and then Monty and Jasper were next, dragging Harper in along with them. An engineering TA named Raven started joining in a week or two later, usually to tend to her grading responsibilities. Murphy strolled into the library one day, sat down in a corner, and never left.
It became a thing pretty quickly. Sure, the others could be annoying, especially when they were constantly bugging him about their personal problems that he never signed up to care about. And yeah, Murphy's snarky attitude could get old real fast. And sure, Jasper accidentally called him "dad" that one time. But to his surprise, he found that he was good at taking care of this weird band of misfits. Even more than that, he actually liked it.
One thing he's not so sure he likes is the Clarke of it all.
Okay, fine. He's attracted to her. He'd have to be blind or gay not to be. She's got that whole daddy-issues-rebellious-good-girl thing going on, with the low-heeled knee-high boots and skintight jeans and leather jackets. Her hair's always doing this thing where it somehow manages to look like someone's just run their hands all through it, and definitely not in a non-sexual way. Also, she's smart. Like, scary smart. To the point where it outright baffles him that she's even in community college, instead of some Ivy League institute gladhanding future senators and cancer curers. (He gets it for Raven and Monty, not everyone can afford opportunities like those, but he's reasonably sure Clarke comes from a good deal of money.)
prompt: Something based off Taylor Swift's song "Gorgeous"?" for @we-are--groot
word count: 2752
After her third surreptitious glance to the left, Clarke reaches her conclusion: the guy at the next table over is staring at her. Or possibly at Miller. But probably at her. It's hard to tell in the low light of the bar, plus he's obviously trying to be subtle, but she knows what's going on. She’s observant. She can tell.
She looks at him again out of the corner of her eye.
This guy is so dumb. Broad-shouldered and just utterly stupid. Beautiful, in that strong-arms, golden-skin, might-as-well-be-a-fucking-model kind of way, and slightly familiar, though she’s not sure from where, but also, beyond all that, utterly infuriating, in the way that good-looking people always are. He’s going to keep on staring, and she’s going to keep on thinking about him, wondering about him, constructing fantasies about him, long after he’s left. He’s going to be the human equivalent of a song stuck in her head.
"Hey," she says, turning back to Miller with a calculated and obviously casual air, as if this thought had just occurred: "Do we know that guy?" She shrugs with her left shoulder in the vague direction of his table, then, as if to hide the movement, picks up her drink and takes a sip.
She asks because Miller knows everybody, and more importantly, he knows just how everybody knows everybody else. This is a useful skill in times like these.
"That guy?" he echoes, now, and looks to his right. Unlike Clarke, he makes no effort to be subtle. His drink is crowded with ice cubes, and they clink against the sides of his glass as he twirls his straw in a wide circle, thinking. "Oh, yeah. Sure. That's Bellamy."
"Bellamy,” Clarke repeats. She tries to sound thoughtful, lightly curious, judgmental but in a subtle, understated way. “Sounds kind of familiar."
"Yeah. Raven hooked up with his sister for a hot minute, last year. And now she's dating Gina, who is Bellamy's ex. Also, he's in the same grad school as Monty. Different programs. Oh—" He snaps his fingers, then points at Clarke, alight with a sudden realization—"You know when we met him? Monty and Jasper's New Year's Eve party, last month."
Clarke does remember, quite suddenly and fiercely, like a bright flash of light: a vision of the crowd in the living room, the rhythmic chant of the countdown as they watched the ball drop on the tv, and the loud shouts and hoorahs and noisemaker blares at midnight. Bellamy clapping along with the others. She thinks they might have talked a bit before that. She cannot remember in the slightest about what.
"Technically," she answers, shifting against the heat-sticky cushion of the booth, "New Year's Eve was two months ago."
Miller rolls his eyes. "Technically," he counters, with mocking emphasis, "it was six weeks ago. And the party ended in January, which was last month. Don't play this game with me when you're drunk, Griffin. I will win."
