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racetrackthehiggins · 7 years

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Johnny and the Delinquents: A Murphamy Rock Band AU

warnings: brief unspecific references to child abuse, alcoholism that was mostly in the past, lots of swearing, men who suck at talking, my aggressive inability to write lyrics, and John Murphy singing a cover Can't Help Falling in Love BECAUSE FUCKING EVERYONE ELSE IS RIGHT NOW.

apologies: on how long this took, and also the sheer number of JTHM references in here. I spent the early 2000's writing JTHM fics and it turns out the name Johnny is FOREVER linked with that so there's that. Also I know nothing about music besides singing so I'm sure I got a lot of that wrong and also I apologize for the stage names...I thought it was funny

and last but not least, a note: I'm pretty sure this is gonna be my last work in the 100 fandom, at least at the moment. thank you all for sticking with me, and who knows, maybe I'll return to the 100 in the days to come!

below or on ao3

Murphy answered the phone, because it was Jaha. As much as he hated his new manager, he had also learned better than to blow him off. “Y’ello,” he said, because he knew how much it irritated Jaha.

He was exhausted and had earned his uninterrupted sleep. He and Emori had a show that went until two the night before and then they had gone out for drinks. The City of Light had been months in the making, but their fifth major gig had gone splendidly, and he blamed the combination of sleepy, hungover and deeply satisfied on why he completely missed what Jaha said.

“It would be a really good opportunity for you,” Jaha said. “Everyone else has agreed,” Jaha said. “The publicity would really help The City of Light, and you know how much I want to see you all become a success,” Jaha said.

Murphy could tell there was something Jaha wasn’t saying, but didn’t know what it was. Jaha could be infuriatingly cryptic. Everything had been better before he had done a summer at Burning Man and come back frustratingly zen. “Okay,” Murphy replied. “What is this great opportunity?”

Jaha’s long pause was telling enough and Murphy really wanted to hang up, but resisted because Emori would be irritable if she knew he was blowing off their manager. “A reunion of Johnny and the Delinquents. Don’t hang up.”

Murphy took his finger off of the end-call button reluctantly. “No. I’m not doing it.”

Jaha continued like Murphy didn’t say anything, which he always, always did. “Album and tour, a couple of photos of you all hugging, and you’re done.”

“I believe I already said no.” Murphy felt anger already bubbling up from within him like a volcano of rage, but so far he’d kept his voice quiet enough that Emori was still passed out and he hadn’t threatened anyone or even cursed.

His anger management counselor would have been so proud.

Jaha took another long pause to find his words. “You’re contractually obligated. They expect you in New York in a week.”

Murphy could feel his blood pressure rise. “Excuse me?” he said, and it all went downhill from there.

The second he hung up with Jaha he called Raven. “What the actually fuck is going on, Raven?”

“I dunno,” she said, and he could tell she had a wrench in her mouth because he had known her long enough to know what that sounded like. “Just the sound engineer.”

Murphy rolled his eyes. He might be across the country, but he was not in a different reality. “I know you know, so spit it out.”

“Apparently your split from The Delinquents wasn’t ever made official—now that Kane’s in charge of the label, he wants the publicity from a reunion tour. Plus technically you’ve been in breach of contract for five years.” She paused. He tried not to fidget. “But that’s just what I’ve heard. I’m only a lowly engineer.”

Murphy took a deep breath and counted to ten. There’s background noise on the phone, something that sounded like voices.

Raven came back sounding too chipper. “Octavia wants to know if you still have your combat boots or if she should order you another pair.”

He hung up. Emori was still passed out in bed. He didn’t want to wake her. He looked at the clock. It was 9:23 on a Saturday, so he left the room, still dressed in his gig clothes, which he realized he hadn’t taken off, in search of somewhere serving brunch. He’s pretty sure getting mimosa drunk at brunch was acceptable.

He stormed back into the hotel two hours later, and five mimosas tipsier.

Emori was sitting up in bed, repainting her nails, black on black, which he, drunkenly, thought must be a metaphor for something. She looked up at him expectantly.

He stared her down. “I am contractually obligated to do a reunion-thing. I don’t know how long it’ll last.”

Emori nodded. “Okay. When you are going?”

He sighed and slumped into the bed across from hers. “Friday. But I’d prefer never.”

She shrugged. “It’s almost the summer. You know I go every summer to teach some humility to those little rock camp shits. This summer wasn’t going to be any different.”

Murphy nodded. “I know, I just felt like we were finally getting somewhere, you know?”

She nodded again. She was very understanding when she wasn’t being destructive or angry. He liked that about her because he hated that about himself. “The City of Light could wait. Go finish out your contract, and if we’re still feeling it, we’ll keep going. And if not, we’ve had a good run.”

He wanted to hug her, but Emori hated hugs. “You’re the best guitarist I’ve ever worked with,” he said instead.

She laughed, and it was clearly at him. “Nonsense. You’ve worked with Bellamy Blake.”

And that right there was the problem.

He spent the rest of the week in a much nicer hotel that he bullied Jaha into paying for, and occupied his time looking through the lyrics he wrote for that last album that never happened and trying to get back into the headspace of Johnny.

It was harder than he expected. Johnny had been all about righteous anger. He was a violent character, vicious and hurting and eager to watch the world burn, and the music he had created had been the area of pop-rock that flirted with metal and punk. Murphy’s more recent work had been a solo album, that was embarrassingly depressed and almost entirely about heartbreak and acoustic, and his work with Emori, which was a neo-folk duo.

He didn’t want to be Johnny again. Johnny was an idiot, and Murphy liked to think he had learned something since then. He thought about seeing them all again, and it made his chest ache. Murphy probably hadn’t learned shit.

The week ended too quickly and then he was flying into JFK which was not his favorite, but at least wasn’t Newark, and wishing maybe a little more than he should that the plane would crash and his untimely death would cancel the contract for him.

“Who’s picking me up?” he texted Raven as he took the escalator down. It has taken forever to get off the plane and he was irritable and exhausted.

She texted back immediately, “why should i know im just the sound engineer,” followed second later by, “the blakes.”

Murphy looked up from his phone and saw Bellamy standing at the bottom of the escalator in his usual public disguise of a baseball hat and sunglasses.

“No,” he said, pushing past Bellamy and heading for the baggage carousel.

“John,” Bellamy said, and it almost sounded like he was pleading.

He managed to snag Murphy’s arm in his hand, but Murphy shrugged it off. “I’m taking a cab.”

Bellamy sighed. “We’re going to have to work together.”

Murphy sneered at him, but his heart was beating a mile a minute. “We’re not working right now, are we?” He turned around and stormed off to get his bag. Octavia was sitting on it, sipping something from a Starbucks cup.

“Do I at least get a hug?” she said, and he was so mad he wanted to say no, but he never had a problem with her.

She hugged him tightly, and she was still using the same shampoo that smelled like coconuts and he spent so much of his youth in the Blake’s basement so even the smell of her hair sort of felt like a home-coming, but then he remembered Bellamy and he wanted to cry.

“I saw your interview. About Skycrew. You guys sound good,” Murphy said, pulling away.

Octavia grinned at him, easily, like they hadn’t been out of touch for half a decade. “Thank you. We’re unfortunately on hold at the moment. Lincoln’s in rehab.”

Murphy managed a sympathetic smile. “Sorry to hear that.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s good. He’s getting help. Besides, I’ve been waiting for this reunion for ages.” She handed him another Starbucks cup that she must have had squirreled away somewhere. “I heard your new EP with Emori. It was really, really good Johnny.”

Murphy nearly choked on his hazelnut mocha (and was a little pleased to see that she had remembered his favorite drink). “No, no, no, no, no and no. Same rules apply as before, you use my stage name, I use yours, and I have no compunction calling you Babydoll in public.”

Octavia scowled. “Fine, Murphy. You win this round. Now, c’mon, if we hurry we’ll miss the worst part of rush hour.”

She grabbed his bag and started wheeling back in the direction of Bellamy, who he realized hadn’t followed them.

“Octavia, wait,” he said resolutely. “I should take a cab.” He was strong of body and mind, and his will could not be broken. Or something.

Octavia rolled her eyes, but the look was softened by the smile she offered him. “You should sit in the back with me and eat the cupcakes I got for you from Melissa’s.”

Murphy was the weakest of willed. “The mini cupcakes?”

Octavia laughed. “Come on!”

So he did. The car ride would have been awkward, in no small part because Bellamy kept shooting him these furtive looks in the rearview mirror, but Octavia was talkative and kept him from focusing too much on the back of Bellamy’s head.

“So what about Clarke?” Murphy asked, halfway to Manhattan.

“She and Lexa just finished a tour as Wanheda, so they were planning on a break anyway. She’ll be flying in tomorrow, and they asked if anyone would mind if Lexa hung around, and considering they’re the hottest couple of the season, we all said no problemo.” Octavia stole a cupcake from him, but he still had twenty left, so he chose not to complain.

Bellamy from the front said, “We would have asked you, too, but none of us had your number.”

Murphy very obviously turned to smile at Octavia. “It’ll be nice to see Clarke again in person. I caught Wanheda in Chicago, they’re very…” He tried to think a word that wouldn’t sound backhanded.

“They’re a lot,” Octavia said with a smile, and he smiled back. “Finn’s not coming back, but considering he didn’t do the last two albums with us, I’m not sure anyone will notice. Wells won’t be available for the tour, so he’s a no go. We’d love to get Mbege back, but he’s not responding to any of our calls since…”

Murphy nodded. “I’ll call him.” Mbege would come back for him. They’ve toured together twice since the split, and they were still as close as they’d ever been. He pulled out his phone and texted him, because calling was for losers.

Mbege texted back, “when and where?” so Murphy mentally patted himself on the back. He would be going into this experience with at least Mbege and Octavia on his side, maybe even Clarke. Things could have been a lot worse.

Things could not have been a lot worse.

“I’ll stay in a hotel,” he said to Octavia, because he was not making eye contact with Bellamy.

Octavia sighed. “We don’t know how long it’s going to take to record the album, there’s no need to throw away money on a hotel room when Bell has a perfectly good spare room.”

Murphy’s palms were getting sweaty. “What about your spare room?”

“Clarke and Lexa called it,” she said, and sounded so honestly apologetic that Murphy almost felt bad for how angry he was getting.

“I’ll get a really cheap hotel,” he bargained.

Bellamy spoke up for the first time during this exchange. “And you’ll have to also pay for transportation. I’m two blocks from the studio. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want, but you know the writing will go faster if we’re in the same place.”

Historically, Murphy wrote the lyrics, maybe half a melody, and Bellamy filled in the rest. Murphy didn’t give a fuck about history.

“Fine,” he spat, and he wasn’t yelling or swearing or punching anyone, so he figured he was doing okay. He dragged his bag into the spare room and slammed the door.

The bed was comfortable, and lying on it, he felt more out of place than he’d felt in years. He called Emori.

“How’re The Delinquents?” she asked without a greeting, because that’s who she was. He usually found it charming. Currently, he found it beyond irritating.

“I want to go home,” he said, because if she could speak in non-sequiturs, so could he.

“Give him a chance,” she said back.

He hung up and barely felt guilty. He spent so many nights of his youth in the guest room at Octavia and Bellamy’s house, desperate to get away from his mother and her shouting, and he had been so angry, Johnny had come naturally.

He was tired now. He was tired of the music and the attention and tired of acting and of Bellamy and of the person he felt himself becoming.

He fell asleep in his clothes and woke up to the sound of someone knocking quietly on his door. When he dragged himself out of bed there was no one there, but there was a tray with a cup of coffee and a real New York bagel.

It was nice, as far as peace offerings go, but nowhere near enough to make Murphy forgive him.

Bellamy was scarce all morning, and Octavia arrived at noon to take him to lunch. They got burgers and shakes and she sat across from him and waited for him to stop chewing.

“So do you know where this album is going?”

He chewed more slowly to give himself some time. While the band had always done edits, the actual meat of the stories had always been his. The first four albums were the evolution of Johnny, and everyone was waiting for the fifth, the last of the Johnny story, to end it somehow satisfactorily. He had been writing those songs right before the split. He had maybe half an album in notes. They were all concept albums, all a linked story. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t lost the concept.

“Maybe,” he said after a long pause, swallowing.

Octavia took a thoughtful sip of her milkshake. “The last album,” she reminded him, unnecessarily, like he hadn’t been listening to it non-stop, “ended with Johnny in his darkest place. Since the split happened so quickly after, a lot of the fans thought that it was sign. That Johnny died.”

Murphy nodded. He’d been skimming through forums for days. “I was thinking I could maybe go with that. Johnny in the afterlife. Johnny in heaven, Johnny in hell. Maybe being reborn.”

Octavia’s face turned thoughtful. “Huh. Not really dead, but changing into something different. I like it.”

“I don’t want to keep doing Johnny after this,” he blurted, and was embarrassed. He used to be so much more sarcastic, caustic, even. He missed that part of himself, maybe a little.

Octavia put her hand on his, which was more comforting than he wanted it to be. “I don’t want you to run away after this. There’s definitely room for you in Skycrew, or we could all start something new. Just don’t leave.”

Murphy absolutely was not crying in a Schnippers. “I can’t face Bellamy, O. I just can’t.”

“Think about it,” she said, and lead him out into Manhattan. She sent him away in an Uber; he couldn’t really blame her, plus he had work to do.

With Octavia’s support, the lyrics began to flow more readily. He sat on Bellamy’s inexcusably comfortable sofa and accessed his anger, which was easier than he would have liked. The comfortable couch only served as another reminder that Bellamy had built something successful—and comfortable—without him, while he had spent the past five years wallowing in his crappy one bedroom in fucking Wisconsin of all places.

By the time Octavia burst into Bellamy’s apartment with Clarke, Lexa, Raven and Jasper in tow, he had solid melodies and words for a few songs. Bellamy followed behind the group, looking around angrily, but Murphy ignored him, because he would much rather hug Clarke.

“Murphy!” she exclaimed, and gave him a very rewarding embrace. “So good to see you!”

“Clarke,” he said, because he was good at not being mushy. “I saw Wanheda in Chicago. You were great.”

Lexa smiled at him, and he shook her hand firmly once Clarke had released him. “We appreciate it, thank you.” Lexa was strikingly beautiful in a could-easily-kill-you kind of way, which tended to be the sort of women Clarke went for.

Raven slung an arm over his shoulder and gave him the most heartfelt side hug he’d ever experienced, which was nice, but unnecessary, because the two of them had kept in contact.

He and Jasper fist bumped. They had never been close—Jasper wasn’t even really part of the band—but they had hung out enough that a greeting was expected.

“Anyone want a beer?” Octavia called as she skipped into the kitchen, returning with an armful of bottles and corn chips, placing them all on the low table in the living room and ushering them onto the couch. She turned to Murphy and said, “I called Mbege, he can’t come tonight, but we have the studio tomorrow to start a rehearsal-slash-jam-sesh tomorrow assuming you write at the speed you usually do. That okay?”

Murphy nodded and threw his notebook to Bellamy, who was sitting in a separate chair as close to Murphy as he could get while not being on the same couch, and who promptly fumbled it.

“Nice one, Bell!” Jasper called, extended his bottle for a toast. Murphy reluctantly clinked with him.

“Shut your face, Jasper,” Bellamy replied, settling the notebook on his lap and flipping through it.

Bellamy had seen his writing since the age of seven, so the rush of anxiety that made his chest ache was completely uncalled for. Bellamy had read his first ever poem, which had gone, “I like my friends/I like the sun/I miss them both/When the day’s done,” and it didn’t get much worse than that. He sat still to keep from hyperventilating.

Bellamy scanned the lyrics and scraps of music he��d written around it and looked skeptical. “We’re doing Johnny as Jesus?”

Murphy’s face flushed hot with anger and embarrassment. “No, Johnny’s not that forgiving,” and turned away from him to face Clarke, who had her concern hidden badly under her curiosity and immediately engaged him in the backstory for the new album.

“I’m thinking more Dante than Jesus, yeah?” she asked him, and his breathing came more easily.

He’d always sort of loved Clarke. She was so unattainable in high school, popular and beautiful and honor roll smart, until one day she had walked up to him and said, “Bellamy said you’re starting a band, and I want to join, if that’s okay. My name’s Clarke Griffin,” and had shaken his hand so professionally. She was like a sister, but better because she didn’t have the baggage of growing up with him to affect her love for him.

“I like it,” Clarke declared after nearly an hour of intense plotting, and turned to Bellamy. “What would you change?”

“Oh,” Bellamy said. He looked like a deer in the headlights, like he thought he wouldn’t at some point have to weigh in on the situation. “I guess it’s pretty good.” He held up a page covered in Murphy’s scribbles. “How do you feel about this one in a minor key? Maybe acoustic?”

Octavia scoffed at him. “We don’t do acoustic.”

Clarke frowned. “Why not? Everyone’s expecting us to have grown as artists. They want the music to be familiar, but innovative. Bellamy’s not suggesting doing an acoustic album, just a song. I think it could be the kind of twist that people will like.”

Murphy nodded because words were too hard. He wanted nothing more than to leave. He looked up and met Bellamy’s eyes and it was like he’s twelve again, or fifteen, or eighteen, or twenty, because now he was almost twenty-five and the only thing that had changed was that his dream had gone from fantasy to impossibility.

He looked away. “I’m gonna turn in, if that’s okay.”

The others tried to stop him, and he could hear them, but he didn’t listen. He closed the door softly, resisting the urge to slide down it and cry like he wanted to. He lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. He missed it the night before, but there were stick-on stars, like there used to be in his guest room in the Blake house. He stared at the stars and felt homesick for a place that was never his home.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but woke up several hours later when there was a tentative knock on his door. The clock by his bed said it was 4:30 am. It had to be Bellamy, it couldn’t be anyone else. Murphy wanted to scream.

Instead, he counted to ten. His therapist would have been so proud.

Bellamy was standing there when he opened the door, eyes cast downward. “Could we talk?”

“I wasn’t aware we had anything to talk about.” Murphy’s hands were clenched into fists. “So if that’s all—”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Bellamy said desperately. He’s backlit, barely, by a light in the kitchen, but Murphy could see the bags under his eyes, the deep sadness in his face that never used to be there. Serves him right, Murphy thought, and tried to feel vindictive but he couldn’t muster it. “You were my best friend and I didn’t…”

It’s the “were” that made Murphy regret agreeing to come. He should have tried to weasel his way out of the contract. He should have gotten a hotel room. He should have—

“I’ve regretted losing you every single day.”

“You ran! You left! I left you 80 voicemails, trying to fix this, trying to make sure you were okay and somehow, I’m the bad guy! You didn’t lose me, because you never had me, and as soon as I’ve completed my contract, I’m gone and you will never see me again.” Murphy hands were shaking and his chest felt tight and his face was burning and he was so angry he might start crying and he hated that.

“John.” Bellamy sounded choked up, hurt almost, and it hurt Murphy more than he thought it would.

“Get the fuck out of my room.” He looked at Bellamy, whose face echoed the exhaustion and pain he felt. He sighed, and offered, “please.”

Bellamy retreated slowly with a look that said he’d really rather stay. But that was okay. Murphy had gotten used to not getting what he wanted, Bellamy Blake could afford a taste, too.

The next day went better, thankfully. The label had rented out a studio around the clock for three weeks, like they were the Beatles or something. After their first couple of albums, Murphy thought they would have killed for studio time like this. Currently, three weeks felt like centuries.

Despite how much he would have given to avoid the situation altogether, he and Bellamy worked like they’d been practicing for the past five years instead of avoiding each other like the plague.

Performing together again would be like riding a bike, Murphy thought, showing up last despite the fact that he and Bellamy lived closest to the studio; it would hurt like hell when he fell, but he’d have to just keep trying, anyway.

Everyone was tuning when Bellamy called him over to the upright piano he had set on the left side of the studio. He threw his shoulder bag on the floor and didn’t bother greeting his bandmates; hardly a minute had gone by that he hadn’t seen them and so the need for greetings had quickly evaporated. He sat down next to Bellamy without being asked, and Bellamy tried not to smile at him.

Bellamy’s stupid half-smile made a full body tingle rush through him, and he was resentful of his stupid body’s stupid feelings.

“I still can’t read your chicken-scratch,” he said, and pointed to a corner of the page where Murphy wrote what might have been lyrics, but also could have been a chord progression. Or a phone number.

“Lyrics,” Murphy clarified. “The rhyme is off though, and I can’t seem to fix it.”

“Hmm,” Bellamy said, looking over the page thoughtfully. He always used to help Murphy; it’s nothing new, but it makes Murphy’s head ache. “What if we,” he started, and Murphy got caught up in the “we” for so long he didn’t realize how animated they’d gotten until Octavia started laughing.

The candid picture that Clarke took of the two of them sharing a piano bench, huddled round a notebook like they were still the best of friends, became the bane of Murphy’s existence. She uploaded it to twitter with caption, “guess what’s coming?”

Not an hour later, someone unearthed a picture of them doing the same thing years before, with Murphy perched on Bellamy’s lap, and put the pictures side by side. Murphy wasn’t sure if praying for death would actually be appropriate.

“It’s not so bad,” Octavia said, scrolling through her favorite Delinquents tumblrs during their lunch break. “Ooh, this fanart’s pretty accurate, even though I’m not sure either of you gets off on choking.” The long considering look she gave him made him regret all parts of their friendship. “Do you think you’d be more of a bottom or a top with my brother?”

He thought about Bellamy, his long, strong, fast as fuck fingers which earned him his stage name, Twitch.

That thought had brought up a whole slew of feelings that Murphy had actually thought he had buried, as a semi-adult well into his twenties should have. Bellamy’s dexterity had been most of his fantasy life during his teen years, considering he didn’t have a reliable internet connection and who needed porn when he had a best friend like Bellamy?

Despite being a plain fact of his youth—the sky was blue, the grass was green, the thought of Bellamy’s fingers gave him a woody—it was also something he hadn’t actively thought about. His first few post-Delinquents years had been spent getting drunken blowjobs behind various concert venues, and the past few had been spent sharing hotel rooms with Emori who gave him judge-y looks when he had hookups, but judged him more when he masturbated in their room, assuming, wrongly, that she was asleep.

So it wasn’t as though he never thought of Bellamy, or his long slim fingers, or the afternoons spent in his basement watching Futurama and eating cheetohs, and being so far gone on him that the his fingers were even sexy covered in cheetoh dust, but instead that he hadn’t gripped his dick and actively imagined Bellamy’s long quick fingers there instead.

He had been in a funk for the rest of day. Half a song had been written and recorded, but not nearly enough if they were planning to finish in three weeks.

And now he just felt guilty. He stared at the door separating him from Bellamy and Bellamy’s loud 11:30pm moping. It wasn’t like Bellamy would come in without knocking, or like Bellamy could possibly know what he was up to. Fuck it, he decided. Fuck you, he then clarified to himself.

Murphy threw himself onto the bed and unzipped his pants. He closed his eyes and he could almost imagine Bellamy leaning over him, unzipping his pants instead, staring at him longingly, which wasn’t really a hard expression to conjure. He’d wrap his palm around the head of Murphy’s cock and—

The teakettle whistled shrilly.

Murphy groaned in frustration, hand falling apathetically onto his stomach and dick still bobbing obliviously. This was a mistake. He sighed again. He couldn’t keep that image of Bellamy in his mind, anyway. Instead it was replaced with the look of sheer panic that Bellamy had worn right before the split, his elegant fingers clenched into tight white fists, and he felt nauseous. His cock softened obligingly, and with one last look at the door he decided he would just go to sleep.

The fact the he could hear Bellamy in the kitchen humming the first ballad they had ever written together didn’t help at all.

When TwitchxJohnny was trending the next day, Murphy was reluctantly glad that at least they were sticking to their stage names, and couldn’t help but think that in a karmic way, he had brought this on himself.

They meshed much the same way they always did. Clarke had only become a stronger guitarist, Bellamy one-upping her and tooling away on the piano if the song called for it, Octavia doing her thing on bass and Mbege kicking ass on the drums.

Murphy, as usual, felt a little like the Davy Jones of their group, casually waiting for someone to hand him a tambourine or maracas. Despite his feelings, he had grown as a writer, and it was obvious that the group felt the same, deferring to him instead of Bellamy, which was both incredibly reassuring and deeply saddening.

By the third day, they’re on to their fifth track. Murphy missed this, even when he and Emori had finally hit their stride, there was always something between them that made their rehearsal times seem to drag.

The Delinquents’ music was buoyant, vibrant and adrenaline fast, and Murphy missed the quiet swell of The City of Light a little bit more than he thought he would, but this music was like being on a rollercoaster and he’s surprised at how much he missed the thrill.

Mbege got it. He had ended up in several indie bands, but was clearly thriving banging away with The Delinquents. The fact that he spent all his spare time glaring at Bellamy didn’t hurt either. He took Murphy out and around the town after that first week, supposedly to re-introduce him to New York, but really so Murphy didn’t have to be in that tiny apartment with Bellamy.

Mbege was really too good for Murphy.

“I’m so sorry, J2, you know I’d let you crash if I had any room,” he told Murphy several times when they were drunk off their asses and Murphy’s anger had turned to sadness.

“Don’t worry about it, J1, you’re still my fave.” And it’s true. Mbege’s friendship mostly relied on Murphy spending time with him when he had it. They wouldn’t talk for months, and then when did, it was like nothing changed.

Getting to work with him again was in many ways the balm to living with Bellamy. They avoided each other at the apartment, worked in each other’s pockets at the studio, and then tried to spend the evenings as far apart as they geographically could while staying in the same city and apartment.

“Do you think you two will ever get over it?” Mbege asked him, dropping another beer in front of Murphy. No seemed like too simple an answer.

It got harder during the second week. Murphy’s voice was embarrassingly unused to the amount of screaming and abuse he used to regularly subject it to. He left the studio every day with his voice shot, coughing, and after almost a week of this, Bellamy burst into his room one night holding a cup of Murphy’s favorite chai blend with a large quantity of honey.

“Thank you,” Murphy whispered and waited for Bellamy to leave. He didn’t. “You could sit,” he said after a long moment, because he knew Bellamy would just hover awkwardly indefinitely if he didn’t offer.

“Thanks.” Bellamy sat at the edge of the bed and stared out Murphy’s window. “This is kinda like—”

“—Midnight snack sesh,” Murphy said, because he was thinking it, too.

Bellamy smiled wistfully and it made Murphy’s chest ache. He was seriously considering going to see a cardiologist. “Remember? Every night after recording, we’d go out for a snack.”

“We were so fucking young then.” It had mostly been fast food, eaten quickly in Bellamy’s third hand Ford before they passed out from sheer exhaustion. He can’t remember a single one of those nights individually, but the summation of them was like a warm weight in his chest, a burning orange glow. “Clarke thought we were going to get fat.” Murphy smiled reluctantly.

There was a moment when their eyes met, and Murphy was unsure how he ever gave this up. How he didn’t fight harder. How could he have not fought harder?

Bellamy broke eye contact first. “Worse things have happened,” he said as he stood. He hesitated at the door, back to Murphy. “Good night, Murphy.”

“Goodnight, Bell.”

He drank the rest of his tea by himself and set the cup down, like an adult should do, instead of smashing it, like he wanted to.

Bellamy came back the next night, and the next, and it was almost okay. They didn’t always speak, but there was something between them, closer to what Murphy remembered.

It was the second to last day when Bellamy called a band meeting in the middle of recording. They had seventeen tracks which was excellent because there were always a few that were better in their heads than in their ears. Octavia shot him a warning look and crossed her arms over her chest, so Murphy knew this was something that the Blakes have discussed at least.

Which could be either really good or terrifically bad.

“I don’t like the way we’re ending the album,” Bellamy said, and made sure he met all of their gazes.

Mbege rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Bell, and you wait until now to say anything?”

Clarke shook her head, determined, as always to be the most levelheaded. “Let’s hear him out.” She reached very subtly and squeezed Murphy’s hand, which he appreciated, because he hated this.

Bellamy took a deep breath and tried to gather his words.

“Any fucking day now?” Murphy muttered and tried to avoid Bellamy’s gaze at all costs.

“The last song is still too angry.”

Murphy scoffed. “Yeah. Johnny’s angry. Johnny’s always been angry. That’s sort of his defining characteristic.”

Bellamy scowled, turning his whole attention on Murphy. “Yeah, but we all agreed, years ago to a five album sequence. Do you think it should end on an angry note? You and Octavia keep talking about growing and changing, and the entire album feels like a growth until the end.”

Murphy wanted to bite back, wanted Bellamy to look away and never look back. “End on a familiar note, is there a problem with that?”

He could see Clarke making panicked eyes at Octavia, but neither one cut in. “Don’t you think Johnny deserves more than that? Don’t we all? It’s our story, too.” Bellamy had always been a master of mixed signals, but the anger and, Murphy thought, hope in his face was beyond confusing and Murphy couldn’t believe it actually took him this long to realize they’re having two different conversations.

“How would you end it?” he asked, and pretended like he didn’t sound hoarse.

Bellamy’s eyes were boring into him. “I don’t know. Contentment doesn’t suit him maybe, but, I dunno, I…”

Octavia spoke up, but didn’t look any happier. “Optimism.”

Clarke nodded slowly. “Might be nice.”

He was furious. He didn’t get to have optimism, so why should Johnny? He wanted to yell and scream and throw stuff, because Bellamy didn’t seem to have a problem throwing this back in his face. “Fine, I’ll see what I can fucking do,” Murphy said, because he was a professional, before storming off and bunkering down in a conference room.

He was a good writer, had become so with sweat and effort. An anthem, he thought, because if he couldn’t be angry he’d be emblematic. It still was angry, when he finished an hour later. It was angry and it was an anthem and it was hopeful, and he felt 1/3 of those things, but maybe he’d earned some hope.

He brought it back to the room, and tried to ignore how broadly Bellamy smiled when he saw the words.

And then the album was done. It felt like they had just started, but then he and Bellamy were ushered into a meeting with Marcus Kane, who Murphy only hated slightly less than Jaha.

Kane smiled and gestured for them to take the two seats in front of him. Maya stood off to one side, and Murphy had only met her once, but he liked her. She was way nicer than Jasper deserved, but he couldn’t help but feel that her presence at this meeting was a bad omen.

It might have been her very uncomfortable smile.

“Gentlemen!” Kane greeted exuberantly, and looked at them both expectantly.

Bellamy nodded a weak a hello and Murphy managed an, “Uh, hi,” by utilizing all of his personhood skills.

Kane was still smiling, but his smiles didn’t reach his eyes as a rule and Murphy wasn’t convinced he wasn’t a robot or a pod person. “I heard the album, and it’s great, just great. I wanted to talk to you both about the tour. We’re pushing the timeline a little, so the album’s going to be in stores in five weeks, and then the tour will start one week after that, which gives you six weeks to get prepared, figure out choreo and costumes and whatever else.” He gestured to Maya and she gave a tentative wave. “Maya will be on the tour to do hair and makeup.”

He turned his full attention on Murphy. “The dreads were very popular, would you consider—”

“Nooooo,” Murphy interrupted. “No, the days of white-boy dreads are long gone.” Bellamy laughed, and Murphy pointedly didn’t look at him and pretended like he wasn’t blushing.

Kane frown said he was going to insist, but Maya, who he had clearly underestimated, came to the rescue. “What if did pulled back twists? Like in the promo pictures for the second album?” she asked and he nodded quickly. Anything was better than the dreads.

Kane nodded, smiling tightly. “Alright, twists it is. Maya, could you give us a moment please.” Maya left quietly and Kane gave them the exceedingly tight smile again.

It could only be a bad sign.

“I know this is…uncomfortable to talk about, but part of the appeal of Johnny and the Delinquents has always been the chemistry between the two of you. I don’t know the details of what happened, and I don’t want to. I don’t care what happens in your personal life, but on the stage, I need you two to behave how you always have.”

Bellamy choked, then croaked out a weak, “yessir,” and Murphy contemplated shoving a paperweight down Kane’s throat.

“Yeah, fine,” he said finally. “What-the-fuck-ever.”

Kane nodded decisively. “Excellent. Glad we’re all clear on that. Now then, John.” Murphy bristled. “I need you to have a more active online presence. Soon as you can. Periscope would help, twitter, the works. We’ll also be getting you on some late night programs, so play nice.”

He promised he would try but he meant it about as much as Kane meant his whole, let-me-be-your-father routine.

As soon as the CD’s were pressed they released a single, and then Johnny and the Delinquents job was hyping the hell out of it.

Kane got him on a late night show starring a white man in a suit, which was better than Murphy was expecting. He didn’t think his name carried any sway anymore. He sat on the comfortable chair in his Johnny clothes and smirked at the host and the audience and all the folks who had tuned in to see him flash his canines.

“So I’m sure you get asked this all the time,” the host asked him. “But what happened? Five years ago, Johnny and the Delinquents were truly on top, and then suddenly, nothing. Nothing for five years. So what happened?”

Murphy thought about what he could say, what Kane would want him to say. He finally settled on, “I decided y’all could use a little anticipation, so I took a long drunken sabbatical.”

He laughed. “And based on your pre-sales, you were not wrong. Where It’s Going, out this week!”

After Kane explained how very disappointed he was in Murphy, they both agreed he should try and stick to social media. Periscope, he stressed again.

Periscope helped with nothing. He used it, though, streamed rehearsals and coffee breaks. He wandered through the chaos of set-up for their first concert with his phone out and ready.

“This is Raven,” he whispered, showing the internet Raven as she yelled at a stubborn microphone cable. “She’s the best.” He walked a little further, stumbling upon Jasper, Monty and Miller. “This is Jasper, I guess he does lights, I dunno, say hi Jasper.”

Jasper smiled into the phone and said, “Hi, Jasper,” because Jasper was the worst.

Murphy tilted the phone away from him. “This is Monty and Miller. Monty does something…and Miller sleeps with him? I’m unclear.”

He was already walking away but in the corner of his screen Monty yelled, exasperated, “Craft services! We fucking feed you!” and Murphy couldn’t help but laugh.

He harassed Maya as she braided Octavia’s hair, and they were laughing so hard Murphy was barely holding up the phone when Bellamy appeared, right in front of him and said, “Hey, could we talk?” like they haven’t been living in the same tiny apartment for months and now was the perfect time to speak.

The broadcast cut off so suddenly that twitter was filled with gossip. Clips of the last three seconds of that video were looped all over twitter and tumblr and vine and Murphy couldn’t escape from his own awkward fumbling on his iphone and the pained expression on Bellamy’s face.

“What?” Murphy asked, gripping his phone in his shaking hands.

Bellamy glanced from Maya to Octavia to Murphy and grimaced. “Privately?”

Octavia scowled at Bellamy, glaring. “We’re not listening, are we, Maya?”

Maya smiled serenely at Octavia. “We are not, Octavia.”

“So please,” Octavia continued savagely. “Feel free to speak openly here.”

Murphy thought he could be in love with her in that moment (if, in reality, he wasn’t so horribly gone on her brother). “Well?” he said, and Bellamy frowned.

“I just wanted to—I wanted to talk to you before we—look, can we do this in private? Please?” Bellamy’s jaw was clenched tight and Murphy almost felt bad but he also felt vicious and self-righteous and living in Johnny’s pocket had made his anger so much easier to access.

“This is private,” Octavia insisted, still glaring.

“Very private,” Maya agreed, sealing one of Octavia’s braids with a load of hairspray.

Bellamy’s face fell, realizing he was losing and preparing to wallow. Murphy sighed. “I don’t have anything else to say, Bell. I don’t.”

Bellamy nodded slowly and backed up, turning around and running off with his symbolic tail between his very nicely muscled legs.

Octavia cackled, and Maya chuckled along and Murphy felt like he was maybe drowning.

He didn’t want to talk to Bellamy. Not at all. He didn’t think there was anything that hadn’t been said, and the tentative truce that they had formed couldn’t hold under the weight of real friendship. He wasn’t ready for that again.

Besides, he figured, storming off into his dressing room. He had a show to prepare for, figurative pounds of eyeliner to apply to his face, and twenty minutes of vocal warm ups.

The next day, sitting in Kane’s office, he wished he had maybe tried to talk to Bellamy a little bit harder than not.

Kane’s Disappointed Dad face was out in full form, and Bellamy was staring fixedly at his knees. Murphy couldn’t take his eyes off the computer on Kane’s desk, where a video of their last concert was playing. He had been aware, at the time, that he didn’t want to look at or dance on Bellamy, but he hadn’t thought that it had shown.

Watching the video, the tension between them was palpable. They barely made eye contact, and Murphy had kept far away from Bellamy’s part of the stage. It was painful to watch, like two strangers instead of people who had been best friends.

Kane cleared his throat and waited for them to look at him. “This, as I am sure you know, is unacceptable. I don’t care how you two feel about each other, really, I don’t. You have a job to do.”

Bellamy sucked his teeth and Kane glared at him. “Maybe—just throwing out some ideas here—maybe fake gay undertones shouldn’t be part of our job?”

And why did that make Murphy’s heart ache? There was almost nothing between them now, but hearing Bellamy be so cavalier about his feelings, the ones he had had since middle school, made Murphy want to drink. Heavily.

Kane scowled and folded his hands neatly on the desk. He stared at Bellamy for a long time before turning to Murphy and studying him as well. “I don’t know what went down five years ago. I don’t care. I do know that your fans are showing up for you, in droves, to try and capture the magic you had before. And you’re disappointing them. Your fans want the childhood friends who decided to start a band together, not the jaded folk artist and playboy rock star. Get your shit together, get your act together, and for fuck’s sake, try and remember that your fans are paying good money and all you have to do is remember what you liked about each other.”

Murphy glanced at Bellamy, who was staring at him, and so their eyes met, and Murphy couldn’t look away.

“Good,” Kane said. “Glad we’re agreed.” He excused them together and they walked silently out of the room.

“We should probably talk,” Murphy suggested once they hit the hall. It was surprisingly deserted.

Bellamy looked at him in surprise before fishing his phone out of his pocket. “Later? I gotta meet O in Brooklyn in 20 minutes. Wish me luck?”

They were currently in the Upper East Side. Murphy grinned. “There’s not enough luck in the world.”

Bellamy’s face shifted into a confused smile and he started backing up towards the elevator, eyes fixed on Murphy. “Later, yeah?”

Murphy nodded. “Yeah.” Later, they would talk, and they would work some of this shit out.

Clarke found him first. “Listen,” she said to him, grabbing his upper arm and herding him into a break room. Murphy glanced around anxiously, but Clarke had always been good at sensing what rooms were empty. “We’ve tried to be supportive without being overbearing, we’ve kept our distance, and we haven’t asked any questions, but this is getting out of hand, John. What happened with you and Bellamy?”

She led him to chair and looked at him expectantly until he sat down. She kept standing, and moved off to make him a cup of tea.

It occurred to him that Octavia was probably grilling Bellamy in Brooklyn, probably with less tact and more public yelling and he had never been more grateful for Clarke’s friendship in his life. That could have been him. “We fought, I quit, end of story.”

She walked over to him with a mug full of tea and honey and stood in front of him in full disapproving glory. She handed him the cup and crossed her arms, every inch the intimidating front woman she had grown into in Wanheda. “I don’t know what I did to make you think I was an idiot, but I’d appreciate it if you at least came up with a better story.”

“Clarke,” he started, sighing, but she interrupted him.

“Murphy, five years ago my family was ripped apart and no one will tell me why. Do you think this was easy on me? On Octavia? Do you think we liked having no idea what was happening with you, if you were okay? With Bellamy moping and crying and drinking and sleeping his way through everyone who looked his way?” She wiped an angry tear out of her eye and glared. “I’ve been accommodating and I’ve been kind but I am exhausted and sad and I need to know if this is something that can be fixed or if I’ve lost my family for good.”

Murphy was embarrassed his find his eyes were teary, too. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” And he told her. “It was the after the last show we did for Goblins, the one in LA? Bellamy came up to me after the show.”

They had been sweaty, still covered in stage makeup and hours worth of musical grime, tired and delirious and bright and happy. Raven was packing up the van (or rather gleefully directing her underlings to) and Murphy was in the green room chugging plastic water bottles and trying to decide if he had it in him to go outside and greet the roadies or if he would just retreat to his hotel room and wait for morning.

Bellamy stuck his head in the door. When his eyes fell on Murphy he smiled lazily, and Murphy felt a flood of warmth like the stage lights hitting him all over again. “Hey, Murphy.”

He would have blushed if his face hadn’t already been red from exertion. “Hey, yourself.”

Bellamy had invited himself in, then, like he always did. They had been sharing a space for so long that they frequently forgot about personal space. He smiled, and then Murphy’s phone buzzed. He frowned instead. “Who is that?”

Murphy looked at his phone and then blushed even harder. “That guy. From the show in Philly?” Bellamy’s face still clearly asked for clarification so Murphy made with the clarifying. “We’ve been talking a lot. He’s in town. Wants to see me, I think.”

Bellamy was still frowning. “Are you going to see him?”

Murphy sighed, standing up and stretching. “I guess so.” He smiled at Bellamy, but it was a weak smile. “Can’t keep chasing my dreams forever.”

Bellamy scoffed and gesturing grandly around the green room. “That’s literally all we do.”

“Yeah but—” Murphy sighed again, tried to align his brain with his mouth. “It’s different now, isn’t it?” It was different. Wells was gone, Finn was leaving. Raven had gotten into MIT and Clarke was talking about college, plus Monty and Octavia were talking about settling down with their respective boyfriends, like they weren’t too young for that shit and Murphy—Murphy was chasing after Bellamy’s shadow, just like he had done his whole life.

When he looked up, Bellamy was close to him, so close to him Murphy could hear his breaths, could practically taste his sweat. “It doesn’t have to be different,” he said vehemently. “We can stay the same.”

Murphy shook his head. “I can’t stay the same. I need to stop chasing.” He smiled, melancholic. “Don’t I deserve some happiness, too?”

“Yeah.” Bellamy was so close he could feel the whisper of his words and then Bellamy was kissing him and Murphy was so caught up in the sensations he could barely process what was happening until Bellamy pulled away.

“Bell,” he said, and tried to close the distance between them, but Bellamy shoved him backwards and he hit the makeup table—not hard enough to hurt, but enough so that his things went flying.

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy said, and then he was out the door.

By the time Murphy was up and into the hall, Bellamy had disappeared into the throng.

When Murphy got to the hotel, Bellamy’s stuff was gone, and no one—not even Octavia, who would have absolutely lied for him but had no poker face whatsoever—knew where he was.

So he texted him. And he called him. Left message after message and email upon email and finally after five days he got a call from their manager politely demanding that they fix their shit, or Murphy, the volatile lead singer, was going to get the axe.

And Murphy was angry, the deep, hot, seething sort of anger that he had only felt before for his mother, that he channeled on the stage but never really let himself soak in anymore because he had been so depressed in middle school and high school and he had excised that anger through music and friendship and now he was adrift, and the figure that he had chased after for so many years was nowhere to be seen.

He thought, what would I have said in high school? And so, calmly, politely, he phoned up their manager and said, “fuck you, I quit.”

And then, he told Clarke, sitting in the recording studio, in the breakroom, “I drank for a week, and I thought about moving to Australia, and then I put out an album of me crying for seventy minutes. And now here we are.”

Clarke reached out and gripped his hand tightly in hers. “I love you, you know that?”

He was teary eyed again, and his voice was shaky with it. “Yeah, I do.”

Clarke nodded decisively. “And Bellamy is an idiot. But he loves you, too.”

“Clarke—“

She shook her head. “No. I know he fucked up and he hurt you, I get that. I do. But he loves you and he’s been trying.”

Murphy could feel himself getting angry but he swallowed it. His first thought was, fuck Bellamy. Fuck Bellamy and fuck the fact that he got to have Murphy’s family and Murphy’s job and Murphy’s life while Murphy had to settle with trying-hard-and-not-quite-making-it. “And I haven’t been.”

Clarke smiled at him. “You’ve been trying. A little. But he’s been trying a lot. Meet him half way?”

Murphy nodded, and stood up, figuring Clarke was done with him. She squeezed his hand and stood gingerly. “Good,” she said. “Now let’s go find Lexa, she has a proposition for you—before you have that interview to get to.”

He couldn’t remember anything about an interview but he hadn’t really been paying attention, had he? He hadn’t been trying. They found Lexa in the lobby, scaring off paparazzi with a glare. She smiled at them as they approached, which was much more friendly than he expected from her. She absolutely terrified him and he really liked that about her.

She laid out her proposition and Murphy immediately accepted, before being ushered into a company car by Clarke, presumably taking him to the aforementioned interview.

He texted Raven on the way. “Where exactly am I going?” he asked her.

“not ur calendar & am in fact doing important sound stuff,” she replied, followed almost immediately by, “casual fan interview, should mostly be a puff piece, but wat do i no im just the sound engineer.”

He got out of the car in a small cupcake café on the lower east side, which he wasn’t expecting, but considering Murphy remembered literally nothing about the interview, he supposed that wasn’t shocking. He walked in and looked around anxiously at the pastel covered café, glad he was in his civvies instead of his Johnny regalia.

“Mr. Murphy?” He turned and was face to face with a girl who was definitely younger than him, wearing a very professional outfit that did nothing to age her up. The French braids didn’t help, either. “Hi, I’m here to interview you! My name’s Charlotte. I’m a music blogger. I started SoundSiren?”

“Hi,” he replied, and reached out to shake her hand. It then occurred to him that he had heard of her blog before. “Oh! Hi, yeah I know you. Can I ask a stupid question before you start recording stuff?”

She laughed, a real sounding and very charming laugh. “Of course!”

“Why are we in a cupcake den?” He had been avoiding looking at the glass case because Murphy was weak and the cupcakes smelled like exactly what he deserved after the past few hellish days.

Charlotte grinned mischievously. “I heard they were your drug of choice.”

He smiled back but was instantly filled with guilt. He was pretty sure his drugs of choice were, in order of most destructive to least, Bellamy Blake, tequila, Bellamy’s twitter account, vodka, Bellamy’s old anonymous livejournal account, rum, and then cupcakes.

“You heard right,” he said, and let her lead him to a table, already covered in cupcakes.

“I wasn’t sure which kind you like,” she said apologetically, gesturing to the smorgasbord of cupcakes.

He laughed, and felt more prepared for this interview than he’d felt for anything in months. “Oh, you are definitely on my good side.”

She smiled and slid into her seat, Murphy following. She pulled out her phone. “Do you mind if I…?”

He hated having audio recordings of himself wandering through the internet, but despite himself he trusted her. Murphy nodded and bit into a red velvet cupcake. The girl had good taste.

“So,” she asked picking a caramel cupcake, “how does it feel to be back in New York?”

“Like a kick in the balls,” he said, and she laughed.

“Just like old times, then? Speaking of, how’s the band meshing after years apart?”

Murphy paused, chewing. She scribbled something onto her phone with a stylus. He hoped it said something like, “he chewed contemplatively,” instead of “he stared stupidly into the distance and messily devoured a cupcake.” He had seen her blog before and she could be ruthless when she wanted to.

“We’re coming together,” he said finally. “There were some road-bumps, but we’re family, you know? Even when we hate each other, we still love each other. And I think that comes across in the new album.”

Charlotte’s face turned a little guilty even as she said, innocently, “was last night’s concert one of those bumps in the road?”

Murphy choked on a piece of cupcake. “Yeah,” he wheezed and tried to remember how to swallow like an adult. “Definitely. But we’re working on it, and it’s only going to get better.”

“Good,” Charlotte said, and beamed. “I saw the show last night and it was…”

“A work in progress?” Murphy offered.

Charlotte laughed. “That’s a good word for it. Do you mind if I ask—what went wrong?”

Murphy paused and used the opportunity to cut into another cupcake. “I think there were some miscommunications. Some bad blood that we needed to excise.”

“Metaphorical or literally?”

He thought about how badly he had wanted to punch Bellamy’s face in the night before. “Metaphorical blood letting,” he clarified, “literal talking.”

Charlotte laughed again, and very kindly changed the subject. “So I asked my readers what they were most interested in me finding out, and surprise surprise, they want to know who is the inspiration for “Brainfreeze” and “Kill the Moment”?”

Murphy polished off the cupcake and moved onto a chocolate one covered in glitter. “Who says they’re about anyone? Let alone the same person?”

Charlotte pounced. “Well, general fan theory is that before your character, Johnny, died at the end of Goblins, he was developing feelings for someone. The imagery in “Brainfreeze” and “Kill the Moment” are very similar; wanting to stay in the moment that’s occurring right now, but wanting to see what happens next. All this rising to the high note of “Finger Guns,” before the album ends abruptly, presumably in Johnny’s death.” At his incredulous look, Charlotte blushed. “I’ve been a fan since I was in middle school,” she admitted.

Murphy laughed and wiped the chocolate off his mouth. She made another scribble on her screen. “There was someone in Johnny’s life—we intended to give him an accomplice. But his life didn’t turn out that way.”

“And your life?”

Murphy could feel the self-deprecating smile unfurl across his face. “My life didn’t turn out that way either.”

Charlotte gave him a very sympathetic look before visibly changing gears. “I was very excited to hear a studio version of “ ’07,” which has gotten consistent concert play, but has never been recorded until now. What made you decide to change that?”

Murphy sighed. He loved almost every song he had ever written—and he loved ’07. That said, if no one asked him about it for the rest of his life he would die happy. “People have been asking for you it, you know? I wrote it for our first album, We Who Are About to Die, but it was cut for space reasons, and so we could end on “Salute,” which clinched the reference, you know?”

Charlotte nodded avidly.

Encouraged, he continued, “So we’ve been trying to squeeze it onto somewhere, and Octavia—er, Babydoll suggested it be the bonus track, and we all agreed.”

Charlotte nodded. “Well, it sounds great! Definitely well worth the wait. And I believe you wrote it for your mother, correct?”

Murphy’s heart started pounding loudly in his ears. “No,” he heard himself say. “I wrote it about my mom, but I wrote for me. My mother was terrible—honestly if it wasn’t for Mrs. Blake I doubt I would have survived high school. When I turned seventeen, she disappeared and I haven’t heard from her since. So “’07” was for me to excise those feelings. She made my life hard enough when she was in it, she has no right to make it harder now that she’s out of it.”

She looked at him, impressed, or maybe even proud, and he reached for another cupcake because he’d earned it.

He got back to the apartment before Bellamy that night, and, exhausted, fell asleep before he heard Bellamy return. He figured, as he drifted, that they would talk in the morning, when Bellamy didn’t feel so angry from fighting with Octavia, and he didn’t feel so exhausted from spilling his guts out to small bloggers.

The article was up the next day, and Murphy was glad that Charlotte had made him seem engaging and funny and had left out that he had eaten a total of seven cupcakes.

Talking about his mother had, in some ways, put things into perspective for him. He was actively hating Bellamy because he had committed himself to it, even though it made him miserable. If happiness was his end goal, then he should try to make that happen, instead. Which probably meant reconnecting with Bellamy, even just to see if he could.

He walked out into the main apartment area, still skimming through the article, and looked up, when Bellamy made a soft, surprised sound.

“Good morning,” Murphy offered, before grabbing a piece of toast off of Bellamy’s plate and stuffing it into his mouth.

Bellamy gaped at him, open mouthed and floundering. “Um. Hi.” Even fishlike and baffled, Bellamy still managed to seem aloof and available and charming, and in the morning light as a new and improved Murphy, he realized he was just as head over heels as he’d ever been.

“You sleep well?” he asked, and tried to play it off like they had this kind of conversation on the daily, like two grown ass men.

“To be honest, I’m not sure I’m awake,” Bellamy said and then winced. “Sorry, that was—sorry.”

Murphy shrugged. He almost certainly deserved that. “You ready for tonight?”

Tonight was the real start of their tour, their biggest show ever and at Madison Square Garden (the Madison Square Garden, was this even the real life), before their stateside tour began.

“Honestly?” Bellamy asked, rolling his shoulders. “I feel like I’m about to vibrate out of my skin.”

“Yeah,” Murphy agreed. “It’s great, right?” Murphy held his gaze for a long moment, and his body hummed. He felt energized, centered and a little horny.

Bellamy swallowed hard and turned away, which was good, because it meant he missed how much Murphy stared at his throat. “What are your plans for the day?”

Murphy would give the amount that Bellamy’s voice didn’t waver an E for Effort. “Not a whole lot. You?”

“Nothing.”

Murphy tried to smile openly. He wasn’t really an open kind of guy, but he didn’t want Bellamy to think this was a trick. “Wanna order pad thai and watch Pulp Fiction?” which really shouldn’t have been a tradition but absolutely was.

Bellamy looked stunned, open and vulnerable, and the shitty vindictive part of Murphy wanted to laugh in his face, but the rest of him wanted to cuddle down on the couch with Bellamy Blake, thai food, John Travolta, and Samuel L. Jackson.

“Yeah,” Bellamy said. “Yeah, okay.”

Pulp Fiction had lead to Kill Bill which had lead, inexplicably, to Charlie’s Angels, and when they left, together, for MSG, Murphy more at peace than he had felt in years.

Because they were all big name stars now, they each had their own dressing room, not just a green room. Maya had emailed them all very specific schedules of when she expected them to be sitting in their rooms waiting for her, and Murphy was cutting it close as he spotted his name on the door. Or well, Johnny, but he’d take it.

He had just reached for the handle when Bellamy said, “Wait.”

Murphy turned around, conscious that every ticking second brought him closer to Maya’s subdued and quiet (but still probably dangerous) wrath.

Bellamy fidgeted, which made Murphy nervous too, before pulling something from his pocket. “I know, I—we—there isn’t really—here,” he said, and passed Murphy a tarnished silver nut on a chain. “I’m not sure if we do this anymore, but it was from before, so. Have a good concert. It’s from that night, but I—I should go,” he said, and ran.

Murphy squeezed it tightly in his hand and walked into his dressing room.

Bellamy had, at some point, created a tradition for them, whereby he stole a piece of the venue they did the last show of a tour in, and gave it to Murphy at the start of the subsequent tour. It was a silly tradition that resulted in stupid pieces of memorabilia like the dumb necklace in his hand.

He put it on over his head and sat down to wait for Maya. He looked in the mirror. He was stupidly in love with Bellamy Blake, but maybe, just maybe, Bellamy Blake was stupidly in love with him, too. He began applying the first of many layers of eyeliner and smiled.

Maya came by to do his hair and rolled her eyes at the way he couldn’t stop smiling. Raven came by afterwards and was even less amused.

“This is a microphone,” she said, holding the microphone in front of his face. “Microphones are for singing into, they are not for dropping, me entiendes?”

“Mhmmm,” he said dreamily.

Raven took a deep breath, and then whacked him with the mic.

“Hey!” Murphy yelled indignantly. “You’re the one hitting people with them!”

Raven nodded. “Right. Because they are my mics. And I know what they can take, like a light smack against the empty head of a dumbass. And I also know what they can’t take, which is being flung into the ceiling by the same empty headed dumbass.”

“It was funny though, right?” he asked, smirking.

Raven rolled her eyes but he knew he had won.

Tonight was going to be amazing.

And it sort of was. Unlike the night before, it had gone down without a hitch. Murphy had remembered how to properly stalk and run and throw himself around the stage including not one, not two, but four backflips (take that Brendan and Josh), and had engaged in some really questionable grinding on two microphone stands and also Bellamy, to the loud approval of the audience. He was surprised to find he felt like Johnny again.

They reached the first encore way too soon, in Murphy’s opinion.

He sneered into the mic while his bandmates tuned and hydrated. “What’s good?” he asked the crowd, and they screeched. “I’m Johnny,” he said, and paused for the cheers. “And these are my Delinquents. On my right,” he pointed to Octavia, “the beautiful Babydoll on the bass. Next to her, the incomparable Sandman on guitar,” he pointed at Clarke, who gave him and obliging sting on her guitar. “My pal Thanatos on the drums, and of course, Twitch, who doesn’t even need an instrument to play you.”

He blew Bellamy an exaggerated kiss and the crowd shrieked again. Bellamy rolled his eyes, but it felt so much more like their normal patter. Murphy grinned again. “Thank you, New York, you’ve been great!” he said, and then sauntered off stage. The others followed, and they huddled off stage while the audience chanted, “Johnny, Johnny,” over and over.

“Hey,” Murphy said to Bellamy, pulling him aside physically.

“What’s up?” Bellamy’s eyes were glued to the spot where Murphy’s hand was attached to his arm.

Their stage manager was already prepping them to go back out, but Murphy refused to be rushed.

“Hey,” Murphy said again, and then cupped Bellamy’s face and pulled him into a kiss. He could hear Clarke’s gasp and Octavia’s cackle and Mbege’s obnoxiously loud wolf whistle, but he ignored them. This was his moment. “I love you,” he said, and then ran back on stage.

The crowd roared again, and Murphy had never been in front of so many people in his entire life. “We got a surprise for you tonight,” he said, as Lexa marched on stage, looking like she could kill. “Lexa from Wanheda is here to play for you lucky delinquents, so make some fucking noise!”

The crowd did, as crowds are known to, and they began their first encore. Lexa was an incredible bassist, and Murphy was definitely going to tap her for their next group project.

Their first two encore songs went better than he expected, and as he desperately chugged water before their last two songs, he turned to see Bellamy actually smoldering at him.

He hadn’t wanted to play “’07” in public but Octavia had insisted. In part, he assumed, because it was one of only three songs where she got to sing back up. It was still one of his best, but also personal and way too relevant. It may have been written about his mother, but he could have written the same song about Bellamy.

He sang the entire song without checking on Bellamy again, which he counted as a personal achievement. “’07” ended in a false cheery tone that he loved and he waited for the cheers to die down.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Clarke motioning for the other’s to put their instruments away, and he was as, always, extremely grateful for Clarke. Lexa switched out her electric bass for an acoustic one and her eyes twinkled as theirs met.

“We got another surprise for you lucky criminals!” The crowd exploded with cheers.

Lexa began playing the melody on her bass, which was way more affective than he thought it would be and he gripped the mic and began to sing. “Wise men say, only fools rush in,” and the audience cheered its approval.

His hands were shaking, Jesus, more than they had ever shook in his life. He wanted to turn around and look at Bellamy but he didn’t let himself. Bellamy had to know, he was smart and he knew Murphy, and wasn’t that the problem, anyway? Murphy had let himself be hurt and he knew he was setting himself up for the same exact fall. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me a hundred times and shame on love.

“But I can’t help falling in love with you.”

Lexa nodded at him, and he managed to take a real breath before he kept singing. The final time through, as he sang, “Take my hand, take my whole life, too,” he tilted his microphone out to the audience, who obligingly sang along.

He felt the hands on his shoulder spinning him before he could register it. His hand was still outstretched, the mic aimed at the crowd when Bellamy swooped down and kissed him again and he dropped the mic and Raven was absolutely going to murder him, but he could hardly care because Bellamy Blake was playing tonsil hockey with him in front of the biggest crowd they’d ever played for and he was pretty sure he wasn’t dreaming.

The crowd was deafening or Murphy’s heart was just pounding so loudly in his ears that when Bellamy pulled away, his equilibrium had gone to shit—and it had to be the noise because there was no way he just got weak in the knees.

“Don’t run away this time,” Murphy said against his mouth.

“Never again,” Bellamy said, and Murphy reluctantly detached himself.

Lexa had just finished playing and was smiling at him smugly, which both meant that Murphy had impeccable timing and that he and Bellamy had made out for possibly an embarrassingly long time.

“Good fucking night New York,” he hollered, and ran offstage, dragging Bellamy behind him.

“We should talk,” Murphy started, but Bellamy interrupted him.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you and I’m in love with you and I’ve spent the past five years hating myself for chasing you away.”

“Oh,” Murphy replied, and prided himself on his sharp wit. “Well in the case—” and let Bellamy pull him into a kiss again.

Behind him, he could hear Octavia say, probably to Clarke, “I’m beginning to think we made a huge mistake.

“I don’t know,” Lexa replied, managing to sound introspective and domineering all at once. “I think they’re cute.”

Epilogue

“So,” Charlotte asked, and smiled charmingly at the webcam. “What can you tell us about your new project?” Her set-up had improved in the last year, and instead of a cell phone and some cupcakes, she had a full a video portion of her website and a studio to match, although her hair was still in two little braids.

“Well,” Murphy said. “It’s massive. It’s a coalition between Skycrew, Wanheda, City of Light, The Delinquents and Lexa’s old band, Tree People. It’s me, the Blakes, Lexa and Clarke and their old bandmates Anya and Gustus. We have Mbege—Emori and Finn are going to be on selected tracks—and we have Lincoln, who is finally fighting fit and the kind of badass a band of this size really needs. We strings and a trumpet, more drummers than I personally know what to do with and so many guitarists that I literally can’t make a g-string joke without risk to my life. Oh—and we’re calling ourselves Polis.”

Charlotte’s excitement was very poorly hidden, but he liked that. It was nice that she had asked to interview him first, nice that he could finally do a press interview in his civvies. “I can’t wait to hear your new stuff! When does the album drop?”

Murphy grinned back. “It’s called Power to the People, and it’ll be out mid-march. But actually, we wanted to surprise you and your viewers with our first single.”

Charlotte’s disbelief was so genuine he almost laughed. It was replaced by excitement almost instantly. “I—thank you—this is such an I honor—I—”

“It’s called “Arcadia,” why don’t we take a listen?” he said, and nodded to Bellamy off camera, who had taken over her sound equipment, and let it play.

Afterwards Charlotte whispered to him, “I’m going to cut the part where I’m all googly-eyed and cry in the middle of your new single okay?” and Murphy nodded, because he was nothing if not accommodating.

She gathered herself and looked him in the eye. “Mr. Murphy, I know I shouldn’t, but I have to ask. How are things with you and Mr. Blake?”

He glanced at Bellamy off screen, who was smiling a reluctant, dopey smile, the way he always did when Murphy did interviews. “Things,” he said, still looking directly at Bellamy and feeling possibly contentment. “Things have never been better.”

#long post #murphamy #murphamy fanfic #the 100 fic #murphamy fic #implied clexa #jesus i'm so sorry #gabriel writes fic

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