June Fic Recs: Soulmates!

This month's theme was a request from a reader (whose name I unfortunately forgot to note, please wave hi if it was you!) When I sat down to pull this list together, I realized that I actually hadn't read a whole lot of soulmate fics, at least according to what I'd tagged on my own blog. Luckily, other readers came to the rescue and reminded me of some classics.

As Though From a Dream by Jaded

Canon compliant, one-shot, 1.2k

All his life, Cassian has dreamt of a girl his age, growing up along with him. She may not have his words on her skin, he may not have a mark that matches hers, but he knows she's his soulmate anyway. When he opens a file and discovers that she's his next target, his mission suddenly becomes as much personal as ideological. 

Note the canon-compliant warning up there. This does follow the path of the movie, all the way to the end (sob, sob, sob) but there's a whisper of hope, that they could be together and happy the next time around. 

If you're gonna let me down, let me down gently by Kacka / @katchyalater

Modern AU, one-shot, 5k

Although she's had a soulmark for years, Jyn instinctively distrusts anyone or anything that tries to tell her what to do. Luckily, her newest sparring partner is smarter than that. He's definitely smart enough not to show off his own soulmark before she gets to know him.

Every time I run across this story and its synopsis, I have to laugh: Jyn is aggressively uninterested in meeting her soulmate. To be fair, she's also just generally aggressive. Jyn is snarky and wary and not at a great place in life, but Cassian is patient and smart and finds his way in around her defenses, both on the mat and off. Thanks to @athalar for the rec

This is the Fate You've Carved on Me by Selkit

Canon-verse, 14 chapters, 54k

Jyn is only four when her soulmark appears on her arm, the first words that her soulmate will say to her. It doesn't mean much to her at the time, but as the years pass and her life gets battered by trauma, she grows more and more resistant to the idea. Then she meets the man who says those words: When was the last time you were in contact with your father?

This is one of my very favorite ways to do soulmates. While they knew they're soulmates from the beginning, they're not sure what that means and whether they really want to fall in line with fate, and they spend as much time fighting destiny as they do each other, resulting in some divergences from the movie's storyline. There's also the intriguing wrinkle that Galen and Lyra Erso weren't each others' soulmates, and Jyn struggles with what that means about her and how she'll reconcile with her own fate. Thanks to @anghraine and @incognitajones for the rec

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As always, if you’re one of the authors featured and would like me to change anything about the way I’ve listed your story, please drop me a line via PM or ask and I would be pleased to edit.

Next month’s theme is Neighbors! If you have a perfect story to rec, drop me a line via PM or ask with the title, a link to the story, and maybe a few words about why you liked it, and I’ll include it with your handle.

making a molehill out of a mountain by Kacka // @katchyalater

@clarkeattack: @blakethefirst didn’t even make it to 9:00 tonight… #secretly90 [click to view image]

@clarkeattack: further evidence that @blakethefirst is #secretly90: spent the morning trying to get me to eat his gross Fiber-Os

@blakethefirst: @clarkeattack your digestive system will thank me one day

@jjordan12: @clarkeattack @blakethefirst can you say #secretlymarried???

@therealnathanmiller: @jjordan12 stop trying to make fetch happen

@blakethefirst: @jjordan12 your over-investment in our love lives is excessive

@jjordan12: @therealnathanmiller @blakethefirst none of you appreciate me

Aka the Friends to Lovers au in which neither Clarke nor Bellamy knows how to be casual about... Whatever this is between them.

The happiest of birthdays to @katchyalater!

For six years, the world had been too quiet.  With just Madi to talk to— and precious few animals, especially the first few years— the world had been silent as a tomb most of the time.  It had driven Clarke nearly mad, and when everyone came back to her in the span of two weeks, she’d rejoiced in the cacophony of the people she loved.

But now it felt too noisy.  Even at night, when everyone was asleep, Clarke’s small compound was filled with sounds.  Cots creaked and people snored, and guards paced the perimeter with guns that clicked and boots that snapped twigs and crushed leaves under their heels.  It felt odd, resenting the noise when she’d spent so long wishing for it, but nothing had been the way she imagined.  Her mother refused to speak of what happened in the bunker, and Octavia and Kane looked haunted.  Abby had taken to Madi the way Clarke knew she would, of course, but there was a guilt in Abby’s eyes whenever she looked at Clarke that made Clarke’s skin prickle.

And Bellamy— Clarke had wanted him to come back to her for so long, and now that he was here she didn’t know what to say to him.  He’d changed more than she imagined, and even though she’d told herself over and over again to expect him to change, part of her was still surprised he had.  It wasn’t just the beard, either.  There was a peace to him that hadn’t been there before, a stillness, a deliberateness that surprised her.  The Bellamy she remembered had never hesitated— that had been her role.  But now he was the one preaching caution and diplomacy in dealing with Eligius while Clarke urged action.  It made her feel off-kilter, like the time the canoe she made tipped over and suddenly she was under water and didn’t know which way was up.

Clarke threw off her blankets and decided to go for a walk rather than toss and turn some more, but she hadn’t gone more than fifty yards when a guard challenged her.  “No one leaves camp at night without a direct order from Octavia,” the woman from the bunker explained.

Clarke fought the instinct to argue and walked over to the fire instead, picking up a stick from the ground and tossing it petulantly into the crackling flames.  “Can’t sleep?” Bellamy’s deep, reassuring voice asked from behind her shoulder.

Clarke shrugged.  She had spent six years imagining telling him everything, memorizing details so when he came back there wouldn’t be any space between them, no moment left untouched.  But now he was here, real and solid and warm and standing just behind her, and she couldn’t find the words. “Too noisy,” she said gruffly.

Bellamy fell silent and she hoped he’d walk away, leave her alone with her black mood.  “I’ve got an idea,” he said, and Clarke risked a look back at him.

She couldn’t read his expression.  She hated that— not knowing what Bellamy was thinking was unimaginable to her once upon a time, but now it felt like he was a stranger.  But she nodded and let him lead her around the corner from the outbuildings to the rover.  Bellamy grabbed an extra sleeping bag from the bunker’s stash and handed it to her, opening the back of the rover as he did so.  “I slept in here last night,” he explained.  “I’d forgotten how goddamn loud crickets are.”

“Those are frogs,” she said, a tiny smile creeping across her face.  She accepted the sleeping bag and lifted herself into the back.  She and Madi had slept in here countless times, but only when they were scavenging. It hadn’t occurred to her to use it at the compound.  Bellamy paused with his hand on the door and she looked at him awkwardly.

“Sleep well, Clarke,” Bellamy said.

“Wait,” she said when he went to shut the door.  “Didn’t you finish your guard shift a few hours ago?”

“So?”

Clarke narrowed her eyes, piecing it all together.  “You can’t sleep either, can you?  You were going to sleep in here again.”

“It’s fine.  I got a decent night’s sleep last night.  It’s your turn.”

“There’s plenty of space,” she said impulsively.  “We could...share.”  She felt unaccountably nervous in offering, mostly because in the two weeks since he’d been back she hadn’t been able to figure out just what he and Echo were to each other.  She didn’t think they were together, but then sometimes there would be a moment of familiarity— her hand on his lower back, or him smiling at something Echo said in a council meeting— and Clarke would be plunged back into uncertainty.  It felt silly and selfish to admit she was jealous he had moved on, but she was.

“I snore,” he warned.

“Better one person snoring than three dozen,” she replied.

Bellamy looked back towards the compound and nodded.  He took a second sleeping bag and climbed in after her, waiting for her to scoot over to one side before unrolling his pack.  Sharing with Madi had been easy, but Madi was considerably smaller than Bellamy and definitely didn’t have shoulders as broad, so it took a few moments of shuffling and fumbling before they were comfortably laying side-by-side.

Clarke rested her cheek on her folded arm and considered him.  It was darker in here, and much quieter.  She could hear his slow, even breathing.  “Who told you you snore?” she asked quietly.  There were plenty of people who could have told him that, she reasoned— his mother or Octavia or Gina, or even Miller.  But she had a deeper reason for asking, and she couldn’t stop herself.

Bellamy didn’t respond right away.  “Echo,” he said finally.

Clarke hated herself for her jealousy.  It sat uneasily in her gut, curdling and churning, competing with anger and regret and a heaping dose of self-censure.  She had no reason to feel this way, because Bellamy had thought she was dead for six years and he was never even hers in the first place.  She had no claim to him, she’d reminded herself hundreds of times over the past two weeks, and therefore had no right to feel like she’d lost him.  “I’m glad,” she made herself say, because she was, truly.  She wanted him to be happy and whole, and if Echo was the person who made him happy now, she’d learn to live with it and wouldn’t let jealousy poison her.  She’d let Bellamy go and be happy with her family having come back to her, and that would have to be enough.

Bellamy made a soft sound like a snort.  “She told me when we were breaking up last year,” he said, and he sounded like he was smiling.  “Said she was glad not to have to sleep next to someone who snored like a bear anymore.”

Clarke wasn’t sure what to say to that.  “Oh,” she said, so he’d know she was listening.  “I’m...sorry?”

Bellamy’s sleeping bag rustled like he was shrugging.  “We both knew it wouldn’t last.  But there wasn’t much to do up there, aside from each other.”  

Clarke let out a surprised giggle at that.  “So I spent six years fighting for my life and becoming a surrogate mom while you spent six years having sex with everyone?” she teased.

“More or less,” he said, chuckling.  “Not Murphy though.  I still draw the line with him.  He did try to hang me, after all.”

“Only because you tried to hang him first,” Clarke laughed, and Bellamy barked out a laugh.

It felt good to laugh with Bellamy, and Clarke felt the thick wall of glass that had surrounded her since they returned start to crack.  More than once someone from the Ark would say something and Bellamy would laugh unexpectedly, clearly an inside joke, and Clarke would feel more lonely than ever.  But maybe this was just temporary— maybe she could work her way back to them, even if she’d never share those same experiences.  She couldn’t make up for what they’d lost, but they could make new memories.

Clarke fidgeted to get more comfortable, and Bellamy’s arm came down around her shoulders.  “Here,” he said, and shifted her so she was resting on his chest instead.  “That okay?”

Clarke blinked back unexpected tears.  In the six years post-praimfaya she’d slept with Madi curled into her hundreds of times, but that was different.  Clarke was Madi’s comfort then, and whatever peace it gave her to have Madi slumbering in her arms was profoundly different from this moment.  She curled around him, letting his warmth seep into her bones, and draped her arm over his chest.  “I talked to you,” she admitted.  “Every day.  I’d pull out the radio wherever we were and I’d try to contact you, and then I’d tell you about my day.”

Bellamy’s muscles tightened at her confession.  “The ark?” he said carefully.  “Or me?”

“You.”  She took a deep, shuddering breath. “You were what kept me sane, more than anything.  The memory of you, of how much you believed in me, of— just you.”  Her throat was thick with unshed tears and Bellamy carded his hand through her hair.

He cleared his throat.  “I talked to you too,” he said.  “It was different, because I never thought I’d see you again.  I thought you were gone, but I couldn’t let go.  I tried, I really did, because I thought you’d want me to, but I couldn’t.  So on nights when it felt too much, or when I was going crazy from having to see the same six people over and over again, I’d find your mugshot in the database and ask you what to do.”

Clarke nuzzled closer to him, the pain in his voice like a knife to her heart.  “What did the others say about that?”

“I never told them.  They’d think I was crazy.”

“Why tell me?”

Bellamy pressed his chin into his chest to look down at her.  The light was dim, barely enough for her to make out his pupils, but his eyes were glassy.  “Because that’s what we do.  We tell each other things we can’t tell anyone else,” he said roughly.

A wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm her, so she steered them into calmer waters.  “My mugshot isn’t exactly the best picture of me,” she said lightly.

“I thought it was nice,” he replied, matching her tone.  

She felt like ice in the grip of a spring thaw, slowly drip-drip-dripping back into being.  Clarke put her head back down on Bellamy’s chest and tangled their legs together.  “I missed you,” she whispered into his shirt.  “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too, princess,” he said, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.  “But we’re here now.”

The vice squeezing her heart eased slightly.  “Good night, Bellamy.”

“You think we’re going to stop rearranging furniture any time soon,” Bellamy asked, “or should I cancel our plan for the foreseeable future?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Clarke said cheerfully. “Hmmmmm…..I don’t really like the desk there, actually. How about underneath the window?”

“Sure thing,” Bellamy sighed. He pushed the sleeves of his shirt up past the elbows and in a single movement had placed the solid wood desk where Clarke had requested.

“Better?” He asked defiantly, glaring back at her with eyebrows raised. This had been going on for some time, ever since they’d started moving into their new apartment early that morning. Jasper, Monty and Miller had helped them unload the truck, but now it was just the two of them.

The apartment was a tiny one bedroom downtown, nothing special, but it was close to both the hospital where Clarke interned and the bookstore Bellamy managed. More significantly, it was their first place together, after a year of dating proceeded by a year of bad flirting. They didn't have it all figured out yet, but they had a good start.

“The desk’s fine now,” Clarke conceded, “but I don't like where the bookshelf is. Can we try it opposite the bed?”

Bellamy just rolled his eyes and proceeded to move the bookshelf.

“And the chair,” Clarke continued, “have we tried it in the other corner yet?”

“Clarke, I think we've tried every piece of furniture in every possible spot at least twice.”

“Oh, am I tiring you out?” Clarke asked innocently.

Bellamy bit his lip and stepped forward, wrapping an arm round her waist. “You know, when Raven said you were trouble, I had no idea this is what she meant.”

Clarke laughed. “I’m pretty sure she just meant I’m stubborn and annoying.”

“Stubborn? Annoying? You?” Bellamy teased. “I wouldn't dream of describing you that way.”

“How would you describe me?” Clarke asked, gazing up at him with a mock serious expression.

“Hmmm….well, for starters, short.” He made a great show of the height difference between them before continuing. “Tenacious. Smart. Kind. Beautiful. Impatient, at times. Complex. Loving. Brave. In short, amazing.”

Clarke blushed. “Well, shit. Warn me next time before you get all poetic, alright?”

Bellamy grinned. “Oh, I forgot the most important one: secretly an emotional marshmallow.”

“Fuck you.” Clarke stuck out her tongue at him.

“Well, if you insist…” Bellamy picked her up and in an instant they were laughing side by side on the bed, arms wrapped round each other. “Admit it, you were just trying to get me hot and bothered.”

26. Do you read from recommendations or whatever book catches your eye?

Both. When I’m looking for a new book to read, I usually go through this process to good potential reads: 1) I like it’s cover and/or description 2) the reviews are generally positive 3) I am not bored by the end of the free sample.

kiss meme #11- ‘we’re actually being kind of silly for once’ kiss (this entire drabble is silly tbh)

ao3!

“If you keep glaring at everything like that, you’re gonna have wrinkles before you’re thirty.”

Bellamy ducks his head, a rare grin darting across his face as he catches his girlfriend in his arms before she can stumble into the wall.

“It’s called ‘supervising’,” he corrects her primly, and Clarke just leans forward to blow a wet raspberry against his cheek. He can smell the alcohol on her breath and smothers another grin in her hair. “Someone needs to make sure you drunks don’t injure yourselves,” he says, pinching the soft skin of her hip where her shirt has ridden up.

“It’s called ‘being a stick in the mud’,” she shoots back before pulling away and taking his hands in hers. “Come dance with me.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t dance.”

“Don’t or can’t?” she asks, hitching an eyebrow.

“Don’t,” he replies, brushing a hand over her exposed shoulder. “But don’t worry, you’re dancing enough for the two of us,” he adds on with a smirk.

It was the understatement of the year.

Clarke, when given the correct sugar to alcohol ratio, is a notoriously bad dancer. She’s a ball of energy, enthusiastic spins and flailing limbs, a danger to anyone within a five foot radius, and Bellamy finds it absolutely adorable.

(Although, that may just be because he finds everything Clarke does absolutely adorable. She’s his girlfriend, he’s allowed to think that.)