#this is widely open to interpretation with other octavia's

[atmyhiraeth]

Gina A. Martin. / DOSSIER 

name: Gina Aylin Martin  dob: sep 26 orientation: bisexual / biromantic  affiliation: Ark -> Factory Station (former) , Earth (former) , Sanctum (current as of s7)  notable features: multiple stab scars around her ribs and midsection, 3rd degree burns on right side of body ( lower neck, shoulder, upper back, midback )  traits:           + Compassionate, Diplomatic, Practical, Resilient, Tactful           - Dissatisfied, Passive, Predictable, Smug, Worrier  notable connections: Bellamy Blake ( friends, former classmates, briefly dated ) , Octavia Blake ( love-hate, plotted with @headstrongblake​ and open to interpretation ) , Raven Reyes ( friends ) , Jacapo Sinclair ( friends )

BACKGROUND: 

Born in Factory Station, Gina longed to be a teacher from a young age. She studied to be a teacher on the Ark and worked part time as a research assistant on Go-Sci in the meantime to bring in income to her family. The Martins were not well off- as weren’t most families in Factory Station- but they were an affectionate family, and while Gina occasionally wanted for non-necessities, she didn’t lack love or attention, and in her younger years her apartment was often open to her friends to spend time in as her parents worked opposite shifts. 

Gina lost both her parents to the culling, when they volunteered in order to give her more time to hopefully reach Earth. With no family, recently certified to teach, quick to pick up little details, sharp without being disrespectful, and a determination to succeed, Gina was given a spot on Alpha Station when it came down and thus survived the landing and helped put together Camp Jaha / Arkadia. You’ll often find her on supply runs and in the mess hall where she keeps up with the running of the food and water storage while trying to talk the powers-that-be into setting up classes for the kids on Earth. 

MOUNT WEATHER EXPLOSION:

Stabbed three times in Mount Weather, the assassin misses any vital organs or blood vessels and once he’s gone Gina radios to Raven and Sinclair as canon. Suffering from blood loss and not thinking clearly, she tries to stumble toward the mess hall, realizing less than a minute is a dangerous amount of time to have to take out a grounder, and thinks she can warn the others. 

She’s by the door outside when she hears the explosion set and dives out the door and around the corner of it, hoping to avoid the worst of the blast, saving herself and leaving the Farm Station residents to die in the mountain. The instinctive choice still haunts her. She’s thrown with the blast, sustaining 3rd degree burns and falling unconscious into a coma that will last 14 days and she will wake up the day Lincoln is executed and Bellamy is taken to The Cave with the resistance. 

SEASON BREAKDOWN: 

SEASON 4 / BUNKER - Gina is part of the teams helping Raven, and is aware of the 6-month time frame and keeps that information to herself despite her and Raven's better judgement.

 Gina stays behind with Octavia when Bellamy and Clarke go looking for Raven. It's a tough choice, but she trusts Bellamy to not leave her friend behind, and she promises to watch out for Octavia in his absence.

Gina finally becomes a teacher in the bunker, helping organize the teachers of the clans to ensure that no one's culture is erased and all the children get equal teaching.

SEASON 5 - Gina is released with the remaining Bunker residents, but errs on the side of caution in both the war between Wonkru and Eligius and the brewing tensions between Wonkru and Spacekru. Gina’s main concern in this time are the children she’s spent the last 6 years teaching and getting to know, many of whom no longer have their parents through either initial sacrifice to enter the bunker or the fighting pit. 

SEASONS 6/7 - in progress.

[queenofchildren]

Are you taking prompts? It's totally cool if you're not, but if you are, that sex toy prompts list also had "✥ this sculpting class is the bane of my existence and for the final project (where i’m supposed to use a non-clay medium) i’m going to troll my teacher and make a bunch of silicone dildos. will you donate your dick to my cause?" And that just seems like such a Bellarke situation.

Alright, I finally did it! It turned out a lot less smutty than the prompt suggests though and a lot more fluffy, I hope that’s okay. Thank you for prompting this - and yes, I do take prompt, always! 

[also on ao3]

“You need what?“

Bellamy can’t believe what he’s hearing. To be honest, he’s not entirely sure he isn’t hallucinating this entire conversation, tired as he is. The last few weeks have been brutal, and he’s barely managed to make the deadline for a paper that could make or break his career. So when he comes home after finally sending it off and then having to teach three classes back-to-back and reassure a bunch of panicking freshmen that they’ll get an extension on their own work, it seems perfectly plausible that he is in fact imagining it when he opens the door to find his best friend standing outside and exclaiming:

“I need your dick.”

It doesn’t sound any less crazy the second time, and Bellamy closes his eyes and pinches his arm, hard. But when he opens them again, Clarke is still standing outside his door, wearing tight jeans and a light grey, v-necked shirt and looking at him pleadingly. Not a hallucination then, even if the combination of that expression and that request – more like a demand, really, because Clarke is bossy as hell – seems to come straight out of one of the more vivid dreams he’s been having recently.

The thought must be showing on his face, because Clarke gasps and goes beet red.

“Not like that!” She pushes past him, smelling like the perfume he and Octavia chipped in together to buy her for her last birthday, and Bellamy takes a deep breath and then immediately feels pathetic.

“Well, what else would you need it for?” He snaps, a little defensive now because it’s hard to keep his cool around Clarke when he’s at his best, but dealing with her when he’s exhausted and she’s making nonsensical demands is damn near impossible.

“My sculpting class,” Clarke huffs, as if that would be sufficient explanation, then spots what he’s sure is a less than intelligent look on his face and keeps going. “We’re supposed to do a piece in a non-clay medium for our final project, and I want to piss my professor off.”

“The smug sexist one?” Bellamy asks, because even when his head feels like it’s filled with cotton balls, he apparently still remembers all the times Clarke ranted about the professor teaching her “Introduction to Sculpture”-class.

“Exactly. You know how he’s always showing us his “phallic art pieces” that are just plaster casts of his dick and making everyone uncomfortable?”

Bellamy nods. That habit in particular is one Clarke has been fuming about all semester.

“Well, I figured I’d give him a taste of his own medicine and make him look at someone else’s dick for a change. Or perhaps a whole bunch of dicks. A bag of dicks, so to speak.” She giggles a little at her own joke, then grins deviously. “So obviously, it’s got to be a better dick than the one he keeps shoving in our faces.”

He tries to ignore the “better dick” thing in favour of focusing on the logistics of what, exactly, she’s planning.

“And when you say “look at”, you mean…?” Bellamy has trouble understanding her professors’ outlandish assignments most of the time, and this one is no exception.

“I mean I’m making a mold to produce a bunch of silicone dicks. Plaster casts are so 1970s anyway.” She scrunches her nose as she says it, as if everyone should share her opinion on plaster cast penises when he, personally, didn’t even know they were a thing, let alone one that existed way back in the seventies.

“So,” Clarke says with the finality of someone coming full circle, “I need your dick to make the mold.”

And Bellamy still isn’t entirely sure he understands, but he shakes his head just to be on the safe side.

“I don’t know…”

“Come onnn,“ Clarke whines, then probably realizes that acting like a petulant child won’t help her because whenever she does, he just reverts to stern professor mode. She changes tactics instead. “I don’t have that many penis-having friends. And yours is a really good one.“

The fact that he doesn’t let this obviously manipulative compliment sway him is definitely a testament to his superhuman will.

“How would you even know that?”

“We went skinny-dipping last summer, remember?”

Oh, he remembers. Because he was already half in love, or at the very least in lust, with Clarke, and trying not to stare at her when she shimmied out of her sundress and took off her bra was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.

Still!

“You looked? I thought we agreed not to look!”

“I may have peeked. Once. A tiny little bit. And don’t act like dudes don’t love shoving their dicks in everyone’s faces and waiting for them to be impressed. At least in your case, someone actually was.”

And now the blatant flattery does get to him after all, and suddenly, the fact that she not only snuck a look at his dick but actually managed to form a favourable opinion of it becomes the only thing about this conversation that matters. As if to prove her point about men and their obsessions, he can feel himself stirring already just from her casual praise, from wondering if she thought about him the way he thought about her after that night, if it just occurred to her now that she was apparently impressed by his penis (he still can’t believe this is an actual thing that came out of Clarke’s mouth), or if she’s been thinking about it since then, lying awake at night and touching herself to the memory like he has….

“And it won’t be difficult, or dangerous, if that’s what you’re scared of. I’ll be there the whole time, and I can even help you,” she falters, briefly but long enough for him to notice, “get ready, if necessary…”

It takes him a moment to understand what she means, then it’s his turn to blush furiously.

“Absolutely not! If I’m doing this, your hands won’t be anywhere near my dick, understood?”

Now Clarke actually looks a little hurt. But as much as he wants to help her teach a lesson to her sexist professor, he can’t have her directly involved. Not after the things he’s been imagining about her lately, or the little moments that actually happen between them, hugs and playful touches and soft kisses she presses to his cheek when she wants to cheer him up – much less sexual than his fantasies, but so much more powerful.

He can’t have her actually touching him like that if it doesn’t mean anything.

“We’ll need to maintain some boundaries. Otherwise it will be too weird. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll manage.”

He thinks.

And then suddenly, he doesn’t think at all anymore because Clarke is hanging off his neck and squeezing him tightly, her soft breasts squished between them and her hair in his face, and Bellamy closes his arms around her on instinct and buries his nose in her hair and allows himself to breathe her in, just for a moment. Then she’s already drawing back, still a little flushed but beaming at him brightly, and his heart aches with how much he loves seeing her like this.

“You’re the best.”

“In a lot of ways, apparently,” Bellamy grumbles, still not entirely convinced he won’t wake up any minute and thinking that maybe if he did, it would be for the best. It’s only sinking in now what he just agreed to, but already Bellamy can feel himself panicking at the thought that he may have just made a very grave mistake. If he wants to make it through this with his dignity and their friendship intact, he has to instal some kind of safety net.

“But I have conditions,” he blurts out, and Clarke looks at him questioningly, wide-eyed but still full of trust that he’ll keep his word, and this too is something he can never get enough of. “One, you can’t tell anyone who modelled for your project,” Clarke nods eagerly and he continues, “and two: no touching. You can do whatever you want with the mold, but I’m the only one handling the original.”

Clarke nods again, but it’s a little more hesitant this time, and there’s an odd look on her face that he can’t interpret.

“Whatever you want.”

Three days later, Bellamy is standing in his bathroom with his pants around his ankles, staring at a long plastic tube filled with green jelly and dealing with a problem that, frankly, he hasn’t had to deal with before: He can’t get it up.

Which is sort of instrumental here.

But he’s tried for several minutes now, and no matter what he does, no matter what he imagines, the response remains underwhelming. Perhaps his bathroom isn’t the most conducive place to his undertaking, glaringly bright with Saturday morning sun. Perhaps there’s the knowledge that the entire escapade will only end with his dick buried in cold, gooey molding gel and not… somewhere else. Or perhaps it’s the fact that he can hear Clarke pacing up and down the hallway on the other side of the door, anxiously waiting for his results, and it couldn’t be further from any of his fantasies that feature her equally impatient. (Which he is fully aware is pathetic, thank you very much.)

Ironically, those fantasies would be guaranteed to solve his current dilemma – but they’re also kind of the reason he’s in this mess in the first place: Because he can never say no to Clarke, no matter how ridiculous the idea. Because he’s head-over-heels in love with her and has no idea how she feels about him. And because that very fact makes him feel guilty just considering using her as wank material.

And just when he’s done contemplating this problem for about the fifth time, Clarke’s voice rings out from the other side of the door.

“Bellamy? Are you alright?”

“Yes, I am. Just give me a second, okay?”

Of course, she does no such thing.

“Is there a problem with the molding jelly?” Her clearly audible concern is not helping.

“Not with that, no,” he replies through gritted teeth, and her soft “Oh” tells him she finally understood.

There’s a moment of silence before she speaks again, softer this time.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help? I don’t mind…”

“No!” He yelps, but even as he protests, his cock hardens a little at the image that pops into his head, of her making good on her offer and sinking to her knees before him…

“Fine! If I’m that repulsive, I’ll just get my laptop so you can watch some porn.”

This time, he’s sure he didn’t imagine it: She sounds hurt, as if by rejecting the idea, he was rejecting her too.

And with that realisation comes the thought that maybe he’s been operating under flawed assumptions about the state of their relationship - and that perhaps, his dick and the stupid mold are the last things he should be worrying about right now.

With an irritated growl, he wipes off the baby oil he (rather uselessly) covered his hands in, yanks up his boxers and pants and pulls open the door to find Clarke right before him.

“I don’t find you repulsive,” he snarls, and she draws back a little. “That’s not the problem here at all. In fact that’s the opposite of my problem right now.”

Her mouth falls open in surprise, a small, pink “o” that lends itself perfectly to the kinds of thoughts swirling through his head - and that turns out to be the thing that finally pushes him over the edge and makes everything he’s been keeping so carefully bottled up come rushing out.

“Trust me, nothing would get me going faster than your hands on me. In fact, I’ve been dreaming about it for months and feeling like a complete asshole because you’re my friend, and this whole situation here,” he gestures frantically, at her and him and the open bathroom behind him and the shoerack behind her, as if they were in any way responsible for this mess, “is not helping.”

Clarke’s eyes are impossibly wide now, and bluer than they’ve ever been.

“You’ve been thinking about me?”

He can’t even meet her eyes anymore. What kind of person lusts after his friend and then yells at them about it? For fuck’s sake, it’s not her fault he apparently can’t control his thoughts around her.

But suddenly, there’s a hand on his chin, softly but irresistibly turning his head so he’s looking at her again.

“Bellamy?”

And her eyes, he realises now, aren’t just wide with surprise: there’s something else there too, something boundless and breathtaking – hope.

“You’ve been thinking about me?” she asks again, and this time, he nods.

“A lot. And I’m….” ‘sorry’, he wants to say, but never gets around to it.

Because Clarke flings herself at him and he just manages to close his arms around her and steady them both before they smash into the wall. Then she’s kissing him, hard and soft, demanding and coaxing all at the same time, and again he would be concerned about hallucinating if she didn’t feel so damn real in his arms. But her lips really are pressed softly against his, her hands sliding up from his shoulders into his hair to make him shiver in delight, her skin warm underneath the thin cotton of her dress.

And when she draws back to look at him, she’s smiling brighter than he’s ever seen before, and that’s real too, and all for him.

“I may have been thinking about you too.”

“You have?” He croaks out, voice breaking, because, well, he knows he’s attractive to plenty of women but he somehow never imagined that Clarke would be one of them. “Huh,” is his not very intelligent summary of the situation, and Clarke laughs.

“You’re such a dork,” Clarke says fondly, in the same teasing tone she must have used with him a million times before, and he likes how many things between them are still familiar even if there are suddenly other things that are definitely new.

“Says the woman who seduced me under the pretext of silicone-penis-making.”

Clarke sticks out her tongue at him.

“They’re real usable dildos, actually. I just didn’t want to call it that when I asked because I thought that would make you even less likely to agree.”

She has a point, he has to admit. But he’s not letting her know that, not when she’s running her hands down to his still unbuttoned jeans and palming him through his boxers, grinning smugly when she discovers that his earlier problem is very much not a problem anymore.

“Incidentally, that’s also why I almost died when you said I could do what I wanted with the mold… Since we’re sharing fantasies.”

It takes him a moment to understand what she means, and just when he does, he feels her hand slip down his boxers to close around him, and his eyes nearly bug out of his head.

“You were going to… keep one?”

She shrugs, innocently, but the way she’s licking her lips is anything but.

“I was thinking about it. Since I wasn’t going to be allowed to handle the original...”

Her smile is more self-congratulatory than ever, and he pulls her close by the back of her neck to kiss her, ostensibly to shut her up but really just because he can, apparently. (And also because the idea of her keeping a lifelike model of his dick to fuck herself with is making his head spin and this whole situation is once again feeling like a hallucination and he needs to make sure that it’s not.)

She draws back with a laugh, but it’s breathless and shaky and her pupils are blown wide and he can’t wait to turn the tables on her later. But Clarke is already slipping out of his grasp to push him back inside the bathroom and sink to her knees before him, and then her lips close around him hotly and Bellamy grips the sink behind him so hard there’s a chance he’ll rip it out of the wall.

It can’t take more than a few seconds for him to go from almost-there to painfully hard, no more effort necessary than a few teasing licks and hollow-cheeked sucks. When he opens his eyes to look down and sees her blonde head bobbing above him, eyes closed in bliss or concentration or both, Bellamy has to bury his hand in that glorious golden hair and gently put a stop to her enthusiastic movements.

“If you ever want to make that damn mold you’ve got to stop and do it now!”

She nods, a little dazed, and fuck if that’s not the hottest thing he’s ever seen: Clarke Griffin, flushed and tousled and, judging by the way she rubs her legs together, turned on from sucking him off.

He takes her arm to help her to her feet again, stealing a quick kiss before she turns to pick up the mold where it sits, forgotten, on top of the washing-machine.

She laughs again, the perfect sound to match his current mood, and gently pushes him away.

“Just let me get this done so we can continue, will you?”

Well, he very much does want to continue. So he doesn’t distract Clarke any further when she slides the tube with its jelly filling over his shaft, tries not to wince even though the substance feels cold and strange, and waits for her to count to ten (silently, but he watches as her lips move along, more entranced by the sight than by any movie).

She gently slips the tube off again and sets it aside, then wipes any excess jelly off with a warm washcloth, and as soon as she’s done, Bellamy picks her up and deposits her on the washing-machine before kissing her feverishly.

“Good, that’s done,” he murmurs into her skin and Clarke laughs again at his impatience but the sound ends in a breathy moan when he lets his lips ghost along her jaw to her neck to suck hotly on her pulse.

Standing between her legs, Bellamy slides his hands up her thighs, pushing up her dress in the process, and watches her shiver in response.

“You got your taste. It’s my turn now.”

Clarke doesn’t protest – and she doesn’t leave his apartment for the rest of the weekend either.

Two weeks later, they’re in their favourite bar, where all their friends are gathered around their usual table and hanging off of Clarke’s lips as she tells the story of the silicone dick installation – already a legend, it seems.

“I called it 'The Twelve Apostles’ and hinted heavily that there’s something different about Judas. Which means he now has to look at them very, very carefully to figure out how I used a dick to make a statement about Judas,” Clarke finishes the story of how she handed in her final assignment, and everyone bursts into laughter, Bellamy included, even if he gets distracted halfway through by Clarke’s pleased grin and the little flush on her cheeks.

When the riotous laughter slowly dies down, Maya wipes her eyes and asks:

“Where the hell did you even get the mold for the penises?”

Bellamy’s heart seems to stop – is this the moment all his friends will find out he dick-modelled for Clarke? Miller will never let him live it down.

But Clarke only shrugs. “I asked some guy on craigslist.”

“Craigslist?” Monty sounds worried. “Please tell me you didn’t go home with him to do the cast.”

“No, I made him do it right on campus. Of course I went home with him, Monty, there was a penis involved.”

Monty looks exasperatedly at her, then at Bellamy.

“That’s insanely unsafe. Back me up here, Bellamy – you’re the one who’s always lecturing us about being careful!”

But Bellamy is a little preoccupied, because Raven is still studying the photo of Clarke’s installation with a little frown on her face, and he’s sweating profusely at the thought that, any moment now, she could recognise him (even though that’s ridiculous because they only had sex once, and that was years ago).

He barely manages to chastise Clarke, somewhat lamely, about not going home with strangers. But Clarke, apparently determined for him not to survive this evening, shrugs once more, looks him dead in the eye, and says:

“It all worked out great though – I got my model for the installation, and I got to suck the most beautiful dick I’ve ever seen.”

Bellamy nearly chokes on the sip of beer he unwisely took just before she spoke, and for a moment he thinks the last thing he’ll ever hear is Jasper and Raven hollering in unison and his little sister calling for a high-five and congratulating Clarke on “finally getting some action again”.

But when he excuses himself by claiming an early class the next day, Clarke innocently proclaims that she too has to get up early and follows him out of the bar, waiting only until they’re out of sight of the window before she burrows into his side and he can put an arm around her shoulder to pull her close.

And really, Bellamy thinks as she smiles up at him and they start the short walk to his apartment, Clarke can give him as many heart attacks as she wants with her antics, as long as he gets that smile afterwards.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Chapter 42: Sometimes I Can’t See Myself

Rating: T Fandom: The 100 Pairing: Bellamy x Clarke Chapter: 42/68 Word Count: 1892 Words

Chapter Summary: The one where Clarke and Octavia move into an apartment.

Also on AO3; Start from the beginning on AO3

Bellamy and Clarke picked up the moving truck first thing in the morning. Even if she hadn’t brought him coffee, he still would have helped her, but she was insistent. He knew better than to get in the way of an insistent Clarke, so he accepted his coffee in peace.

They drove to his mom’s house in companionable silence and he could feel the energy buzzing off of her. It had been a long time since he had seen her so excited. It seemed that her impending “official” escape from under her mother’s roof almost made her into a morning person for the day.

Lincoln’s truck was already in the driveway, but Bellamy allowed himself to be silenced with a look from Clarke. Most of his sister’s boxes were already in the back. Miller, Wells, and Lincoln jumped up from their seats on the porch when Bellamy backed the truck into the driveway. The only things they had left to move were his sister’s bed, nightstands, and dresser.

Aurora cried as they carried the bed out of the house. Octavia hugged her, rubbing her back and trying to remind her that she really needed the space for her sewing equipment. The new apartment wasn’t that far away. Still, she took Bellamy off to the side and made him promise again that he would keep on eye on his sister. Like that wasn’t what he had been doing since O was born.

Their mother only delayed them a little, though. Monty and Jasper were waiting in their car out in front of Clarke’s house and Bellamy didn’t really blame them. He’d only met Abby once before. It would be a lie if he said he wasn’t reluctant to see her again.

There was a lot more to move at Clarke’s. Bellamy was impressed with what she and O found. The two of them had spent the summer searching Craigslist, yard sales, and thrift stores for furniture. Abby had volunteered the garage for storage as an olive branch. It had taken some convincing, but it was a good thing Clarke had accepted. They found almost everything they needed and in the end, the only gift they had been forced to accept from her mom had been a brand-new couch.

Bellamy probably wasn’t as careful as he could have been moving the bigger furniture. The couch Abby had purchased was a sectional and honestly way too big. After he may have pushed the couch forward a little too hard, Clarke reassigned him to help Monty and Jasper. He tried to play it off as a stumble, but Clarke obviously didn’t buy it. Neither did Miller, who took his place, but not before shooting him a look he could only interpret as, Dude, cool down.

The goodbye between Abby and Clarke was much more mellow. It was closer to tense. Abby hugged her tightly, but Clarke went rigid. Bellamy wondered for what felt like the hundredth time since Christmas what was going on there. The memory of her in his front yard, tears streaming down her face, still tore at his heart. Since that night, Clarke would only go to her mom’s house if someone went with her. Most of her packing had been done while Abby was at work or with friends.

After a few seconds, Clarke pushed away from her mother. Abby’s jaw tensed. She blinked back tears as she watched Clarke link arms with Wells and pulled him toward the moving truck. When she noticed Bellamy watching her, she nodded to him. He nodded and turned back to the truck where Wells and Clarke were speaking in hushed tones. They only spoke loud enough for him to hear once (“I get why you’re mad, but you have to let this go eventually.”) before Wells pulled her into a hug.

An impatient shout from Miller interrupted their moment, though, and Wells went running off toward the car. It left Bellamy and Clarke alone in the truck with a twenty-minute drive toward the college and her new apartment. Clarke leaned her head against the window for a long time, staring out at the sun and the clouds. Bellamy waited. He knew she would speak when it was time. At one point, he nudged her in the side with a water bottle and she accepted graciously, but she didn’t speak until they were about five minutes out.

“You need to be nicer to Lincoln.”

“What?” He would have been less surprised, but he had been so distracted thinking about how nice it was to have someone he could be so comfortable with.

“You need to stop whatever protective older brother thing you have going on. Lincoln isn’t going to bend over like Atom did. You’re not going to scare him away.”

Bellamy’s hands tightened on the wheel. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“Do you want to lose her for real this time?” Clarke’s voice was soft, but forceful. “Lincoln’s a good guy, Bellamy. He loves her. A lot. And if you took the time to get to know him, I think you two could actually be friends.”

He gritted his teeth and tried to think of a response. The problem was, she was right, but he didn’t want to think about someone a year older than him being in love with his baby sister. Especially not after they had only been officially dating for three months.

When he finally parked in front of her building, she turned to face him with her arms crossed. Their friends loudly ran to the back of the truck and slid the door open, but Clarke stayed put.

“What do you want me to say, Clarke?”

“That you’ll make an effort to be less of a dick?”

He rolled his eyes. “Thanks a lot.”

“You know it’s true.”

A knock on the window startled them both. Wells waved from the other side, his eyes wide. “You guys, I think we need you.”

With a sigh, Clarke and Bellamy hopped out of the truck. A semi-comical, yet highly dangerous scene greeted them. Monty and Jasper were trying to help a flustered Lincoln move their giant couch. Miller kept trying to jump in, but Jasper kept waving him away.

“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Lincoln said.

“Seriously! We got this!” Jasper adjusted his grip on the arm. On the arm.

Monty was at least trying to hold onto the base of the couch. “Are you sure, Jasper?”

“Yeah, come on! Just lift some more.”

Bellamy and Clarke shared a resigned look before he ran over and pushed them out of the way, hoisting up the bottom of the couch. Lincoln raised an eyebrow at him and Bellamy shrugged awkwardly under the weight. “Let’s go.” He winked at Clarke, who was watching him carefully as they walked by. “Could your mom have picked a bigger couch, Princess? I hope you know you’re hosting movie night for the rest of your life.”

Clarke knew she was lucky. It took less than two hours to get everything moved into the apartment, because she and O had awesome friends. The only one missing was Raven, but she had to pick between going to the ocean or helping them move and the ocean was the obvious choice. Raven had still been texting all day with apologies.

There was one box left in the back of truck. As she walked down the ramp, she found almost all of them gathered on the curb. “What are you guys doing?”

Wells gritted his teeth. Miller pulled his beanie down over his eyes. Harper shook her head and Jasper buried his head in his hands. Monty grimaced, but at least he was brave enough to speak. “Bellamy and Octavia started arguing again as soon as you left.”

She groaned and looked up at the sky. Bellamy had been doing such a good job working with Lincoln and she couldn’t believe he was blowing it. “How bad is it?”

“It’s not ‘Atom’ bad.”

“I doubt it’ll escalate too much,” Harper added.

“You should still probably go stop them,” Wells said.

“Fine, I’ve got it.” She glared at all of them. “Everyone can just hide down here.”

“Thanks!” They all called after her as she trudged up the stairs.

Lincoln hurried over to her when she walked in the door and took the box out of her hands. “I was about to come down for this.”

“It’s not heavy.” Clarke didn’t see anyone else in the apartment. “Where are they?”

He nodded toward the bedrooms and led her into the kitchen so he could set the box down on the counter. “They stopped yelling pretty fast.”

“So I don’t need to referee?”

“I doubt it.” He chuckled and leaned back against the counter. “Everyone else cleared out of here. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather hide with them outside?”

Of course, Octavia chose that moment to yell that she’d make her own damn choices and Bellamy didn’t need to interfere in her relationships anymore. “It’s unofficially my job to make sure they don’t kill each other.”

“How’d you end up with that job?”

Clarke shrugged. “Sometimes Bellamy’s actually willing to listen. It just takes the right approach. When O wouldn’t learn how, it kind of forced me to instead.”

Lincoln smiled. “O’s talked about their dads leaving. I think it would be hard to be in Bellamy’s position. Especially with Aurora asking so much of him. And, Octavia doesn’t help at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Octavia is….” He hesitated and looked around the corner at the still closed bedroom door. “She’s incredibly strong-willed. So is Bellamy. He can see that she’s grown up and doesn’t need him the way he’s used to being needed. Which is probably why he’s started projecting all that onto all of your friends, too. I hope we can be friends eventually, but I can be patient while he figures out I’d never hurt Octavia.”

Clarke grinned at him. He had figured Bellamy out in less than three interactions, which was way faster than she had and she prided herself on being able to read him. Before she could say anything, the bedroom door slammed open. She covered her mouth trying not to laugh at Lincoln’s shock as someone stomped out into the living room.

“Bell, wait!” Octavia shouted.

“O, I’m just going to give you a little space and return the moving truck for you guys. I’ll be back in like a half hour.”

“No, I just wanted to tell you that—”

“Hey. Hey. O, listen. I get it. You don’t need someone else to make your decisions, but I’m always going to want to protect you, okay?”

“Bell—”

“Let me finish. I talked to Clarke, and well… it’s obvious that Lincoln really cares about you. I mean, he’s put up with your shitty brother and shitty friends for an entire day. He helped you move a shit-ton of stuff into your new apartment. He’s even staying to help you guys unpack. Maybe he’s not as bad as I originally thought.”

Octavia squealed and Clarke poked her head out of the kitchen in time to see her throw her arms around his neck. “I knew you’d come around!”

“I wouldn’t say I’m around.” He squeezed Octavia. “But I’m closer to it.”

[madisonsclarks]

Beautiful Goodbye

Author’s Note: So I’ve heard from a few people on Twitter who wished the goodbye scene was longer/explained more about why Abby chose to take off the necklace with Jake’s ring. Since I agreed, I decided to write a short (well okay, close to 4,000-word) thing about it from Marcus’ perspective. So basically, this is my interpretation of how the goodbye scene could have gone down if the writers hadn’t chosen to cut away after the kiss.

Rating: M-ish? I’m TRASH and hyped up on The Scene, so of course there’s sexytimes.

It was dark in the tower, save for the flickering of a few candles aligned at the sides of the hallways: hardly enough to fend off the blackness of night. Striding through the empty corridors, Marcus mused on the iciness of the streets below. The danger that lurked in every shadow, the hatred hidden in glares and deciphered through threats. His chest ached, remembering the ambassador’s hatred of Skaikru, his refusal to choose diplomacy over violence. A stab of pain so intense that it might have been he, not the Ice King, who’d been shot.

How deftly Marcus had tried.

How decisively he’d failed.

There has to be another way, he’d thought, urging Roan to delay his battle in favor of negotiations. And he’d been so sure he could do it – so confident they would see his side, cherish life over bloodshed – that the ambassador’s refusal had knocked the breath from his lungs like a punch to the gut. Diplomacy, he knew, was far from an exact science. There were no guarantees. But to have failed now, at such a crucial time...he could hardly offer himself forgiveness when regret was the only emotion available.

Octavia had barely looked at him after that; instead of remaining with him, she’d chosen to seek out Indra. Since midday, he hadn’t so much as glimpsed her. Marcus thought he’d seen something pitying in her gaze – something that spoke more than her words ever could, something that implied she blamed grounder politics and not him for his shortcomings – and as small a gesture as it was, he appreciated it. If nothing else, at least she’d been willing to give peace a chance.

A soft breeze blew through an open door, and Marcus breathed out a soft sigh as the coolness of the night wind washed over him. As loath as he was to admit it, there was nothing more to be done. He would have to accept whatever came in the morning, swallow the bitterness of self-loathing that had burbled again inside him when the boy mentioned what the chip had forced him to do. Focusing on what came next was easy when hope was abundant, but in its absence his mind turned back to territory it had explored a thousand times before, terrain he and his people had mapped out so well.

It was a land of remorse.

Dwelling on the past did him little good, but in times like these it became harder to construct a dam strong enough to hold back their tide. A few more seconds, and he could have taken Bellamy’s life. Had ALIE’s hold over him not been broken in time, had his hands not relaxed and his composure returned, his story might have been an echo of the young grounder’s. Their hatred for Skaikru might have been pronounced, but the boy had no inclination of how alike they really were. The shame they shared.

If he’d told him what he’d been forced to do, a member of Skaikru equally torn by his actions under the influence, would it have helped? Could it have saved whatever fractured bond they might have with the grounders? More importantly, could he even trust his own voice to recite so sensitive a memory?

He could still feel it; the sickening agony of looking down and seeing the eldest Blake sibling on the dusty throne room floor, gasping for air, his face bruised and bloody. The look in Bellamy’s eyes shone forgiveness mixed with fatigue while his own blurred with tears, appalled with himself for what he’d been forced to do. What his hands and legs and arms had done without his consent, all because of a woman in a red dress and a computer chip.

He remembered something else then, drifting back to him through the listless fog of misery. A gun pointed to Abby’s head. She’s still here, he reminded himself. Bellamy’s still here, Clarke’s still here, Octavia’s still here. There is still hope.

And hope, as he’d come to know from the woman who held his heart in her hands, her smile, her sigh, was everything.

He opened the door to their room, hoping his gaze would land on her when he stepped inside. The sound of the knob turning startled him from his reverie and solidified a barricade between past and present, shoved thoughts of ALIE’s torture to the back of his mind. In the flickering candlelight he could barely distinguish her form, but he would have known her even in utter blackness.

“Abby,” he said, warmth returning to every inch of his skin. She was here, standing next to the window in their room, flowing chestnut hair stirred gently by the night wind. She was safe, illuminated faintly by white curtains and beams of moonlight. Even the darkness could not eclipse her beauty.

The tiny fires on the wicks of the candles provided just enough light to see by, and he wasted no time in making his way toward her, crossing the room in a few lengthy strides. The day’s tasks had separated them completely – she’d gone to Roan and then treated the City of Light’s wounded while he attempted his fruitless negotiations. It was hard to reconcile the gray, drab place in which they lived now with the bright, charming image of the dwelling it once had been: the place where she’d tried, so long ago, to give him the Chancellor’s Pin.

“Did Roan fight?” he asked, and her downcast gaze was all the answer he needed. His stomach sank, and that monster of regret stirred once again in his chest.

“It’s too soon,” she said, defeat resounding in each syllable.

It wouldn’t be too soon if you’d done your job, he thought, self-loathing seeping slowly back into his thoughts. He gave a deep, frustrated sigh.

“One simple task, and I’m failing,” he said. It was, he thought, its own kind of perverse déjà vu. On the Ark he’d had one simple task: to keep his people alive. What had he done instead? Led the Culling. Sacrificed 320 innocent lives. And here, he’d failed again: instead of bringing Roan peace and diplomacy, he’d delivered a battle the king had no chance of winning.

“No,” she said, firm, her gaze hardened steel. “You’ll figure it out.”

He wanted to smile, to believe in himself with the steadfastness with which she believed in him. Yet he sensed a deep exhaustion in her tone, a slight slump in her shoulders only he would be able to detect. Whatever he’d been through during the course of their day, it seemed she’d braved similar rough waters.

Her wide-eyed gaze was an apology, and he knew what she might say before her lips so much as parted. But there was something as intimate in assuming as asking, and if their words with each other were now to be limited, he wanted to hear as many of them as he could.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and he waited.

“There’s nothing more I can do for Roan,” she said as his eyes sought hers in the embrace of darkness, the realization dealing another blow to his sinking morale. After all, he’d known that tone. It was the one she used with patients before surgery, with Clarke before refusing her something she wanted, with Raven before telling her she couldn’t do something her heart was set upon.

Her brown gaze trailed down to the floor for a heartbeat, and he knew his assumption had been correct. What had happened, he wondered, to make her so uncertain of her value? She was a doctor, an ex-Chancellor, one of the most respected leaders in Arkadia. Certainly, there was a place for her in Roan’s Polis.

Then again, he couldn’t exactly count on himself to be objective where Abby Griffin was concerned.

To some extent Marcus thought it might be true: as talented a doctor as she was, she couldn’t heal the Ice King’s wounds. Time, rather than her skilled hand, would see to that. But these words weren’t hers. Left to her own devices, Marcus knew she would have stayed by Roan’s side until she could be confident of his full recovery – her mouth held words from the king himself, not from her. Abby Griffin never abandoned her patients.

Despite his own shortcomings, the ways he’d failed the Coalition’s leader that day, a selfish part of Marcus wished Roan had never spoken to her.

They’d had nine days in which they’d decided to push one crisis aside in favor of another, traded a nuclear apocalypse for grounder politics. But in those moments, in that first night when she’d chosen his arms instead of the multitude of abandoned guest rooms that could have kept her more than comfortable, he knew this was about more than just democracy and healing. This was about building something in spite of the destruction raining down on them. This was about finding the light in each other when the world was bleaker than ever. This was about continuing where “may we meet again” and “we will” had left off, adding chapters to their story when the universe threatened to burn the whole damn book.

She’d kissed him as she guided him back against the mattress, her lips a tantalizing mixture of softness and decadence and urgency, the threat of six months etched into the insistent pressure of her mouth on his skin. And although they’d known such pleasures were fleeting, the emotions behind them were stable, strong. Distance could not soften them. Miles could not make them weak. So Marcus said the only thing he could say, the thing she needed to hear. The sentence that was best for their people, though it might deal a deathblow to his heart to say it.

“You need to go back to Arkadia,” he said, the words tasting like poison, immobilizing, bitter. He was thankful it was only nine words: much more than that, he wouldn’t have been able to handle. “To Clarke.”

The irony hidden in the fact that his goodbye spanned the length of days they’d spent together was not lost on him. How was it possible, he wondered, for his tongue to disregard his racing heart so fervently?

She nodded, swallowed hard, battling with the same emotions that surged through him. Sadness. Regret. Yearning. Hope. Holding her gaze only intensified his agony, and he allowed himself to look away. But his heart lurched as his glance locked on her chest – or rather, the empty expanse of skin where a ring had rested for over a year.

Thoughts spiraling, swirling from one extreme to another, he fumbled with words until he latched onto something that made sense.

“Your necklace,” he said, reaching forward to brush the soft skin where he once would have felt metal, a fundamental part of him unwilling to accept its absence until his thumb could confirm the image. He remembered fastening the clasp this morning, insisting that Jake was a part of her, brushing the soft strands of her dark hair aside to secure that memory – an emblem of a man better than he could ever hope to be – in place.

Her hesitation this morning hadn’t gone unnoticed, but he thought his urging might have convinced her of its necessity. As long as he held her, he would ensure there was space in her heart for Jake Griffin. Jake had been a man of honor, a man whose sacrifice had saved lives, a man worthy of Abby in every way. He was her first love, part of her soul, as integral to her being as the blood that flowed through her veins. He had given her years of happiness, a daughter whom she loved with all her strength, his sacrifice fueling her to keep fighting even after Jaha ordered him to be floated and Clarke locked away.

And what had he, Marcus Kane, given her over so lengthy a time span? For the majority of it, nothing but headaches and spiteful, explosive arguments. It seemed fundamentally wrong, he thought, that she should remove a symbol of a man so powerful, a man whose influence echoed in her every word.

Where had it gone? Why had she taken it off? And why had seeing the absence of that familiar silver circle from around her neck stolen every wisp of breath from his lungs, left him with a burning ache?

“Marcus,” she whispered, moving closer, the heat from her skin warming him as the night air cooled around them. Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke, wavering just enough to show the forethought she’d given her choice. “I…I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Since before we stayed here.”

Lost for words and fighting a lump in his throat, he could only nod.

“I love Jake. I’ll always love him,” she said, pausing to take a deep breath. She appeared equal parts emotional and nervous, shrinking against the flowing white curtains, far removed from the brazen confidence with which he so closely associated her. “But I don’t need a necklace to remember him. He’s always with me, whether I wear a ring or not. I’m going to give them to Clarke when I get back.”

Her words sounded faint, far away, as though she were speaking to him from the opposite end of a tunnel instead of from a few inches away.

“And when I made the choice to wear his ring, I wasn’t the woman I am now,” she said, reaching out to enclose his hands in her own. “When I first put on that necklace, I never thought I’d love again. That when Jake died, that part of me might have died with him. And I was okay with it.”

She looked at him, her eyes chocolate brown in the orange candlelight, full of tears and hope and adoration.

Her voice broke.

“You changed that.”

Without thinking he pulled her close, relishing the feeling of having her in his arms. It was more than he could accept, the belief that he’d opened her heart to romantic love again, especially considering their history. A part of him might always reject that notion, but for now – in this moment, with her head resting in the crook of his neck and her warm breath igniting the depth of his own emotions – he could push away his petty doubts.

“Abby, I –“ he started, but she wasn’t finished. Shifting in his arms she leaned away enough to stare directly into his eyes, each of them baring their souls in the intimacy of their gaze.

“I love you, Marcus,” she said, stroking the side of his face, running her fingers through his hair and drifting them through his beard. “Just as much as I loved him. And I’m ready for whatever comes next.”

And although she hadn’t said it, it was clear: she loved him enough to let go of that symbol of her past, the absence of that ring symbolizing how he’d opened her heart to love once more. Lost for words, half-faint with the depth of her confession and the petrifying knowledge she’d be gone tomorrow, he did the only thing his feeble brain could tell him to do.

He leaned in and kissed her.

Nine days of savoring each other had robbed the contact of all its awkwardness, given them boldness and stolen away timidity. So instead of going slowly, savoring the moment when moments were harder and harder to come by in a world determined to wipe them out, Marcus wrapped an arm around her and pulled her flush against him. She gave a tiny moan of pleasure – a sound to which he’d grown achingly, adoringly addicted – and he opened to her at the warmth of her pink tongue tracing his lower lip.

Her hands drifted to the hem of his jacket, asking a question he answered by helping her pull the garment over his shoulders and yanking it off. They stumbled over toward their bed, shedding layers along the way, leaving shirts and jackets and pants in jumbled piles to sort through when morning came. For now they had precious few hours to spend with each other before fate guided them apart again, and he intended to savor every minute until she left for Arkadia.

She slid under the covers first, smiling, eyes sparkling brighter than the stars that shone overhead. And he followed, lowering himself on top of her with a soft exhale, the dull pain in his wrists not enough to overpower the sheer sensation of being with her like this. The electricity of skin on skin, surging power when his lips moved to her neck (he’d learned, over the past nine days, that the friction of his beard against her pulse point drove her crazy), the overwhelming need to give her everything he had. Right now nothing existed but the two of them, fitting together like matched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle underneath the soft furs.

Abby guided his mouth to hers as soon as he settled between her legs, wasting no time in re-establishing their contact. She tasted sweet despite the bitterness of the moment, like the last piece of chocolate on the Ark, the sound of her heartbeat reminding him of what he wouldn’t have next to him the next time he lay in this bed. But this craving, this incessant hunger, this beast that roared to life when she pulled him down to her with her fingers in his hair…it sometimes felt as though it could never be sated. And now that they’d named it, given it power over them as he let out a groan of pleasure against her lips, he felt himself succumbing to its power and letting all thoughts of the future slip away.

He groaned when, after several minutes of hungry kisses and moans and sighs, she reached down and guided him inside of her. No matter how many times they did this – no matter how well they mapped out each other’s bodies with their lips, unified in any and every possible way – Marcus thought he’d never get used to the sensation of being inside her, of looking down and seeing her pupils blown wide with desire, of knowing the same adoration-laden pleasure coursed through her as it did him.

They’d had each other quite a few times since that first night when she wandered into his room, and yet every time felt like the first, better than the last. Each time taught them something new about each other, deepened their rapidly-expanding intimacy.

He tried to go slowly, to prolong this for her for as long as he could. There was a decent chance this would be their last time until Polis was done with him, until he could return to Arkadia and find his way back to her – and his heart, which she held in her hands – again.

But the sounds she made – quiet, desperate little cries buried into his shoulder as he withdrew from her almost completely and slid into her again, her back arching as her breathing grew uneven – made it damningly hard to keep a steady rhythm. He could barely choke back his own grunts and groans of pleasure as her walls closed around him, the world around him blurring as he buried his mouth in the hollow of her throat, making his way slowly toward her pulse point. It was as though he was fire and she was gasoline, fueling him into higher and higher ecstasy with each passing second.

“Marcus,” she panted, his name a pleasure-soaked moan, murmured in time with the faint thunking sound of the headboard against the wall. “Oh God, Marcus.”

He knew what she wanted, staring deep into her soft brown eyes, realizing somewhere in a tiny recess of his mind not flooded by pleasure that those eyes were his home. That her arms held him steadier than any four walls and a roof, that his security could never be found behind a locked door.

Leaning down, slipping a hand between their undulating bodies to find the cluster of nerves at her aching, throbbing clit, he closed his eyes and kissed her (less precisely, now, addled with sensation and near-release) and stroked her until her muffled cries molded to his name and grew silent. He spilled over inside her only seconds later, the sound of her sighs and the friction of her bringing him to the edge and pushing him over.

“Oh, Abby,” he gave a strangled groan, lost in a dream from which he never wanted to awaken.

They collapsed, boneless and weightless, holding each other close against the slowly-lightening night. Abby leaned in and pressed her mouth to his again, her fingers running through his beard, her smile evident in the shape of her lips. And for a while they stayed in that euphoric haze, building a bubble of bliss through which no tragedy could touch them.

But eventually, as dreams are wont to do, it ended.

Marcus slid out of her and leaned away, propping himself up on his elbow to keep pressure off his wrist. Abby stared at him for a moment, kiss-swollen lips still smiling, hair unkempt and splayed out in all directions against the fur-covered pillow. His chest hurt as he realized he’d never before seen a woman so achingly beautiful, so pure, so fiery and ferocious.

A woman so determinedly devoted to him.

His gaze drifted to the empty stretch of skin at her chest where a ring used to lay, and he felt a too-familiar disbelief wash over him. But for now, lying in bed with her, he knew that one day he could believe himself worthy of that void where silver had once shone. One day, he would believe himself enough to merit Abby Griffin’s determination to move on into the future while continuing to hold on to her past.  

“I love you,” he said, throat tight with the utter perfection of her, and her smile widened. And in that moment he knew no distance could truly separate them. No number of miles could pry her from his thoughts, fade his memories, loosen the ironclad grip she had on his heart.

No matter where she was, he would always belong to her.