#as Emori was one of the lucky people who managed to be pulled out of the City of Light | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

libraryofsouls · 3 years

Note

May I request the slasher’s reaction to their s/o getting a bad haircut! (btw hope your day/night is going well).

of course! and things have been going well, thank you. 💖

slashers reactions to: their s/o getting a bad haircut

Asa Emory / The Collector

depending on whether or not you actually consulted him beforehand, this could go two ways.

if you didn't, he'd be upset. who gave you permission to have your hair cut? why didn't you ask him first? does he need to remind you of your place again?

Asa might leave you be for a couple of days depending on how drastic the change is. if it can be remedied easily, he'll have you beg for forgiveness but if not - don't be offended when he starts bringing you wigs. actually, he won't care either way. this is your fault.

if it's something you two have talked over then he's a lot more sympathetic about it. especially if you feel insecure over it. it's not so bad actually. if you're lucky you might catch him fiddling with your hair while you sleep.

overall he's indifferent to it. it's just hair? it's not the end of the world. just be thankful that he has no interest in experimenting with hair implants.

Billy Lenz

it might seem like he wouldn't notice but he's actually quite perceptive to these kinds of things. Billy is absolutely the type to notice any sort of physical change no matter how subtle it is.

unsurprisingly, this is because he spends almost all of his time watching you. of course he's bound to notice!

he'll definitely point it out but he'd either be neutral or mildly upset about it. if he dislikes it, you would know immediately because he would pull your hair and demand answers.

if it's not that big of a difference and he's craving a bit of your company Billy would want to brush your hair for you! isn't he sweet? unless of course it gets tangled, then you might actually end up looking worse. (unless you teach him how to do it properly.)

if he's feeling more gracious than usual he might even offer to remedy it! whether or not you decide to indulge him is entirely up to you. there's a slim chance he would actually be good at it but denying him isn't recommended either..

Bo Sinclair

there's no sugar-coating it. Bo will laugh at you. he might even point it out to his brothers if you look especially funny.

did you go to a blind hairdresser? head got stuck in a lawnmower? got attacked by a bunch of bloodthirsty birds? you're never going to hear the end of it. he's never going to let this go even after your hair grows out.

would constantly tease you about it but it's mostly out of love. he might even come up with cute nicknames for you depending on how badly you messed up your haircut.

if someone else tries to make fun of you though that's an entirely different story. only he can call you ugly duckling! if someone else does it then he's ready to crack someone's skull open.

denies he was doing anything to defend you. Bo would just claim that they were being too loud for his liking. it had nothing to do with you. nope. not at all. "it's 'cause your hair's so damn ugly that they died on the spot."

Brahms Heelshire

what have you done?! this is MUTINY! he's been BETRAYED! dramatically reaches out to feel your hair with his trembling fingers.

this is all so wrong... so very wrong. at first he would only be able to stare at you in utter disbelief. as if you've spat at his face and insulted his entire bloodline.

Brahms takes it as a personal attack against him. sure, he can be a handful at times but he'd never thought you'd be this cruel! it might take some thorough explaining that no, actually you hadn't intended to end up like this.

regardless he would be very upset. he's rather fond of your hair and if it was longer before and much shorter now, he might not be able to recover from it until it grows back. Brahms is a bit shallow, you see.

when your hair does eventually grow out expect him to treat you like a ticking time bomb. he can't possibly trust you with keeping it pristine now! it's decided. Brahms would just have to cut your hair for you. unlike Billy though, he has slightly more experience since he cuts his own hair so you might not have to worry too much.

Bubba Sawyer

Bubba absolutely adores you either way! literally nothing can convince him otherwise. he might even get upset if you tell him it's ugly. no no no, you can't possibly be ugly! you're his s/o! you look wonderful no matter what!

as for the rest of the family... the twins love it too! they might even call you a trendsetter. they might come off as patronizing if you haven't been around that long to know them but they're actually genuinely into it. it's fun and quirky and nobody else has it! what do you mean you look bad?

Drayton is a lot less enthusiastic about it. he'll throw in an insult here and there but nothing too harsh unless it's getting in the way of your chores. if it bothers you so much he might actually shave all of your hair off. (don't worry! Bubba will protect you!)

if you're adamant about remedying your look then Bubba would offer to help. unfortunately he has little to no experience with cutting hair. he was the one offering his help but.. are you sure you want him to do this? he's more worried about accidentally snipping your ear off than he is ruining your look.

Bubba wouldn't really understand if you happen to be worked up about it. he truly, wholeheartedly thinks that you look gorgeous no matter what you do with your appearance. it's still you under there after all!

Jason Voorhees

he'd be surprised at first but will try to play it cool if you become self-conscious. points at something just above your head. he wasn't staring at your hair, he was looking at...uh. that bird up that tree! it flew away when you looked... too bad..

like Bubba, Jason loves you no matter how you look. big boy does not care at all. things will stay pretty much the same. he’s not the type to make a big deal about it just because you look a little different.

he would make sure to shower you with compliments if he catches you fussing over your appearance though. bring in the gifts! he picked up this cool hat for you, do you want it? how about these hair clips? he wants to help as much as he can.

Jason would not want to fix it for you but it’s not like he can deny you when you’re asking for his help. what if he messes it up? what if you get mad at him? what if he accidentally hurts you? it’s too risky. he doesn’t even know how to! hopefully his many concerns would be enough to convince you to just let it be.

if not, well.. his hands would be trembling the entire time. this poor man would be scared to death to snip even a single strand of your hair. why would you put him through this? not only would it take him hours before doing anything noticeable, he would be in a constant state of dread the entire time.

Jesse Cromeans / Chromeskull

WHEEZE. babe, what happened? who did you offend? he’s very desperately trying not to laugh at you but he’s failing. what a gentleman. Jesse would inspect the damage - totally not struggling to hide his laughter - before claiming that he hadn’t noticed anything until you pointed it out.

he’ll tease you about it, asking if you’ve been out making enemies behind his back. he won’t be as much of an asshole as Bo per se but he’s not about to pass up the opportunity to get a reaction from you.

Jesse is more of a romantic about it, holding you close and placing a palm on your chest. what matters to him is this, he signs. ...your tits. oh and your heart too, but that’s just a bonus. he’s kidding! stop hitting him! (claims to have planned this just to make you smile all along. sneaky bastard.)

if it’s something that bothers you, he’ll have a hairdresser come over for a home service. why are you surprised? were you expecting him to bring you to the salon? the barbers? why would he do something like that? he’s offended!

now you’ve done it - you’ve bruised his ego. the man’s just showing off at this point. within the short period of time the hairdresser took to fix your little problem, Jesse somehow managed to get more people involved. they’re wheeling all sorts of expensive-looking equipment in. one claims they’re a nail technician and the other a masseuse. oh you had plans today? too bad, you're getting pampered and that’s final.

Michael Myers

if it’s really bad then he might let out a small chuckle but that’s pretty much it. the most he’ll do is run his fingers through your hair. Michael doesn’t really care all that much for appearance either.

but he’s not as eager to console you like the rest of the slashers are. if it’s a bad haircut then it’s bad - he’s not the type to beat around the bush. “do you think I look stupid?” he’ll nod. if you react negatively to that he’ll just shrug. you asked! what do you want him to do, lie?

Michael would help you out if you asked but it’s ill-advised. he’s decent with a pair of scissors but he’s going to keep cutting shorter and shorter until you either stop him or you run out of hair. (there’s no guarantee he’ll stop even if you asked nicely.) clearly this is your fault. why would you trust him with a pair of scissors?

this should be obvious but do not let him anywhere near your hair with anything sharp. he might take matters in his own hands if he sees how fixated you are with your haircut. if it’s that bad, he’ll snip away while you sleep. Michael would be careful not to wake you.

overall you’re almost guaranteed to have an awful time if Michael decides he wants to do something about it. he’s not going to make fun of you but you’re going to wish he did instead of butchering your precious mane.

Thomas Hewitt

oh, honey... what happened? he’ll set you on his lap to give you a good look-over. Tommy is not all too concerned about how you look but how you feel about it so he’ll help in any way he can. if you’re upset about it he’ll press a quick kiss on the crown of your head to reassure you.

nothing a little trim can’t fix! as good as he is with his hands, he has almost no experience with hair so he would have to ask Luda Mae for help. he’ll be there too don’t you worry your pretty little head!

Luda Mae would coo at you affectionately, earning a disapproving “tsk, tsk.“ at the poor soul who had done this to you. they would be the talk of the town. if you somehow did this to yourself, then she’ll scold you out of love. why didn’t you ask her instead? after the whole ordeal is sorted out though she’ll beam with pride when you comment on how good it turned out.

Hoyt is most likely going to chide on how badly you messed it up if you were the one responsible but if it was someone else, you best believe he’d be out of the door in search for the s.o.b. what kind of hairdresser would do such a half-assed job?

if you’re not quite close to the family yet, Tommy would do it but he’s unfortunately not as good as Luda Mae. he won’t be as bad as Michael though so you can still save whatever dignity you have left.

Vincent Sinclair

unsurprisingly, he’s the mature one out of the bunch and like Tommy, he’s more concerned about how you feel instead of how you look. he would immediately try to fix it - you won’t even have to ask. Vincent won’t even give you time to actually feel bad about it, that’s how much he cares about you.

he usually doesn’t alter his victims’ appearances so he doesn’t have much experience but he’s not about to tell you that! his caring side would definitely override his lack of confidence. congrats! Vincent does a pretty good job. he would even give you a trim if you asked.

if you somehow ran into his brothers first then there’s no escaping it. Bo’s going to laugh at you. Lester wouldn’t really insult you but he’ll poke fun at you, saying that it would be much easier to find you now, much to Bo’s amusement. luckily for you, they’d made enough ruckus to draw out Vincent.

Vincent wouldn’t necessarily defend you from his brothers, just silently tug you somewhere else - prompting Bo to call him out for being a killjoy. unfortunately since he’s used to his brothers picking at him he’ll expect you to do the same. afterwards he won’t take long to fix your haircut.

this isn’t going to stop Bo from calling you names though. Lester wouldn’t do it but he’s not exactly opposed to what he assumes is just friendly banter. they’re unlikely to cross the line since they know how much you mean to Vincent so unless you’re especially sensitive, then it’s nothing too serious.

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canonconspiracy · 4 years

Text

Who Needs Food When You Have Love? (Memori x Fem!Reader)

Fandom: The 100

Fanfiction By: @rmorningstar21

Pairing: Emori x Fem!Reader x John Murphy

This will be cross-posted between my AO3 and Wattpad (rmorningstar21).

Warnings: Poly, a little swearing, needles

WC: 1890

“I bear the burden so that they don’t have to,” you murmured to yourself as you stared down upon Emori’s beautiful, sedated face, before glancing to the needle in your hand once more. You, much like Octavia, had been the girl from underneath the floorboards. You were an outcast upon the Ark, and it was only natural that you managed to fall for the two largest outcasts you had met down on Earth.

A hand gently caressed Emori’s cheek, a sad smile against your lips as you moved to inject yourself with the black blood marrow experiment, feeling the foregein sensation taking over your body. It had started with the pain simply from the injection, but your body had to process the new marrow as it began to course through you. New cells formed in your body slowly, and yet, you knew you did the right thing. Your voice rang out strong, true, as you called out to the rest of the group.

“You’ll be testing it on me,” you said firmly.

Clarke’s eyes widened, and yet she nodded with a tear in her eyes. “You’ll be okay,” she lied to you, moving to guide you to the other medical bed to allow Emori to wake on her own. “You’re strong, Y/N.”

“She’s your sister, Clarke,” Abby, your mother, gasped out with wide eyes. Even so, she knew it needed to be done. Abby had not been daft to the feelings she could see from your y/e/c orbs towards the two in question. Though she had not understood exactly how you could love two people, two people like them, she knew it was why you had done it. “Y/N, what if you die?”

“What if Emori did?” you shot back while crossing your arms against your chest. “Just like the last test subject, she wasn’t a willing subject. She knew that she would be the guinea pig, and that’s why she saved her own skin the first time.”

“But, Y/N,” Abby tried to counter, placing a hand upon your shoulder as tears welled in her eyes. “We need you.”

“And I need them,” you spat back acidically, your y/e/c orbs shifted to a glare as you glanced over upon your mother. “We will do the testing on me, and if it fails, you did everything to prevent the human race from going extinct.”

“Fine,” Abby said, her voice tight as she glanced away, moving over to distract herself with anything. The waiting would be agonizing, impossible as she awaited to place her own daughter in the tube. If it had been her first daughter, though, if it had been Clarke, surely she would have stopped it.

Emori stirred, her face immediately drifting to panic as she glanced over at everyone. Her voice was about to exert panic, but she could see the sadness against everyone’s faces...everyone except your own. As the only person in the room despite John that she trusted, she hurried over to you, placing a hand against your shoulder as her eyes scanned your features. “Did you let them inject me?” she questioned, worry clearly in her tone.

“No, Em, I didn’t,” you said, forcing a smile against your lips as your gaze met her beautiful brown eyes. “You should know by now I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

Emori’s brown eyes widened as she stared you down, her hand moving to meet your face for a moment. Her thumb trailed your cheekbone as her lips dropped to a distressed frown. Swallowing hard, she whispered her next words as she removed her hand and backed away. “You didn’t…” her tone shook with each word.

“What didn’t she do?” John asked as he had finally made his way back over to the group, Clarke being the one to set him free of the restraints that held him to the ship. He glanced from you to Emori, noticing the terror against her face. “What’s wrong?”

“She did,” Clarke chimed in. “But, it has to work. She’s making the sacrifice so that we can all live.”

“And you’re okay with this?” John spat back, before moving over to your side, motioning with his eyes for Emori to join him. “You’re okay with playing God on your own sister?”

“I made the choice,” you replied sheepishly, moving your hand to touch his arm gently to get his attention. “I know how much the two of you mean to one another. You need each other.”

“We need you, too,” Emori chimed in.

You moved to press a kiss against Emori’s cheek, before John’s, a sad smile against your lips as you stood to your feet. Not sure how two hours had already passed, you knew you were ready to test the black blood in your system. Your eyes shifted to your mother, your sister, and then to Jackson as your tone was firm. “I’m ready,” you said. As much as you wanted to tell the two that you loved them, that you needed them as well, you knew it would just make everything hurt so much more. Tears welled in your eyes as you moved over to the machine, opening it and lying down inside of the tube.

Jackson was the one to place the EMR tags upon your skin to monitor your vitals as you would go in. You could hear the faint tears of Emori as she stood beside John, but you dared not look in their direction as you closed your eyes. Though anxiety filled your chest, you forced yourself to believe you were ready for exposure. As you took the burden so that Emori would live, you had to believe that what you were doing was to make all of humanity live.

When the tube had closed, you were unable to hear anything outside of it. Each time that Jackson cranked the radiation, you were unaware, though you knew it had been happening. With each tear that fell, each worried strain as the radiation rose, your heart-rate stood intact. It seemed to be forever that you were in that tube, until your mother had been the one pulling you from the experiment.

"It…" Abby breathed out as she checked over your body, checking for any sort of lesion. "...worked! As she moved to pull you into a bone-crushing hug, she continued. "Don't you ever scare me like that again."

Clarke had been the next to have dibs upon hugging you, though the two that you loved waited impatiently as you reunited with your Commander of Death sister. Tears still shed from her blue eyes as she embraced you, though you knew as well as any that she would have lived with you dying in that tube. It had been for the greater good, to save everyone, and you had simply gotten lucky that you were the second test subject.

Emori was on your left, John on your right as the two of them practically squished you in embrace. Holding you tightly to them, neither of them dared wish to let you go. The two who would do anything to survive would have been lost without you, and yet, neither knew how to say it aloud.

Emori still had fresh tears upon her face as the three of you separated, her eyes frantically searching your face for any sort of problem, anything that the radiation had done. Finally, she breathed out, "You're okay!"

It took mere moments for the black to begin to drip from your nose as you quickly separated from the woman. Your hand moved to your face as you turned away, beginning to cough. Black blood dripped from your hand to the floor as gasps sounded around you. Lesions formed against your face and neck from the delay to the exposure as your world was spiraling to blackness. As you fell, you were not even sure who's arms managed to catch you, or if you hit the cold tile.

Waking had been like a dream, though you could feel strength as your y/e/c orbs opened once more. As your gaze fixated above you, you found two sets of eyes staring down upon you. Both your hands were held in a comforting manner, one by a strong hand while another by a more lithe one.

"Y/N!" They both gasped, nearly at the same time as they noticed you waking. A mix of relief and worry was present in both tones as they spoke, though your mind had yet to process the upturn of John's lips, or the softness in Emori's brown eyes. The comfort of both of their hands would have made you blush if you had been more awake for it.

In a groggy voice, you said, "I'm not dead, right?"

"No, but you missed a lot," John said with a laugh. "I guess I'm not the only cockroach after all."

"John," Emori warned sharply before moving to squeeze your hand gently. "How are you feeling, Y/N?"

Though you did not want to move out of the comfort of both hands that held you, you pushed yourself up to a seated position, smiling at her softly. "Honestly, great," you said with a soft chuckle. "It helps that my two favorite people actually give a shit. The treatment worked, though. That means, depending on how long we have, we may have just saved the world."

"It's a little late for that," John chimed in with an eye roll. "There's a conclave in Polis over who gets a bunker, and even if we win, there isn't enough time to get there."

"So, my mother and Clarke…" you began to question, glancing between the two of them.

"In Polis," Emori confirmed, causing your heart to drop. "John and I stayed back with you."

"You remember that bunker we were stuck in for 84 days?" John mentioned snarkily, a smirk making its way to his face. "We were thinking waiting out the end of the world in there."

"How could I forget?" You replied with a chuckle. "I- I wish you guys could have gotten someplace safer, though. I'm so glad that the two of you cared enough to stick back, but what about survival?" You raised an eyebrow at the two.

"We can take supplies and food from the house," Emori suggested slyly, a smile against her lips.

"And who needs food when you have love?" John added slyly, moving to press his lips against your own quite suddenly. Though it was a chaste kiss, you had been stunned, barely having the chance to enjoy it, let alone kiss back. Still, as your lips connected, you felt blush rise in your cheeks.

To add to your shock, Emori moved to do the same, pressing her lips against your own rather suddenly. As she did, you could feel John's hand tighten reassuringly upon your own. It had been Emori that broke into laughter at the absolutely stunned look on your face.

"I- I- um," you started, trying to think of a way to redeem yourself, though you fell short.

"If it wasn't obvious, we both love you," John said with a smirk. "The end of the world wasn't really when we wanted to admit it, but when isn't it the end of the world around here?"

#memori x reader #memori #emori x reader #john murphy x reader #murphy the 100 #emori the 100 #murphy x reader #polyamory #the 100 oneshot #the 100 oneshot collection #reader insert #x reader

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pretend-writer · 4 years

Text

Down Below (Chapter 51)

Summary: Y/N Reyes lands on Earth with the rest of the 99 prisoners. Being one of the first people to come back “home” after 97 years of living in space, she learns what it’s like to finally live in this planet.

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x reader, Raven Reyes x sister!reader

Word Count: 1723 words

Warning: blood, guns, swearing

Down Below Masterlist

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‘Please!’ I yelled and cried over and over again. 'Let me go save them.’

After getting an injection by Miller, I woke up beside Bellamy in a room which I guessed was the engine or water room for the bunker.

Chained up against the wall, I struggled getting out. The handcuff was on pretty tight but I had to keep trying. For my family and for someone I now called my best friend.

'Reyes… I’m angry too but you’re just hurting yourself.’ Bellamy said in a worried tone, watching blood come out of my wrist as I pull against it.

'I don’t care I just want my people back.’ I kept on pulling as tears fell from my eyes. The mixture of anger and sadness made me feel crazy; The pain on my wrist was nothing compared to what I was feeling internally.

Bellamy looked at me calmly, trying to keep me somewhat sane. 'Let’s make a plan to get out.’

'Plan? We don’t have time, we have to leave now.’

'Hey, hey, hey.’ He said, coming forward as close as he can even with the chain on his wrist. 'Y/N. Look at me.’

Tears rolled out even more as the rage took over me but knowing that it wouldn’t help yelling at Bellamy, I took one deep breath and looked into his eyes.

'It pains me to see you hurt yourself like this.’

'Bellamy, your sister is out there and mine is too. Someone that’s like a father to me might also die because of this bitch and I can’t just sit here.’

He bit his lips, 'What can I do to make you feel better?’

'Let me out, hurt Clarke, make the radiation disappear just to name a few.’ I continued to pull the handcuff, making me bleed more as the handcuff rubbed against my open wound.

The door swung open, Murphy and Clarke came in together into the room. Seeing the mark I left on Clarke’s face, I laughed.

'Don’t even expect an apology after punching you. You’re lucky my hands are now full otherwise I would’ve gave you another bruise to even it out.’

'Y/N, I’m sorry I had to do this. It’s for our own good.’ Clarke apologized.

Chuckling, I shook my head. 'You’re doing this for your own good, not ours. If I was in your shoes and locked Abby out, would you honestly think it was to save our people?’

She starred at me with a sad face and looked over at Bellamy. Clarke then turned around, 'Murphy watch them please.’

'You know I’m right!’ I yelled at her as she walked out of the room. Then I eyed Murphy who was just standing there, 'What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re okay with this too.’

'Y/N-’ Murphy watched me struggle to get out of the handcuffs, in shock. 'I-’

My eyes widened as I remembered something, 'John, where’s Raven?’

His jaw immediately dropped and I knew the next thing he was going to say wasn’t going to be good. 'I tried Y/N but she di-’

'What happened?’ I screamed at him as tears streamed down my face. Bellamy managed to help me stop crying but here I was, balling my eyes out again.

'Her condition was getting worse. Her seizures were constant and she started hallucinating… A.L.I.E.’s chip messed her up.’ He stuttered, 'R-Raven told me to leave her there.’

Yanking the chains on my wrists again, I screamed as I bawled my eyes out. My sister was gone and I wasn’t there to help her through the toughest time.

She was a tough person, someone I admired growing up. Even with all the Marcus things, she was the only family I had.

Knowing Raven, I knew that losing her mind was something she would’ve definitely suffered through. She lost her mom and dad, she lost Finn. She even lost the ability to walk properly after getting shot by a grounder back at the dropship.

However not being able to use the one thing she relied on her whole life, her brain, must've bothered her that she eventually gave up.

Thinking about the pain she was going through made me hate myself even more. Especially because as her sister and as her best friend, I was never there for her.

He continued to stare in awe, unaware that his mouth was open the whole time.

'John, what?’

'I-I’ve never seen you so upset.’ Murphy reached for my wrist and rubbed the blood away with his shirt. 'Don’t do this to yourself.’

Even with all the little arguments John and I had in the past, I was never this angry before. Heck, I’ve never been this mad my entire life. It was a different emotion that I’ve never experienced before.

'Well, I don’t see another way out. Seems like you’re taking Clarke’s side too. The person you love is safe so you’re okay with leaving others up there, isn’t that right?’

Murphy kneeled next to me and grabbed my cheeks, 'Emori is down in the bunker with me, yes but the people you love are up there and is making you upset… really upset.’

'What’s your point?’ I said, starring at the ground. It was weird being sentimental with him again, I was curious of what he needed to say.

'I’m not on anyone’s side, I just want you to be happy. You’re all I care about besides Emori.’

The way he looked at me made me reminisce the times I was with him. I was confused on why he approached me the way he did but it was a little comforting.

'John, why are you telling me this?’

'If I let you out, the grounders will bring chaos and I don’t want to create any reason to lose you.’

Trying to not make an expression, I hid my confusion on what was happening. I peeped over at Bellamy who was intensely watching me and John talk.

'As far as I know, the grounders don’t know Clarke and Jaha stole the bunker yet. It’s not too late to make things right. Please.’

Murphy bit his lips and then slowly reached into his pocket and grabbed the keys. Unlocking my handcuffs, he sighed. 'I trust you’re doing the right thing.’

Hugging him instantly, I thanked him for letting me go. 'I know I am.’

He then went over to Bellamy and uncuffed him also. Finally free from restriction, he rolled his wrists. 'What did you mean by those words, Murphy because I’m curious.’

'What words?’ Murphy questioned as he stuffed the keys back into his pocket.

'The “I don’t want to lose you” bullshit.’ Bellamy took a step towards Murphy.

He kept a serious face, 'I’m letting both of you go, be thankful I care about you guys. Even if it means that I’m sacrificing Emori’s safety.’

'So why are you doing this exactly? Your girlfriend may not have a space in the bunker when Octavia takes over and you’re here saving your ex?’ Bellamy huffed.

'Stop! We don’t have time for this, now really isn’t a good time.’

Bellamy rolled his eyes and walked out of the room. I looked over at John, 'Thank you. I owe you.’

'Yeah, yeah. Go save the world and whatnot.’ He smiled lightly.

As I smiled back, I left the room and chased after Bellamy. Slowly catching up to him, I ran by his side. I sensed Bellamy was a tad mad but this seriously wasn’t the time to bring up the subject again.

After running for a bit, we finally reached the hatch that led to Polis. With Bellamy following me up the stairs, I reached for the door when a bullet hit the door.

Under the stairs stood Clarke with her gun aimed straight at us.

'Nice aim, you know you missed me.’ I snickered.

'Next time, that won’t be the case.’ Clarke exclaimed.

'Clarke! If you hurt her, I swear t-’

Interrupting Bellamy, I bickered. 'Let her shoot. She want to save them so much, you can prove to everyone that you’ll shoot your own people, right? Because that makes so much sense.’

'Are you insane Reyes?’ Bellamy shouted, 'Clarke, if you shoot you’ll live a nightmare and I promise you that.’

'This is the right thing to do.’ Clarke cried whilst aiming the gun at me.

I chuckled, 'You betrayed your people and leaving them to die, which was not even your call to begin with. Octavia out of everyone has the right to decide what’s going to happen to our fate. Need I remind you, you have a gun aimed at me and you’re telling me you’re in the right?’

'You don’t understand, Y/N.’

'Damn right, I don’t understand and I don’t want to. I’m still going to open this door and by all means, shoot if you want to.’

Bellamy grabbed onto my shirt, 'Reyes don’t.’

Ignoring him, I reached and opened the door. Realizing that Clarke hasn’t shot me, I climbed up the hatch.

'Y/N!’ Octavia cheered as she helped me up to the ground. As she saw Bellamy climbing after me, she screamed his name too.

'Monkey.’ Marcus called out my childhood nickname as he slowly walked towards me, 'I was afraid I lost you.’

'You know I’m too stubborn to be gone that easily.’ I grinned.

As he flashed a grin, Marcus noticed wounds on my wrist. 'What did they do to you?’

Following his gaze, I realized what he was looking at. Pulling my sleeve up, I mumbled. 'Ah, it’s nothing.’

'What were you thinking?’ Bellamy walked over to me after his sibling moment with Octavia. 'You almost got yourself killed.’

'Killed?’ Marcus’ crunched his brows. 'What all happened?’

'Clarke and Jaha trapped us and we tried to escap-’ Bellamy stopped for a moment, then suddenly hugged me, 'Don’t do stuff like that. It scares me.’

Marcus watched us with a cute smile, 'How adorable.’

My face turned pink, slowly pushing Bellamy away from me. 'Marcus, stop.’

Octavia joined us as she chuckled, 'Thank you guys for coming back.’

'Of course we did. It was the right thing to do.’

Indra then mumbled as the grounders started coming in, 'Just in time before they found out Skaikru took the bunker.’

Octavia took a deep breath, 'Here we go.’

✤ · ✤ · ✤ · ✤ · ✤

tag list; @jodiereedus22, @coffeebooksandfandom, @bellamyblakemorley, @wisestydia-15, @dbtvluv , @hurricane–amelia , @lexalexy , @olkathefoxi, @lena-davina, @kellbell44, @thehakunamatara, @akelly4477, @morgannope, @littlegirl-fox, @captainam-erika-trash, @greygarbage, @nathaliabakes, @eternallyvenus, @rauwz, @broco8

#bellamy blake x reader #bellamy blake series #bellamy blake imagine #bellamy blake fic #the 100 fic #raven reyes x sister!reader #raven reyes sister #reyes sister #the 100 series #down below series

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ivy-stjames · 4 years

Text

the winner takes it all ( ivy + rory + julien )

𝚆𝙷𝙾: @julien-schuester && @roryslade && @ivystjamess 𝚆𝙷𝙴𝙽: the evening of thursday, august the sixth 𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴: choir room, william mckinley high school for the performing arts 𝚆𝙷𝙰𝚃: ivy is uncharacteristically nervous for opening night, like always, julien is there for her, but this time rory’s just around the corner.

POSSIBLE TWS: CHEATING

𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐍: Opening Night snuck up on the cast and crew of McKinley High’s production of Mamma Mia faster than any of them could say “here we go again.” With a trip to New York and Los Angeles freshly under their belts, everyone arrived back to Lima feeling reinvigorated and inspired. The show was going to be great. As Julien sat in the make-up chair getting his face patted and his hair styled to transform fully into Sky, he glanced around at his cast mates through the mirror in front of him. He saw Rory, beaming, with LJ and Ruby. There was Joey. Baby. Even Leo and Finn were in his line of sight. It didn’t take him long to clock that Ivy was nowhere to be found. Hm. Weird. Ever since Julien had gone to Ivy’s place on Monday, the energy between them had been extra charged. It wasn’t lost on him that had Eli St. James not burst into Ivy’s room, they would’ve likely crossed another line that would’ve made this little thing they were doing unforgivable. Truth be told, it was already unforgivable, but Julien had found a way to justify in his head that as long as they’d only kissed and nothing more, it wasn’t as bad as what he did to Emory…so maybe it wasn’t that bad at all. Julien still had yet to figure out what to do about Rory. He still hadn’t made up his mind. Whenever he was with Ivy, he felt like they made sense. But whenever he was with Rory…well, he felt like they made sense. He knew time was ticking and that he’d have to pick a lane at some point, but with opening night being under one hour away, his love triangle fiasco would simply have to wait. Julien smiled at the sophomore who had been fixing his hair when she finished, said thanks, and made his way over to Rory. Where the hell was Ivy? Almost on cue, he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out just as he reached his girlfriend, giving her a quick kiss on the side of the head as he discreetly read the message from Ivy. can u come to the choir room asap? He had to think fast. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” he said to Rory, giving her a quick kiss as he tucked his phone into his pocket and exited the backstage area where the cast was congregating. Once Julien was in the hallway and out of everyone’s sight, he started sprinting past the lockers until he arrived at the room he was looking for. “Hey,” he said breathlessly, his chest moving up and down dramatically as his eyes landed on a Sophie-clad Ivy, “everything okay?” Julien’s demeanor changed from cheery to concerned in a matter of seconds once it registered that something was wrong. He gently shut the door behind him before he approached her with open arms, “what’s wrong?”

𝐈𝐕𝐘: IVY ST.JAMES HAD NERVES OF STEEL. this was a fact the same as the earth revolving around the sun or a cheerios uniform instantly making someone more desirable, so why she was so nervous come opening night was lost on her. she was prepared and well practiced, so why did she feel like running into dan’s office and spilling her guts in the trash bin? being sophie sheridan meant more to her than probably anyone at mckinley would ever understand. sure, she got leads upon leads and solos upon solos, but this was a part ivy had cherished since childhood. despite all the drama in her personal life, her experience throughout this production of mamma mia sort of felt like her real coming of age and not her bat mitzvah four years prior. usually ivy kept a pretty tight lock on her headspace during show nights, no negative thoughts coming in, nothing got through that could potentially throw her off her game. unfortunately, never had she been involved in a show before where her ex-boyfriend, the girl her ex-boyfriend was seemingly moving on to, julien, and the girl julien was cheating on were all lingering backstage. every turn she feared running into something that would send her spiraling. more nervous about becoming nervous, she stowed away in the choir room where she remained pacing. why was she getting so nervous? how was she getting so nervous? eventually, she came to grips with the fact that there was no calming herself down from this one. pulling out her phone, she sent a text to julien and prayed he wasn’t occupied with anything else. lucky for ivy, julien made his appearance at just the right moment, which, seemed to be happening a lot lately. it was pathetic really, the moment julien opened up his arms ivy moved directly into them. she placed her head on his chest and closed her eyes. the fact his embrace so quickly soothed her made her feel stupid for even summoning him in the first place, “hey. . .” she finally replied. eyes still closed, she began issuing the explanation julien was owed, “i just like. . . i don’t know, it’s so totally dumb. . .” she prefaced before opening her eyes, pressing flush against him, and looking upwards at him. again, her breath caught in her throat simply from the sight of him at this perspective. as much as she wanted to wrap her arms up around his neck, ivy instead pulled away and settled for smoothing out the part of shirt she had just crumpled with her head. “i’m just like. . . kind of nervous i guess. i don’t know if i can like be around leo and rory and your sister and like still be me and do good with sophie i guess.” she rambled, once again meeting julien’s gaze with a slight pout, “don’t make fun of me.”

𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐍: Julien smiled to himself when Ivy clicked into his arms like the final piece of a puzzle. For two people who used to annoy the crap out of each other, they were surprisingly good at comforting each other in a crisis. It wasn’t even intentional half the time. Julien’s instincts were simply compatible with Ivy’s needs and vise versa. Who would’ve thought? Once his heavy breathing finally regulated after his brief sprint to the choir room, he tightened his arms around her and rested his chin on top of her head. “I’m sure it’s not dumb,” he said earnestly, pulling back slightly when he felt her looking up at him. For a moment, as they stared at each other, there was no drama, no opening night, no obstacles—just them. The illusion of that fantasy land barely lasted because in no time, Ivy was pulling away and smoothing out his shirt. Julien’s hands settled loosely at her waist as he looked down at the spot on his chest that she was touching and then back up to her face. Once Ivy got to talking, he knew that she was valid. It was a really intense situation from all angles, but definitely the most intense for her. Of course she felt nervous. It made sense. The longer she spoke for though, the more his subtle smile grew. “Wow, Ivy. St. James is nervous?” he commented in feigned shock, chuckling softly as he found her eyes again, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous. Well, at least not because of a performance. It’s kinda cute.” Julien was being a little too bold for someone whose girlfriend was a couple of hallways away, but clearly that was the furthest thing from his mind. His sole focus was making Ivy feel better and confident that she could go out there and deliver. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he quickly cut in, smiling down at her dreamily as she pouted, “I’m not making fun.” He took a deep breath and moved his hands to her shoulders as he leveled with her and held her gaze. “Listen to me,” he started, giving her a squeeze, “I know things are complicated and messy right now. I know you’ve had a really hard few weeks. But for two hours tonight, you get to be someone else. You get to use everything you’re feeling and be the best Sophie Sheridan this town has ever seen. If anyone can do it, it’s you. So all that other stuff,” he used one hand to figuratively wave it away, “just leave it at the door. You can do this, Ivy. You’re the most talented person I know. And even if you went out there and messed up, you’d still be the star.”

𝐈𝐕𝐘: IVY WASN’T SURE WHAT GOT HER HEART BEATING FASTER, JULIEN’S HANDS ON HER WAIST OR THE RAPIDLY ACCUMULATING BUNDLE OF NERVES SETTLING AT THE BOTTOM OF HER STOMACH. at his comments about her looking cute, ivy rolled her eyes, though there was an ever so faint smile gracing her lips, “okay, like, how is that not making fun of me? i know i’m cute, but being all like totally insecure is not cute.” she questioned, tilting her head slightly to the side, but never breaking her gaze from his own. truth be told, his following words were hardly a necessity. his presence alone worked miracles to soothe her. while her bubbling anxiety lingered, it felt dulled, numb even. if julien was at her side, what did she have to fear? nothing?. . . exactly. it wasn’t often the two of them just got to be alone and while logically she knew ’bad’ things happened when they were left unsupervised, the invigoration it gave her was worth it. ivy couldn’t explain the seemingly magical way reality seemed to melt and leave her and julien clutching each other in it’s wake, but the comfort that came from each of their stolen moments was the best medicine to life’s problems. as his pep talk drew to a close, ivy found herself fully smiling. each of her worries had been fended off by her knight in. . . a button down and shorts, equipped with his toolbox of all the right things to say. she would’ve managed if he hadn’t taken that next step, gone above and beyond, but he had and it left both her heart and knees feeling weak. “thank you.” she whispered. though she didn’t say a lot, it could be seen very clearly that she was thinking about saying. . . or doing more. there was an odd moment of clarity where ivy felt more certain of her feelings towards julien than she had felt about anything as of late. it was certainty beyond a charged exchange in her bedroom monday night or needing companionship. at least she thought it was certainty, but just to be sure. . . “julien, i need to like check something.” ivy said quietly. before he had the chance to ask questions or to stop her, her hands were around his collar, tugging him down to bring their lips into each others. it was another kiss to add to their ever-growing pile of oopsies, but what other way to get confirmation that this. . . thing they had going did indeed mean something.in the world they had been living in moments at a time, the one away from reality and away from namely rory, it seemed like the perfectly logical thing to do. again, ivy found her thoughts fogging over with a desire to kiss julien, to be near him. would that urge be so strong if it meant nothing? her clouded mind couldn’t confirm or deny more than she had when she initiated the kiss, but ivy figured she wouldn’t want to kiss him so badly all the time if they really were just friends. julien was always there, picking her up, sharing laughs, stealing glances, putting all the pieces together, and causing her to come undone all at once. without considering julien had a girlfriend and without considering the fact ivy hadn’t fully processed what had gone down with leo and overcome it, it added up. ivy wanted it to add up, she needed it to be this simple. there was a seed planted in her heart and ivy was choosing now to command it to be full grown. pulling away, ivy remained near, scanning julien’s face for some kind of reaction, any indicator that he had a similar realization. “julien. . .” she said again, letting out a breath before finally replying to julien’s own comment from a week ago in a los angeles stairwell, “it means something.”

𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐍: Julien came from a long line of pep-talkers, so whether it was right before a big show choir competition or in the final ten minutes of a state championship, he knew a thing or two about the right thing to say and how to say it. So when he came face to face with an uncharacteristically insecure Ivy, he knew what he needed to do. He needed to remind her that no matter how crappy her circumstances were in the moment, she was talented and capable. No amount of drama or complicated entanglements would keep her from doing what she did best: shining. In the confines of the choir room, just the two of them, Julien never broke eye contact and kept his hands planted on her shoulders as he gave her an abridged version of all the ways she was incredible. When he was done gassing her up, he studied her face for any sign that he’d remedied her worries. The smile tugging at the corners of her lips indicated to him that he’d done a decent job. “No need to thanks me, Legs,” he said softly, mirroring her grin as he gave her shoulders a final squeeze before dropping his hands, “I’m just being honest.” As they stood there, shamelessly indulging in their very bad and unsubtle habit of staring at each other dreamily for way too many seconds at a time, Julien was at war with his own thoughts. What were they doing? Why was he here with her instead of with his girlfriend backstage? His overthinking was interrupted by the sound of Ivy’s voice. “Huh?” he asked quickly, snapping back to reality, “check what?” Before he could even finish his question, she was pulling him down by his shirt collar until his lips crashed into hers. Suddenly all of his thoughts quieted—all of them but one: Julien Schuester wanted Ivy St. James. Yes, in a primal physical way, but also in a fall asleep on the couch together way and a hold hands in the car way and a sing each other to sleep way. He was so screwed. Once she broke the kiss, his eyes fluttered open slowly and he looked down at her in complete awe. His breath hitched when she said his name and when she finally answered his drunken statement from nearly a week prior, he nodded. “I know.” Instinct took over as soon as their feelings were out in the open. Julien cupped the sides of Ivy’s face and brought his lips down to hers again, wanting desperately to be closer. The kiss was urgent and clumsy and before he knew it he was backing Ivy into the grand piano in the center of the room. The sound of her body hitting the keys sent a loud clash of cords through the room which shocked Julien right out of the moment. He pulled away from her breathlessly, his hands lingering on her face for a moment until he saw some movement at the door from the corner of his eye. The second he turned his head, his face got hot and his ears began to ring. “Rory,” he breathed out, dropping his hands and his heart as he laid his eyes on his beautiful, kind, talented, funny, deserving-of-only-good-things girlfriend. How long had she been there for? What had she seen? “Rory,” he said again, cautiously walking towards her as all thoughts about wanting Ivy were exiled from his brain, “it’s not what you think.”

𝐑𝐎𝐑𝐘: Nothing would have prepared Rory Slade for today. At the beginning of auditions, she only saw herself as Sophie and was convinced she would land the role, but she didn’t. Then she fully stepped into the role of Donna and felt confident in herself and that if someone was meant to play Donna at McKinley, it was Rory. She was nervous, sure, and she felt like she could hear her heart beating so loudly in her ears. Rory tried not to get herself too hyped up, she always thought it was bad luck to practice before going on. Weird logic, but she thought that if she performed now, she’d forget later or work herself so much up on stage that she’d freak out and dash off stage. After getting into costume which was just a white peasant blouse and overalls, she fixed her own hair and makeup, leaving her makeup natural but beat enough that the audience could see she had makeup on and a pinned look paired with some beach waves to give off an effortless beach look. After she was done, she spent her time with Julien until he abruptly excused himself to go to the bathroom. She didn’t think anything of it, he was just going to be gone for a minute, but then two minutes passed. Then five. Then ten. And as minute twelve was approaching, Rory knew she had to go on a man hunt for Julien. The show was about to start and neither him nor Ivy was anywhere to be found so she went to look for Julien and hoped to just find Ivy after. She looked in the girls restroom for Ivy and briefly popped her head in the boys to ask if Julien was in there. When neither were found, she started looking in other rooms, eventually landing in the ill fated choir room. They were kissing. Julien and Ivy were kissing. Julien, her boyfriend, was kissing Ivy, her rival. The blonde didn’t know how to react; should she scream? Cry? Even react at all? Or just leave the building altogether and tell Leo that she couldn’t perform? Lost in her thoughts, staring at the scene, Julien finally noticed her. She had only been standing there for thirty seconds, a minute tops, but she felt like she had spent her entire life watching the pair kiss. She heard Julien saying her name, but it was just echoing in her head and once he started making his way towards her, she bolted out of the room and out into the hallway, tears beginning to form in her eyes. Don’t cry, don’t cry. You’ll mess up your makeup. But then Julien began speaking. “Not what I think?” Her words weren’t angry, they were strangely calm for a girl who had just caught her boyfriend in the act with someone else, but with the freshly hot tears streaming down her cheeks, her eyes piercing into Julien’s, she didn’t need to express emotion for him to know how hurt she felt. “People have been saying that you were cheating on me and now look! I’m the one who gets to look like a fool for trusting you,” now her emotions were building up. “God!” she expressed, her hands flailing up. “I trusted you!”

𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐍: The wave of peace that Julien briefly experienced while kissing Ivy quickly turned into a storm when he saw Rory. Shit. Shit. Shit. “Rory, wait—“ he called out, quickly jogging after her but pausing at the door of the choir room. Julien was the rope in a twisted game of tug-of-war and the worst thing was? He put himself in that position. His face was hot with shame and embarrassment. How could he have been so stupid? He and Ivy were living in a fantasy land. And why had he even been doing it in the first place? Because he liked Rory, he really liked her. He turned his head to look back at Ivy, who was still standing flabbergasted at the piano. Even though there was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to meet her back at the piano and kiss her again, there was a girl out in the hallway who he’d just hurt beyond belief. What kind of guy would he be if he just let her leave? “I’m—“ he wanted to say something, anything to make the situation okay, but he was at a loss, “fuck, sorry.” He barely looked at Ivy when he apologized but once the words fell from his lips, he left her standing there alone and zoomed into the hallway where he stopped Rory in her tracks. “It really isn’t what you think,” he lied, scrambling to come up with a valid excuse or reason for why he would be kissing Ivy in the choir room. He knew he was shit out of luck. There was nothing he could say. When Rory’s eyes filled with tears and she revealed that people had been warning her, Julien was riddled with guilt. Fuck. Why was he like this? It was all fun and games until someone got hurt. He needed to fix this. “You’re not a fool,” he told her as he approached her slowly, “okay? I am. I’m an idiot. I’m—I’m stupid. I don’t know what I’m doing.”As she started to wave her arms around and get angry, Julien tightened his lips into a line and felt all of his muscles tense. Her words echoed through the empty hallway and he knew there was nothing he could say in the moment that would make the situation better. “Rory, please,” he started, eyes pleading and tone strained. There had to be something he could say to make things better. The words spilled out of him before he could really process it, “I love you.” On cue, his phone alarm went off in his pocket and startled him. “Shit,” he muttered, pulling it out and seeing that they had five minutes until the show started, “we have to get back.” He looked at Rory, completely focused on her and entirely unaware of anything that might’ve been happening behind him. It dawned on him that he had just said he loved her. Did he love her? Had he just said that because it felt like the right thing to say? He was so confused. “I know you’re mad, but can we just do the show and then talk about it? Please?”

𝐑𝐎𝐑𝐘: Watching Julien and Ivy kiss in a romantic way instead of practicing for the musical way made Rory's heart sink and naturally so. No one wants to see their boyfriend kiss someone else like that especially when that boyfriend had a history and everyone had been warning her about the said history, but she thought things were different. Rory had been through this before. Not when it came to Julien and when that did happen, she was the "other girl". It's why she kept her relationships minimal and sexual encounters at a maximum. She couldn't get hurt if she didn't open up to guys, but it was also her weakness. A guy could just flash her a smile and tell her she was remotely attractive and she'd be weak in her knees. Maybe it was the daddy issues or the deep insecurity she held as the second-best at McKinley. And now she really was second best to Ivy St. James in every aspect. Julien was the one thing Rory had that Ivy didn't and now... even the Wicked Witch of Lima had that. She wrapped her arms around her body as if to calm herself down even just a bit but what she had seen in the choir room just kept replaying in her head every time she closed her eyes. She felt so stupid. So stupid for trusting Julien. So stupid for believing he changed. So stupid for falling in love with his stupid dorky smile. And that's when it dawned on her. She was so hurt not only because she believed in him but because she had fallen in love with Julien Schuester and in the same moment she recognized how much she loved him, he had simultaneously broken her heart at the same time. "Isn't what I think?" A scoff left her mouth. "That wasn't a practice kiss, okay? I know what you look like when you have one of those... charged choir room moments," because he had looked at her like that at one point. When Julien started to approach her slowly, she backed away a few steps. She didn't want his semi-comforting words or for him to step closer to her, she wanted to forget what she had seen. No wonder why Emory wanted to beat his car in and break Ivy's nose. This feeling sucked. The tightening in her throat, the tears, her heart beating out of her chest. She felt like someone had quite literally stomped on her heart, but when he uttered those three words Rory almost saw the light at the end of the tunnel which would have been comforting if Julien wasn't cheating on her. "Yeah... I love you too," she said barely above a whisper, using the back of her sleeve to wipe some tears off her face. There was a small foundation stain, but it wasn't a priority of Rory's at the moment. When she heard Julien's alarm ring, she knew it was almost time for the show to start so she quickly sucked up whatever she was feeling and dabbed away her tears. "Maybe," she shrugged. "I don't think there's much more to talk about," she said with a deep sigh. "Break a leg, I guess," she croaked out as she tried to hold in any emotion. Save it for the stage. Turning on her heel, she started walking back to the auditorium to get ready to go on.

𝐈𝐕𝐘: THE FANTASY WORLD THAT RESIDED WITHIN JULIEN SCHUESTER’S LIPS CAME TUMBLING DOWN AT THE SOUND OF A FEW DISCORDANT PIANO KEYS, FOLLOWED BY A SOFT ‘RORY’ THEN A FRANTIC ‘IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK’. ivy’s ejection from that little piece of paradise was violent. other than having to make a quick acclimation to this new and tense situation, she had to shove all of eli’s, now proven to be correct, comments from her mind so she could focus on what to do. last time when emory had caught her and julien, ivy had peeled from the scene as quickly as she could, but that wasn’t really much of an option on opening night of a show in which all parties involved played principal roles. faster than they had been caught, rory was running out the door and julien was going after her while ivy remained stunned at the piano, painfully aware of how she had nowhere left to run. both herself and julien should have known better than to walk this fraying tight rope together at this point. they both knew it was a hazard, there was no safety net below them, and one misstep would send them plummeting to the hard surface that was the consequences of their actions. julien paused in the doorway, looking ivy up and down and filling her with the dangerous hope that he may stay with her. as soon as the apology slipped from julien, he was gone, and ivy found herself now knowing what to do. follow him. her feet carried her to the doorway where if she looked just to the left she could see rory and julien, even hear their voices echoing down the hallway to where she was. she was still functioning in a trance like stuporous state. she wanted to run down the hallway and after julien, but her feet told her the threshold of the choir room door was far enough. hearing rory choked up was enough to make anyone feel bad, ivy included. ashamed , she looked down upon her sandaled feet. as much as she tried to assure herself rory would come out of this fine and it was just a small incident that could be brushed off, the longer she eavesdropped the less confident in that she grew. though ivy’s largest emotional reaction came from hearing the words i and love and you leave julien’s mouth and into rory’s ears.it was like a large wound in her chest opened up and immediately caused her lip to quiver. it wasn’t a new gash though, it was about a year old at this point, and while it had been closed for some time, julien had just as easily reopened it as he had sliced it a little over a year ago. suddenly rory and julien’s conversation was muted in her ears and it felt like all she could hear was her own heart heaving in pain with each beat it thumped. what had happened to ten minutes ago when julien was in fact confirming that did mean something? was she just a toy for him to play with when he got lonely and bored? ivy couldn’t find it in herself to believe julien was capable of that malice, she didn’t want to. unable to wipe her tears fast enough, ivy bolted out of the choir room, to the right, and into the bathroom all while a faint jingle of someone’s alarm could be heard at the other end of the hallway. instantly, she locked herself in a stall and tried to rid herself of this used feeling. julien loved rory, and it seemed that ivy's own moments with him the past couple of weeks had meant nothing. julien had lied, and that only made her cry harder. the show was the last thing on her mind at the moment, just herself, the bathroom stall, trying to halt her tears and the dejected feeling that came with an overwhelming sense of loneliness and foolishness.

END

#julien #rory #tw: cheating #discord para #the winner takes it all #//when taylor swift said chase two girls lose the one she was actually prophesizing this moment

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christophe-delorne · 4 years

Text

Good Dog: Chapter 15

Pairings: Gregory x Christophe (Kyle?)

Warnings: None.

Notes: Wow, another chapter so soon? You lucky little dirtbags. Or my internet was out and I needed something to occupy my thoughts. Anyways! I'm taking asks on my admin blog. So if your curious about the writing process, me, headcanons, or the future of this story, hmu.

Memory & ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ

"No, Mole, hang on."

A voice haunted his memory, causing him to stir, wanting to turn away from it. Why would he bother hanging on, what was the point of carrying on when all his life he'd only been used as a tool. God had fucked him over so many times that he'd lost count over the years, he's only purpose had been to serve others, did he even have a goal beyond being ordered around, of being hurt, of dying for some war he had no stake in. War. He remembered it as clear as if it happened only yesterday, how could he not? One tends to remember their own death.

"We'll get you home."

Home? What a fanciful notion, a delusion people lived to find some sort of comfort. Homes could be destroyed, ruined, burned to ash within moments. Christophe's life was already crumbling around him, to have some physical evidence of that was something he didn't want to bother with. It made him remember what he used to call home as a child. A quaint little house on the edge of South Park, close to Gregory's family estate. It wasn't much but Christophe remembered every little detail about it, it was branded in his mind like some sort of fantasy that didn't seem real.

"Christophe, you failed your math test again. Are you even trying?" His mother's voice echoed in his mind, he looked up from the table, seeing his mother but her face was blurred out, scratched from his memory.

"I'm sorry, mother." He said pleasantly even though he was seething on the inside, he'd known all the answers on the test, but what was the point of getting them correct? Not like his mother would reward him and Christophe didn't particularly like getting judged by this woman.

"Its fine, dear, we will just have to study harder. For now, no dessert tonight." His mother scolded gently, as if she honestly meant it. Christophe was aware of it being all a farce, he'd been aware of his mother's act for a couple of years now. If he had a choice, he'd run off, but he couldn't, he was only eight years old and already basically sold off to servitude to Gregory. Christophe got out of his chair, planning on going up to his room to stew in silence when the door rang. It was rare someone came to their house, no one outside of Gregory's family really knew about them.

Christophe didn't care and his mother was already on her way to answer, her tone was grating with how charming and polite she was to whoever was at the door. He wanted to escape, to get away from it all. He was drowning out his mother's grating voice until she called out his name, it appeared someone had come for him. That was a surprise, Gregory never came over to his house, usually summoning the Frenchboy over to his place instead. Scowling, Christophe made his way towards the door, where three boys stood at his stoop. Everything in him screamed to shut the door, knowing how this ended, but one couldn't change the past.

The scene began to melt, like wax, dribbling down to reveal darkness underneath the colorful layer. A reality of it all, the emptiness of it was far too familiar and yet Christophe wanted to turn away from it. He didn't want to relive this nightmare, this reality that had been in his past. It haunted him enough during his waking hours, but it appeared that it wouldn't let him rest in peace even in his last moments. The coldness washed over him, reminding him of before, of how it felt like he'd never recall what it was like to be warm. He wished it would just go numb, but the chill crept into his very bones, making it difficult to move.

Then warmth, a small amount pressing on top of his hand, fingers smooth but unfamiliar. Not smooth enough to be Gregory's, it was as if the touch alone was summoning him through curiosity, drawing him away from the bitter coldness of death. Annoyed that someone was calling him back from the brink, needing him, always needing him for their own personal gain. He was a fucking idiot for being drawn to it, out of habit, like a dog crawling to his master even in his last breath was fading from his lungs. Ever loyal, ever determined, even if it meant dying at his master's feet, to be buried and replaced.

"Every time you come into my life, it always ends up like this?" A quiet voice reached him, causing him to crack his eyes open. Not a pleasant or smooth as Gregory's, stern but there was a hint of concern in his voice. A face, pale skin, even with Christophe's unfocused vision, he could see the tangled mess of red hair. Kyle. Hard to forget him, not when his face was the last one Christophe had seen before he'd died as a child. The only one to have offered him some form of comfort in his last moments, even though the only reason those kids had needed him alive was to help get them out safe and alive. Showing compassion to an expendable tool, it was odd.

Christophe didn't respond, he was exhausted, too tired to bother thinking about why Kyle was there. If he really was there and not just some figment of Christophe's imagination, it was difficult to tell what was reality and what was something conjured up by Christophe's fading mind. Instead, he let himself drift off again, he didn't want to think anymore, didn't want to be haunted by faces of his past. However, God never took what Christophe wanted into consideration, he was always punishing Christophe's existence, as if he was some sort of personal stress toy for the asshole.

"I'm glad you came on such short notice." Another voice drifted into his conscious some time later, he didn't need to open his eyes to know it was Gregory. They'd been bound at birth, as romantic as that would seem to the outside viewer, it wasn't that simple. This wasn't some Hallmark movie housewives jerked off to when their husbands weren't satisfying enough. But Christophe could understand the need for that illusion to cover up their shitty relationship, it just wan't in Christophe to delude himself in such a way.

"Of course, its the least I could do for him... As some form of apology for... what happened." Kyle's voice seemed to hesitate, stressed by bringing up the topic. It made Christophe wonder how Kyle had fared after Christophe's death. He assumed the red-head had moved on with his life, forgetting about the French mercenary like everyone else had. However, maybe that wasn't the case.

"Christophe mentioned you were there." Gregory's voice seemed tense, as if he didn't want to carry on with this conversation, but he had to, for some reason Christophe couldn't fathom.

"I was. There wasn't anything I could have done for him at the time." Kyle hesitated again. "I don't like feeling helpless. Its one of the reasons I became a doctor." He admitted, though much to Christophe's annoyance. This conversation was far too awkward, even for him and he was barely conscious. Two people who wanted to avoid any sort of actual emotion holding a conversation about emotions? What a joke.

"We were just kids." Gregory admitted, though it didn't seem like he accepted the excuse himself. Guilty though for having sent Christophe off without proper backup, for trusting Kyle, Stan, and Cartman. Christophe had trusted Gregory's judgement and had paid the price for it.

"Yes, well." Kyle sighed out heavily, bracing himself. "I'm sorry, I don't think any of us actually properly apologized to you. If I had known Christophe was still alive..."

"It was better no one had known, in our line of work, knowing could put you in the line of danger. Especially with the trouble you and your friends get into." Gregory's tone seemed sour for a moment, before letting out a stressed exhale. "My apologies, it is unlike me to get this worked up."

"I understand, but we're in this trouble together now and I'll help out any way I can. I'm not as ill-prepared as last time." Kyle stated firmly, making Christophe remember that hint of a feiry temper from their childhood. He'd only gained a brief glimpse of it, but it had been something Christophe had admired. Left uncontrolled though and it could be dangerous.

"I can see that now, thank you for patching Christophe back up. I couldn't take him to the hospital, I'm certain you're aware as to why." Gregory seemed to be pacing, from the sound of his brisk footsteps, sometimes they lingered closer to Christophe's bed, wanting to be near but resisting the temptation.

"Yeah, I figured as much. I need to stay here for a couple more days just to make sure he recovers without any sort of infection."

"I can handle that."

"Are you trying to tell a doctor how to do his job, Gregory?" Kyle's voice tightened as if using Gregory's name was an insult.

"No, certainly not, but I'm more than capa-"

"Then you should listen to my orders when it comes to matters like this." Kyle cut in, not willing to listen to Gregory's excuses. It was rare for anyone to really be able to interrupt Gregory without certain annoyance. Christophe wished he had the capability to laugh, because he certainly wanted Gregory to know his amusement. However, he doubted he could even manage a humored smirk, feeling detached from his body, as if he was just floating there, barely tethered to the lead weight of his body.

"If you insist." Gregory backed down, already stressed from what happened no doubt. Logically, it was ideal to have a certified doctor on hand, even though both Gregory and Christophe had a decent amount of experience patching each other up from missions that had gone badly. It had always either been himself, or Gregory, no one else. Christophe didn't tolerate strangers touching him, so doctors were avoided at all costs for Christophe. That and he couldn't have his files pulled up where anyone could trace him or realize he wasn't dead.

"Why don't you rest for a little, you've been up for too long. I'll keep an eye on Christophe in the meantime." Kyle seemed to soften his voice a little now that Gregory had conceded, he still seemed to hold some amount of care towards other. One couldn't take just the care without the temper with Kyle.

"Fine, but if he wakes, you let me know." Gregory warned before footsteps receded out of the room, leaving Christophe with Kyle in the room. Not that Christophe was truly much company as he didn't even bother to open his eyes, they felt like heavy weights anyways.

Once again, warmth covered over his rough and scarred hand, making Christophe aware that Kyle was lightly holding it. It was a strange feeling, he could barely recall anyone holding his hand in such a gentle fashion, as if afraid they'd hurt him. Impossible, really, but the notion was not lost on Christophe. It was strange, but Christophe could remember that this wasn't actually the first time his hand had been held as this moment recreated itself. He was dying in the dirt, but then arms did their best to hold him close. A hand grasping his as if trying in vain to tether him to the mortal plain.

Kyle.

#south park #gregory #christophe #good dog #fanfic #kyle broflovski

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finchilyflawless · 5 years

Text

The 100 Season 5 AU (Bellarke)

Season 5 AU in which the radio tower isn’t screwed up and Clarke actually makes it back to Alie’s lab in time to go to space (effectively preventing Becho from ever becoming a thing). I tried to follow the main storyline from the show itself, but I had to take some artistic liberties, and I haven’t watched the show in a couple months. And scientific inaccuracies are accidental and I swear I tried my best. Enjoy!

Bellamy’s POV:

"She has one more minute," Raven says, frantically prepping for takeoff. We're all in the rocket, ready to go. Except for Clarke. She should have left the radio tower 9 minutes ago. She should be here any second. She has to be.

30 seconds later, still no Clarke. "Bellamy... we have to go," Raven says to me, looking scared and sad, but determined. If Clarke's not back, she will launch this rocket. Raven will make sure we survive. If Clarke's not here, Raven will make sure the rest of us survive.

We can't leave Clarke. We can't. I can't. I won't. "No. She'll get here." I'm tearing up, I can feel it. She has to make it back. We can't survive in space for 5 years without her. I can't survive in space for 5 years without her.

CRASH

A bunch of beakers are shoved off a table as someone stumbles into the room. They're wearing one of our hazmat suits. It's Clarke. I don't even struggle with the straps, I have them off and I'm leaning out the door before anyone else has even started to move. She's clearly exhausted. She collapses to the floor, panting, then gets back up.

15 seconds on the clock. Clarke' not going to make it. I make a split second decision and jump out of the rocket. I hear several people yelling at me, probably because what I'm doing is incredibly stupid. A grabbed Clarke's arm, wrapping my arm around her and pulling her with me towards the ship, speeding her up considerably.

7 seconds. I push Clarke up the ladder, helping her into the rocket. I jump in and we both scramble for our seats as Raven preps for take off. I strap in, making sure Clarke has done the same. She’s here. She’s safe. We’re together.

Blast off. We're leaving Earth. Maybe for the last time, because we don't have a way to get back down. My sister is still down there. Octavia is down there. So is Abby. Clarke didn't get to say goodbye to her mom, and it's my fault because I killed the radio talking to Octavia. She's not mad about that, is she? I didn't mean for the radio to die. I just wanted to say goodbye to my sister.

We've reached the ring. Raven is prepping for her space walk. Murphy and Emori are checking each other's oxygen tanks. He has 16 minutes. She has 17. "Well, at least I don't have to watch you die," Murphy mutters, rolling his head back. That’s Murphy’s version of ‘shit shit shit.’

"Nobody is dying," Harper says, glaring at Murphy. "Raven's going to get us in there and get the oxygen running. We're going to survive this." I'm not so sure. "And Monty will have his algae farm." That, I'm really not sure about. 5+ years of eating algae does not sound like much fun. But Monty's excited, and as far as I know, it's our only food source.

Raven gets the doors open. "You did it," I say to Clarke, smiling. I expect her to be proud of herself, or at least be happy about it. Instead, she just nods weakly. That's when I notice how heavily she's breathing. "Clarke, where's your oxygen tank?"

Clarke had sprinted for 10 minutes. Straight. When she'd arrived at the lab she was exhausted. She probably had less oxygen left than any of us. "I'm fine," she whispered. It looked like she was trying to steady her breathing. It didn’t appear to be having any effect. "I'm all good," she says a bit louder than before.

I shook my head. She’s lying straight to my face. She doesn’t want me to worry, I can tell. "Clarke, how much oxygen do you have left?" I ask forcefully. If she's running out of oxygen, we need to know. Clarke can't die. Not now. Not like this. I can’t loose her.

Clarke glanced at her oxygen tank. I could tell she tried to hide it, but I noticed her close her eyes for a split second. In that moment, her face revealed it all. She was accepting her imminent death. Then the expression was gone, covered by her calm collected mask. "11 minutes." That got everyone else's attention quickly.

Clarke hid it well, but I could see the fear hidden in the way she avoided eye contact and the uneasy twitch of her jaw. She was scared. Scared to die. Clarke Griffin was afraid to die. The person who had risked her life for us time and time again was afraid of death. Add that to the long list of reasons that Clarke is the bravest person I know.

Raven's back. She's directing the rocket into the landing pad on the ring. We're all running out of oxygen. Clarke's down to 7 minutes of oxygen. Murphy has 11; Emori has 12. I'm not sure about Monty, Harper, Raven, or Echo. I check my oxygen tank. 11 minutes. More than Clarke.

When we into the ring, Murphy and Emori help Raven move the oxygen machine thing. They have to go find a place to hook it up with the vent system. Meanwhile, Monty, Harper, Clarke, Echo, and I pick a nice hallway and pray that the machine works.

Clarke is pacing. She does that when she feels useless or nervous. "I should go help them. They might need another set of hands. Murphy might do something stupid. Emori doesn’t have a lot of experience managing technology."

I cut her off before she can continue panicking. "Clarke. You've done plenty. Raven knows what she's doing. Murphy and Emori will give her all the help she needs." Clearly she doesn't believe me. I'm scared too, but I know Raven can do this. "Clarke, you have less oxygen than any of us. Sit down." She does, begrudgingly.

Monty and Harper sit too, talking quietly. Echo ignores us. I stand near the wall, trying to relax and trust Raven. Clarke looks even more frustrated. Then her oxygen tank beeps. 1 minute. She has one minute of oxygen. I check my tank. 5 minutes. I see Echo checking hers. 3 minutes. Monty has 6, Harper has 5. I can see panic in everyone's eyes.

Clarke's oxygen runs out. She struggles for breath for a few seconds before breathing, "Help..."

Harper reaches for her oxygen tank but Monty stops her. "I have more," he says, removing his oxygen tank and holding his breath. Harper helps Clarke remove her helmet and Monty holds the oxygen tank to her face. She takes a deep breath and relaxes, looking calmer. She hands the oxygen back to Monty, who waits a little while before using it. Clarke is starting to struggle again, so Monty gives it back to her. They continue like this for a few minutes, until Echo's oxygen tank gives the 1-minute warning.

I reach for my tank, but Harper gets hers off first, she stands up as Echo pulls of her helmet. Harper removed her own, holding her breath, and offers Echo the oxygen tank. Echo takes it and takes a breath, just as Clarke tries to use Monty's and gets nothing. It's empty.

I remove my oxygen tank, and give it to Clarke, then remove my helmet. Harper and I are the only ones left with oxygen in our tanks. Echo, Harper, and I sit down, and start passing the tanks to whoever needs them. When my eyes start to close, an oxygen tank is thrust into my hands and I take a breath. I give it to Harper, who looks ready to collapse.

She gets nothing. Somebody passes her the other oxygen tank. She takes a breath, then hands it to Echo, who's looking faint. Echo gets nothing. We're out of air. "Get her to the vent," Monty says. "When the oxygen comes on she needs it first."

We all help Echo get to the vent. She's the first to loose consciousness. Monty goes next. We all look at Harper who looks terrified. Her fear speeds up her heart rate, and she looses consciousness next.

Clarke lies down, trying to conserve energy. I join her. What if Raven doesn't get the oxygen on? What if it was broken? What if we're all going to die. I don't say this out loud. What I do say is, "See you on the other side, Princess." My vision is fuzzy. Everything's going black. I hear a buzz. Is there a bug in here? I don't know. I don't know anything.

***

When I wake up, Harper is already awake, attempting to push Monty's unconscious body towards the venting system. I push myself into a sitting position. "Oh thank god," Harper says. "Move Clarke, please. I was going to move her after Monty."

Clarke is still out of it, limp on the ground next to me. I half lift her and slide her towards the air vent with Echo. Then I help Harper with Monty, who was farther away. "Did you check their pulses?" I ask her. What if they're dead? What if Clarke's dead?

Harper nods. "They're alive. Just deoxygenated." Thank god. "I haven't seen Raven, Murphy, or Emori yet. But they should be ok. When the others wake up we should go find them."

Echo starts to stir, along with Clarke. Good. Monty's not moving yet, but I think that's ok.

Echo wakes up ready to fight. She bolts upright and scans her surroundings before relaxing a bit. "The last time I woke up to unfamiliar surroundings, I was inside Mount Weather," she explains, her expression guarded.

Monty is starting to move when Clarke's eyes open slowly. "Bellamy?" She asks. I can't help but smile. She's ok. We're all ok.

"How do you feel?" I ask. She shrugs, sitting up. "I told you you'd be ok," I say. I can't resist smiling a little every time I talk to her. Unfortunately, I barely get a smile in return. "When Monty wakes up we're gonna go find Raven, Murphy, and Emori."

Clarke nods and pushes herself upright, leaning against the wall. "If the oxygen is working that means somebody was conscious to turn it on. A-at least one of them should be alive." She realizes how pessimistic she sounds and quickly adds, "If not all 3 of them."

As soon as Monty wakes up, Harper collapses on top of him. They cling to each other, Harper pressing a relieved kiss to Monty's lips. I don't think they realize how lucky they are to love somebody who loves you back. I wish I had that.

***

We find Raven, Murphy, and Emori. They're all ok and breathing. Raven goes off with Monty and Harper to set up the algae farm while the rest of us explore the ring. We find 5 rooms that could easily be converted into bedrooms. There's 8 of us, which means we're going to have to share.

Monty and Harper will room together obviously, along with Murphy and Emori. That leaves 3 rooms for 4 people. Clarke will probably want to room with Raven. That leaves Echo and I each with our own room. I hate sleeping alone. That's why I slept around so much when we first got to the ground.

"We got this one," Murphy drawls, pulling Emori by the hand into one of the rooms.

She chuckles and follows him. "We'll see you guys later," she says dismissively, kicking the door shut behind her. I'm sure they'll have lots of... fun.

Clarke takes over a leadership position then, as usual. "Alright. There's 5 rooms and 8 of us. That means 3 pairs and 2 singles. Murphy and Emori are... all set, Monty and Harper should be more than happy to share, which means the three of us and Raven are confined to 3 rooms.

Echo was looking around awkwardly. Things were... tense between us and I know Clarke isn't a fan of her either. "I want my own room," she says, quick and to-the-point.

"I hope you don't expect me to share," a voice says from around the corner. Raven emerges from the hallways we'd come from, her hand on her hip. "I don't do roommates."

Clarke looks thrown for a second but regains her composure quickly. "Um... ok. Echo and Raven get the singles. That leaves... Bellamy. And myself. To share. Yeah, ok we can make this work." I can't read the expression on her face and it's bothering me. I always know what Clarke's thinking.

Raven and Echo are choosing their rooms when Monty and Harper return. "There are 2 rooms left, which one do you guys want?" I ask, pointing to the unclaimed bedrooms-to-be. "We assumes you wouldn't mind sharing." I smirk.

Monty blushes and Harper giggles. "We don't mind," she agrees, giving Monty a look to make sure he agrees. They look at each other and talk quietly for a moment before Harper announces "We'll take this one!"

"Should we ration the food now, or wait?" Monty asks. "Most of us are pretty tired." He's not wrong. "If we decide to wait, I'm in, but at the moment I'd kind of like to sleep."

"Same," agrees Raven, turning towards her room. "It's late anyways. We should all get some shut-eye."

"Agreed," Harper chimes in, leaning her head on Monty's shoulder.

"Agreed," Echo mutters, looking uncomfortable as if she doesn't feel right contributing.

"Agreed," I say.

"I'm in," Clarke states. Then she adds, "But we should look around and see if we can find something more comfortable to sleep on than the floor. We might not find anything, but I think it's worth a try."

Everyone seems to agree so without half an hour or so we've collected 4 cot-mattress-things and a thin bedroll. Raven takes charge and gives all the doubles a cot, before realizing that that leaves just 1 cot and a bedroll between her and Echo.

"You can have it," Echo says dismissively, grabbing the bedroll. "I've slept on worse and I can look again tomorrow."

Raven looks pleasantly surprised. "Thanks," she says, extending her hand to clap Echo's shoulder in a friendly gesture. "I'll help you find another cot tomorrow." Echo nods, a flicker of a grin ghosting across her face.

We all split up into our separate sleeping chambers and try to get comfortable. Unfortunate, I'm anything but comfortable. Don't get me wrong, I feel more than safe being near Clarke. It's just... I never thought I'd be sleeping with her. No, NOT sleeping with her. Definitely not. Just... sharing a bed with her. Not that I'd mind sleeping with Clarke... or maybe I would? I don't know. I think I just need sleep. I think I could sleep for a week.

Before I even notice, Clarke has set up our cot in one corner of the relatively small room. "We don't have any pillows at the moment, but if they had beds there might be some of those around too." She seems sidetracked, rambling on about sensible stuff. She's not usually like this when it's just the 2 of us.

"It's fine," I grumble, my eyelids drooping. "I could probably sleep on rocks right now."

She finally cracks a smile. "I think we all could," she agrees, giving me the look. Clarke has this one look she gives people sometimes, that makes you feel like she knows all your secrets. But you willingly gave them all to her. And don't regret it. Honestly this woman is a miracle. "Do you want the inside or the outside?"

I shrug indecisively leaning against the wall. "I don't care."

Clarke grins a bit more and climbs onto the cot. "You can have the outside." She rolls over until she's next to the wall. "I'll- try not to wake you up - by - like - moving."

She sounds kind of nervous but I'm too tired to really care so I just grunt in acknowledgment and turn off the lights before lying down on my back. I fall asleep almost instantly, barely taking the time to check on Clarke.

***

I'm woken up rather suddenly by a large weight rolling half on top of me. I open my eyes to see Clarke, shaking slightly, clinging to me in her sleep. Her face is screwed up like she's having a nightmare and she keeps whispering things like: "No! Wait... stop! No..." I go to wake her up when I hear, "No... Bellamy!" This is the loudest cry yet, followed by a sob.

I shake Clarke awake gently. "Hey, Clarke, wake up," I murmur to her, using one arm to nudge her. She's still clinging to me desperately and I want to comfort her, but I can't do that if she's asleep. Her eyes open quickly, tears clumping her eyelashes, and she looks at me confusedly. "You had a nightmare. You were crying out in your sleep."

She looks shaken, her eyes unfocused. That is until she realizes she's half-hugging me and scrabbles away. I sigh slightly at the loss of contact and prop myself up on my elbow facing her. Wiping away tears gently, I ask, "Want to talk about it?" Clarke shakes her head. "Didn't think so. You alright?"

She hesitates, then nods, but I don't believe her. "I'm- I'm sorry for- for- you know..."

Clarke starts to inch away from me, still looking unsure as to whether she's safe or not, but so touch her arm gently to stop her. "No, it's ok," I say quietly, settling back down. "Come here, you can lay on me if you want. I don't want you to have any more nightmares."

Clarke starts to move slightly, then stops before I can tell if she was coming towards me or rolling away. "You- you're sure?" I nod and wrap my arm around her as she moves towards me again, resting her head on my chest. "Thank you, Bellamy," she whispers.

“Anytime, Princess.”

Heyyy thanks for reading, hope you liked it! As stated above there will be a part 2, maybe part 3. Follow me for more!

#The 100 #Bellarke #Bellamy Blake #Clarke Griffin #bellamy x clarke #murphy x emori #Fluff #Nightmare #Oneshot

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aadmelioraa · 6 years

Note

For the prompt thing - Bellarke + "is there a reason you're naked in my bed?" (I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this one) 😉😙

Hehe this was fun, thanks Elly {read on ao3}

As far as academic conferences went this one had been extremely grueling, though not without its merits. It wasn’t exactly why Bellamy had gone into education, but if Kane wanted his favorite teachers to attend endless lectures on integrating technology into the classroom and the powers of student driven learning, he’d go along with it.

By the last panel Friday afternoon, Bellamy was just looking forward to taking a shower and collapsing in his own bed. He thought of little else from the time he boarded his flight, and when the airport shuttle finally pulled up outside his house he was so fixated that he didn’t notice the strange set of keys on the entryway table.

He dropped his bags in the living room and immediately headed for the shower. The hot steam cleansed his soul of the inane conversations he’d been forced to overhear on the plane ride home when his iPod had died. The apartment had been dark and still when he arrived, which meant Murphy was probably spending the night at Emori’s. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Wrapping a towel around his waist and gathering his belongings from the living area, Bellamy dropped his bag inside the door of his room and turned on the light. Sleep could not come too soon.

The second the lights flicked on, he realized he wasn’t alone. The bed was unmade, like he’d left it. What he hadn’t been expecting was for it to be occupied.

Tousled blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and sheets grabbed in panic to her chest…he was face to face with an apparently naked Clarke Griffin.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? I live here, this is my bedroom…what are you doing here?”

Clarke flushed and clutched the sheets until her knuckles went white. “I…Murphy said you wouldn’t be back until Saturday night.”

“Do you always sleep in my bed when I go out of town, or just on special occasions?”

“I don’t…my place is being fumigated this weekend, and since you were going to be out of town I thought, Murphy said I could crash here until you got back. I was going to leave tomorrow morning, you’d never even know I was here.”

“That’s creepy.”

“I just mean,” Clarke rolled her eyes, “it wouldn’t have been an imposition.”

“Mhmmm. Well I guess that explains why you’re in my bed, though it doesn’t explain why you’re naked…”

“You’re one to talk!” Clarke shot back, giving his entire body a sweeping look. “That towel is…not doing a whole lot. And I’m not naked,” she pulled down the sheets to reveal the strap of a worn tank top.

Bellamy chuckled and adjusted his towel slightly. “Ok. Fine. Neither of us are technically naked.”

He took a seat at his desk without exposing himself, not an easy accomplishment, and noted with pleasure that Clarke was fighting to keep her gaze at a respectable height.

“So what are we going to do now?”

“I’ll go crash with Raven at Shaw’s, I guess…”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Well, we’re not going to share your twin bed, Bellamy. Seriously, what grown ass man sleeps in a bed this small? What do you do with overnight guests?”

“My ‘overnight guests’ aren’t usually as demanding as you, Clarke.”

Clarke rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, ok. Seriously, you need a real bed. This is barely big enough for one person.”

“It’s big enough for you. I’ll crash on the couch.”

“Now you’re being stupid. I can go sleep in Murphy’s room, I guess.”

“Murphy hasn’t washed his sheets in at least three months. Why do you think he’s always at Emori’s?”

Clarke wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Bellamy said magnanimously, standing up and moving to his dresser. He rifled around for some comfortable clothes, feeling Clarke’s eyes on his back. He turned around. “You’re not going to fight me on that? You could at least pretend.”

Clarke shrugged. “I mean, I’m already here…”

He snorted. “Yeah, can’t argue with that.”

“You really don’t mind?”

“I mind a little.”

Clarke considered. “I guess I can live with that.”

Bellamy laughed and grabbed his phone charger out of his bag. “Have a good night, Clarke.”

Clarke smirked. “I will.”

—

Bellamy woke the next morning to the smell of strong coffee. Clarke was standing over the stove, holding a spatula.

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

Clarke turned, grinning. “I can’t. But I can toast bread and scramble eggs with moderate competency. Hungry?”

Bellamy sat up and stretched. “Starving.”

“Good. Breakfast’s almost ready. You still take your coffee black?”

“Mhmmm. Thanks.”

“So what I still don’t understand,” Clarke said over a bite of toast, “is why you arrived home a full day early.”

“I didn’t. Murphy got the days wrong, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess…”

“You sound suspicious.”

“Of Murphy? Absolutely.”

“What possible ulterior motives could he have?”

“Just general fuckery,” Clarke shrugged. “Anyway, I’ll be out of your hair soon. I just got a text from our landlord, we can move back in this afternoon.”

“It’s nine a.m. What are you going to do until then?”

“I dunno. Murder Murphy, maybe.”

“He’s not worth it.“ Bellamy’s eyes darted from Clarke’s face to his plate and back, trying to deny the sudden nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach. “If you’re free, I could use help with something.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes. “Help with what?”

“I was thinking about buying a new bed. You know, now that you’ve ruined mine with your Clarkeness.”

“Moron. Most people would consider themselves lucky to find me naked in their beds.”

“You weren’t naked, remember?”

“Not that time.”

Bellamy almost choked on his coffee and Clarke dramatically patted him on the back.

“There, there. Are you really going to buy a new bed?”

“Yeah, I mean…you weren’t wrong. I’m twenty-five. It might be time.”

“It’s definitely time. Come on, if we hurry we can still make the best garage sales. You never know what kind of deals you’ll find. ”

“Ok, but we’re definitely buying a new mattress.”

“Obviously.” Clarke gathered her hair up into a ponytail, and headed back to his bedroom. “Frame first, then mattress.”

She emerged a moment later wearing jeans and an oversized tee.

“Is that my shirt?”

“Yeah, I figure if I ruin this you’ll let me take you clothes shopping too. Your wardrobe needs serious help, Bellamy.”

“I’m not made of money! And my wardrobe is fine.”

“You own the same two shirts in four colors. That’s it.”

“Whatever. I know what I like.”

“You like boring things.”

“Maybe. I also, for some reason, like annoying blondes who have way too many opinions on my personal life.”

Clarke paused by the front door. “Like…as friends?”

Bellamy hesitated too, biting his lip. “Not exactly. Wasn’t that obvious?”

She turned back slowly, a funny expression on her face. “I mean, I wasn’t sure…”

“Well, now you know…” He shoved his hands into his pockets and fixed his eyes on the floor. “If you don’t want to go shopping that’s fine, I can forage out on my own. Might be better, since I know you’ll be obnoxious about what styles and sizes are acceptable—“

Suddenly Clarke was right in front of him, and she was resting her hands on his chest, and then—

He was kissing her, and she was kissing him back, and they were leaving a trail of clothes on their way to his bedroom.

Clarke very thoughtfully refrained from critiquing his mattress until they’d finished fucking, and she was laying back in the crook of his arm while he played with her hair.

“We could get really good at this if you had a better set up here, I’m just saying.”

Bellamy snorted. “I think we did just fine.”

Clarke propped herself up on her elbow. “Fine, yes. Excellent even. I’m talking really mind blowing, acrobatic sex—”

“We had to be pretty acrobatic at one point…”

But the covers had fallen away from Clarke’s breasts and Bellamy found himself slightly too distracted to carry on a verbal conversation.

“Well,” she continued, after round two. “We missed most of the good yard sales. I say we try again next Saturday. We can find you a good deal, we just have to start looking early enough.”

“Ok.” Bellamy ran his thumb over her cheek. “Next Saturday morning. It’s a date.”

“We’re going to have sex at my place in the meantime. My entire left side is cramping. This bed is tiny, how do you live like this? How do you get laid like this?”

“It’s a daily struggle.”

“Yeah. Daily. Sure.”

“In my defense, we just had sex twice.”

“I remember. You still think I’m annoying?”

“Yeah, but I’m not gonna hold it against you. You still think I’m a moron?”

“Mmmm…I may have to reconsider.”

“Keep me posted on your decision.” Bellamy pressed a kiss to her cheek.

Somehow, despite the lack of room and lumpy mattress, Clarke managed to drift off to sleep a few minutes after Bellamy did. Murphy found them there when he arrived home that afternoon. If he did take a photo, it was only to prove to Raven that he’d won the bet.

#kat writes #bellarke fanfiction #amm celebration #sorry this took so long!! <3 #frecklessbellamy #yes Bellamy still uses #an iPod #you know it's old as fuck too #but it works

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merrymemori · 5 years

Text

Don’t be surprised if I love you (for all that you are)

To @dylanobrienisbatman from @raven-reyes-of-sunshine

Merry Christmas my bestest babe. You have no idea how hard it was to keep this from you!

Emori has never really put much faith in the idea of soulmates. How does the universe get to decide whom she’s with? That should be a choice that’s up to her. Not the golden pattern on two peoples skin the first time they touch. She’s going to pick her own destiny. Which is why she is so careful not to touch people upon meeting them.

She doesn’t want to brush hands with a stranger and then be forced to go on a date with them just because the universe thinks they’re made for each other. She won’t.

And so she wears gloves as often as she can, long sleeves, even in summer. It might not be the best way of dealing with the issue at hand, but it’s worked for her so far.

It’s not like she never touches people. There are often occasions where it happens in the street or on trains or at busy restaurants because no one is as careful as she is. And once she gets to know someone, she relaxes a little and eventually they hug or brush legs while watching movies or something. But she’s not going to deny that she’s felt relief every time she finds she’s not someone’s soulmate.

“Hurry up, Em,” Harper shouts from the living room of the apartment she shares with Harper and Monty. They’re soulmates and don’t share the same reservations as she does. It probably has something to do with the fact that they found each other when they were teenagers. And she’s happy for them, happy that their soulmate really is who they’re meant to be with. But she knows they got lucky. It doesn’t works out that well for everyone. She’s seen that first hand.

“Do we even have to go?” Emori mutters, grabbing her gloves off the dresser (specially designed by Raven to fit, despite the fused fingers on one of her hands) and pulling them on.

“We have to go,” Harper confirms, laughing softly. “We promised Bellamy and he needs the support.”

Emori sighs, pulling her coat tighter around her and stepping into the lounge room. She wants to support Bellamy, she’s so proud of what he’s achieved at his job. But she wishes supporting him didn’t involve lame office Christmas parties with people who immediately judge her.

They take the train to the party and she bumps shoulders with so many people that she pulls her coat tighter around her, despite the long sleeved and high neck dress she has on underneath. Sometimes she wishes she could just find her soulmate to tell them that it’s not what she wants. But she’s not ready to deal with that, so she keeps avoiding people.

The party isn’t much better, filled with business snobs that she’s terrified of touching. She’s introduced to people whose name’s she’ll never remember and ones she’ll try and forget. The food is fancier than she’s used to and it’s uncomfortably warm inside. It doesn’t take long before she’s hiding in a corner with Raven, rather than attempting to mingle. It’s just more their thing.

“There you guys are,” Bellamy calls, joining them beside the refreshments table. “I wanted to introduce you to Murphy, he’s going to be my partner next year.”

The man they’re introduced to looks as though he’d rather be anywhere but at the party, which Emori relates to. But he also offers his hand, which reminds her that she’d taken her gloves off to wash her hands earlier. And there is no way she’s shaking hands without them, so she keeps them firmly by her side. He looks at her challengingly before rolling his eyes and moving onto Raven, who takes his hand. There’s no explosion of golden tendrils on either of their hands, not that Emori was really expecting it, but she still feels the same weird sense of relief she always does.

“Nice to meet you both,” Murphy says, and it still feels like a challenge. One she’s tempted to rise to. But she doesn’t, she just smiles and let’s Bellamy lead the small talk for a couple of minutes before they’re called away.

“She has a thing about germs,” Bellamy says quietly when he leads Murphy back to the party. She’s grateful for the lie her friends keep up because she is sick of having to explain to strangers that she doesn’t want to touch her in case they’re her soulmate. Murphy shrugs and then they’re out of sight before she can hear a response.

“How do you do it?” Emori asks, tugging her gloves out of her pocket and pulling them back on.

“I don’t know,” Raven shrugs, squeezing her shoulder. “I guess I just got used to it.”

“How?”

“I really don’t know,” she says, obviously thinking about her answer, “I still get nervous meeting new people but I guess I’ll just deal with it, if and when it happens.”

“That’s a much easier mentality to have,” Emori sighs.

“You’ll get there,” Raven promises. “And if you don’t, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll just keep making you the badass gloves.”

“What would I do without you?” She asks, leaning into her friend and smiling to herself. She’s built herself a great family.

“Crash and burn,” Raven grins. “Definitely.”

They get home from the Christmas party just before one and she’s a little tipsy and a little tired by the time she drops onto the couch in between Monty and Harper. She’s a lot surprised to find Murph Murphy on Facebook and not quick enough to move her phone away from Monty, who accepts it for her. Whatever, she’ll deal with it in the morning.

In the following week, Murphy likes one of her photos and she runs into him twice. Once when she drops a file off to Bellamy that he’d somehow left on their coffee table. Murphy is in the office with Bellamy, but it looks more like they’re talking about some movie than their work. Which is probably better for Bellamy’s end of year stress levels.

The second time she’s picking up coffee on her way to work when she runs into him. He’s careful not to touch her, but he smiles a greeting when he steps into line beside her. She really does appreciate the gesture, it’s not often that people actually accept the fact that she doesn’t like to be touched. Especially without questioning her or telling her they use a lot of sanitizer, ‘just so you know,’ first.

They order their coffees and are standing in an almost awkward silence while they wait for their drinks. She wants to say something, but has no idea what. She doesn’t know how to start a conversation with a virtual stranger. And the way he keeps glancing at her makes her wonder if he’s thinking the same.

Murphy is stepping forward as the barista calls ‘John,’ and she stares after him confused, coming the the conclusion that he’s about to take someone else’s drink.

“Wait,” she hisses, as he steps back from the counter. “That’s not yours.”

“Isn’t it?” He asks, perplexed.

“Is your name John?” She accuses, glancing to make sure no one has seen him take the coffee that’s not his.

“My first name is,” he says slowly, “I give my first name because they always manage to fuck up Murphy.”

“Oh,” Emori says, cheeks reddening. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he smirks. “I’m used to accusations like that.”

She rolls her eyes, because she doesn’t know what else to say and then reaches for her own coffee. Her gloved fingers brush the hand of the guy holding her drink and she can’t help but wince.

He waits for her and they step onto the cold street together and she’s touched, he didn’t have to hang around after she accused him of trying to steal someone else’s drink.

“I’m headed this way, so…” he trails off, giving her a soft smile and an awkward wave.

“I’ll see you around, John,” she smiles which turns into a full grin when he rolls his eyes. She hardly knows the guy, but he’s endearing and funny and she wouldn’t mind if Bellamy was to turn their partnership into something more like a friendship, so she could see him around more often.

Her wish is granted at their annual-friends-who-have-nowhere-else-to-go-on-Christmas Christmas lunch. Monty and Harper have gone away for the week, spending the first few days with Monty’s parents and then the days after with Harper’s mum. Clarke is going with Lexa to visit her mum and step dad. Bellamy was supposed to be visiting his sister, but she’s decided to disappear on an impromptu hiking trip, so he’s taken over hosting to make himself feel better. This just means that their usual lowkey affair has been turned into something out of a Hallmark movie.

Bellamy’s gone overboard with the decorations, so his apartment looks as though it’s come directly from a Christmas catalogue but it’s warm and homely. And her friends are mostly already inside. Raven is talking to Wells and Gina, his soulmate. She had been Bellamy’s girlfriend when they met but she’d brushed shoulders with Wells at a party one night and tendrils of gold shot down both their arms. And to Emori’s complete surprise, Bellamy had been happy for them. Excited even. She still doesn’t understand. Doesn’t think she ever will.

Luna and Maya are arranging the Secret Santa presents under the tree and she’s got a suspicion they’re probably trying to work out who got who. Jasper and Bellamy are in the kitchen, arguing over whether or not they should spike the eggnog. It sounds as though Jasper is winning.

She joins Raven, hugging her friends and happily accepting the drink Raven is already handing her.

“Why do none of our friends have homes to go back to?” She asks, glancing fondly around the room. She loves that they almost all spend Christmas together.

“Because we keep adopting strays,” Raven says, nodding towards the door which has just opened. She’s more than a little surprised to see John standing in the door, looking sheepish but holding a gift wrapped in brown paper. Which means Bellamy has definitely found a way to include him in the Secret Santa they’d organised weeks ago.

“I like this stray,” Emori says, before clasping her hand over her mouth. That had come out so differently than she intended.

“Em,” Raven smirks, “do you have something to tell me?”

“What no?” She says, trying not to sound overly defensive. “I just think he’s alright.”

“Right,” Raven mutters, drawing the word out and rolling her eyes. She already doesn’t believe her.

It only takes a few minutes of teasing for Raven to move on, because Luna and Maya come to join them. And while Raven may be a pain, she’s a loyal friend and wouldn’t ever betray what she thinks is a secret. Even if it’s not. It was just awkward wording.

She accepts a second drink from Maya and quickly realises Jasper definitely won the spiking the eggnog argument and settles on the couch, with Raven sitting in her lap. They’re waiting for Bellamy to finish in the kitchen, so they can start opening presents. She feels like a kid on Christmas, knowing full well that it’s because she never got to experience feeling like a kid on Christmas. She’s forever grateful for the family she’s found.

“Finally,” Raven grins, when Bellamy joins them in the living room.

“You’re all so impatient,” he mutters, dropping down in front of the tree and starting to hand out the presents to their recipients.

Raven gets hers first and grins as she pulls a t-shirt out of the paper that reads, I need space, with the NASA symbol. Emori smirks at Luna, she’d helped her pick it last week. Wells gets a book that he’s been wanting to buy, Gina gets a about ten pairs of socks and gives Maya a knowing smile, so it must be some kind of joke between them. Jasper gets his gift, but she stops paying attention because Bellamy passes her hers and she gets too excited.

She tears the brown paper off, screws into a ball and throws it at Jasper, just because, before looking down at the gift sitting in her lap. It’s a little drawstring bag, made of black velvet. She opens it, tipping the contents into her palm. She can’t help the smile on her face when she sees the beaded bracelet, different coloured beads depicting the planets. All her friends know she’s been interested in space her whole life - it’s what had kick started her friendship with Raven, but the bracelet is perfectly her style and if she hadn’t helped Raven buy Bellamy’s gift, she’d assume it came from her.

“This is perfect,” Emori says, holding it up for the group to see before slipping it onto her wrist. She looks at each of her friends, trying to determine who gave it to her, but none of them give anything away. She glances at Raven, expecting her to tell her, but she just shrugs her shoulders and turns to Maya, who is now opening the gift Emori had gotten her.

After everyone has opened their presents and (with partial success) tried to figure out who’s theirs came from, Bellamy calls them to the table for lunch. They eat and chat and drink and eventually move back to the couches and Jasper turns up the music and plays Christmas carols loud enough that she’s sure the neighbours will complain.

It’s a good day, the kind that leaves her sleepy but not wanting to go home yet, because she’s having too much fun. It’s late when John drops down beside her on the couch. And she tenses for a moment, because the shirt she is wearing leaves a lot of her arms exposed. But he sits a safe distance away and she relaxes. He must have taken what Bellamy had said seriously, which she’s grateful for. Most people don’t.

“It looks like Santa threw up in here,” John tells her, offering her the second glass he’s holding. It’s a sweet gesture and the drink she’d been drinking all night, so he’s been paying attention. It makes her smile.

“Have you had a good night though?” She asks him.

“Yeah,” he says, “way better than my original plans of working today.”

“It should be illegal to work on Christmas,” she chastises, a little tipsy.

“I had nothing else to do,” he shrugs. “It’s cool that you guys do this though.”

“It is,” she hums in agreement, “it’s nice having somewhere to go on Christmas. And it’s nice that we can adopt lonely strays.” She leans in to bump his shoulder with hers but freezes at the last second, not able to bring herself to do it. She likes John but she doesn’t know him. She’s not willing to risk their skin touching yet.

“Yeah, the strays really appreciate it,” he grins and she can’t help grinning back. He ends up telling her that he doesn’t go home for Christmas because his dad is dead and his mum holds it against him and she tells him that she never really had parents and she lost her brother when they were teenagers. He asks about her hand, not in a rude way and when she tells him she was born with it, he tells her it’s badass. They keep talking and swapping stories until Raven dances over and pulls her up and leans into her.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your flirting,” Raven whispers, loud enough that John hears and Emori flushes, grateful that he looks away and acts like he’s not listening. “But I want you to sleep at mine tonight and it’s time to go.”

Emori doesn’t argue, she doesn’t particularly want to go home to an empty apartment anymore than Raven does. But she doesn’t really want to stop talking to John.

“Hey,” John calls, before she gets dragged any further. Raven lets go of her hand, wiggles her eyebrows and disappears into the kitchen. “I was just... ugh, I was just wondering if you were going to that New Years party that Blake’s talking about?”

“I am,” Emori nods, feeling a little giddy at the idea that he’s interested enough to find out if she’s going to be there.

“I’ll see you there?” He asks and she’s definitely imagining the hope she hears in his voice. She smiles as she nods again.

Once she and Raven are in the hallway of Bellamy’s apartment building, Raven starts asking about John. She’s a little too disappointed when Emori tells her that she had just been talking to him and a little too over excited when she mentions he asked if they would be at the New Years party. She always gets over invested when she’s been drinking.

“Okay, all jokes aside,” Raven says, as they settle into her bed for the night. Her roommate is away for Christmas and Emori is pretty sure she’s going to stay here until Harper and Monty get home. “Do you like him?”

“I like him,” Emori says, “but I don’t know him. He’s just a good guy.”

“Whatever, you’re totally into him.”

Emori rolls her eyes, even though the lights are off and Raven can’t see her. But the more she thinks about, the more right she seems. It’s not like she wants to immediately go and touch him to find out if they’re soulmates or anything, but she’s interested in him. He’s funny and kind of charming in a very non-conventional way. And without any explanation from her, he’d accepted that she doesn’t want to be touched.

He’s definitely someone she wants to keep getting to know.

The bar they’re going to for New Years Eve is at the one Bellamy and his friend Miller used to work at. It’s where she’d met Raven and where they’d spent so many of their college nights. At this point, they only come back for New Years and the nostalgia, but she always loves it.

“You’re here,” Harper calls excitedly, throwing herself at Emori and pulling her into a hug. They haven’t seen each other since before Christmas.

“I am,” Emori confirms, letting go on Harper and pulling Monty into a hug.

She dances and laughs with her friends, verses Bellamy in a game of pool, steals handfuls of Monty’s fries and is so distracted that she doesn’t notice John approach her.

“Hey,” he calls above the music, stepping beside her. He’s dressed in black jeans and a maroon button down that looks way too good on him.

“Hey,” she grins, pulling her gloves higher on her arms and then offering him her hands to dance. He hesitates for half a second and she immediately regrets it, but then he takes her hands and they’re dancing. Neither of them really know what they’re doing, so it’s a lot of twirling and hip movements and laughter. And John is still careful not to touch her. She suspects by now that Bellamy probably told him the whole truth, but she can’t bring herself to be upset. She likes that he respects it. Likes that it doesn’t seem to bother him.

“I’m going to need to step in,” Raven says, pulling Emori away from John. She doesn’t miss the look of disappointment on his face and she turns to glare at Raven.

“What the fuck?”

“Shut up,” Raven hisses. “Bellamy just met his soulmate.”

“He - what?” Emori asks, brows furrowing together but this time obediently stepping after Raven.

“He was just playing pool with this girl and they were talking trash and I honestly thought it was going to end in a fight,” Raven explains, pulling Emori into the bathroom where it is a little quieter. “And they shook hands at the end and they’re fucking soulmates.”

“Whoa,” Emori mutters, a little lost for words. Bellamy had always been excited at the idea of meeting his soulmate but just assumed it wasn’t going to happen yet. And now he’s met her, in a bar on New Years . A girl he was trash talking and who probably beat him in pool. “Did you speak to her?”

“Not really,” Raven says, “she was really into the game. And then when they realised, they went off to talk.”

“So we won’t see Bellamy again for the night?”

“He told me he’d be back for midnight,” Raven says, “but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“I can’t believe it happened here,” Emori agrees, deciding the rest of the conversation can be had back in the bar. “Like of all places, here in our bar.”

“What a good story. Met on New Years,” Raven agrees. “Just another good memory to add to this place.”

“As long as it turns out well,” she mutters.

“Such a cynic, Em,” Raven grins, ruffling her hair dragging her back to the dance floor. She feels the disappointment a little too harshly when she realised John isn’t where she left him. Though she’s not surprised, because it had just been the two of them before Raven interrupted.

“He’s over there,” Raven says, nodding towards the bar. Emori wants to deny that she was looking for him, but he glances up at that moment and waves. “Go on.”

Emori ignores the smug look on Raven’s face as she crosses the bar and joins John. She ignores the eyes she can feel in the back of her head as she slides onto the stool next to him. She ignores that fact that she’s certain Raven is filling Harper and Monty in on Christmas and Emori’s several casual mentions of John since then.

“Everything okay?” Johns asks.

“Bellamy met his soulmate,” Emori says, raising her voice above the noise in the bar. “Raven was telling me.”

“No shit?” John asks, raising his eyebrows. “Who?”

“Some girl he was playing pool with.” She pauses then, wondering if it were her place to tell John about what had happened. The mark is on his hand, Emori rationalises, everyone is going to ask him about it anyway. If she’s the one that tells John, as least they won’t have to have the conversation at work later. It’s probably better this way.

“Do you want to go outside, so I can hear you?” John asks. She nods and follows him into the courtyard. It’s cold out, but she’s got long sleeves on and their are heaters lining the walls. And they can actually hear each other and have a proper conversation.

They talk about Bellamy’s soulmate, how he’s always been intrigued in his, but never actively looked. How John and him had spoken about them, John telling him that he doesn’t care. Emori is surprised when he adds that it’s not the truth though, he wants to find his. He wants there to be someone out there who cares about him and loves him unconditionally because he’s never really had that.

“I’ve never told anyone that,” he says after a moments silence and Emori is touched that he trusted her enough.

“I’m terrified of finding mine,” she says. It’s fair that she tells him considering, what he’s just told her. “I don’t want the universe to decide who I end up spending the rest of my life with.”

“Fuck the universe,” John tells her firmly. “You decide what you want to happen.”

“That’s why I wear the gloves,” she continues, even though she’s pretty sure he already knows. “If I never touch anyone, I won’t find them. And then I can decide for myself.”

“And if you did find them?”

“They’re my soulmate I guess,” she shrugs. “I just hope they’ll understand.”

“They’re meant for you,” he says. “They will.”

Bellamy’s soulmate is named Echo and she’s tall and terrifying, with kind eyes and a big heart. Emori likes her immediately. She fits in almost seamlessly with the group, only rubbing Clarke the wrong way. But even she is beginning to warm up to her.

Her and Bellamy are taking things slowly, going on dates and getting to know each other. He brings her to some events and not to others. They spend a lot of their free time together and they seem to really like each other. And by March, Echo is having a girls night with Raven, Harper and Emori. She’s become part of the group, not just Bellamy’s soulmate.

“What was it like?” Raven asks, as she clicks through the Netflix options. “When you met him?”

“I didn’t even notice at first,” Echo laughs, looking down at the gold winding down her right hand. Objectively, it is beautiful. “I was too busy bragging about beating him. But then he was staring at our hands with like, the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. And then I felt it. I don’t know how to explain because it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt.”

“I know what you mean,” Harper says, touching the mark on her shoulder. Monty had tapped it to get past her in the halls one day, shocked when it exploded with gold. “I don’t know how to describe it either.”

“And that was it?” Emori asks.

“I was always anxious about finding mine,” Echo says softly. “So I don’t blame you for the gloves, Em. I can’t believe how well it turned out for me.”

“Yeah, you got us,” Raven grins, selecting a movie and settling back onto the couch.

“Yes, that’s definitely what I meant,” Echo laughs.

Emori stops pay attention to the movie, too distracted by the message she gets from John. Next time I agree to help someone move, remind me to do it for something more than pizza. Bellamy had asked him to help Miller move into his new apartment and John and she’s surprised it’s taken him this long to complain.

I’ll be sure to do that, she replies, smiling down at her phone. And then, they’re texting back and forth until Raven reaches for her phone.

“Who are you texting so much? It’s girls night.” She asks. Emori pulls her phone out of Raven’s reach, only to have it grabbed by Echo.

“Traitor,” she mutters, conceding defeat and letting them see her messages.

“It’s Murphy,” Raven exclaims excitedly, practically climbing over Emori to look at her phone. “Tell me there is something going on there?”

“We’re just friends,” Emori shrugs. “He’s complaining about helping Miller move.”

“You’ve been texting for almost an hour,” Harper grins, reading over Echo’s shoulder. “It’s definitely more than him complaining.”

“You guys are the worst,” she complains, covering her eyes with her hands and shrinking back into the couch.

By the time April comes to an end, Emori can admit that John is one of her best friends. And part of her family. He fits in with the group as well as Echo does, finding his place (often as the sarcastic arsehole) and settling in. She’s also big enough to admit that she’s developing a crush on him, which is not ideal. She’s pretty sure he buys too much into soulmates to be willing to be with her despite it all. Even though Raven says he’s flirting and Harper insists that he’s into her as well. Even Echo points out one evening that he’s always drawn to her when she walks into a room.

But they’re just friends.

And that’s fine, because they’ve grown so close in such a short time. She’s not willing to risk their friendship by telling him about feelings he might return. So she keeps them to herself, focussing on their friendship and remaining careful not to touch him. Except now, as each day passes, it’s not because she’s scared of what he might be. It’s because she’s scared he won’t be it. And she would be okay with that. But soulmates don’t mean the same to her as they do to him.

So she stamps down her feelings.

“You’re late,” Emori says lightly when, John finally steps out of his office.

“Bellamy decided we needed to finish the entire weeks worth of work today,” John grumbles, but his face definitely lit up when he saw her.

“Poor baby,” she teases, nudging his shoulder with her covered one. Despite the warm April evening, she’s got cardigan on. “Having to do so much work.”

“Shut up,” he rolls his eyes and leads the way down the street to what has become their favourite Thai restaurant. It’s become a routine of theirs. After her Thursday class, she meets him at the building he and Bellamy work at and they get takeout and watch Netflix on his couch. It’s something her friends won’t shut up about and she can only hope they don’t give him the same treatment.

“Whatever,” Emori grins, walking beside him. She ignores the temptation to take his hand, keeping hers firmly in her pockets. She doesn’t need to know that the guy she’s falling for is probably not her soulmate and therefore not willing to seriously be in a relationship with her.

They order their food and split the bill and are sitting on his couch, arguing over what to watch on Netflix by 6 o’clock. It’s her favourite day and the week, which is just another thing she’s not going to address.

It’s comfortable, sitting and arguing and eating and flirting with him. And it’s the most comfortable she’s ever felt with anyone who she’s not touched. She just wishes she was brave enough to tell him.

Instead she settles in beside him, leaning against him when he pulls a blanket over his exposed skin. It’s a lot. And it’s not fair on him. But he’s never once complained.

“What do you want to watch?” Emori calls, from the couch. It’s their regular Thursday hangout and John is in the kitchen of her apartment insisting on cooking. Because we get too much take out.

“Something good,” he calls back.

“Forever helpful.” She flicks through Netflix, settling on rewatching Brooklyn 99 because she knows it won’t take long for them to get distracted with conversation. Because they always do.

She’s halfway through the first episode when he finally joins her on the couch, handing her a plate of the pasta he’d been making. It’s chicken and avocado, which she would have never thought would make such a good combination. But he’s such a good cook. She shouldn’t have doubted him.

They don’t even make it to the end of the episode, before the TV is muted and they’re chatting idly. John is telling her a story about one of the clients he’d dealt with and it doesn’t take long before she’s laughing.

“Can I ask you something?” John asks softly, after she’s regained her voice.

“Sure?” She freezes, not knowing what to expect.

“Why don’t you believe in soulmates?”

If she’s honest with herself, she’s been waiting for this question since she told him that she didn’t buy into them. And it’s complicated, but she trusts him enough to explain it.

“My parents were soulmates,” she says slowly, thinking about how she’s going to answer the question. Her parents aren’t a happy story. “But they led each other down such toxic pathways, that they self destructed when my brother and I were babies. They might have been meant for each other, but they weren’t good for each other. If their situations were different, maybe it would have worked.”

“I’m sorry,” John says quietly. “What happened?”

“They died,” she says simply. “Otan and I were in foster care our whole lives. We had a place for a few years when we were teenagers and he met his soulmate. She was great, she made him happy.”

“There’s a but coming, isn’t there?” John asks and she nods.

“But she got him killed too. She was involved in some shit and it followed her home and got them both killed. I was alone from when I was 16.”

“Shit,” John says lowly. She nods again. Her story isn’t a happy one.

“I met Bellamy and Raven when I was 18, it’s been good since then,” she smiles softly. “And I met some nerd who cooks for me a few months ago, he’s pretty cool.”

“Watch who you’re calling a nerd,” John grins.

“I know exactly who I’m calling a nerd.”

“My parents were soulmates too,” John says. Quid pro quo. “But my dad was killed when he was picking up antibiotics for me when I was a kid. Wrong place, wrong time. My mother held it against me until I left home. She never got over losing him.”

“She shouldn’t have held it against you,” Emori says, anger rising at the thought of a young John being mistreated just because his dad wanted to help him. He didn’t deserve that.”

“She shouldn’t have,” he agrees. “But before that, they loved each other so much. I just want to find the person who loves me as much as they did.”

She doesn’t notice that he doesn’t mention his soulmate.

Raven meets her soulmate in September. He’s sweet and funny and smart, someone who can challenge Raven in all the best ways. She hadn’t known him very long when they’d worked it out. He was the new guy at the garage she basically ran, while she is finishing her masters and Emori had heard her speak about him a few times in the days leading up to it. He’d been working underneath a car and brushed against Raven’s leg as he slid out from underneath.

In true Raven fashion, she’d decided they would talk about it at the end of their shifts and walked off. Later, she tells Emori that she needed time to wrap her head around the fact that she’d met him. They’d gone to dinner and Raven fell hard and fast, which scared her, almost scared her into backing away. But she persisted and now she’s invited him to the beach, to meet her friends.

It’s the first day they all have off in months, which has led to Harper and Luna’s extravagant plans for a picnic at the beach. It had sounded so simple when they suggested it, but now as Emori helps Monty shoves yet another cooler into the trunk of his car and then squeezes into the backseat between bags of stuff she doesn’t think will even make it out of the car.

“Packed enough?” She teases Harper when she climbs into the front seat.

“I was actually thinking about going back inside and getting more,” Harper says, without looking up from her phone where she is probably typing another message to Luna. “I think we’ll probably need the couch?”

The drive to the beach is cramped, worse once they pick up Echo and by the time they get there, Emori almost falls out ot the car.

She’s introduced to Zeke, who she likes immediately. He laughs at one of her jokes and looks at Raven with total adoration, which is basically all Emori could ask of her best friends soulmate. He offers to help Monty carry everything, which also gets him points and gives her time to gossip with Raven, Harper and Echo.

“He seems great,” Emori says quietly, the second they’re out of earshot.

“I really like him,” Raven confesses, as though it’s something they couldn’t already tell.

“He’s your soulmate,” Harper says softly, “of course you do.”

“I think I’d like him anyway,” Raven says hurriedly, “I don’t like him just because he’s my soulmate.”

Emori can’t help but to think of John in that moment. Because she likes him. She likes him more than she really wanted to, she thinks she likes him the way you’re supposed to like a soulmate. Likes him despite his flaws, despite his attitude, despite everything. She wants to touch him because maybe they will be. Because this should be how you feel about your soulmate. And while she may not believe in them, if he was hers, she’d know that that’s not why she likes him.

She’s fallen in love anyway.

She listens to Raven gush Zeke for a moment longer and then the others arrive. They go down to the sand to help set up, laying out the insane amount of food Harper and Luna had organised. When everything is laid out and appropriate instagram photos have been captured, they can finally eat. They tell stories and gossip and trade information about their year because they haven’t been together as a whole group since New Years.

The day passes in a semi haze of laughter and saltwater and sunshine. It’s getting too cold, but they swim anyway, splashing and wrestling each other into the water. Emori screams when Wells grabs her ankles and pulls her under, but laughs as he does the same thing to Luna. They slowly move back onto the sand, to soak up the last of the sun and continue their conversations. It’s getting late by the time Jasper pulls out a flask.

“I’m not even surprised,” Emori says quietly, watching as he tops drinks up with whatever he’s got. It’s not enough to get them drunk (which is probably for the best, Luna might literally kill him). But it’s so like Jasper to bring it.

“Neither am I,” John says, rolling his eyes.

“This was a good idea,” Emori says after a moment. She means the whole day, but she also likes the time they’re spending with just the two of them. She always does.

“Totally over the top though,” John says and she knows it’s just his way of agreeing with her. She knows him so well now.

They’re sitting away from the group, watching the sunset over the ocean and wrapped in their towels, protecting themselves from the chill in the air. And from touching each other. She thinks about it, thinks about leaning across and brushing her fingers against his wrist, just so she’d know. She thinks about gently bumping her shoulder against his, where the towel has slipped.

And she thinks about just telling him the truth. That she likes - probably loves - him. Asking him if he’s willing to take the chance, despite the fact they might not be soulmates. Asking him if he’s willing to stop looking, because it doesn’t have to be his soulmate that loves him unconditionally. It could be her. It is her.

She’s so deep in thought, arguing with herself over whether or not she should talk to him that she doesn’t notice John getting up. She doesn’t move away in time and while she’s staring at the ocean in front of of them, she feels him brush against the leg she’s sitting on.

She holds her breath, waiting for the feeling Harper, Echo and now Raven have all described to her. And for the first time in her life she feels a bitter disappointment when it doesn’t come. John isn’t her soulmate. He’s not the person meant for her. More importantly, she’s not the person meant for him.

She forces herself to look up at him and feels her heart shatter once more when he’s looking down at her with a smile. It hasn’t occurred to them that they’re not soulmates. Or maybe it just doesn’t bother him.

“You coming or what?” He asks, nodding towards where their friends are packing the cars.

“Sure,” she says, standing up and walking away before he can register the pain on her face.

“Are you okay?” He asks again, hurrying after her.

“I’m fine, John,” she forces a smile on her face as she climbs into the back of Monty’s car. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay?” His brow furrows and he’s looking at her with concern she doesn’t know how to deal with because just moments ago, she would have thought you wouldn’t look at a friend that way.

She watches him glance back as he walks towards Bellamy’s car, confusion still evident on his face. She pulls her door shut and draws her knees to her chest, waiting for Echo and Harper to get in the car. She knows she should get out and help, but she doesn’t know how to deal with what she’s just found out.

“Ready?” Monty asks, after what feels like hours of John looking intently at her through the window, trying to catch her eye.

The others talk about the day, oblivious to Emori’s distress. She’s okay with that though, she kind of just wants to get home so she can wrap her head around what’s happened. Around her feelings. Because it’s not like her to feel like this. She needs time to process.

They pull into the carpark of Echo’s apartment complex without Emori really paying attention and she’s about to mutter a goodbye when Echo speaks.

“Em, I need your help with something. Come up?”

She sighs, because she doesn’t really want to, but she doesn’t have an excuse. And Echo is her friend, so she nods and climbs out of the car, telling Harper and Monty that she’ll see them later.

“What’s up with you?” Echo asks, as soon as they’re in the building and trudging up the three flights of stairs to her apartment.

“Nothing?” Emori responds, feigning confusion.

Echo asks again and it takes until they she’s turning the key in the door for Emori to decide to tell her. She’s one of her best friends and she probably has good advice on the subject anyway.

“John isn’t my soulmate.”

“Oh Em,” Echo says, looking at her with more sympathy than the situation necessarily warrants. “We all thought - what happened?”

“He touched my leg at the beach, just before we left,” she says quietly, dropping onto the couch. “And I was almost waiting for it to happen? Because I really like him and he really believes in soulmates so I wanted to be that. I wanted to be that for him” Her voice cracks, but she’s not going to cry over this. She’s not going to let soulmates make her cry.

“Did he say anything?”

“No,” Emori shakes her head. “He didn’t even acknowledge that it’d happened. After months of being so careful, he didn’t say a word.”

“I’m really sorry,” Echo says, dropping down beside her and opening her arms. Emori slides up to her friend - sister - and accepts the hug. “For what it’s worth, I think he really likes you too and I think you should talk to him about it. You’re right, the universe doesn’t get to pick who you end up with. That’s on you, girl.”

“You think he likes me?”

“We all think he likes you.”

While Echo’s words don’t really solve the problem, they do make her think. She’s never once let the universe decide what she does. Why should she start now? That’s not who she is.

After deciding not to let the fact that John isn’t her soulmate stop her, things don’t really change. She sends him a message that night, apologising for being weird on the beach and he replies telling her it’s fine and that he hopes she’s feeling better. She smiles at her phone for a moment before telling him goodnight. She really does like him. And she’s not going to let the fact they’re not soulmates stop that.

In the following weeks, her friendship with John doesn’t change. He’s still careful not to touch her, which she still thinks is weird, and he doesn’t mention the fact that they’re not soulmates, so neither does she. If he doesn’t want to talk about it, they don’t have to. Especially because they’re still hanging out and she’s pretty sure that he’s flirting with her.

“Maybe he doesn’t care that you’re not soulmates,” Harper says, one night when Monty is at Jasper’s and it’s just the two of them.

“He’s always said he wants to find his soulmate,” Emori mutters. “Why would that just change?”

“You tell me?” Harper responds, her eyebrow raised challenging. Emori knows that she wants her to admit that he’d change his mind because of her. They’ve been dancing around whatever they are for nearly a year. She loves him and she thinks he loves her back.

“Say he is into me now and we go for it and date and whatever,” she says. “What happens when he finds his soulmate later?” Emori doesn’t know anyone who has ever chosen to stay in a previous relationship after finding their soulmate. She’s seen hearts broken when people break up because of it. She doesn’t want to have hers broken too.

“I think you’ll regret it if you don’t talk to him,” Harper says softly. “Even on the off chance he doesn’t want to try, at least you’ll know.”

It’s easy for Harper to say. Her soulmate was the first person she’d ever loved and the person who was perfect for her. And while Emori still values her opinion and loves that she can talk this through with her friend, she doesn’t understand. Harper has never been in this position. None of her friends have. Sure, they casually dated before finding their soulmates, but Emori doesn’t want casual with John. If they start something, she wants it to be forever.

And she’s not sure he can be that for her.

John still messages her on Saturday nights and invites her over to watch movies and they still hang out on Thursdays. And he asks her for advice about the rude client he’s dealing with. And he tags her in things that make her laugh. And he asks her to help him pick a present for his office Secret Santa. And she just doesn’t know anymore.

It’s two weeks until Christmas and they’re walking through the mall, picking out gifts and making plans for dinner.

“I got you that last year,” John tells her suddenly, reaching over and carefully touching the bracelet on her wrist, keeping his fingers away from the skin exposed between the pair of gloves she’s wearing and the sleeve of her shirt. It’s the space bracelet that she’s hardly taken off since getting it. She’d never figured out who’d given it to her.

“You did?” She asks, looking up from where his hand is now pulling away.

“Bellamy got you, but he added me to the Secret Santa at the end and told me to get yours. He said you were into space,” John shrugs. “And I’d met you once and I didn’t know if you’d like it.”

“I love it,” she says, twisting it on her wrist. She doesn’t need to tell him that she loves it even more now that she knows where it came from. “I wear it all the time.”

“I know,” he smiles, leading the way into another shop. “I need to get my Secret Santa something as good this year. I’ve got a reputation now.”

“Who do you have?” Emori asks, knowing exactly what he’s going to say before he says it. “I can help you.”

“It’s ruin sanctity of Secret Santa.”

“As if you care about the sanctity of Secret Santa,” she laughs, leaning in and bumping him as they walk, smiling when he bumps her shoulder back. She wants this, wants to be able to walk through the mall with him and laugh and joke and not worry about who their soulmates are. She wants to be with him.

She needs to talk to him.

Raven is hosting the annual-friends-who-have-nowhere-else-to-go-on-Christmas Christmas lunch, with Zeke’s help, this year and it’s already more casual than Bellamy’s the year before. She’s (Zeke’s) cooked and it’s already prepared when they arrive. The apartment is decorated, but just with what Raven already had, so it doesn’t look like ‘Santa threw up’. Emori drops her present under the tree and then joins Raven and the others in the kitchen.

“Merry Christmas, babe,” Raven says, hugging her.

“Merry Christmas,” she repeats, moving over to hug Echo.

Next is John and she’s hit with the realisation that she’s never hugged him before. He’s always been too careful around her. He looks at her questioningly and she smiles as she steps forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. He keeps his face far enough away from her that they don’t touch and she’s still wearing her coat and gloves. She still melts into him a little though, revelling in the feeling of his arms around her waist.

She let’s go first and it’s only because she can feel Echo and Raven smirking and the curious looks from the others. She doesn’t need to try and explain that she’s in love with someone who’s not her soulmate today.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispers softly, looking at her. She smiles again and it’s a moment just for them. A moment she never wants to leave. But then Jasper basically tackles her into a hug and the moment dissolves into laughter as she tries to stop them hitting the floor.

Raven insists on presents first and once Luna arrives, ushers them all out of the kitchen and instructs them to sit around the tree. She doesn’t pay attention to the other gifts getting passed around, too intent on waiting for John to get his. It’s from her and she’d spent so long picking it out.

Raven throws him the present and he tears open the package, pulling out a dark jacket, with red spiked shoulders. She’d found it at a Thrift Shop and bought it immediately. It’s not his present, it’s just how she hid them. It takes him a moment, but he finally notices the two pieces of paper, sticking out the pocket of his jacket. Tickets it to the Old Film Festival they’d been talking about weeks ago, but it had sold out before they made up their mind. Emori had found two for sale online and had bought them even before she found out John was her Secret Santa. She’d gone way over their budget, but she didn’t mind. Half of it was for her anyway.

“This is perfect,” John says, looking up at her. There’s no way they could be from anyone else. “How did you manage this?”

“A magician never reveals their secrets,” she grins, tapping her nose.

“I’m taking you,” he tells her, rolling his eyes. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” she agrees, reaching out to take the present Raven is holding out for her. She grins when she tears off the paper, because it’s obviously from John. It’s a kitchen knife set and he’d been complaining about hers since the first night he cooked dinner at her house. He’s also smirking at her.

“Thanks,” she laughs, “I expect so many more home cooked meals from you.”

“I’m going to regret getting you those,” he mutters, but the smile doesn’t leave his face. For a second, Emori wonders if Bellamy had somehow managed to rig the Secret Santa so she and John got each other. But it’s not like it’s a huge group, it’s could just be a coincidence.

The rest of the afternoon passes smoothly, with only the usual amount of shenanigans and teasing from her friends. Like she is every time they get together, she’s struck with gratitude for her friends - her family. She loves them all so much.

Until Bellamy corners her, towards the end of the day and asks her about John. It’s the last thing she suspected and it really shouldn’t have been. Bellamy and John work together, they see each other almost daily. She knows they’ve spoken about her, Bellamy had told him about her aversion to soulmates in the first place. And she’s sure they’ve continued that conversation since. Especially considering Bellamy would be talking about them with Echo. Honestly, her friends are such gossips.

“He wants his soulmate and I’m not that,” she says, a little forcefully. Which is a kind of unfair, but she’s sick of saying it.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, he touched me that day at the beach.”

“Are you sure?” Bellamy presses.

“Do you know something I don’t?” She almost snaps, looking at him and trying to work out if he knows something or is just being difficult. She loves Bellamy but she’s doesn’t feel like trying to figure out what he’s talking about.

“Just, think about it,” Bellamy sighs, looking as though he has something else to say. She waits for a moment but he doesn’t give her any hint on what she’s supposed to think about, nor does he add to it.

“Right,” she nods, “Have you had too much eggnog?”

“I didn’t actually let you Jasper spike it this year,” he grins, turning to join the others who are playing some card game Wells got at the dining table.

“Bellamy’s being weird,” Emori mutters, dropping on the couch beside John. It reminds her a little of the Christmas the year before, before she was in love with him. Sitting on the couch together, talking about the others. Getting to know each other. Becoming friends.

“When isn’t Bellamy weird?” John asks.

Emori laughs, glancing back at him. He’s moved away from the table and is standing with Raven and Echo, almost definitely talking about her and John.

“They’re talking about us, aren’t they?” Emori whispers.

“Definitely.”

She thinks about the fact that he instantly agreed they were talking about them, meaning he thinks they have a reason. She thinks about the words Bellamy had said to her, ’just think about it.’ Thinks about the moment in the kitchen where neither of them wanted to pull away. And for the first time, she actually thinks that maybe John loves her too, despite not being soulmates.

She almost asks him about it, needing to know, but they’re in a room full of their friends who will almost definitely not leave them alone long enough to have that conversation. They’re far too meddlesome for that. And it’s getting late. She knows he’s going to head home soon and she’ll stay with Raven. It’ll probably be good, talking to her friend about it first.

She’s right, not even half an hour later, their friends are filing about of the apartment and it’s just her and Raven, sprawled on the couch, leaning against each other.

“I’m going to go for it,” Emori says, a little sleepily.

“You should,” Raven insists. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

“What if he doesn’t want me?”

“You won’t know unless you try,” Raven shrugs and Emori gets the feeling that she knows something too. But they fall asleep before she can take the conversation further.

Emori doesn’t see John again until New Years. She spends the six days waiting in nervous anticipation because she’s going to tell him how she feels. She’s not sure how she’s going to do it but she’s going to. He deserves to know and at this stage and she’s fairly hopeful that he feels the same way.

The bar is crowded when they arrive like it always is but they find their friends leaning against the bar. Luna offers to buy her a drink, but she shakes her head. She’s too nervous, she doesn’t need alcohol in her system as well.

She spends a lot of the night with John. He takes her hand as they move through the crowds and while she’s still wearing her gloves, their fingers intertwined sends goosebumps down her arms. She wants this. They dance together and play bar games and heckle their friends. They even sit back down in the courtyard, where they sat last year when they spoke about soulmates. But it never feels like the right time to tell him.

Echo, Raven and Harper whisper encouragement throughout the night. They remind her of all the reasons that they think he loves her back. They remind her that she’ll never know unless she gives it a go.

And then all too soon the countdown begins. They’ve moved outside, so they can watch the fireworks and have a little more space.

10, 9…

She’s standing next to him, thinking of the last year and how important he’s become to her. All the memories they’ve shared. How close they’ve become. How much they’ve learnt from each other. How they’ve grown together.

8, 7…

He’s one of her favourite people in the world, they’re best friends even if she wasn’t in love with him. He means the world to her. He’s part of her family.

6, 5…

And he’s looking down at her, with soft eyes and a soft smile and it’s not how you look at someone who is your friend. Because it’s not fair to look at them like that, because it makes them fall even more in love.

4, 3…

She’s going to tell him.

2, 1, Happy New Year!

She brings her gloved hands to his face and pulls him towards her. The best way to tell him how she feels is to show him. She presses her lips against his and he’s kissing her back instantly, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling close.

And suddenly she feels warm all over, like sparks are shooting through her body. It’s like nothing she’s ever felt before and she doesn’t know how to describe it.

“Em,” John whispers when he pulls away. She wants to chase his lips but she should probably make sure they’re on the same page first.

She opens her eyes and gasps. The gold that she’s become so familiar with on her friends skin, has spread from his lips and across his cheeks, in swirling patterns. The marks that means they’re soulmates.

She brings her hand to her own face, it doesn’t feel any different but the way he’s looking at her is enough confirmation. The pattern is on her face as well.

“But you touched me,” she says slowly. “That day at the beach.”

“I never touched you,” he shakes his head. “It would have been my towel or something.” And she realises that her friends had already made the connection. That they knew he didn’t touch her. They probably didn’t want to get hopes up which is why they were being cryptic. The conversation with Bellamy is suddenly making more sense.

“We’re soulmates,” she says, a smile growing on her face.

“We’re soulmates,” he repeats. “I know you don’t believe in them, but I love you. I’d want this even if we weren’t. You have to know that.”

“John,” she whispers, moving her hand to trace the mark on his skin. “I love you too.”

She’s going to tell him that she’s loved him for months. That she was upset when she thought they weren’t soulmates. That she was hoping he’d be willing to be with her anyway. She’s going to tell him everything. But she’s going to tell him once they’re alone.

Now, she’s going to kiss him again. And keep kissing him. And ignore the cheers and I-told-you-so’s of their friends.

#raven-reyes-of-sunshine #dylanobrienisbatman #merry memori 2018

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bts-write · 6 years

Text

I fucking care- Murphamy Oneshot

A/N: Ahhh I finally finished this!!! For some reason it took a lot longer than I thought it would. I’m disappointed that it’s only my second fanfic for Pride Month but I’m just doing my best. I guess starting halfway through June because of exams slowed me down a bit XD.

Summary: IM SO BAD AT SUMMARIES UGH idk basically they’re all chilling in space (John and co. after Praimfaya- so it’s set after season 4 and before season 5) and John lowkey fancies Bellamy but of course he doesn’t even wanna admit it to himself but he kinda gives himself away cos he does something really cute and Bell is like omg does he like me and he lowkey confronts John about what he did and well...feelings come out and shit is revealed and it’s gay angst so yeah! (I was way too tired whilst writing this intro don’t judge me)

Requested by @bunker-boyfriends

The window looked out on emptiness. Distant stars, a distant Earth. It drove John crazy, being locked in space, the same people day in and day out, no way to escape the fact that he was just another broken light in the circuit of the Ring. There were no distractions. No job that he was good at. And now, no hand to hold his own, no one to whisper reassuringly.

He felt his mood darken further when he saw Harper touch Monty’s arm, drawing him closer, their bodies locking in an embrace. It made him feel colder, as if there was nothing separating him from the icy vacuum outside the window. He tried to turn back to it, to look at the stars instead, but the pain demanded to be felt.

Someone walked to his side and still, John couldn’t tear his eyes away. But then the voice brought more pain, and his eyes moved greedily to look.

“Hey”, Bellamy had greeted.

It had been one word, yet it had hurt more than any happy kisses shared by giggling couples.

“Don’t you have some minor problem to fix? Some decision to discuss with Raven?”

He didn’t want to push him away, but it was instinct. An instinct that had grown into his skin in the past years, an inborn illness magnified by the lethargy of space. There was not enough self esteem for him to face the shining heroes of the Ark.

“Or maybe you need to show off in front of Echo for a bit. She’s so whipped. Go on, lead her on a bit more.”

Bellamy nodded to himself, accepting John’s taunts. There was no point in trying to stop the sharp remarks. But it hurt nevertheless, seeing John punish himself by pushing them all away.

“I’ve made my feelings clear to Echo. Whatever she felt, it’s gone.”

John scoffed. The memory of Echo sauntering around Bellamy, trying to catch his eye, was still bitterly sharp in his mind. It didn’t matter that Bellamy hadn’t felt the same. It had turned John’s blood to fire, seeing them practice together, Echo oblivious to her failure, smirking and purring whenever she pinned Bellamy down. Sometimes it had seemed dangerously close, the possibility of a new couple on the Ring, ready to fill the void left by John and Emori.

And even though he’d had no right, he’d also felt himself scowling whenever Emori found solace in Raven’s company. John had been full to the brim with jealousy, bitter and unexplained, sometimes spilling from his eyes at night, more often, through sharp words from his mouth. He’d pushed them all away, to see if they cared enough to come back. Maybe he’d pushed too far.

“Murphy, I’m not here to talk about Echo.”, Bellamy brought John back, words so tired and listless, John stopped himself. He stopped whatever avalanche of insults was ready to pour out and drown the tired man beside him.

Bellamy hesitated. “I asked Monty about my rations from last week. Why he was giving me more food than he should. And he said someone was giving up theirs.”

John’s heart jumped into his throat. He tried to shrug. “I’m not surprised, the algae soup doesn’t exactly boost appetite.”

“He wouldn’t tell me who it was, when I asked him.”, Bellamy continued, trying to catch John’s eye. “But I heard Raven talking to you the other day. Something about food rations.”

John remembered Bellamy’s bedridden week, and the constant anger, like a squeezed fist around his heart, loosened a little. He remembered the worried glances, the tense silence spreading through the Ring. The half-hearted suggestions of remedies for the coughs and headaches. But they were no doctors. The best they could manage were the sympathetic looks, and that wasn’t enough.

John had taken his suggestion to Raven, but she’d thrown it back in his face in a panic. They couldn’t risk more people getting ill. John should stay away and keep eating and let them handle this.

It had hurt. He’d thought that for once, he might have an useful idea. Raven had snatched that away. But why shouldn’t he try? Apparently the best he could do to help was stay away. So surely they wouldn’t miss him if something happened to him. It would be worth it to help Bellamy. They needed him more than they needed John.

“Talking to me? More like screaming in my face.”, John answered, swerving around Bellamy’s silent question. But then the question ceased to be silent.

“It was you, wasn’t it? You told Monty to give me your rations because I was ill.”

John tried to swallow, but his throat had an invisible grip around it. Excuses seemed futile now, on the brink of discovery. But admitting his weakness to Bellamy was as terrifying as seeing him ill had been.

He’d been so pale. Skin hot and clammy, eyes drooping with each laboured breath. With his old vitality gone, there had been no black fire lighting up his eyes.

It had been Bellamy’s body. Reduced, shrunken, yet still his body. But it hadn’t been Bellamy. Only a shell that croaked whispers instead of growling threats. The familiar short temper hadn’t been there to greet John’s teasing. Bellamy hadn’t been grumpy, hadn’t even scowled. He’d barely been able to keep his eyes open.

So John had to do something. The hunger hadn’t been so bad. Not compared to the empty hours of waiting. Waiting for Bellamy to stand up from his bed and start shouting at John to stop sulking. Waiting for a miracle.

“It wasn’t a big deal”, he said, avoiding Bellamy’s eyes. “I slept through it most of the time. And like I said, that algae soup wasn’t appetizing anyway.”

“You could’ve made yourself ill, Murphy!”

Bellamy’s tone pulled at John’s heart, a violent wrench that made his hesitant eyes reach out for proof. It shouldn’t have been real. But it was there, even showing on his face. As if he cared. For John. As if John’s sacrifice had meant something.

John wanted to shake his head. Laugh it off. It hadn’t been a sacrifice. It had been a small incident, an act to soon be forgotten as things on the Ring settled back down. But Bellamy’s eyes were holding his own, and they burned with their old fire again. Only this time, it was warm. It was a hundred small flames from a hundred different feelings, and John thought he understood them all.

“I couldn’t just let you-”, John choked on the fear behind his honesty. It was terrifying, to remove the mask from his words before he spoke them.

“You were so ill, Bellamy. I had to do something.”

He thought Bellamy might shout at him. Call him an idiot. That he would have been ready for.

“Thank you.”, Bellamy said, his eyes still holding John’s, still warm with their hundred flames.

For a moment, they were both too scared to act, too frozen in uncertainty. The moment floated between them, a heavy air sparking as if with electricity. John wanted to move, but any move seemed a mistake he couldn’t afford to make. And he didn’t know what to do.

Bellamy looked away, the fire running from something more intense.

John wanted to run too. Behind his walls, back to before Bellamy’s illness. He wanted to run from the silence, from the weight of unspoken words.

Bellamy looked back. He looked at the way John’s clothes seem too loose for him, the way his stubble covered sharp cheekbones, a face so thin that all traces of humour had turned dark. And it was partly because of him. For him. And space. It had turned John sour, and nowadays the blue eyes were mostly grey.

Something stirred in his heart. Some discomfort tugging at him at the sight of John’s frailness. It was sadness and something else, something a little sweeter.

“Why do you care?”, Bellamy asked. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

John shrugged. “Because without you this ship would be emptier. I guess I’ve grown fond of this little space family. It makes it easier to be the outcast.”

“Murphy, you’re not-”

“I am. I am an outcast, but it’s my fault. And sometimes I don’t want to be.”

“Then why push us away? Why push Emori away?”

“This is not about Emori!” John could feel his pulse burning hotter.

“Do you not love her?”

“I do. But I’m not in love with her. Not anymore.”

John pondered the silence, wondering whether it was too late to turn back their honesty. “Just like you’re not in love with Echo anymore.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes. “I never was in love with her. And I don’t think she was in love with me either.”

“Have you seen the way she looked at you?”, John laughed.

“Like she wanted to kill me?”, Bellamy suggested, raising an eyebrow.

“Like she was trying not to look away. Like she was trying to be braver than she was.”, John mocked.

But then his tone softened, his mind drifting away. “Like looking at you was the most terrifying thing in the world, but like it was worth it nevertheless.”

The silence deepened. Bellamy’s hands found each other, fumbling.

“I guess I wouldn’t know...I’ve never really-”

“What? You’ve never been in love, Bellamy? You’re lucky.”

“Why?”

“Because it hurts.”

“I’ve heard it can be pretty good.”

“What did you hear?”

“I’ve heard that it can make you smile a lot. Even if you’re not with them, you think of them and it just happens.”, Bellamy shrugged, fighting his own smile.

“You seem to be smiling a lot right now.”

The smile turned bashful at John’s words, shying away until it disappeared.

“Sounds like you’ve got more experience than you think.”, John concluded, trying to redeem his mistake. “Whoever she is, I hope she’s worth it.”

John’s small voice, his fading smile, the fragile frame drooping under baggy clothes, they all tugged on Bellamy’s heart. A regret for the fear behind his actions.

He wanted to smile again, hold onto it and embrace the fact that yes, he was smiling a lot right then. But he didn’t know how to say it, and he didn’t know why.

“Murphy-”

John was still studying his hands, folded together to tight that his knuckles turned white.

“John.”

John’s hands clenched tighter.

Bellamy’s breaths turned shallow. “I didn’t- I think maybe I was wrong”, he stuttered, his words stumbling over each other. “Maybe I do know what it feels like.”

He took a deep breath. “When I saw you with Emori, Monty with Harper, I thought maybe Echo’s company wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe that’s why I didn’t push her away at first. But then you and Emori broke up, and even though she was a friend who was hurting...I felt- I wanted to stop pretending with Echo. I realised she wasn’t what I wanted. And I hated myself for it but... I was glad you pushed Emori away.”

John’s head was spinning. It was as if the sound waves were tumbling over each other, mixing up words, carrying muffled half sentences to his ears. It was dream-like, it was impossible.

“And when I found out what you did for me”, Bellamy continued, “I realised how much it meant to me. That you cared. But it terrified me, the fact that you could’ve been sick or hurt. Is that- is that what it feels like? The good and the bad?”

For some reason, John’s voice trembled when he spoke, and his eyes filled with emotion. He felt pathetic, too much relief, fear, too much of everything being too much for him.

“Is that what what feels like?”

“Being in love.”

All the hidden emotions, everything John had been ignoring for years broke through the surface, and he sobbed too hard to speak.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”, Bellamy asked, that impossible care still in his voice, his arms moving to hold John’s shaking body.

There were a million things John could have said, or forced himself to say. But instead he cried, sobbing in Bellamy’s arms, not letting himself talk because trying to speak would have been more embarrassing than simply crying in silence.

When John felt like he’d cried his soul out and was nothing more than an empty shell, he leaned weakly against Bellamy, whose arms were still wrapped around him.

“I’m sorry.”, John said, too worn out to manage more than a monotone whisper. The million emotions that had mixed together through the years had now drained out through his eyes, leaving emptiness behind.

“What happened? Why were you crying?”, Bellamy asked.

“Did you really mean what you said? Because I really don’t feel like being played with, Bellamy.”

“It was because of what I said? John, I’d never do that.”

Bellamy pulled away, his hands on John’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length.

“John, I don’t know much about this. But you just made me realise that I’m in love with you. And I have been for a while. I wouldn’t joke about that.”

“You really must not know shit, because how the hell could you just admit that in front of the person you supposedly like?”John spoke lightly, too weak to fight Bellamy or to look away, to pretend he didn’t care.

Bellamy smiled. “I guess I was pretty certain you felt the same. You’re not exactly subtle, Murphy.” Bellamy’s hands moved up John’s shoulders, resting in the crook of his neck.

John was too tired to worry and doubt. The tears had washed so much away, that all he could do was live the feelings he was feeling right now, it was too hard to remember the past. So it felt easy to mirror Bellamy’s smile.

“You cocky shit. How could you be that self centered? And just stick with John please, it was really hot.”

Bellamy laughed, his hands cupping John’s face. “So you believe me? You admit you like me back? No more pretending, no more sulking and pushing people away?”

Part of John wanted to defy the infuriating confidence, prove Bellamy wrong. But the feeling of the hands on his skin was too intoxicating to deny.

“I never said anything about liking you. But even if I accept you, it doesn’t mean I have to talk to anyone else. You’re just too hard to resist.”

“You’re contradicting yourself, John.”

“Fuck, just kiss me already you coward.”

“I’m the coward? I’m the one who actually-”

John muffled Bellamy’s words with his lips, bringing years’ worth of struggles to an end, and finally sealing his dreams with a kiss.

#the 100 #bellamy blake #john murphy #murphamy #raven reyes #emori the 100 #murphy x emori #monty green #monty x harper #echo the 100 #praimfaya #the 100 fanfiction #murphamy fanfic #the 100 oneshot #bellamy blake fanfiction

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desperate-entwives · 6 years

Text

before midnight

memori week day seven: free choice

cw: abusive relationship, mention of past abuse

John Murphy is driving to prom when his car breaks down.

It isn't his prom. It's his girlfriend’s prom. He doesn't even want to go, but truthfully his girlfriend kind of scares the shit out of him. The idea of willingly spending time with people who went to school with him (albeit the year below him) scares him too, but not as much as his girlfriend does.

But when his car lurches through the pothole, a broken tin can being yanked by superglue, maybe he relaxes his shoulders a little. Maybe he breathes a small sigh of relief.

Maybe he realizes he doesn't have a fucking cellphone and probably wants to get out of this pothole eventually, or sometime in the next day maybe.

A car drives by, and then another one. He stares blankly at them and then thinks, oh. Help. I should get help?

When he waves at the next passing vehicle, it's halfhearted. But it pulls over. A sizable pickup truck manned by a smallish woman, who jumps out and wipes her gloved hands on her jeans.

“Stuck, huh?”

“Nah, just doing this for fun,” he says without thinking. She lets out a surprised laugh and he wonders why she's surprised, and then he realizes her face is soft and hard at the same time, the kind of face that has seen shit and still manages to care about shit.

“I'll call my brother,” she says. “He works for a tow company.”

“Lucky me,” he says, almost meaning it. He should think what are the odds. He's too busy trying not to think of what he'll say to Ontari, how he'll have to make it up to her, the pointless sex stuff he never feels like doing that he'll probably end up doing anyway. In trying not to think about these things, he watches the woman take it her phone, the awkward way she cradles it against her face with her left hand, the zoom of a headlight past on the highway and how it briefly glints in her hair. He has always romanticized being saved. He hates this about himself.

“It's gonna take about an hour,” she says. “Think your ball can wait, Cinderella?”

He is wearing a tux. He thinks fast, wanting for some stupid reason to impress her. She's wearing ripped jeans and a work shirt. Her hair is messy and knotted and braided, and she is somehow luminous in the darkness.

“I'll try to keep both my shoes on,” he says.

---

The woman's brother is grim and quiet and has scars on his face and drags Murphy's car to his mechanic, which is closed, of course. The car looks small and tired and crumpled in that parking lot, and if that isn’t a metaphor for something, well.

“I have to get back,” the man says to the woman and Murphy realizes he doesn't know either of their names. The man looks at his sister pointedly. “And so do you.”

“It can wait, Otan,” she says. “No,” he says. “It can’t.” Murphy wonders what, exactly, he’s stepped into. He shifts on the balls of his feet, checks his watch. 8:15. Perfect. The woman notices his restlessness and breaks her staring contest with her brother. “I can get you wherever you need to go,” she offers. “I just need to make a stop first.” “Sound like a plan,” he says, casually. He hopes he says it casually. His hands worm into his pockets; he thinks of Ontari. Ontari, beautiful and conniving. Exactly his type. He tries to remind himself of this but it’s hard, for some reason. His wrists hurt suddenly. The man, Otan, glares down at the woman. “Hurry up. Don’t do anything stupid.” “When do I ever?” she challenges. -- “So, you late for your wedding or something?” Murphy stares out the window, pointedly avoiding looking at the woman driving the car, who has a voice like low wind and apparently makes him think in stupidly poetic terms. “Don’t give me nightmare-fuel.” They’re driving along the road and the darkness and trees are all-consuming. Civilization is somewhere but he’s damned if he knows where. The woman, who told him her name was Emori, takes a sharp right turn and he almost slams his head on the window. “I hate it when men do that,” she says. “Do what?” “Complain about their girlfriends. If she makes you happy, be happy.” He is silent. She looks at him from the corner of her eye and he focuses on the relentless grind of wheel on gravel. These are sketchy little roads and he’s starting to hope this woman isn’t going to murder him. Sort of. If he was going to be murdered by anyone, okay, she’d be an acceptable option. “Unless,” she says carefully, “you aren’t.” “I’m tragically incapable of being happy.” “That may be true,” she concedes, “but sometimes people are wrong for each other.” She pulls over by a small shack and Murphy wonders if her tone was hopeful, just slightly, and she gets out of the car. “Wait here,” she says. He doesn’t; he slips out of the car and watches her enter the house and leave with a canvas bag she didn’t have before. “Let me guess; drugs,” he says, following her back to the truck and crunching through the shards of rock on the shack’s miniscule walkway. He likes the press of the texture against his soles. He likes walking in the dark with her. “Really big drugs.” “Good job waiting in the truck,” she says. When she climbs back in, her hands fumble a bit to find purchase on the wheel. Something transient about how she grips things. He files it away in the space of his brain reserved for morally dubious women he’ll probably never see again. “I don’t do what I’m told,” he says mildly. “I can see that. It isn’t drugs.” “No shit.” She studies him, leaving her keys beeping in the ignition. “So where are you going? Do you have a date?” “Prom,” he says. “At the Ivy.” “That’s north of here.” She pauses and Murphy watches curiosity drape itself across her face. Maybe it’s interest, and he won’t fool himself into thinking her obviously illegal transaction hadn’t piqued his own curiosity. “Look, I need to do something else,” she says. “You can come with me, or I can take you to your stupid prom and you never have to see me again.” Nothing sounds worse. He slouches in the passenger's seat. “What is it? A stolen high-profile fax machine or something?” “It’s a computer. You with me or not?” It isn’t even a choice. -- Her second activity is pretty easy. “It’s a game Otan and I used to play when we were kids,” she whispers as they eat french fries in the all night Walmart’s McDonalds. Everything’s too bright in here and he’s conscious of how starkly his bruises stand out on his pale skin, how fucked up his neck must look. She isn’t looking at his neck; she is peering at the trickle of evening Walmart shoppers and the dark precision of her gaze makes her look like a shark. His breath quickens. “Yeah?” “Yeah. Whoever gets the most wallets wins.” He almost laughs at that. “For all you know I could be a really good person who would never steal from my fellow man.” “Yeah, but you’re not, right?” She catches his eye. He wants to laugh and he also wants to drown in the dark material of her work shirt and he wants to know what her hair would feel like if he twirled it in his finger. “It’s like you know me,” he says. -- After running from a pair of guys who noticed Murphy’s hand in their mother’s purse, he winds up with Emori at a footbridge a few yards away in the shadow of another shopping center. It crosses a small stream and they sit on the edge, tangling their legs in the metal structure which is covered poorly in chipped green paint and his chest is heaving and he can feel his heart shaking like a live animal in his chest. “Wasn’t that fun?” she asks breathlessly. She bumps her leg into his. “You’re insane,” he says. “Batshit.” She grins wildly, and then her gaze softens. Looking her in the eyes is dangerous, but he’s feeling dangerous himself tonight. He meets her eyes. Something catches like a stone in his chest and he thinks why now, why the hell did I have to meet you now? “Where did the bruises come from, John?” she asks, which is not the romantic bullshit he expected hoped maybe wanted her to say. His name is absurdly soft on her lips. He should never have told her his first name; it’s a vulnerable word, a spell when spoken by her. A piece to a puzzle, an idea that doesn’t belong to him. He looks away. “Ah,” she says. “She isn’t all bad,” he says lamely, a moment later. No one gets it, really. “They never are,” she says softly, and he wonders what kind of angry, shitty dust lives in her past. “Do you think you deserve it?” He laughs. “Loaded question.” “I thought I deserved that bullshit for a while too,” she says. Her eyes are quick; she’s making a decision. “I’ve had to do things. Otan and I… are different. Our parents couldn’t take care of us, so we had to live by our own rules. Still do.” He takes her hand without thinking. It’s shape is strange and heavy in his fingers, but he doesn’t mind. Her face is startled, disarmed. “Come on,” she says quickly, pulling away from him. His hand feels cold without hers but that doesn’t matter, he tells himself, because he’s never going to see her again. She’s going to drop him off at prom and then drive away and that will be fucking that. “I think we lost those guys,” she continues, and she cradles her hand against her ribcage like a conversation with herself. -- When they pull up to the Ivy’s parking lot, Murphy realizes his tux is wrinkled and he totally lost his corsage and his hair hasn’t been combed in about three hours. He wants to say goodbye, but Emori is staring at the windshield darkly and the words shudder in his chest and die. “Why are you with her, anyway?” she asks. The words are laced in something indecipherable. He stares at her mouth, at her awkward grip on the steering wheel. “There isn’t much in my life,” he says. “She… she gets me out of the house.” He doesn’t explain what’s in his house, his father’s death and his mother’s empty bottles and his dropping out of school and his lack of future, but she seems to get it. Her hands loosen on the steering wheel. “You could sneak in?” he offers. It’s a shitty offer. She laughs. An empty chime. “No thanks. It’s almost midnight. You’re about to turn into a pumpkin, anyway.” “I don’t think that’s how the story works,” he says. She turns to him. She doesn’t say goodbye, but the door locks snap open and her gaze is unwavering. -- “Where were you?” Ontari is livid, of course. She looks dark and beautiful and he is completely unaffected as he looks at her, stomping her way across the dance floor to see him like the crest of a wave. She grabs his wrist; he lets her. Until he doesn’t. Until he yanks his hand away. Until he stalks out of the room before he can think about it twice and disappears into the warm May night. There, in the parking lot; a truck waiting, still waiting. An engine running. There’s a euphoria settling in his chest, like looking at something from a great height. He smiles.

#this needs more work but hey! I did every day this time!#I'm proud of me!#memori #memoriweek #my fic #some memori writing

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doortotomorrow · 3 years

Photo

Memori AU / Life with the Murphy Family : Emori, finishing off wiping down the kitchen table after tonight’s dinner, looks over yonder to the living room across from her towards her husband with unquantifiable adoration in her eyes while he reads his favourite book of Trigedasleng poetry. He was, by far, the most beautiful, hard working, giving, and supportive person in her life. There was no one else quite like her John and it made her incredibly joyful to be the lucky woman who gets to call herself his wife, and with this sentiment in mind, Emori decided to treat her husband to a big surprise.

“Murphy?”

John’s eyes bolt up from his book, a look of confusion written all over his face as he clutches his book to his heart.

“What’s wrong, Emori?”

“Thought that would get your attention,” Emori relieves him of any worry when she starts laughing, tossing the sponge into the empty sink and dries her hands before she leans over on the granite topped kitchen island. “I was just gonna say that you might prefer to read the book on the coffee table instead. I think you’ll find it more exciting,” Emori’s eyes flit downward, indicating the book in question and sways her hips back and forth in anticipation of what his reaction may be to what lays inside the pages.

“Okay, I’ll take your word for it,” John, knowing his wife too well, can easily figure out when she’s up to something and humors her, putting down his current book to grab the one she suggests. Once he opens up the book, a concealed envelope reveals itself, falling into his lap and the next thing he hears is Emori’s restrained squeal of excitement as he pulls out its contents. “A two week, all expense paid trip to a five star cottage out in Arkadia?!” John stares at the colorful brochure in astonishment, his gobsmacked expression warming into an appreciative smile.

“You’ve been working so hard these days, I thought you could use the break. I called up Bellamy and the boys, and they all freed up their schedule. Don’t worry about things here, I can look after the restaurant while you’re gone.”

“You sure about this, Emori? The restaurant’s packed during the summer months,” John stands to attention, not wanting to put that burden onto Emori’s shoulders.

“I might not know how to cook as well as you, but I know how to manage people and organize things. I can handle it, John,” Emori reassures him, tilting her head and giving him a beaming smile. “Go.”

John immediately hops off the couch and makes a run for his wife, picking her up into his arms to plant a big kiss on her lips.

“You’re the best wife in history, you know that?” He purrs into her mouth, voice turning into sweet, golden honey. “I’m gonna be thinking about you a lot while I’m gone.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder...or so I’ve been told,” Emori hums, rocking on the tips of her toes, and swoons at his rumble of laughter vibrating through his chest.

“I’m gonna go pack my things,” John kisses her forehead and starts bounding his way upstairs into their bedroom, and Emori lets out a relieved sigh, happy her husband was taking a much deserved mental health break. There are many things in Emori’s life that she considers priceless and irreplaceable, and seeing her husband all happy with boyish excitement might just be her favourite among them.

#The 100 #John Murphy #Emori #Memori #the100edit #and now for something seriously fluffy and sweet as honey #I could honestly see myself writing stories about these two forever

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madisgriffin · 7 years

Text

home is what the heart protects

Summary: “John Murphy had lived a hundred lifetimes in his year on the ground and yet still, somehow, after a year of living in space again, nineteen year old John Murphy hears the word “dad” and his first thought is I’m too young.”

I set out to write memori fic and instead ended up with 2k words of feelings about John Murphy. You’re welcome.

Requested by @bellxmyblakes and yelled at to write it for the last 2 weeks by her, @bobmorlee, and @bellammy. I love my Supportive Fam.

Read on Ao3

John Murphy was seventeen the first time he was accused of murder. A little girl drove his knife into the throat of the chancellor’s son, and he was hung for a crime he didn’t commit and driven out of the only semblance of home he could possibly know on this screwed up planet.

He was seventeen the first time he did murder someone. Tortured and driven by his desire for revenge, he’d held the fabric over their heads until they stopped breathing. They were kids, he was a kid, and the Earth had already made murderers out of them.

He was seventeen the first time he met the love of his life, and in some ways he knew he was lucky for that, even if she stole from him and held a knife to his throat.

He figured he was probably eighteen—they all lost track of the days at some point—the first time he considered taking his own life in the bunker that became a prison.

By eighteen, John Murphy was standing back up in space, watching the world burn.

John Murphy had lived a hundred lifetimes in his year on the ground and yet still, somehow, after a year of living in space again, nineteen year old John Murphy hears the word “dad” and his first thought is I’m too young.

A million voices shouted at him that he wasn’t good enough, that he didn’t deserve this, that there was no way he could raise a child to be any better than he was, but when he looked into the terrified eyes of the girl he loved, he knew that right now, he had to be the strong one, the confident one.

“Hey,” he said, gently taking Emori’s face in his hands. She was shaking, and he forced his hands to remain still. “How much have we been through together? You and me against the world, right? We’re survivors; we can face anything together.”

She shook her head, dark eyes watery. “It won’t just be about us, John. How can we raise a baby? I’ve never had a family or a home; my parents threw me out like trash. Will I even know how to love my own child?”

Anger flared up in Murphy at the people in Emori’s life who should’ve loved her, and instead made her feel she was unworthy and incapable of love.

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing, not wanting Emori to misunderstand his anger as being directed at her.

“My mother was raised the same as everyone else on the Ark,” he started, forcing himself to keep his eyes fixed on hers rather than avoiding eye contact. These weren’t things he told people. “She had friends, parents who cared about her, the whole shebang, and she was a fine parent when I was kid. But when my dad died, instead of pulling it together for her son who had just been saved from the brink of death, she spent the rest of her life drinking and wasting her life away, all while blaming me for his death.” He shook his head. “What I’m saying is, how you were raised doesn’t make you good or bad. Just because you had a decent life doesn’t mean you can be a decent parent. You’ve had one of the worst lots in life possible, but you came out of it stronger, and you’ll make a fantastic mother.”

“How do you know?” She asked, her fear still written all over her face.

“You’ve always been a fighter, Emori. You fought to survive, and you fight for the people you love. This kid will know you love them because they’ll know you’d do anything for them, I’m sure of that. I’m sure of you. You’re my family, you and little John junior.”

She giggled a little, and he smiled in triumph.

“What about your dad?”

He looked away, considering asking what she meant just to avoid the question a little longer.

Instead, “My dad saved my life, and he was killed for it.”

He felt her hand on his cheek, turning his face back to look at her. “It wasn’t your fault, John, you know that.”

He shrugged, “It was and it wasn’t. It doesn’t really matter. He knew the choice he was making when he stole the medicine for me. He knew he’d die for me; it was what he wanted. I’d do it for you,” he took her right hand in his, lacing his fingers through hers, “and I’d do it for our child too. And I haven’t even met the little misfit yet.”

“Misfit?” She smirked.

“He’s our kid, Emori. Are we expecting anything else?”

She laughed. “Or she.”

He grinned.

“We can do this,” She said, her voice no longer full of fear.

“We can do this.”

***

He really doesn’t know if he can do this.

He can’t say it to Emori, not with her relying on him to be strong, but he was scared out of his ever-loving mind.

She’d fallen asleep shortly after their conversation, and he’d managed to slip out of the room without being noticed. Without even really meaning to, he’d found himself in the rations room. And from there, it hadn’t been a far jump to end up slumped against the wall, one of the few bottles of alcohol scavenged from the remains of the Ark slipping out of his hand.

Bellamy walked in on him like that, taking in the scene and shaking his head with an exasperated sigh.

“Murphy, what is going on here? We agreed to save the alcohol.”

Bellamy was giving him that quintessential stern dad look and Murphy almost laughed. Or maybe he did laugh. His brain wasn’t processing things well at the moment.

“But it’s a special occasion, Bell.” He slurred, grinning lopsidedly at him. “I’m gonna be a dad.” He threw his hands in the air clumsily, dropping the plastic bottle in the process. He stared at the spilled liquid longingly for a moment before shrugging and turning his attention back to Bellamy.

Bellamy’s jaw had gone slack and he was staring at him like he’d grown a second head.

“Aren’t you gonna congratulate me?” Murphy asked after a long silence.

“I—are you sure?” Bellamy stuttered.

Murphy shrugged again. “Guess there’s no way to be totally sure. Emori thinks so.”

Bellamy nodded, finally breaking out of whatever trance the sudden announcement had put him in. “Wow,” he said, coming to sit against the wall next to him.

Bellamy reached out and picked up the discarded bottle. “Cheers,” he said, drinking the little that hadn’t spilled onto the floor. They’d have to clean that up later, he thought foggily. Can’t be leaving messes like that around when he has a kid.

They sat there in companionable silence for a while, and Murphy wondered if he’d ever be able to do this like Bellamy, to know when someone needed to talk, or to be yelled at, or to just to have someone sitting next to them. Those were dad things, weren’t they?

“I haven’t actually had that much to drink,” he admitted, breaking the silence. “That bottle wasn’t even full.”

“I know,” Bellamy said. “I did inventory today. I would’ve yelled at you if you’d taken more.”

“You wouldn’t have, not with me drunk and miserable.”

“I would’ve, tomorrow.”

Murphy smiled a little, then shook his head and focused his gaze on his lap. “What am I gonna do?”

“You’re gonna have a kid,” Bellamy said, and Murphy shot him a well-meaning “duh” look. Bellamy rolled his eyes, “Let me finish,” he said.

“You’re gonna have a kid, and you’re gonna realize that whatever intense protectiveness you’ve known up until this point—saving Emori from the City of Light or Praimfaya, everything that you risked and had to do to accomplish that, it’ll pale in comparison to what you’d do for that kid.

“You’ll never be able to make a selfish decision again, because every move you make will have an effect on them, and you’ll be aware of that every second of the day. If, Heaven forbid, the day ever comes that you have to make a decision that puts the woman you love and the child you raised on different sides, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll pick the kid. Even though it still hurts like hell.”

Bellamy had a faraway look in his eyes and Murphy smirked despite himself.

“What?” Bellamy asked.

“Clarke and Octavia,” he said; there was no use beating around the bush.

Bellamy’s jaw clenched and he looked away. Clarke’s voice had crackled through the comm radio a week before. It had cut out every few seconds and the rough connection had made it so they could only understand a few words (days, nightblood, alive), but it was enough to know it was undoubtedly her. Bellamy had spent the rest of the day staring out the window at the Earth, no longer burning but still alight with radiation. No one had mentioned it. It just was.

“Yeah well, that’s a little different,” Bellamy said finally, “but you get the idea.”

“Yeah,” Murphy said, “you’re right. You’ve always been so good at this, you know?”

Bellamy raised his eyebrows, as much in confusion as surprise, “What do you mean?”

“Being a dad. Taking care of people. You basically raised Octavia, and the 100 never would’ve survived without you. I don’t know how to do that.” He paused, and Bellamy was quiet, waiting for him to continue. “I don’t deserve this, Bell. I’ve done too much screwed up sh-”

“Stuff,” Bellamy interrupted. “Watch your language, you’re gonna have a kid.”

Murphy rolled his eyes and chuckled despite himself. “I’m not good enough to be a dad.”

Bellamy stared at him for a long moment before turning to face forward again. “Maybe you’re not. And you probably don’t deserve it. But who here does? We all did screwed up stuff back on Earth.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Bellamy shot him a glare before continuing, “What I’m saying is that maybe you don’t know a thing about being a dad. That’ll come. And none of us deserve this, but it happened, and it happened to you. You’re gonna have a kid and it’s gonna be surrounded by the most unexpected people to be their family, and you’re going to get through this, because you won’t be alone. Got it?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

He did. And to some degree, maybe he always had. He’d meant what he said to Emori back in their room. They could do this, and he knew that he, John Murphy, ever the survivor, would take a bullet in a heartbeat if it meant his kid lived.

Who would’ve thought.

***

They sort of accidentally told everyone else a few days later. Being that there was very little to do up in space, the seven of them spent a lot of time sprawled out on the floor telling every story under the sun. It always started out lighthearted, the delinquents would tell stories about their first few weeks on the ground, stories about all of their vastly different upbringings. But, as could be expected, it usually got heavy before they were through. Names were brought up of people whose deaths would always be fresh in their minds; experiences from one story would lead directly to another that almost got them killed. Their lives just didn’t have much lighthearted left.

A lot of the time on those days, conversation would fade out until Bellamy started talking, telling them stories from long before any of them were born, myths and history lessons that, in another life, they never would’ve sat still for. But in this one, well, in this life everything was a welcome distraction.

It was at one of those times, before Bellamy had the chance to distract them, that the news broke. Monty had just been laughing about a prank he and Jasper had pulled on the Ark, but the laughter had dissolved into a tense silence as the actual heaviness of the situation once again set in for all of them. It was in that first minute of silence that, before he could think better of it, Murphy blurted it out.

“Emori’s pregnant.”

In a flash, all eyes in the room were on him. Emori looked at him, stunned, and he shot her an apologetic smile. They hadn’t really discussed telling everyone, but he figured they’d have to eventually.

To everyone’s surprise, Echo spoke first. “Congratulations to you both,” she said, and her smile was sincere.

With the initial shocked silence broken, everyone else chimed in with their own congratulations. Monty, who was sitting on the floor a few feet from Murphy, sat up to reach over and clap him on the shoulder. “You’re gonna be a dad, man, that’s awesome.”

Murphy grinned, and it was one of his most genuine smiles since Emori had told him. Harper asked how Emori was feeling and Raven said she was gonna make the kid her engineering assistant, and the surrealness of what was happening started to sink in.

John Murphy had done a lot of things in his life to survive, many he regretted and some he didn’t. He’d hurt people, including everyone currently in the room. While he couldn’t yet entertain the thought that he was redeemed, looking around the room at the way everyone was smiling and talking about his unborn son or daughter like a member of the family, he realized he was forgiven, and that was more than he could’ve ever asked for.

#the 100 #memori #memori fanfiction #john murphy #emori #the 100 fanfiction #my writing

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honestfutures · 7 years

Text

Haunt

1000 w

Jasper Jordan/Monty Green

ao3

post-s4 angst party

“Lucky you,” Jasper says, ruffles his hair, “I’m right here.”

The third night back on the Ark (but the first he actually manages to sleep), he comes to Monty in a dream. He knows this, somehow, not because his dead friend is there, but because they’re standing at that one starboard window, the one that used to overlook earth before it crashed down into it.

In the glow from the window Jasper’s profile stands out stark and angular as it always has. He still has that mop of hair, and in the dream he is smiling. “Hey. Which planet would you rather live on?”

It’s not a memory, but almost. Monty knows the answer to this game; it never changes. But now it has. “Anywhere. As long as you’re there.”

“Lucky you,” Jasper says, ruffles his hair, “I’m right here.”

He wakes up, lies awake and still and strangely empty, until the automated lighting system flickers on. Next to him Harper shifts. “Mm. G’morning. Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Monty lies. He’s not sure why.

A month later Monty finds one of his and Jasper’s old stashes while he’s cleaning out a vent. It’s probably still good; after all dried mushroom can’t really go bad in the vacuum of space. He pockets it for later, to test it- hell, maybe it’s selfish, but he really needs a break.

After everyone’s asleep he slips away, picks one of the many, many empty rooms left behind and flops down on the bed. These government types sure had some nice digs, Monty thinks, looking across at the plush rug and seating area. He pops a few dried caps in his mouth and swallows. It’s easy to take the Gov rooms; he never really knew the people who occupied them and most of them were dicks anyway. For some of them though, the Science quarters still feel like a graveyard. It’s okay, though. There’s more than enough space to go around.

Half an hour later and, wow, the shrooms are definitely still good, God. He can feel every thread on these sheets and yeah, why did the guys whose jobs involved sitting around and giving speeches get nice beds like this?

“You’re cute when you’re high.”

Jasper’s there, sitting on the couch. This time his hair is shorn, and he’s still smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He gets up, walks over to Monty, and a trail of light follows him. “I guess you found that canister in Hall B? Told you they’d keep forever.”

“You’re all glowy,” Monty says. His tongue feels like cotton.

Jasper waves his hand in front of his face. “Sure looks like.”

“And you’re not real.”

“Well,” he shrugs, “that’s where you’re wrong.” Jasper sits on the edge of the bed, leans in close. “Do I look fake to you?”

“No, but-” it’s hard, arguing with a hallucination, his brain is having a hard time putting the pieces together while the walls are breathing around him, “you died, you’re not- you’re just in my head.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m any less real, sunshine.”

Suddenly the door bursts open, and Murphy and Emori appear in brilliant technicolor. Monty blinks.

Murphy taps his face. “Monty? Who the fuck were you talking to?” He turns to Emori. “What’s wrong with him?”

She grabs the canister, glances in and sniffs. “Psilocybe cubensis.”

“What?”

Emori rolls her eyes. “Your friend is high, John. He’ll be fine in 3 hours.”

They leave, Murphy tossing back a last “Don’t die!” before he closes the door. But the moment is lost, and Jasper is gone.

A year later the oxygenator finally starts to fizzle out; it’s a small wonder it's lasted this long in the first place. Raven says she can fix it (of course she can), but for a while they’re gonna have to make do with diminished oxygen saturation levels.

It's no big deal for the Ark kids, although the drop will be sudden and unpleasant, but Emori presses them all for information on hypoxia, what it feels like, and will it cause damage? Echo is just quiet, even more so than usual.

It sets in over the next few days, and everyone just kinda sits around, warned by Bellamy against running around, getting excited, or as he called it, “doing stupid shit that’ll raise your blood pressure and get us all killed”.

The hypoxia hits Emori the hardest, probably because she’s never been above sea level in her entire life, and she complains of headaches and tingling limbs but even that gives way to a mild constant euphoria, which in Monty’s opinion isn’t half bad, as far as symptoms of brain tissue death go. And hey, he thinks, as Murphy helps her stumble down the corridor, at least she’s got someone to look out for her.

“Hey, you okay?” Harper says. How long had she been standing there?

“Yeah, I just gotta- I’m gonna go stretch my legs.” He loves her, he does. But he needs someone else right now.

He’s been walking for a couple minutes when he feels a familiar hand land on his shoulder. “Hey, Monty. Miss me?”

“You know this is a cliche, right?”

Jasper snorts. “Don't look at me, it’s your hallucination.”

“Why…” Monty laughs a little, grimaces. “Why d’you have to go and leave me?”

“With… Maya, and everyone always dying, God, and also the threat of constant death and all…” When Jasper looks up his eyes are pleading. “It was just too much for one guy, you know?”

“I told you- you didn't have to deal with it by yourself-”

“But I did!” Jasper grabs his shoulders, and for a minute he forgets to breathe, “I had to, because- you were happy, or close enough. I couldn't do that to you.”

Despite it all Monty raises his eyebrows. “This dump? Without you? This isn't much better, dude.”

Jasper smiles, pulls Monty close, and drowsiness hits him like a wave. “It is better, though. You made it, I knew you could. You're strong.”

“I just…” Monty sighs. “I just miss you so much.”

“Me too, man.”

#jonty #jasper jordan #monty green #emori #john murphy #echo #raven reyes #bellamy blake #the 100

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localbizlift · 7 years

Text

Cultivating Equity with MailChimp Community College

Last week marked the start of MailChimp Community College in partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.

Over the next few months, a cohort of 12 MailChimp employees will have the opportunity to think broadly about equity in our community. To explore what that means for a city like Atlanta, civic leaders, nonprofit executives, community organizers, and seasoned philanthropists will address topics like infrastructure and education, as well as intergenerational cycles of poverty. The cohort will graduate from the program with a better understanding of our city’s nonprofit ecosystem—and our company’s role in it.

How we got to MailChimp Community College

To better connect our employees with our investments in Atlanta, I was asked to turn a part-time community involvement project into a full-time role. Many people at MailChimp already cultivate fascinating pursuits outside the office, including calligraphy, improv—even an organic nail polish business. But I quickly learned that my colleagues were searching for ways to better cultivate their involvement in the community.

Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.

Plus, in a company that’s growing so quickly, we need solutions that scale beyond individual requests. MailChimp needed a system for employees keen on volunteering to approach philanthropy with more confidence. We also needed colleagues to understand why our company is involved in the community at all.

We needed MailChimp Community College.

Building on what already works

I happen to sit next to the MailChimp University (MCU) team and have had the pleasure of watching it bloom into an integral part of our culture. MCU has graduated more than 250 employees over the past 3 years, and partnering with Michael Sacks from Emory’s Goizueta Business School has helped develop leadership skills throughout our growing company.

One day over pizza, I asked Rachel, our learning and development manager, if the MCU team could graciously lend its successful precedent and educational infrastructure to this new idea. This was a significant request of resources, which is why I’d strategically provided pizza for the meeting. She couldn’t really say no.

Rachel agreed to help, but she pointed out that MCU is successful in large part because they have a great partner to help pull it off. Michael Sacks and Emory’s Goizueta Business School were the right partners for MCU. We’d need a similarly excellent institutional partner, but with a local nonprofit perspective and expertise to make MailChimp Community College a reality.

Identifying the right partner

Our first choice was to partner with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. They’ve been serving our region for more than 60 years, and nonprofit organizations and philanthropists look to them for guidance.

In hindsight, their commitment to equity made them the only real choice for us. We’re lucky that they quickly agreed to partner and build the program together. I didn’t even need to provide pizza this time.

We’re looking forward to building something that’s specific to MailChimp. But we’re also cognizant that it should be replicable, in case other companies have employees who want to get more meaningfully involved in their communities. After all, like many American cities, Atlanta is increasingly becoming less equitable. And companies in our industry are already trying a variety of approaches to address inequality and poverty.

Our other key partners in this effort will be the employees in this initial cohort. We have a diverse group of people from nearly every department—from data scientists to support technicians, UX designers to paralegals—who will help shape the program with valuable feedback. By the time they graduate, we’ll hopefully be able to share an open source approach to community education.

#marketing

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memori123-blog · 6 years

Text

On The Flipside

Murphy’s soul mark is on his wrist, so hey, it could be worse. At least it’s not on his face. He’s probably going to die alone out here in the wilderness, like when somebody eventually finds this bunker and kills him for it, but at least he won’t go with something written on his forehead like a total fucking idiot.

Her name, Emori, is written in what looks like ink but really isn’t, a permanent black smear on the inside of his wrist. He’d only noticed it when he’d stripped out of his filthy clothes and exchanged them for new ones (well, as new as can be when they’ve been hanging in a closet for a century.) It’s just his luck, really, for his soul mark to appear when a girl punches him in the face and leaves him for dead.

He’s not as bitter as one might expect, because he’d never really put too much stock in soulmates anyway. The Ark didn’t give a shit if you were meant to be, and neither does Earth. People die, people betray you, and in the end, you die, too. It all comes down to how long you manage to put it off.

Every soul mark is slightly different, but Murphy assumes his is fairly standard. It tingles occasionally, but he figures that’s his skin adjusting to the change or some shit. He manages to get the ancient shower working (the water smells overwhelmingly of rust, but it runs clean enough after a few minutes) and scrubs at the mark with a cloth, but of course it doesn’t come off. The tingling stops, though, so that might have just been an itch due to how dirty he’s been for two months straight.

There are cases where soul marks can actually change a person’s body chemistry when they show up – supposedly, people can have some kind of mental connection with their soulmate, although that’s so rare that Murphy’s only ever heard about it in school or in old movies. But because the universe clearly hasn’t fucked him over enough, he’s the one who hits that lucky jackpot.

It happens for the first time when he’s taking a nice nap in the armchair by the TV. His sleep is fairly dreamless, but for some reason, he jerks awake out of nowhere, his pulse pounding like a drumbeat in his ears. When he opens his eyes, all he can see is darkness – no, there’s a flashlight in one of his hands, but his hands aren’t his hands. One of them is harder to use than it should be – it’s wrapped in cloth, almost like it’s injured. Or deformed.

Emori, he tries to say, and she hears him even though he makes no sound.

“John?” she says, but then she slips away like water through a sieve as his vision clears. He’s still in the bunker, of course. He’d never left – not physically, at least. But the quickness of his heartbeat and the memory of sand under his boots confirms what happened – he’d seen through Emori’s eyes, and she’s moving like a bat out of hell. Where to, he doesn’t know (but something about the way she’d said his name gives him the strange feeling it has something to do with him.)

“Fuck,” he says out loud, but the only person around to hear him is the ghost of the dude who’d offed himself on the couch.

If his mark is trying to tell him something by showing him that vision of Emori, Murphy doesn’t have a clue what it is. There’s miles and a minefield between them, so even if he wanted to help her, he’s way too far away. She’s on her own, just like he is.

He can’t make it back to sleep – he can’t shake Emori’s feeling of urgency, her need to get somewhere. Unfortunately, there’s not much by way of distraction in the bunker except listening to music and reading books, and Murphy’s not much of a reader. He can see how somebody might have lost their shit and shot themselves in here, although he has no intention of doing the same.

Hours pass, and nothing strange happens. He chalks it up as a fluke, or a one-time thing, and then of-fucking-course it happens again. He’s pouring himself a glass of scotch to enjoy with a sandwich made of 97-year-old dried bread and some kind of meat paste and then suddenly he’s not standing at the kitchen counter, he’s back in the Dead Zone, staring down at what looks like dismembered body parts partially buried under sand.

Fuck, he thinks, and instinctively tries to step back, but he’s not in control here. He thinks she might hear him – he can feel her surprise, or maybe that’s his own – but she doesn’t say anything back this time. She’s nervous. Not about the body parts on the ground, though; those don’t seem to bother her much. She’s scared because she knows what the body parts mean – she’s in a minefield.

What the fuck are you doing, Murphy says. Turn around. Go home.

Maybe she can’t actually hear him, or maybe she’s ignoring him, because she doesn’t turn around and haul ass in the other direction like she should. She reaches into the incredibly heavy pack strapped to her back and pulls out a rod, which she promptly extends into some kind of cane. Murphy watches, trapped, as she starts thumping it lightly on the dirt in front of her, exactly like Jaha had.

If she blows up, he’s going to blow up, too, he realizes. That cane isn’t long enough. If she hits a mine, it’ll probably still kill her. He’s lived through this experience before, but it’s worse now, because he’s going to have to feel her die and wake up afterwards –

Don’t fucking die, he thinks, and for good measure, please.

It’s a familiar agony, watching her tap, tap, tap, taking one step at a time. Murphy wakes up slowly this time, Emori’s presence fading away until suddenly he is standing in the kitchen again. There is blood on the counter. He’s broken the glass in his fist and there’s a cut running down the side of his index finger. It hurts like hell and he wonders if maybe, miles away, Emori can feel the sting.

(While he’s rinsing the cut a few moments later, he wonders if he’ll still feel her die, even if he doesn’t have to watch.)

No more visions seem immediately forthcoming, so Murphy takes a few moments to assess the situation (which unfortunately sounds a lot like something Bellamy would say.) Emori is clearly on her way to what she thinks is the City of Light, possibly to find him. He has no idea how she’d known about the landmines, unless of course this freaky bond of theirs goes both ways and she’d seen it coming. But if that’s the case, why is she bothering to come when there’s no City of Light waiting for her?

If Emori somehow makes it here without stepping on a bomb or getting eaten by a sea monster, he doesn’t know what she hopes to accomplish. All he can do, really, is sit here and wait to find out.

Murphy keeps falling in and out of Emori’s mind all day, and finally he notices a pattern; any time she’s feeling particularly tense, he’s there. When she calms down, it’s like an invisible hand drags him back to himself. He spends the day like he’s in the minefield all over again, waiting for Emori to take a wrong step and give him a taste of what death feels like.

I’m not worth dying for, he tells her once, even though he still hasn’t figured out how to make her hear him again. Turn back while you still can.

Emori must eventually stop for the night, because Murphy is finally able to get some rest without any visions. Even then, though, he dreams of her, and the steady look in her eyes as she’d said,“Good luck, John.” He wakes feeling odd; her betrayal still stings, but he’s still never liked his given name more than from her lips.

It’s been too long without an update on her condition – and fuck, now he’s actually invested – but Murphy has no way to tell whether she’s dead or asleep or just safe. Feeling incredibly stupid, he takes a seat in the armchair and closes his eyes as if meditating, and just thinks really hard. First he tries visualizing where she might be, but while she seems to be following his path through the Dead Zone, she could be anywhere – still in the minefield, even. Next he tries picturing her face, warm brown eyes and the swirling designs tattooed from her forehead down to her cheek, and when that doesn’t work, he thinks, fuck, come on, Emori.

Just like that he’s blinded by sunlight, but a second later Emori raises her bandaged hand and covers her eyes, muttering under her breath in her language. She’s reached the solar panels, and while she doesn’t seem surprised by their presence, she clearly doesn’t trust them. She looks up, searching the sky, but unlike when Murphy had been there only days before, no drone shows up to lead the way. After a minute or two, Emori squares her shoulders and starts walking again, giving the humming panels a fairly wide berth.

He stays with her until she reaches the sea, remaining silent and holding tight to the connection he’s forged, sure that if he relaxes he’ll lose her again. There is no boat waiting for her on the shore, but she doesn’t take it as the “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” sign that it clearly is. Instead, she looks up and down the coastline as if contemplating something, then picks a direction seemingly at random and starts walking. It takes her at least an hour, but finally she stumbles upon something useful – an abandoned raft, barely big enough for one person to lay down comfortably. It must have been left behind fairly recently, because Emori inspects the wood and finds it not badly rotted.

While Murphy observes, powerless in the back of Emori’s head, she lifts the raft and drags it to the water’s edge. She seems more and more nervous the closer she gets to the waterline, but never once does she hesitate. Murphy doubts she’s that good of a swimmer – she can’t possibly have been exposed to much water in a desert wasteland – but then again, he grew up in space, so she’s probably better off than he is in that department. There’s also the possibility that she’d been watching from inside his head and knows about the demonic sea monster waiting to eat her, in which case she is either incredibly brave or totally insane. (Possibly both.)

Murphy’s fairly certain that the raft isn’t going to hold her weight without sinking, but surprisingly, it floats. She doesn’t have anything to row with, although she figures out how to awkwardly steer with the cane she’d used in the minefield, but the raft is light enough that she can use her hands to propel it. She must know about the monster, then, because she’s very careful to make as little splash as possible.

She drifts along in silence, and if it weren’t for the fact that he’s watching the entire thing through her eyes and waiting for something to come up out of the depths and swallow them both whole, it could be peaceful. A couple of blindingly white birds – seagulls, Murphy thinks, remembering a picture from one of his mostly ignored childhood textbooks – fly past overhead, and Emori watches them go with interest, clearly not recognizing them. He can’t see her smile but he can feel it, and it’s nice. Weird, but nice. He wishes he knew more about seagulls, so he could tell her if she ever makes it to the shore uneaten.

The sun is getting very low in the sky when Emori spots the lighthouse in the distance, and it spurs her on. Distantly, Murphy is aware that his body is hungry and tired, but because he’s not exactly present at the moment, the discomfort is bearable. He can’t leave Emori now, because she’s making more noise, her quicker paddling causing water to slosh gently but noticeably against the raft. If she isn’t careful, she’s going to draw that thing’s attention, and then it’ll be the end of the game for her. There’s no way she’ll survive on nothing but a tiny raft, still too far from the safety of the beach.

It seems to take Emori eons, but finally, the beach is close enough to see, and Murphy dares to let himself hope that she might make it unscathed. Then something makes a quiet splash near her raft, and Murphy thinks, game over.

Every muscle in Emori’s body tenses, and she pulls her hands out of the water immediately, her gaze searching the sea’s rippling surface for signs of trouble. She barely catches sight of something glinting in the water – the monster’s skin, maybe, or teeth – before it starts moving toward her like a speeding bullet. But Emori is fast, too, and she reaches back and yanks something out of her pack. It’s the rocket launcher that her friend on the horse had been holding back in the Dead Zone – well, that explains why her pack’s been so heavy.

The monster swims under her first, rocking the raft so violently that it is an honest to God fucking miracle that Emori stays on it. She doesn’t scream, but she does yell something at the monster that Murphy figures is a curse word, even if he doesn’t speak Grounder. The monster rolls in the water, turning its massive body around for another go, and Emori lifts the heavy gun and fires.

She hits the thing, alright, but she doesn’t shoot it dead. The blast from the rocket and the monster’s thrashing, wounded body send Emori flying off the raft and into the reddening water, which is so cold that it hits Murphy like a slap in the face and jolts him back into his own body.

“No,” he says, half-wild, his heart pounding as fast as Emori’s had been seconds before. “Fuck.”

Murphy doesn’t even think about it, he just scrambles out of the chair and bolts for the door. She isn’t far from the shore, not far at all; she can still swim, or maybe the waves will pull her in – fuck, he doesn’t know, but he can’t sit here and wait any longer.

“Emori!” he yells when he reaches the beach. He can’t see her anywhere, and there’s no answering shout. Still, there’s no doubt miles and miles of coastline, and she hadn’t been aiming directly at the lighthouse. Just because she hasn’t washed up at his front door doesn’t mean the worst has happened.

He tries connecting with her again and again as he walks along the water’s edge, but either she’s dead or he can’t reach her. He calls her name for hours, until it’s too dark to see farther than ten feet in front of him and his stomach is starting to cramp from consuming literally nothing all day. Murphy returns to the bunker and scarfs down something to eat before falling into a restless sleep, wherein he dreams of water as cold and dark as outer space.

The next morning he wakes up shivering and with a crick in his neck, but he shrugs on his jacket and leaves the bunker again, taking a piece of bread to eat while he looks for Emori. Murphy knows, with a hollow finality, that she’s probably dead by now if he hasn’t seen into her mind after this long. Hopefully the monster had killed her quickly, though his dreams the night before had been so vivid that perhaps they’d been real, and maybe he’d felt her sinking to the bottom of the sea. No matter what, she’s come too far for him to just let her rot on the beach; he’ll bury her, if there’s anything washed up to bury.

He walks down the beach until the sun is high in the sky, yelling her name every once in a while, albeit more quietly and less urgently than he had the night before. He’s just about to turn around and head back, maybe to head past the bunker a ways in the opposite direction in case a current had pulled her in a different direction, when he calls her name one last time. “Emori!”

It’s so quiet that he thinks, perhaps, that he is hallucinating. “John?”

Murphy spins around in a circle, gaze roving, and then he sees her, sitting up in some bushes at the tree line. He runs to her and drops to his knees on the ground next to her. She’s covered in sand from head to toe and her clothes are stained and stiff with dried blood, but she’s alive. “Are you alright?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, staring up at him and looking just as stunned as he feels. “You’re alive.”

He blinks at her, nonplused. “Uh,” he says. “Yeah.”

She shakes her head as if to clear it, but it doesn’t look like it works. “I was sure,” she insists. “I was sure you were dead.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint,” Murphy says, and she gives a hoarse bark of laughter. He’s slightly surprised by the warm feeling the sound sparks in his chest; he thought he’d still be pissed off at her if she actually made it here, but mostly he’s just relieved that she’s not fish food. Her surety about him being dead does raise a few questions, though. “If you thought I was dead, why did you come here? Actually, how did you even know where I was?”

“I saw it,” she says, staring at him like she still can’t really believe he’s alive. “In my head. I watched you crossing the Dead Zone, then the sea. The last thing I saw was when your friend left you bleeding on the beach.”

His friend. Murphy suddenly realizes he has no way to know if Jaha’s still alive or not; he’s so used to being left behind that he’d taken Jaha’s promise to return for him as an empty one and hasn’t considered it since. “It was just a flesh wound,” Murphy says dryly, lifting his sleeve to show her where he’s wrapped the wound in cloth. He hasn’t paid much attention to the injury since the last time he’d bandaged it, and the fabric is stained a rosy pink. “That still doesn’t explain why you bothered to come.”

The astonishment is slowly fading from her expression, and now she’s giving him a rather serious look. “There are rituals to perform when a soulmate dies,” she says, as if he ought to know this. “The mark is sacred and it has to be honored when death comes, even if – even if the soulmates aren’t together at the time.”

He stares back at her. “Oh,” he says. “Guess we ditched that tradition in orbit.”

This joke falls flat, possibly because Emori doesn’t really get it (and Murphy sure as shit can’t explain any science to her, so he just lets it go.) “Even in the Dead Zone, most people respect the bond. It isn’t important to your people?” she asks, confused.

“Not really,” Murphy says, looking down at his wrist, where her name stands out starkly against his skin. “It’s just a mark.”

Emori’s face is carefully blank, but he thinks maybe there’s a hint of disappointment in her eyes when he looks back up at her. “Oh,” she says. “I see.”

“But I think it’s cool,” he says quickly, but honestly. “You were willing to come all this way to honor my death. Even though I’m not sure how you would have done it if I’d gotten eaten by that hellspawn out there.”

She laughs a little at that, averting her eyes, and he says sincerely, “No, seriously. Nobody on this planet would give a shit if I got eaten by Godzilla’s cousin, but you would.”

Her smile softens into something a little shy and she meets his eyes, and honestly, if she keeps looking at him like that, Murphy’s willing to forget the whole “she robbed me at knifepoint and left me for dead” thing happened. “I would,” she agrees. This is followed by, “What does ‘Godzilla’ mean?”

“Oh,” Murphy says. “It’s a really old movie. But it’s also this giant lizard that causes a shit-ton of property damage and kills a bunch of people.”

Emori just stares at him, then repeats, “A giant lizard?”

“I was making a comparison,” Murphy says, exasperated, and Emori grins at him, suddenly and beautifully. Despite himself, Murphy grins back.

It’s kind of uncomfortable kneeling over her in the bushes like this, but he has more questions to ask. “So, what happens now?” he asks. “Are you going to go back to the Dead Zone now that I’m alive and kicking?”

Emori’s smile fades. “I can’t,” she says. “At least, not right away. My older brother – Otan – he didn’t want me to leave. I had to sneak away in the night. He’s going to be very angry with me if I return.”

So that explains why his first link with Emori had happened while she’d been running through the Dead Zone in the middle of the night. “You ditched your brother to come find my rotting corpse?” he asks, dumbfounded. “Shit. That’s dedication.”

She’s blushing, but she sets her jaw and meets his gaze straight-on. “People like me aren’t supposed to have soulmates,” she says, lifting her hand – the one that makes her “different.” She’s lost her mitten at some point, but Murphy’s attention is drawn to her wrist, where John is forever branded on her skin. “I had to do what I could for you, especially after the way I left you.”

It’s not quite an apology, but then again, Emori is like everybody else on the ground – just trying to survive. She can’t apologize for the way the ground has forced her to live, and Murphy understands that part of her a little better now. Still, there’s a note of remorse in her voice.

“I get it,” he says. “People like me aren’t supposed to have soulmates, either.”

She looks pensive. “And yet we have the rarest bond of all,” she muses. “I thought I heard your voice once. You said my name. Were you really there?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I was shouting in the back of your head about what an idiot you were for following me – no offense – but I guess that time I got lucky and you heard me.”

“You had plenty of reason to think I was being an idiot,” she concedes. “I probably was.”

“But a brave one,” he says. “And I can respect that.”

Emori smiles. “Maybe we can work on understanding our bond together,” she suggests. “We might be able to speak to each other, with a little practice.”

“Yeah,” Murphy agrees quickly. “We can do that. I have a place to stay and I’m willing to share.”

She eyes his relatively clean clothing – it’s actually the least prissy stuff he could find in the bunker, but still, he looks like a total asshole – and says, “I figured you must have found yourself a place to stay.”

“It can be ours,” Murphy offers. “If you want it to be.”

“Sure,” she says, and he doesn’t miss the way her cheeks have gone pink again. He finds it weirdly endearing.

“So,” he prompts, eager to get moving. The fact that she is covered in dried blood and probably injured is not lost on him. “Where are you hurt? Can you walk?”

She looks at him, befuddled, then glances down at her clothing. “Oh,” she says, realization dawning on her. “Oh, no. This isn’t my blood, John.”

If there has to be a girl he’s meant to be with, Murphy decides as he leans in and kisses her right then and there, he’s pretty fucking glad it’s this one.

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