Work Text:
The shop was cleverly hidden between an antique bookstore and a small fast food chain, windows stained and dark, with brown paint peeling from the swirly fretwork on the door. The top few floors of the building were tilted forward creating the illusion that they were going to come crashing down any moment now, and the few pedestrians were quick to walk by without as much as a glance.
If Clarke herself hadn’t received a proper description of the place she would have passed it right by without ever realizing the opportunity she had missed.
The door opened with a hard push from Clarke, and a tiny bell hanging above the doorframe announced her presence to the surprisingly wide and well-lit room. It was empty save for the mismatched clocks on the walls, the wooden glass-covered bookcase that housed everything but books, and the table next to it, two chairs across from one another and a bright lamp right in the middle.
Clarke rocked up on the balls of her feet and gave a curious but thorough look to the shop. It was unassuming at first, just another clockmaker’s domain – nuts, bolts and wheels, glass vials with screws in them and oiling equipment, clamps and screwdrivers and variety of tools Clarke couldn’t name let alone guess what they were used for; yet the air was different. There was nervous excitement and hope haunting the space, fears and new decisions in the clocks’ never-ending ticking, but most of all the shop reminded her of change. She couldn’t really explain it but she had the feeling that the people who enter this place weren’t the same people that leave it.
But it was understandable. The clockmaker, after all, wasn’t an ordinary craftsman.
The sound of boots broke her train of thought and she turned her attention to the clockmaker. He was younger than she had imagined him to be – tall, broad-shouldered, with strong hands and oil stained jeans. His hair was a mess of curls in a desperate need of a comb and his dark eyes were framed by long black eyelashes, contrasting almost prettily with his sun-kissed skin. The freckles sprinkled under his eyes gave him a mischievous boyish charm.
“Can I help you?” His tone was polite but not really welcoming.
Clarke coughed and tried to relax. “Ah, yes, we spoke on the phone?”
The clockmaker frowned. “I don’t remember signing up an appointment for today but if you have the watch on you I can take a look at it.”
She licked her dry lips and tried to stop playing with the cuff of her sleeve when she noticed him looking at her left arm, where her compass was resting. “That’s not what I’m here for.”
That seemed to refresh his memory and he gritted his teeth so hard that Clarke winced.
“I believe I told you that I have no idea what you were looking for, Griffin.”
He was attractive, undeniably so, but there was something wild in the way he carried himself, almost animal, a tightly controlled predator waiting for the slightest hint of hesitation from her to pounce.
He gave her the chills and Clarke froze when faced with his commanding presence.
Okay, maybe their conversation hadn’t gone so well. And by that she meant that he’d hung up on her the moment he heard her name. The Griffin name had a specific reputation thanks to her mother, mostly of being supporters of fixing the anatomical abnormalities behind problems with the compasses and disapproving of tinkering with the compass’ components. They were not Gods, her mother liked to say, they had no right to try and fix the soulmate pull of the compass’ needle. But Clarke had other thoughts on the matter.
“Look, I know what you really do, I-“
“Plan on selling me out? I’m not doing anything illegal.” And he was technically right – while opening the compass and taking it apart was frowned upon, there was no law against doing so.
He crossed his arms and she noticed briefly that his own compass was covered by a leather band. His face was set in harsh lines and Clarke wanted to cry – he was her final option and the chance was slipping through her fingers like water thanks to his outright refusal.
“What do you want me to say? I don’t agree with my mom, okay? I just-“ She pushed the left sleeve of her shirt up and turned her arm in a way that he could see the glass of her compass without being blinded by the glare from the lamp. “It’s not working, it hasn’t been working for years now. I tried everything and it won’t move. Please, I don’t care about the price, just take a look at it.”
He seemed at war with himself for a moment and then circled his warm fingers around her wrist and lifted her left arm closer to his eyes. Her compass sat right above her wrist, a glass sphere covering a light brown dial and a thin bronze needle. The needle seemed to be sitting slightly lower at the tip, nose not moving from the bronze embossed N letter. It didn’t move from there, no matter how much he turned her wrist around.
“Curious,” he muttered and tapped gently on the glass to try and get the needle moving.
After another few minutes of him trying different ways to make her needle to change places, Clarke cleared her throat and fought down a blush when his heavy gaze focused on her – he had completely forgotten about her presence save for the mystery her compass was presenting him with.
“So?”
“If you’re sure about this,” he let go of her hand and the warmth of his fingers lingered pleasantly, “I’ll have to open it to see what the problem is. If it’s mechanical, of course.”
“It is.” She must have answered too fast and too sure because he lifted an eyebrow in question. “I tested every possible cause for this, I even specialized into Soul link Cardiology and nothing. Every test came back normal, it has to be mechanical.”
Surprise overtook his features and then something Clarke couldn’t quite grasp; grudging respect, maybe, for the lengths she had gone to, or simple curiosity as to why she was freely sharing information like that. But for Clarke, the more he knew about the problem the better chance he stood of fixing it.
“Have a seat then.”
She took the chair facing the back of the shop, and after he locked the door, he sat in the one across from her. The light was turned off only to be replaced with a smaller desk lamp that he adjusted over a magnifying glass.
“Have you ever had your compass opened before?”
Clarke shook her head but he was too busy setting up his tools and didn’t notice. “No, this will be the first.”
“You have nothing to be scared of.” He cleaned the glass of her compass and took out something that looked like bent pliers. “I’m simply going to tap the glass from the base few times with these and then pop it open. I promise not to leave scratches but if you have objections I can change the glass later.”
“Alright.” Clarke laid her right hand on her left forearm, above the compass with enough space to not be in his way. It was both to steady her nerves and stop any shaking that was bound to happen. “I’m ready.”
He chuckled and positioned the magnifying glass over her wrist. “No, you’re not.”
He had a nice laugh. She filled it for further reference and tried not to flinch when he prodded her compass open with his pliers. It didn’t exactly hurt, it was more like an uncomfortable itch she couldn’t scratch away.
The glass opened smoothly under his expert fingers and he put it on a cotton bed he had prepared in advance. Pushing the magnifying glass away, he gently flicked her compass’ needle with a tool, and then harder with his bare finger. The needle, surprisingly, moved but almost immediately returned to its original position, perched almost protectively over the N letter.
“Well, it moves. The question is why it keeps getting stuck here.” He forced the needle to make a whole circle of the dial and was met with no resistance, but once he stopped touching it, it went back to pointing north. “For how long has it been acting like this?”
“According to my parents, it seemed to run just fine until little after my first birthday. My soul links are fine, they haven’t dried up or anything so my soulmate should still be alive.”
“No, it’s not that. I’ve seen my fair share of people who’ve lost their soulmates and your compass looks nothing like theirs.”
That provoked a myriad of questions in Clarke’s mind but she pushed them back; she couldn’t afford to distract him.
“I’ll need to remove the dial, too.” He looked up for confirmation and Clarke nodded her consent.
First, he removed the needle and the nut holding it in place, and then proceeded to lift the dial. Clarke peered curiously at the countless little gears that were the actual mechanism behind the compass. Her excitement must have shown on her face because he leaned back and let her have a closer look, smiling when she caressed the outer rim.
“The truth is that the soulmates compasses work more like a clock that a real compass. The arrow isn’t magnetic and the dial is static. There are no scales, or an azimuth ring or even a mirror. Just some wheels that move thanks to the soul links.” He hovered his finger over the two soul links that were woven into the wheels and pulsated in tandem with her heart.
The soul links were organic, Clarke knew, much like small arteries connecting the heart to the compass, except that they shone with a radiance that was unlike any other in the human body. There was no scientific explanation for them, but all experts agreed that the blood-like substance in the soul links somehow affected the way the wheels rotated, and in turn the wheels had the arrow move in a curtain way, pointing to the person that it deemed fit for a soulmate.
Even after learning the anatomy behind it, Clarke still wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t just some wacky magic. Except that hers didn’t seem to work.
He produced a pair of glasses from somewhere and pushed them back up when they almost slid off his nose. Huffing, he adjusted them with an annoyed grimace and changed the position of the lamp. Deeming it better, he tested the flow of the soul links and Clarke watched as her wheels slowed down and then sped up few times until he was happy with their work. Still, he greased some of the bigger gears and whipped any excess soul oil away.
He checked for rust, ruptured soul links and tissue knitting but there was none and he put the dial back in, followed by a newly greased needle that he made sure to level properly.
Her breath caught in her throat when the needle did a spin, then another one before it turned north and stayed that way. Her eyes burned and she bit the inside of her cheek. The glinting N mocked her and she was really close to smashing her compass apart.
“I don’t-“ He tried again and this time the arrow didn’t even do a whole spin before returning to its usual place. “I’m sorry.” His eyes were warm and compassionate and Clarke was grateful for the grounding touch he kept on her arm.
She didn’t answer and he didn’t push. He polished her compass’ glass instead and popped it into place without as much as a scratch. Clarke wished he had rather smashed it into million little pieces.
It wasn’t that she really bought the whole ‘there’s a perfect person for each person’ – she had seen soulmates that were better off as friends, soulmates that didn’t work out, soulmates that did unspeakable things to one another, soulmates that did better in threes, soulmates that lived happily with other people. But in a world where everyone seemed to have a companion that appeared to fit in their life like a long lost puzzle piece, she wanted to believe that there was somebody out there that would look at her soul and go this is what I’ve been looking for.
And now that was just another silly dream of hers.
“Thank you.” Her voice was wet and raspy and he squeezed her fingers in return. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Bellamy, Bellamy Blake, the resident clockmaker.”
She laughed and when the tears started falling he kept holding her hand, silently keeping guard as she broke apart.
-
“I told you last time, I’m not taking your money.” Bellamy took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose as if that would make Clarke magically disappear.
“And I heard you the first time.”
“Then what are you doing here exactly?”
“I thought you might like some coffee.” She left the paper cup on the desk, careful to not jostle the parts of the cuckoo clock he seemed to be working on.
He reached for the cup and took a sip – judging by the dark circles under his eyes he was in desperate need of some caffeine – and then narrowed his eyes at her.
“How do you know how I take my coffee?”
Clarke hid her smile behind her own cup of coffee. “I have my sources.” Her source was Raven who was supposedly one of his best friends, if Clarke was to believe her words. Clarke met her few weeks ago on a graveyard shift at the hospital.
Pensive, Bellamy took another sip and drummed his fingers on the surface of the desk. “You don’t owe me anything, you do know that, right?”
“I know.”
He regarded her for a moment and sensing the truth in her words, took a different approach. “Why are you doing this then?”
“Because I want to.” Bellamy was far from appeased and Clarke struggled to find the right words. “You didn’t fix my compass, Bellamy, but you tried your best and you gave me something that no one else had managed before – closure. And in a way that’s both better and worse than finding my soulmate. It’s something when I used to have nothing but hate for my own defectiveness.”
“You’re not defective, Clarke.”
Her lips quirked in a smile at his angry words and his hair flew in every direction when he shook his head, having caught her sardonic expression.
“You’re not, you’re just different. There are a lot more people like you than you can imagine. Not in the exact same predicament, but close. You simply didn’t know where to look.”
She sloshed the lukewarm coffee in her cup around. “Yeah? Is there a private club and badges for it, too?”
“Actually,” he smirked and waved his hands around proudly, “you’re standing in it. But no badges I’m afraid.”
The sleeve of his shirt rode up and she caught another glimpse of his covered compass. There was a story there, she was positive of it, but she knew better than to ask; wounds like that ran deep and bitter.
She snorted at his antics, marveling at how his eyes lit up from the inside at her unladylike behavior, and sat in the unoccupied chair. Brushing few stray pieces of her blond hair behind her ear, she put her coffee down next to his and leaned forward, squinting against the bright light coming from the desk lamp.
“I see I’ll have to begin from scratch then, president.”
His shoulders shook from the force of his laugh and Clarke greedily drank in the long line of his neck when he threw his head back. Bellamy offered her his hand to shake and she grasped it readily.
“Welcome aboard, vice-president.”
-
In the beginning she visited him once every two weeks or so, watching him taking apart clock after clock and working miracles with old clogs and ancient needles. There was something calming in his craftsmanship, his fingers steady, never hesitating, triumph that was quick to catch on when he finished a new project.
Clarke liked staying there, in the small oil-scented shop, back against the wall and with her nose buried in a medical journal or a book. Sometimes she even sketched – clocks and gears and soul links, messy curls and freckles, veins and leather bands. The latter she kept for herself but the others were now hanging in between the ticking clocks, edges stained and creased but just as loved as the timepieces.
Clarke had a comfy couch now, one that Bellamy had hauled from his apartment upstairs after Clarke had complained about her back one too many times. It was faded red with paint marks from the one time she had decided to draw something in color, after which Bellamy banned everything but pencils and crayons. (Mainly because they ended up with paint on their hands and then their faces and hair and clothes; Clarke found paint in her hair four days later and couldn’t keep the smile off her face until she went to bed that night.)
She hadn’t witnessed many people looking for help with their compasses, and the few she was privy to were simple maintenance work.
Tonight was different.
The girl that entered the shop was young, shoulders hunched and nearly shaking under the force of her quiet sobs. The bell’s sound was muted thanks to the force she used to close the shop’s door and when Clarke stood up from the couch the girl jumped. She looked skittish and anxious and Clarke used her warmest smile.
“Hello, can I help you with something?”
The girl hesitated and clenched her hands together. “Are you the c-clockmaker?” she stuttered.
“No.” Clarke moved slowly towards her, careful not to make her feel cornered. “He’s upstairs sorting through some stuff but I’m sure he won’t mind if I call him down.”
She waited for the girl to nod before she approached the stairs hidden in the shadow of the bookshelf and yelled for Bellamy to get down.
He did, with a bit of grumbling that immediately stopped the moment he saw the girl.
“Won’t you sit down?” His whole demeanor completely changed and Clarke went to lock the door while Bellamy sat in his chair, patiently waiting for the girl to take the other one. “What’s your name?”
“Fox.”
“And what problem do you have for me, Fox?”
At that, Fox rolled her sleeve up to display her compass. “I want you to break it.”
Clarke swallowed her gasp and Bellamy tilted his head. “Why?”
“Because-” Fox’s voice wavered but she pushed forward. “He can’t know, he can’t. I’ve seen what he does to girls like me and he already suspects that I’m his soulmate.”
“What does he do, Fox?”
The air in the shop was tense with an eerie calm that was nothing short of an illusion. Bellamy looked like that the first time Clarke had met him – angry but collected, a cold calculating rage that just waited for a reason to snap and unleash hell.
“H-he beats them, the girls he’s with, and I’ve heard him brag what he’ll do to his soulmate when he finds her and I don’t want him to find me. I’m not strong like those girls, he won’t let me go if he’s sure I’m his.”
Bellamy’s knuckles were turning white and Clarke made her way to him, letting her palm rest on his shoulder, nails digging in when he refused to dial back. The pain was enough to snap him out of his haze and he gave her a quick grateful look before turning to face Fox again.
“This is what we’re going to do – I’ll open up your compass and I’ll make it so that some of the wheels don’t spin. That will be enough to confuse your needle about your soulmate, and it won’t stop spinning even in his presence. Does that sound good?”
“Y-yeah.”
Clarke smiled encouragingly at Fox and went to sit back on the couch, book in hand but mind elsewhere.
Bellamy had barely popped open Fox’s compass when there was loud banging on the door. Yelling, followed by more banging and more yelling shook the windows and the bell above the door fell down. Bellamy caught her eye and had her take Fox to his apartment upstairs, while he went to unlock the door.
“Where is she? I know she came to you.” The guy was shouting loud enough for Clarke and Fox to hear him and Clarke hugged the younger girl to herself.
Bellamy’s response was lost under the sound of crashing glass. Clarke shuddered and looked around before she told Fox to hide in Bellamy’s closet.
“Whatever you hear, do not go downstairs until I come and get you, alright?”
Fox closed the door behind her and Clarke took her hair out of her ponytail, running her hands through it to make it messy, and she took off her shoes, socks and pants off. Her shirt was too short and she changed it for one of Bellamy’s that she snagged from his bed. It was loose on her but long enough to cover her butt.
There was another crash from the shop and Clarke hurried down the steps, slowing down to rub her eyes and make herself appear sleepy.
“Bell?” she called out and stepped into the shop.
One of the shelves had toppled over and the glass vitals laid shattered on the ground, the desk was overturned, one of the chairs was broken and Bellamy had the guy by the throat against the back of the door.
Bellamy glanced at her and if he was surprised at her attire he didn’t show it. He did however catch onto her idea.
“Go back to bed, Clarke. I’ll be there in a moment.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Our little friend here is a bit drunk and seems to have the wrong house. He’s going to leave now and never come back, isn’t that right?” Bellamy addressed the last words to Fox’s soulmate with a squeeze of his hand.
The guy must have agreed because Bellamy let him go and he fled the shop the moment his feet touched the ground.
“He’s not going to bother Fox or anyone else again.” The I made sure of it was heavily implied.
He was sad, distant in a way she hadn’t seen before and something in Clarke’s chest hurt to see him like this. She made her way to him through the glass field and cupped his face with her hands. She brushed her thumbs under his eyes and smoothed out the angry lines around his mouth.
“The glass-“
“I’m fine.” She pulled his head down and held his gaze until his breathing evened out. “You did good here.”
“It’s not enough, it’s never enough.”
Clarke tugged at his curls and he frowned. “No, you give people hope and make it possible for them to live the life they want. That’s more than enough.” He was still staring at her in disbelief and she let her hands fall to his shoulders, down his chest to stop on his hips where they circled around and she hugged him as tightly as she could, making him feel what she couldn’t express.
He hugged her back, hiding his face in her neck and she held him until the tension bled off his frame, and then some.
-
She started coming more often after that.
She was there to draw Harper a new dial while Bellamy was changing her broken glass, a gift from her father for having a girl for a soulmate. She was there when Gina came in for a second arrow, Raven and Wells trailing goofily behind. She was there when Monty came in wanting a re-painting of his pink dial to something more neutral. She was there when Murphy visited to get his needle removed. She was there when Bellamy’s sister, Octavia, whom Clarke had listened to Bellamy go on and on about, dragged her soulmate into the shop and Bellamy nearly burst a blood vessel.
She was there when he fell asleep on the couch and she ended up making them a quick dinner in his kitchenette. She was there when they had a case similar to Fox’s and she had to remind him that his hands were better suited for fixing and not breaking. She was there when he forgot she was in his shop and he sang the Spice Girls under his breath. She was there when he gave her a key to his shop and his apartment so that she could stop making him get out of bed to unlock the front door. She was there when Costia asked him for how long they’ve had known each other and he answered with feels like forever.
So it felt completely natural when one day he thanked her for the coffee she brought him with a kiss and not a hello. It felt completely normal for her to kiss him back and feel him smiling against her lips.
Falling into bed was easy, after all, the nakedness of the skin was nothing compared to the nakedness of the soul and they had both bared their souls to one another months ago.
(The sex was still amazing.)
-
She had forgotten about it really, it was such a permanent feature of Bellamy's that she couldn’t imagine seeing him without it.
The leather band was wide enough to completely cover up his compass, well-worn and always warm to the touch. He never looked at her differently because her arrow never moved, and she never let the leather come between them.
She was itching to know the story behind it, there was no denying that sometimes she wanted to peek under it while he slept, but in the end it was his story to share and she refused to break his trust like that. Sometimes, he would take it off while showering but even then Clarke was careful to not look at it. At some point she had accepted it as another freckle of his – little dot of imperfection that was going to be always there and that she loved with all her being nonetheless.
It was nearly a year after they met that he pulled the covers over them and told her the story behind it while the rain drummed on the windows.
“My mother never met her soulmate. It wasn’t my dad and it wasn’t Octavia’s either. They were the type of men that when faced with the responsibility of raising a child preferred to disappear under the pretense that they weren’t my mom’s soulmate and had no obligations to her. When I was born my mom had money to buy me compass parts but we weren’t so lucky when Octavia came.” His breath was warm on her neck and Clarke turned to face him. “I remember the day like it was yesterday. Octavia was so tiny and had those big eyes and – my sister, my responsibility, you know – I couldn’t let her grow up without a compass. So I took mine apart to build hers.”
He smiled absently at the memory and touched Clarke’s cheek with the back of his fingers. “I scratched the glass of course, and broke off one part of the dial in my hurry to get it out. But the needle survived just fine and Octavia didn’t need as many wheels as I did. You could say it worked out in the end. Few years later, when I made enough money, I bought her new parts and replaced the old ones but for some reason I never replaced mine, except for the glass. It didn’t seem important at the time.”
“And now?”
“Now,” Bellamy kissed her and bit her lower lip, kissing her again and again until he stole the air from her lungs and she was dizzy with passion, having completely forgotten her question. “Now there’s no need because I have you.”
Clarke let her legs fall open and pulled him closer to her, arching her back when he sucked on her breasts through her shirt. Her hands found his hair and she tugged at his curls until his mouth found hers again and nothing else mattered.
“And I have you.”
(Later, after she was coming down from another high caused by his mouth, she would take his band off and turn his wrist around, tracing the lonely wheels over the glass and freezing when she saw the lone N left from his once simple white dial. Later, she would ask and he would say that he didn’t know, hadn’t really put it together until recently. Later, they would agree that it didn’t really make a difference – they had already chosen and for them, that was a different forever.
But that was later; now, now was the ferocity of his mouth and the feel of his teeth, hips pushing into hers and touch that burned her very soul. Now was just Bellamy and Clarke, Clarke and Bellamy, two people finding home in each other’s heart.)