Hey all! Some of you may know this AU from my old book, From the Stars, which I recently decided to unpublish. Having a book about my own ship made me feel as if I was acting pretentious or something. I know it's something a lot of real-life authors do (like releasing novellas) but its very existence made me uncomfortable.

I wanted to re-publish it here because I know it was pretty popular, so here we are!

Enjoy this AU I wrote during holiday in Canada in 2016. I also changed a few details, but nothing huge was renovated.

EDIT 10 JULY 2020: Bellamy has not been recast as Peter Gadiot for this AU yet. I am working on it, but it requires an almost complete rewrite for some parts, so it will take longer.

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WARNINGS: Some swearing, mentions of parental deaths (specifically in robberies and hit-and-runs), underage alcohol use, and a few innuendos, but no overtly sexual content. 

Just saying, this is lonnggg. You may want to get comfy before you read this nearly 10k word au.

𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐍 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐒 𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐊 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒. 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐄, 𝐓𝐎𝐎.

Fallon had always thought the idea of having a soulmate was purely fictional. Sure, she could have that one person she loved more than anyone else, but could there really be another half to her own soul? Thinking about it boggled her young mind until she got headaches that bloomed just behind her eyelids.

But even so, she was curious back then. She'd write her homework on the back of her left hand just to see if something would happen. It was dumb stuff that she didn't even need to write down, like "addition paper" and "spelling test."

Nothing ever happened.

There was an incident when Fallon was seven– an instance in which she found a pen mark on her arm that she didn't remember creating. It was quick and light like it was an accident, but even so, she found herself tracing over it for the rest of the day until it disappeared.

When Fallon was nine, the idea of soulmates started to make a little bit more sense. Her best friend Clarke was so adamant about it, trying to convince her that they were real and Fallon would find one someday.

She'd even taken the time to draw a rocket on the space in between Fallon's index finger and thumb, and the hour afterward, there was a little pointed blast of fire beneath it that Clarke had insisted she hadn't drawn.

But the first time she actually gave into the idea was at the age of ten. She was lying out in her backyard, drawing the stars on her wrist with a black ballpoint pen. It was messy because the pen was one of those cheap ones that came in a pack of about thirty at the dollar store, but it was sufficient enough for her.

And ten minutes later, some of the stars were connected, showing the image of a man with a bow and arrow. The name Orion was scrawled between the tiny five-pointed shapes, barely legible because the person had also used a black pen and the ink mixed.

Fallon, never one to keep much from her parents, promptly screamed in excitement and ran inside to show them. CeCe and Geoffrey Rivers were both delighted and weary she had discovered hers at such a young age. For them, it had taken years for CeCe to actually respond to Geoffrey. They were in their senior year of high school when it happened. The idea of their ten-year-old girl communicating with someone they didn't know slightly sent them on edge.

Clarke, who had been receiving messages since she was seven, was extremely excited for Fallon when she immediately called her on their house phones. A million I told you so's were exclaimed into her ear after telling her best friend about the constellation labeled on her wrist. Clarke then demanded that Fallon should reach out to her soulmate. Hers was a girl named Lexa, and she was three years older than the girls. Apparently, she loved to draw trees all over Clarke's hands and was teaching her some off-the-wall language Fallon couldn't pronounce or spell to save her life.

Fallon decided to take a different approach.

After spending hours at the ratty, slow-moving box computer the Rivers family owned, Fallon had managed to cover her entire left forearm in stars. She purposely included patterns of constellations just so her soulmate would spot and trace over them like they had with Orion. Fallon, her hand shaking slightly so her lines were a bit wobbly, connected them to form a girl and wrote alongside the slope of her head, Cassiopeia.

And so it went on. Fallon never washed away the stars until they had found all of the pictures. Clarke had been over when the person was in the middle of connecting the lines, and was marveled while watching them appear until the Little Dipper was formed and labeled. She tried to get Lexa to draw another tree, but she must have been sleeping or something, because it only appeared when Clarke woke up the next morning.

Fallon watched Clarke write messages to Lexa with a rock in her stomach. She didn't know what was holding her back from it, why she couldn't just write "Hello" on her skin so she could finally hold a conversation with them.

She guessed it was she was scared. Nearly terrified, actually, because she couldn't stop thinking of the future. She could marry the person on the other side. The person with knowledge of constellations, who had slanted penmanship and added onto her drawings.

There was a girl who moved across the street from Fallon when she was eleven. The girl was twelve, almost thirteen, but she was fascinating and seemed to think the same of Fallon. Her name was Raven Reyes. She had tanned skin, warm eyes, and her dark hair was always in a ponytail. The scent of machine oil seemed to constantly linger on her skin.

Raven had not yet discovered any pictures or words on her body, but didn't seem to be worried about it. She was incredibly interested in how Fallon's soulmate seemed to enjoy completing pictures. To test it out, she took out a Sharpie and drew half of a wrench on Fallon's palm. Shakily, the picture was finished with a blue highlighter. Raven was absolutely delighted.

It was she who managed to actually convince Fallon to talk to the person. It was on a chilly night inside of Raven's treehouse — or, actually, the previous owner's treehouse — which was pretty much in danger of falling apart at any moment, but they went up in it anyway. Maybe 'convinced' was not the correct word to describe how Fallon ended up writing to them. Raven basically threatened to do it if she didn't.

"It's about time you say something to him," she said as they laid on their stomachs atop of a mountain of blankets in the treehouse. "I'm dying to know his name."

Fallon immediately corrected her. "They. I don't know if it's a boy."

"Would you be okay if it was a girl?" Raven questioned with a spark of interest in her voice. She leaned up on her elbows a little bit more, staring at the new batch of stars on Fallon's wrist.

"I don't know," Fallon admitted, pursing her lips. She knew Clarke liked both girls and boys, but did she? Eleven was a bit young to experiment anyway, and she'd only just started finding boys cute. Girls were a whole other aspect. "I suppose so."

"Do iiiiitttt," Raven commanded in a whine, shaking Fallon's arm with a grin. She smiled back and clenched the purple Crayola marker a little tighter in her hand to prevent it from shaking.

Instead of responding to Raven, Fallon inhaled nervously before writing a simple Hi on the back of her hand. And they waited.

For fifteen full minutes, nothing happened. There was no response, and the longer they stared at her message, the more she wanted to rush inside Raven's house to scrub it off. Embarrassment began to warm her cheeks up until they blazed with heat.

"What if I scared them off?" Fallon questioned a bit miserably.

"Don't worry." There was guilt in Raven's voice even as she tried to reassure her. "They'll respond. We just need to wait."

Almost immediately after, she gasped, and Fallon looked down at her hand to see lines being drawn in green marker. The lines formed letters, which ultimately resulted in a single word.

Hey

Fallon didn't need to be told before writing just below their message, trying to conceal her smile and shove down the excitement bubbling in her stomach.

What's your name?

A pause. Fallon's bubbles started to feel more like acid. Then, slowly and carefully, like they were trying to make it as perfect as possible, the image of a bell appeared.

Raven's eyebrows pinched together. "Bell?"

Fallon copied that exact question on her skin. A new message developed underneath it.

/bel·ami/

"What does that mean?" Fallon questioned. Raven took her wrist and studied the word —thing, whatever it was — with the gears moving furiously in her twelve-year-old mind.

"It's the phonetic alphabet," she decided after a moment. "I'm guessing their name is Bellamy or something. Oh, look!"

Fallon's head snapped to her wrist to see a new word added.

You?

Just as she was about to reply with her own name, Raven grabbed her wrist and shouted, "Wait! You can't just respond with your name all boringly. We have to write it like they did."

In the end, Fallon ended up writing Hold on before she and Raven raced as fast as they could to the computer at Fallon's house, where Raven typed faster than Fallon ever could. The thing took forever to load. In fact, it seemed to be working even slower just to spite them.

/fal·on/

The leader

What?

That's what your name means

Raven was already typing when Fallon looked up, fingers flying over the keyboard so fast they were a blur of skin. She briefly glanced at the search results before reporting, "Bellamy means 'fair friend.'"

Fallon copied it on her wrist. A moment later, something new appeared on her skin.

:)

The smiley face and phonetic alphabet of their names were the only things on her hand when she woke up.

When Fallon was twelve, her dad died and it was all her fault.

They had been walking across the street — jaywalking, if she was going to be honest — when a car came out of absolutely nowhere at the speed of light. Fallon, frozen in shock, simply stood there as the vehicle barreled toward her. Geoffrey pushed her out of the way and the car struck him instead. It dragged him under the automobile, an image forever seared behind her eyelids.

Fallon left the scene with a scratched face and a fractured arm. Her father left without his life.

With her left arm trapped in a sling, Fallon couldn't write on it like she normally would. She was forced to use her other body parts. Sometimes she forgot about the fact that Bellamy could see everything she drew, so when he asked about the angel wings on her left kneecap and the poem on her right, she was mildly embarrassed.

What happened? Did you get hurt? There's a cut on my face

Her hand shook so badly she was worried he wouldn't be able to read her reply. Although it wasn't unheard of that soulmates could share surface injuries as well, it was still kind of rare.

My dad.

Do you want to talk about it?

For the first time, Fallon poured her heart out to Bellamy. Their previous conversations mainly consisted of pictures — he liked to draw Greek gods — so that was much different than anything else she'd ever told him. They didn't even know each other's ages, and yet she emptied her brain out to him until the entire front of her left thigh was covered in words.

She waited until Bellamy was done writing on her right leg before reading it.

That's the trouble with death. One way or another, it's always our fault–or so we think. But listen to me, Fallon. it is not your fault. Your dad loved you enough to save you. The fates had another plan for you; they weren't ready to cut your string just yet. Your dad belongs to the sky now. Find him in the constellations.

Fallon spent the next few nights staring at the stars until her eyes burned and her vision blurred, trying to find a new picture in the sky. Eventually, she discovered a pattern that roughly resembled a man and copied it on her ankle. Bellamy labeled it The Savior.

CeCe bought a dog that same month — as if an animal could replace the presence of her husband and Fallon's father — but somehow he managed to comfort the young girl more than she thought he would. He was a small, lumpy bulldog with brown spots all over the otherwise white fur. She named him Orion.

After that heartfelt conversation, they started actually talking to one another more than drawing pictures. By the time she was fourteen, Bellamy found out he was almost four years older than her.

Why did you draw the sky on your wrist when you were eleven??

Would you prefer i did it when i was twelve?

I wasn't expecting such an age gap, that's all. I'm already out of high school and you just started it

At least it's not twenty years or something

....True

Fourteen was also the age Fallon got a cell phone. It was crappy, cheap, and not at all like Clarke's iPhone, but she treasured it like no other. Plus, it meant she could text Bellamy.

Can you show me what you look like? she messaged him one day she was feeling particularly daring.

Maybe when you're older, he replied. Fallon sent him an emoticon of a tongue sticking out of him in response. Then she realized it might have been a very fourteen-year-oldish thing to do and regretted it.

Ever since Fallon revealed her age, the concept of the gap had restricted Bellamy from doing, well, a lot. He barely talked about college, and if he did, it was only about his classes. He was majoring in History, which fit him very well due to his fascination with ancient mythology.

She once asked him what goddess she'd be. He told her he didn't think she'd fit into just one of their personalities. She was more of an Amazon — a fierce warrior of some sort. When she Googled it, it also said they hated men. Fallon didn't, but she liked the idea of being a warrior, and that was how Bellamy started calling her Amazon.

Can you at least tell me what you look like? she asked him.

There was a moment of hesitation before he answered.

BELLAMY: Black curls, brown skin. I'm 5'10 I think?? I also sometimes wear contacts but mostly have these nerdy glasses. But yeah, that's as far as it goes, I guess

Fallon closed her eyes for a second to conjure up an image of him in her mind. He was beautiful, with his curls melting into the black behind her eyelids.

Hold up, we might be twins, she joked. Except without the curls and freckles. I'm 5'4 and my hair is just below my shoulders. It's kinda wavy, idk.

BELLAMY: I bet you're really cute

Fallon felt herself blush. For the first time, she realized she may have a crush on the boy infatuated with stars and gods at his fingertips. His message had sent butterflies swarming in her stomach until it nearly ached. For nearly the entire day, she wore a goofy grin that almost split her face in half from how much her cheeks started to ache.

Clarke, Raven, their friend Wells, and Fallon all spent a weekend at Clarke's gigantic cottage just before school started back up again. One night, as they slept with the windows open to attempt to get a breeze blowing through the muggy heat, they got on the topic of soulmates. Clarke enjoyed talking about Lexa. Raven and Wells still hadn't found anyone, which they were surprisingly okay with. Fallon didn't really want to talk about Bellamy.

"Why not?" Raven teased as she elbowed Fallon in the arm. "We hardly know about your other half."

"Neither do I," Fallon mumbled beneath her breath. She knew Bellamy, but she didn't know much about him. It was hard to explain. When he wrote to her, she could somehow empathize with whatever it was he was saying. She knew his heart — sort of — just not his outside world. She had no idea where he was, what his family was like. She didn't know anything about his parents or if he had any siblings.

"C'mon, Raven," Wells sighed with exasperation in his voice. He was always the peacemaker between the four of them, and often prevented Raven and Fallon from doing stupid shit. "She doesn't have to tell if she doesn't want to."

"Can I draw to him?" she asked in a more gentle tone. It was full of interest— and it made Fallon...jealous? Raven was way more invested in Bellamy than she was with Lexa.

"Yeah," she replied anyway, rolling up the sleeve of her left arm. She and Bellamy were both right-handed, which made it so much easier for them to communicate. Raven took out a Sharpie and uncapped it before scooting closer and drawing a small astronaut's helmet on Fallon's forearm.

Bellamy replied instantly.

Hi, Raven

Fallon felt a pang. Her face didn't show it — she'd grown extremely good at keeping it blank — but her heart certainly took a beating. Bellamy had never seen Clarke, Wells, or Raven, but he knew of them due to the fact she talked about them so much. And he knew Raven was older than her. And he had never seen her face, but Raven had always been that intimidating kind of beautiful, so it scared Fallon anyway.

Her breath hitched in her throat as Raven wrote back in her strange mix of cursive and manuscript.

Hi Bellamy

Fallon was pretty sure she wanted to melt into the floor. Her skin was being used for her best friend to communicate with her soulmate, a connection that was supposed to be exclusive to them. It twisted her gut, almost forcing a cringe onto her face. She could see Clarke's knowing expression as her blue eyes shifted from Raven to Fallon. Even if she tried to hide her emotions, her best friend could almost always detect them.

Fallon pretended to cough so she could pull her arm away. "I need some air. It's too hot in here."

"Want me to come with you?" Clarke questioned, already starting to get up, but Fallon shook her head.

"No, thanks. I'll just be a minute."

She didn't feel like she could breathe until she was standing on the balcony of Clarke's cottage. It faced Lake Arkadia, the only one in their area, and the stars were sprinkled across the ink-black sky like large grains of sugar. They were much bigger there, compared to the ones in the suburbs, and she felt her breath escape her lungs.

Bellamy hadn't responded to Raven's greeting, which made Fallon feel a bit better, as terrible as that was. She took a pen out of her pocket and began writing.

The stars ar

The ink skidded across her skin, tearing it open in a long scratch as she fell through the boards with a scream. Fallon blinked and found herself hanging through a hole in the balcony, arms clinging onto the wood desperately. Her legs kicked and flailed in an attempt to regain her footing. Breaths came bursting out of her lungs in a panicked manner as the chunks of broken floorboards dug into her stomach.

"Fallon?"

Clarke appeared first, then Raven, then Wells, all of their heads peeking through the door. Raven swore. So did Clarke. "I forgot the floorboards were weak. Oh my God. Dad! Mom!"

"Can you pull yourself up?" Wells asked. Fallon shook her head after a feeble attempt to push herself up using her arm strength. She was too far down, unable to even get her elbows beneath her. Her abdominal muscles were starting to scream in protest.

Words were starting to appear beneath her unfinished message.

The stars what?? and Fallon??? and Are you okay?

It was a terrible situation, but her heart warmed at his concern anyway.

Jake and Abby Griffin burst out of the house through the front door, but she couldn't see them through the hole without hurting her neck. Her legs continued their desperate search for something solid to land on. By then her arms were slipping and she couldn't pull herself up and she wondered how long it would be until she had to drop.

"Fallon, honey," Abby's voice called up to her, sounding frantic. "We're gonna get you down, okay?"

"You have to let go," Jake informed her. "I'm standing right below. I'll catch you, okay? Just push yourself to the edge and let yourself drop."

Fallon saw more of Bellamy's panicked messages being scrawled on her arms, becoming messier and messier with every letter.

Fallon, what's wrong? Fallon. Fallon, answer me. Answer me so I know you're okay!!!

She squeezed her eyes shut and scooted herself to the very edge of the hole for half a second. Her stomach thanked her as the pressure from the jagged wood was relieved. Then, she dropped.

Fallon had never flown, but she sort of did that night. There was a single nanosecond during which she was suspended in the air, her breath trapped in her constricting lungs and eyes squeezed shut. The moment was over as quickly as it had come. Soon she fell and landed firmly in Jake's arms, feet finally finding that solid foundation they had been seeking.

Her stomach was sure to be covered in bruises that ached every time she took a breath, her arms had splinters digging into her skin, and she could feel her feet stinging from the harsh contact with the ground, but her first thought was to write back to Bellamy.

I'm okay

The reply was instant.

Holy God what happened you gave me a heart attack!!!!

I was trying to tell you how the stars were really bright here but I fell through the balcony and had to be rescued

Jesus Christ never do that to me again

Well it's kind of hard to respond when you're hanging out of a hole, Bell

Are you okay?

Fallon paused, thinking about the bruises she could already feel forming on her skin.

Fine.

Good. And then I'm glad you're alright

Fallon felt her throat close a little.

Yeah.

The next morning, when she woke up with her stomach hurting like a mother, she went to look in the mirror to assess the damage the floorboards had done. Instead, she found an entire galaxy on her abdomen. The bruises, purple and dark and hideous, were various asteroids or planets or space shuttles. Stars had been drawn in multiple colors of glittery ink, varying from pink to purple, green to blue, black to red.

One group of stars were connected with lines. She had to bend over to make it out, but it appeared to be a girl with her hands on her hips and chin tilted up. It was labeled The Amazon.

She had Clarke take a picture of it on her iPhone because the camera had better quality. And then, in tiny lettering on her wrist, she wrote Thank you.

The words came slowly and carefully. Anything for the Amazon.

Fallon mentally changed the phrase in her mind. My Amazon. He hadn't said it explicitly, but the "t" looked suspiciously like the first line of an "m". She just wished he hadn't been too afraid to say it.

When Fallon was sixteen, she got a boyfriend. His name was Caleb Jones, he was a senior, and both had the same reasoning behind their partnership: both of their soulmates were far away and holding off romance.

Caleb was the generic cute guy, which Fallon liked but also kind of hated. He was just too perfect-looking, with his black hair always sticking up with just enough gel, teeth so straight it was uncanny, and eyes the color of seafoam. One thing Fallon admired about Bellamy was that when he described himself, Fallon just couldn't imagine him as someone who looked impeccable. She thought of messy curls that always flopped over his forehead in wild tendrils and coffee-colored skin and really warm sweaters. He probably smelled like cinnamon.

One time, Caleb accidentally made a mark on her arm while twirling his pen as they were studying, and words came on her wrist almost immediately afterward.

Who was that

What?

Fallon felt herself begin to sweat. She hadn't planned on telling Bellamy about her relationship, but she knew he would have found out at some point. She just hadn't expected it to be so soon.

That mark. It wasn't you because you never write in purple. Clarke only draws on you, Wells wouldn't, and Raven uses Sharpie. Who was that?

Caleb didn't seem to realize what he'd done, or the words appearing on Fallon's arm. She felt like she'd swallowed a handful of sharp rocks and they were slowly tearing her throat to shreds on their way down.

His name is Caleb.

A friend?

Oh, God.

A...boyfriend?

"?"

Idk what we are

Well, whatever you are, he's certainly close enough to leave a mark on your arm.

Bellamy usually never used periods. When he did, it was because he was being serious or was angry. Fallon felt herself begin to heat up with frustration. She still couldn't figure out what the hell Bellamy was playing at. Did he like her? Age had been an issue for him in the past, but now that she was getting older...

Anger lashed across her body, crackling like a whip. Bellamy had no right to put so much distance between them and then get angry the instant she found someone who actually seemed to like her. 

Like you haven't had your fun before.

Fallon made sure to push harder on her pen to really get the message across. She was not happy, and if Bellamy couldn't tell by the ice in her words, he didn't know her as well as she thought he might. 

Because, as much as it hurt to think about it, Bellamy was in college. He had been fifteen when they first communicated. There was absolutely no way he stayed celibate throughout all of those years. He probably hooked up with pretty college girls who shared the same fascination with history and wore cute glasses like he did. The more she thought about it, the more she really wanted to throw something.

If you want to have 'fun', go ahead.

The words stung. Badly. At first she felt tears of frustration well in her eyes, but then she told herself I will not cry and blinked them back.

I will, thanks.

She turned to Caleb, grabbed his collar, and breathed out, "Kiss me."

And she made sure his pen hit her arm again, just to rub it in Bellamy's face.

Fallon and Caleb didn't last very long. There was no spark between them, no passion; both of them knew they weren't destined to be together, and therefore it set a barrier between them. Caleb was hilarious and definitely treated her well, but she didn't like him as much as she should have if they were going to be in a long-term relationship.

He wasn't Bellamy.

Sometimes Fallon would pretend he was, just to make it easier. Or harder, depending on how she looked at it. Caleb's short and straight hair was no substitute for how she imagined Bellamy's curls to be. Her fingers didn't wind through the strands, she couldn't imagine gods floating around in his mind, and he knew more about machinery than he did about myths.

Raven approved of Caleb. It turned out that they worked at the same repair shop together, and Fallon figured that if she hadn't been dating him, Raven would have. They certainly were alike in many ways.

The thing was, Raven was sort of dating this guy named Wick, who also worked at the shop. Fallon hated him. So did Caleb. He was one of those guys who thought they were the smartest one on the planet, but in reality, he was just a smartass.

The summer before Fallon turned seventeen, a sophomore at her school threw a party. It was an all-out bash and anyone who was anyone would be attending. Jasper Jordan wasn't one of the most popular guys in the school, but his parties were known to be killer due to the fact he was so techy. His house was decked out in lights and music pulsed throughout the structure of the building itself. Pretty cool for an underclassman.

Fallon had lost Clarke, Raven, and Wells somewhere along the line, but she didn't really care. Her mind was a blank slate. She felt loose and jittery, her lanky limbs like noodles that hardly worked. She just kept drinking whatever was in the cup she was holding and finding a new one whenever she ran out.

After dancing for a good half an hour with some guy named Finn or something, she stumbled outside for some fresh air. Her eyes zeroed in on Wells standing along the white picket fence line with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. Or, rather, they zeroed in on both of the Wells' she saw. She never knew he had a twin!

"Wells!" Fallon exclaimed, making her way across the lawn toward him. His head snapped up at the sound of her voice. "I just had a great idea."

He caught her by the elbows because apparently she almost fell or something. The liquid inside of her cup spilled all over her right forearm. Wells grabbed the drink and took one sniff before tossing it aside.

"It's probably not as great as you think," he sighed. "What is it?"

"I'm gonna tell Bellamy I love him!" She beamed at him, a smile lighting up her entire face and stretching her cheeks so wide they hurt. To her surprise, his face morphed into an expression of horror.

"No, Fallon," he protested. "No. Bad idea. Do not—"

"Why?" Fallon's smile slowly started to fade in confusion. She had expected him to encourage her to express her feelings. "Do you not want me to be happy?"

"I do," Wells asserted, still holding onto her arms and desperately trying to hold her gaze. It was no use— her eyes darted around wildly. "I do want you to be happy, and that's why I'm telling you no."

Fallon felt a rock start to form in her stomach. "Do you not think he loves me back? Is that it?"

Wells' mouth hung open, looking like a fish out of water, and that was all the confirmation she needed. The alcohol burned like acid in her stomach, her throat closing. Tears began to prick at her already wet eyes. Her mind chanted I will not cry I will not cry I will not cry, but she felt a sob threatening to come out anyway. She blamed the drinking for making her so emotional.

Fallon turned on her heel. Wells reached for her again, closing his hand around her wrist. "Where are you going?"

"To find someone who will," she answered shortly, deeply regretting leaving the dance floor. She wanted to go back in the house, find some guy who wasn't a total asshole, and forget the other half of her soul for the rest of the night.

"Fallon—"

But she was stronger than Wells bargained for and wrenched herself away.

She thought she heard Wells begin to dial someone on his phone as she walked back toward the house, but fixed the strap of her white dress and pretended she didn't. The bass pumping through her body helped her relax. As soon as she stepped foot back in the heavily crowded, multi-colored, light-filled structure, her shoulders became less stiff.

Fallon passed Jasper as she walked toward the main room. He was acting as the DJ for the night, waving at anyone who was around. Jasper Jordan was an extremely pale, bony boy with messy raven hair and a pair of goggles constantly on his head for whatever reason. His skin seemed to glow in the black light that illuminated the neon colors in the room.

And Fallon did find someone. His name was Jones, and he was pretty gropey with his hands, but he was cute all the same. His dark skin was illuminated with some sort of glow-in-the-dark paint that crept around his angular face in swirls of green. He, like most of the guys, didn't have a shirt on. Neon orange flames flickered across his abdomen and his lips were glowing yellow.

Jones was in the middle of painting pink designs on her face when she first noticed the words appearing in some sort of glow-in-the-dark marker on her forearm.

Fallon stop

Wells called me. Please don't do anything you'll regret

Fuck, Fallon, answer me

Fallon closed her eyes. The words were making her head hurt from trying to read them through double vision, and she didn't want to think tonight. Jones' hand moved the brush lightly across her face and started down her neck. Her breath hitched in her throat as she opened her eyes.

Fallon Fallon Fallon

Call me

C'mon, Amazon. Answer so I know you're okay

You're scaring the shit out of me

There was a buzzing at her chest from where her phone was stashed in her bra. It was the default ringtone, meaning the person calling her had never done it before.

"Are you going to answer that?" Jones asked. Fallon blinked to find him staring at the lit-up phone screen visible through her dress.

"No." She shook her head and her vision turned. "Just keep painting."

Jones obeyed her request and continued moving the brush across her skin. Their proximity was close, but not so close that she felt uncomfortable. His skin radiated heat despite the air conditioning blasting through the house.

"Okay," he said, taking a step back. "All done. Just give it a second to dry."

Fallon looked down to see tiny pink dots trailing from her neck and appearing to disappear down the opposite side of her dress. Bits of blue stuck out, winking at her through a sea of pink. It looked like—

"Stars," she breathed, feeling a pang in her chest. Her phone started to vibrate again. She ignored it.

"Yeah," Jones confirmed with a half-grin. His teeth were glowing white. "Sometimes I like to watch them at night. I know it sounds weird, but—"

Fallon shook her head. "No, it doesn't. I think it's cool."

Suddenly, his face was very close as he painted her mouth pink as well. His hand was on her arm and he was so warm and she felt so intrigued by him that she moved closer. Her eyelids fluttered shut, taking in a deep breath as Jones kissed her. It was gentle and testing. When she felt him pull back slightly, she blinked slowly. Just as his eyes started to open, they caught sight of something and promptly widened to the size of small planets. Jones jumped back from Fallon like she'd burned him.

"What?" she asked, feeling a little bit offended by his reaction. He seemed frightened by whatever he had seen. He backed away, dropping the paintbrush and nearly tripping over himself to get away from her. "Jones?"

But by the time his name left her lips, he was gone.

Fallon's stomach churned. She felt sweaty and sick, almost like she was starting to run a fever. Her head spun as she fought her way toward a bathroom. It smelled like vomit and she was fairly certain Monty Green was sleeping in the bathtub, but she went inside anyway and locked the door. The three steps toward the mirror felt like she was swimming through syrup to get to it. Her hands clenched both sides of the sink before she brought herself to look up at her reflection.

The first thing she noticed was Jones' art decorating half of her face, sloping over her nose and around her eye. The pink on her lips was mixed with a little yellow from their kiss. It appeared dull in the regular lighting. There was nothing on her forehead, at least nothing that should've scared Jones away like that.

Hands shaking, Fallon reached over to flick off the light switch. And the glow-in-the-dark marker became visible.

There, just along her hairline, was the backward message GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER

It wasn't Bellamy's handwriting– that much she could tell instantly, meaning he must have had someone else do it for him. Fallon felt embarrassment flood her system. Bellamy, of course, was now covered in the same paint she was, in the exact same fashion by Jones' hand, even the mixture of it on her mouth. And Bellamy had left a warning to him.

Surely that had to count for something.

Fallon woke the next warning with an ache that overtook her entire head and a message on her leg. After downing half of a water bottle with some medication to ease the pain thrumming through her skull, she started to read it.

Fallon,

First of all, please read this through. I don't know what made you do what you did last night. It killed me— not knowing if you were okay, if you were overdosing or drinking until you couldn't remember your own name or lying in the street somewhere. I almost had a meltdown when Miller told me that I was decorated in glow-in-the-dark paint. Watching in the mirror as it appeared and then seeing it on my mouth instilled an emotion inside of me I didn't know i was capable of possessing.

The point of this message is simple: I care about you and i want you to know that. I care so goddamn much it scares me. I care about what happens to you, what decisions you make, how you react to things and your emotions. I don't know how you feel about me, but I just needed to get this off of my chest and tell you.

I care.

–Bell

Fallon felt her heart skip a beat as she finished reading. She grabbed a pen off of Raven's rickety bedside table and wrote on her other leg, I care about you, too.

Jake Griffin was killed in a robbery attempt a month later.

Fallon didn't remember much of that week. For the first night, she slept at Clarke's house with CeCe and Orion to keep Abby company. The two best friends didn't talk at all. They only sat on Clarke's floor and cried into each other's arms with the dog curled in their laps. Fallon and Wells brought her homework to her every day. Raven made a batch of poorly-constructed cookies, but only ended up eating all of them on her own because Clarke couldn't stomach anything.

Fallon knew a lot of things about Death. It liked to pluck life from people's fingers when they were least expecting it, spreading sorrow and grief in its wake. She knew Bellamy would put it differently: that the Fates had cut Jake Griffin's string. That it was always planned to end that way.

She also had to text Lexa to give her updates on Clarke since she wouldn't answer her messages. Each of their friends had one another's soulmate's phone numbers in case of an emergency. It was how Wells had called Bellamy, and it seemed to come in handy. Lexa told her to tell Clarke Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim, whatever that meant.

One day before Fallon's seventeenth birthday, Bellamy finally agreed to send a picture of himself. Maybe 'agreed' was the wrong word– he sent her a text saying Happy early birthday! with an attachment of his picture.

Fallon's first thought was holy shit. Bellamy Blake was hot.

The photo was grainy because he had a cheap cell phone as well, but she could still make out the details. There was a ball of fluff that appeared to be a tiny dog in his hand. His curls looked exactly how she imagined them, falling over his forehead messily. Freckles coated almost every inch of his skin — freckles! he hadn't mentioned them — which made his skin appear even darker. There was an adorable divot in his chin. His lip was quirked up in a lopsided grin, brown eyes bright, and holy shit.

Wow you're really cute, she sent back. If only she could add emojis like Clarke and Wells could; the message seemed so plain.

Fallon immediately forwarded the picture of him to her group chat with the other three. At least her phone could do that.

She scrolled through her camera roll to find one of the pictures she had taken on Clarke's phone. They were much better quality, and, okay, maybe she was freaking out about Bellamy seeing her face for the first time. But none of them seemed right. And if she sent a high-quality picture despite the fact that Bellamy had just sent one using his own camera, it would seem too glamorized. She wanted him to see the real her.

Fallon opened the camera app and ruffled her hair once before tilting her head to the side and snapping a picture. She barely had on any makeup and was wearing an oversized sweatshirt, but it would have to do. She sent the picture to him without thinking twice.

There's my face, too.

It took him a while to respond, and when he did, she wanted to hit him or something.

BELLAMY: Your hair got longer

Yes. that's what hair typically does over time

Her nerves buzzed. What if he thought she was ugly or something?

BELLAMY: Sorry, you're just ...like ...wow

I hope that's a good wow

BELLAMY: It is, trust me

Just then, Raven responded in the group chat with GET SOME FALLON!!

She snorted and shook her head, but when she did, she noticed a drawing appearing on the inside of her hand. First a circle, then hearts inside of the circle, and a curved mouth. It was Bellamy's half-decent attempt at the heart eye emoji. The picture made her stomach do way too many backflips than it should have.

Below it came his handwriting.

I couldn't express it in words, so

Don't worry. I felt the same way about you

Fallon fell asleep that night with Bellamy's picture still fresh in her mind.

Her phone started to ring right in the middle of her annual birthday dance party with Clarke and Raven. At first, she started to ignore it, but then she noticed the caller I.D and screamed so loudly that Clarke shut off the music in worry.

"It's Bellamy, Clarke," Raven notified with a knowing look toward Fallon. She was smirking. "You can tell by the way her eyes do that thing."

"He's calling me," Fallon stated as if that wasn't already obvious, holding her phone out in front of her like it was infected. "What do I do?"

"Answer!" Clarke commanded excitedly. "Hurry— before it goes to voicemail!"

Fallon, with her heart pumping twice as fast as it normally would, pressed the Accept Call button and lifted her cell to her ear. "Hello?"

"Happy birthday, Amazon."

She stood in shock for a good five seconds. His voice was...beautiful. It reminded her of the expensive sandpaper that Clarke owned, where one side was rough and the other smooth as the granite countertop in the Griffin's' kitchen. And it was deep. She felt herself swallow.

"Thanks, Bell," she replied, a smile lighting up her face. Raven wiggled her eyebrows from across the room.

"Did I interrupt anything?" he sounded slightly embarrassed, which was so strange to Fallon. She could hear him instead of detecting his emotions through his writing. "You sound out of breath."

"Tell him you just—"

Before Raven could finish her sentence, Clarke hit her with a pillow. Fallon felt her face burn.

"We were just dancing," she informed Bellamy, knowing that he'd understand the people involved in the 'we.' "But it's fine. What's up?"

"No, no." God, Fallon would never get used to his voice. "You guys continue. You can write to me when you're done."

She felt her heart sink, wanting to just keep talking to him no matter what the topic was. "Really, it's fine."

"Fallon," he said more seriously. The way he spoke her name made her feel the need to swallow again. "Have fun, okay? I can wait."

"Okay," she sighed, defeated. "Talk to you later."

She hung up and stared glumly at the carpet.

"He has a nice voice," Clarke commented. Then, when given a questioning look, she elaborated, "Your volume is way too loud, Fal. We could hear everything he said."

"Think of it this way: now you can imagine what he'll sound like when he—"

Once again, Raven was cut off by a pillow to the face.

"Hey!" Clarke exclaimed, turning the volume knob up on the radio as a familiar beat began to play. "Guess what's on!"

Raven and Fallon exchanged a look. Neither of them was particularly fond of the music they played on the radio, but the current song was way too catchy. They had made an entire dance sequence to it out of sheer boredom one rainy afternoon. It got increasingly more ridiculous as the song went on – and by ridiculous, that meant hilariously sexual. Very.

Raven even took her hair out of its constant ponytail to dance, which was how everyone knew how seriously she took this dance. She shook out her brunette waves and nodded at Fallon to let her know she was ready.

Clarke, who didn't know the dance, stood and recorded them on her phone, occasional comments coming from her. Most of them were risqué and amusing at the same time; Fallon had trouble not laughing and fought to keep a straight face.

The chorus came, making Raven stifle a giggle and Fallon smiled a bit, breaking her originally pouted expression. Her hands slid down her sides before she slowly sunk to the ground. Balancing on her feet, she bent her arms on her thighs and pushed herself back to a standing position in time with the words lyrics, her hair falling back behind her with the movement. The next parts consisted of mostly hip movements and a lot of suppressed laughter. By the end, both Raven and Fallon were breathless and collapsed into a fit of giggles.

Clarke typed away on her phone as the song changed. Raven immediately began re-tying her hair up, chest heaving with heavy pants.

"Water break?" she suggested to Fallon, who nodded and brushed a stray hair out of her face with her hand. She could feel that her skin was damp with sweat. "Clarke?"

"One second." Clarke was still typing. A few moments later, she looked up and slid her phone into her back pocket. "Yeah, a water break sounds good."

They headed down to Clarke's exquisite kitchen, where everything was clean all hours of the day. It was such a sharp contrast to how cluttered Fallon's kitchen constantly was. Abby was working at the hospital, so the house was cool and quiet with the absence of the music they had been blasting.

As Fallon sat in one of the swivel chairs lined up at the island counter and sipped a glass of iced water, her phone buzzed with a text. Clarke covered her mouth with her hand like she was trying to hide a smile. Fallon squinted at her before reading the text.

BELLAMY: Nice dance moves

Her eyebrows creased in confusion.

What?

BELLAMY: Thanks to Clarke, I will never be able to listen to that song the same way again

It took a moment for the message to sink in. When it did, Fallon felt her already red face flush even deeper with a blush so intense her head spun. She turned to Clarke to see her muffling her laughter with her hand.

"WHAT THE SHIT CLARKE," she yelled in a loud yet flat tone, causing Clarke to snort and no longer hide the fact she was laughing. Raven glanced up from her water with an expression of confusion.

"D-Don't worry," Clarke spoke through her giggles, "he probably really enjoyed it."

"Did you send the video of our dance to Bellamy?" Raven asked her with a slightly amused expression, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised. Clarke nodded, still laughing. "Damn, Fallon. He just saw your face yesterday, heard your voice like ten minutes ago, and now saw a video of your dance skills. He's a lucky boy."

"I am going to KILL YOU!" Fallon shouted, not angry so much as very embarrassed. Her phone buzzed with a new text that she could hardly bring herself to read.

BELLAMY: In all honesty, you are a very good dancer

Fallon buried her face in her hands. "Oh my God."

BELLAMY: And I may or may not be turned on right now

"OH MY GOD!" She took her phone and launched it across Clarke's kitchen to the sitting room, where it landed somewhere on the carpet there with a satisfying thud. The thing was practically indestructible. She then covered her flaming cheeks with her hair and screamed as hard as her lungs could handle.

"What the hell?" Raven asked, having choked on her water from surprise. She was busy cleaning it off of Clarke's table with a napkin.

Clarke was already making her way toward where Fallon had thrown her phone. She picked it up off of the floor and read the unopened text Bellamy had sent, sending Fallon a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows afterward. "Told you he'd like it."

Raven shook her head. "I don't even want to know."

"Well if he's turned on by your dancing, that means he has to like you, right?" Clarke wondered as she passed Fallon's phone back to her.

"Not necessarily," Raven responded. When Clarke shot her a deadly glare and Fallon appeared even more mortified, she quickly amended, "But he definitely likes you."

Fallon let out a slow breath so her cheeks puffed out. She kind of already knew that he liked her back, although he had never explicitly stated it. And neither had she. They more or less resorted to shameless flirting rather than actually admitting to feelings.

"Are you gonna leave him hanging?" Raven asked when Fallon didn't respond.

"What the hell am I supposed to say to that?" Fallon questioned in an exasperated tone.

Raven shrugged. "Depends. You could be very straightforward. You could have a very nice Skype call. You could even—"

"Okay, no," Clarke chuckled and shook her head. "Where does Bellamy live again?"

"Florida," Fallon answered automatically.

"With us all the way in Washington, who knows when you'll actually meet him face-to-face?" Raven mused with another shrug. "May as well..."

"No." Fallon gave her a pointed glare. "Absolutely not."

She looked down at where her phone laid in her lap, text unanswered. Her brain had a mini-war with itself before she responded with, And what are you going to do about it?

BELLAMY: Wouldn't you like to know

"Damn," Clarke whistled when Fallon showed her and Raven the text. "He knows exactly what he's doing."

"I know," Fallon whined. "And I kind of hate it. It makes me think about the age gap. He's twenty-one and his birthday is in, like, three months."

"Sometimes I forget about that," Raven mused. "He doesn't feel that much older."

"Raven," Fallon deadpanned, "you're almost nineteen. That's why."

"Touché."

That night, Clarke and Raven didn't head over to spend the night as planned. Instead, they stayed at Raven's to "give Fallon privacy" while she called Bellamy back. She would've been fine with it if she hadn't had the suspicion Raven had bugged her room. Just to be safe, she went to the basement.

Fallon often had to remind herself to respond when Bellamy spoke. His voice was so entrancing to her she felt like there was something off about it. The sound was like a sugary treat she couldn't get enough of, the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. She could listen to it nonstop.

They talked aimlessly about everything, voices steadily getting more and more hoarse as time passed. Raven called her at one point but she pressed Ignore and let Bellamy continue a story about his sister, Octavia. O was only a year or so younger than Fallon, which she supposed was why he had been so freaked out about her age initially.

"When do you graduate?"

The question surprised her. She felt her heart hammer a little faster in her ribcage like a butterfly was trapped in the bones. "May 17th"

"How soon can you get here?" he asked, causing her breath to get even shallower.

"Well, the four of us were planning on going to Orlando for spring break..." Fallon trailed off and nibbled on her bottom lip. That was the first time any plans of meeting had come up between them, so it was a bit of a shock for him to propose them so casually.

"Is that in April?"

Fallon nodded before remembering he couldn't see her. "Yeah. April seventh through the fourteenth."

"I guess I'll see you then," Bellamy said with a smile in his voice.

"Yeah," she spoke with disbelief still clear in her tone. "See you then."

The days counting down to spring break could not have gone slower. The time between December and April stretched on and on until Fallon felt like she was constantly moving through syrup, unable to speed up time if she wanted to. And she wanted to— badly.

During that time period, Raven finally found out she did have a soulmate. She had crawled through Fallon's window one night while she had been doing homework, squealing about an airplane the person had drawn on the side of her thumb.

That night, Fallon coached her through talking to them just as Raven had for her done all those years ago in the now-demolished treehouse. Her name was Gina Martin, she lived in New Mexico, and she shared Raven's interests in machinery. It was a match made in heaven; Fallon instantly took a liking to her best friend's soulmate.

Octavia discovered her soulmate as well. His name was Lincoln and Bellamy was shitting himself because he was near his age. But when Fallon played the "she's only a year younger than me" card, he seemed a fraction less freaked out about it and more concerned that tattoos kept appearing all over his younger sister's arms. One of O's favorites was a design on the back of her neck that looked like three crescent moons all joined together in a weird shape, points connected and facing outward. It made her realize she liked tattoos and wanted more. Bellamy nearly fainted at that.

Wells lost his head when he found out Fallon had drunkenly told Bellamy she loved him, just as she had planned to only a year ago. He gave her a speech on how she should really consider distancing herself from alcohol. It lasted for nearly eight full minutes until Fallon cut in that Bellamy had said it back, which shut Wells up pretty quickly. She even showed the wobbled letters proclaiming it on her wrist as proof.

On April sixth, Fallon could hardly fall asleep. She kept staring at the large number 1 on the palm of her hand, which Bellamy had used for a countdown. Her blood was warm in her veins and she felt like she might combust if dawn didn't come sooner. The sun was beginning to leak orange light into her room. She sat up in her bed, not bothered by the fact she had barely slept more than one or two hours throughout the night.

Their flight was early — in fact, so early Raven nearly made them late because of how tired she was — but Fallon was grateful for it. She was jittery the entire flight. Raven was sleeping, Clarke was watching a movie, and Wells was reading, but she could hardly sit still. Her nerves were at an all-time high when the plane finally landed at Orlando International Airport.

Bellamy had texted her to let her know that Octavia and Miller were coming with him to pick them up — the former because she was Fallon's friend, latter because he was bored and his boyfriend Bryan was working an early shift. Octavia ended up being the one to spot them first due to Wells' height. She moved forward to hug Fallon, but Bellamy pushed her out of the way before she could.

He was probably the best hugger Fallon had ever known. Her legs lifted off the floor as he spun her around, wrapping his arms so tightly around her she thought she'd crumble to dust in his muscular arms. She buried her face in his neck and returned the embrace with as much enthusiasm as he had.

They pulled apart for a few seconds to take each other in. Bellamy had his glasses on, which she found absolutely adorable and kind of hot as well. Fallon wound her fingers through his curls and it felt exactly how she'd imagined it to. He was so close she could count all of the freckles scattered across his face. His expression was filled with joy and disbelief; she figured she probably looked the same.

And, hell, he did smell like cinnamon.

_____

OLD A/N:

1. sorry to all the caven fans out there, but sadly i couldn't incorporate them in here for the storyline to work ): BUT GINA THO!

2. this is one of my favorite AUs i've ever written, and i hope you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it (:

-kristyn