#clurphy

1. Murphy and Clarke met at the ark and got arrested at the same time (Clarke found the truth about her mother early on and lost control). They don't give Clarke solitary confinement but instead she's meant to go to "class" with the other delinquents. Murphy hates how morally correct she is, hates how Pike was selected to "punish" them for their actions, hates that she genuinely cares when anyone is punished. At the same time she hangs on to the hope of changing at least one of the delinquents. So when she sees that Murphy is only making everything worse for everybody else she chooses him as her target (rather a challenge).

2. Nurse!Clarke has been having the worst work shifts ever and can't be anything other than done. So when her friend Octavia calls her for a "crazy night" at her house she's unable to reject the offer. The night goes pretty smoothly until Octavia's brother, Bellamy, arrives home with his group of friends. They're noisy and seem to be stuck in their teenage years but the worst of them is definitely Murphy. He gets real close to Clarke at one point, taking out a ouija board off his bag.

He's clearly drunk and his breath stinks "Do you have the guts to play with this, princess, or do you only like to when it's a person's life?"

Murphy knows better too, which is why he's just as shocked as the rest of camp would be, if they only knew, that every other night he and Clarke trade off sneaking into each other's tents. Without discussion, they agreed that their arrangement should remain a secret. Something unspoken perhaps because it's shameful, perhaps because it's too ill-defined and ill-formed. What's he supposed to say anyway? That Clarke's his girlfriend? Not likely. Attaching labels to it, squashing it down into words and sentences, confessions, rumors, announcements or news, all that would tip over the delicate balance they've created. Just like they're baking a soufflé, they have to be quiet. Too much noise would send the whole thing falling down.

Clarke would probably find the soufflé metaphor funny, because, like most people, she doesn't know that the cook books in the Ark library database were his favorites. She'd laugh if he tried to call himself a chef. He's a lackey. A thug. He's in with the in-crowd because Bellamy saw something useful in him, something dead about the eyes that screamed out enforcer—or maybe he just knows from his little brat of a sister that Murphy was a lifer, unaccustomed to normal society, ready to follow strength and show it loyalty.

Most of that is true.

So if Clarke sees those traits in him and no others, he can't blame her, and if he keeps the quiet, soft, vulnerable parts of him hidden, whatever they are, it's for the same reason he put up his tough guy persona every day for four and a half long years up in the box: to ward off the dread, to get the girl.

A part of him says that Clarke wouldn't laugh, that she'd get real quiet and thoughtful and maybe brush his hair out of his eyes. He's been watching her during the day. She bends and softens at vulnerabilities; she knows she'll never get anything out of people who are kicked when they're already down. But then maybe he just likes the fantasy of it: a beautiful woman with power who tells him his dreams aren't dumb, who speaks with authority in the dark and silence just as she does out there in the chaos of daylight in the camp.

How he got such a girl he still doesn't entirely know. He'd cut himself badly working on one of the new structures, the wooden hutch where they hope to cure their meat. She was alone in the corner of the Dropship they've curtained off as Medical, and as she wiped the blood away and he hissed low curses and winced at the pain, she started talking to distract him, and he found out she was calm and clear-headed and brave in a crisis. That she looked beautiful as she pressed antiseptic to his skin, and that she could make him laugh when he didn't think he could. What she saw in him in those moments, he has no idea. That's just another secret, too deeply buried to disturb. But she held his hands a long time, even after he was all bandaged up and ready to go. She was kneeling on the floor in front of him, strands of hair pasted to her forehead with sweat.

He thought she'd probably banish him for kissing her but it seemed a fair risk, for that one reckless moment of time before he leaned in. Instead, she grabbed fistfuls of his hair and bit his lip.

In the perfect silence of the hour before the changing of the guard, that night, she crept across the dirt and deadened, yellow grass and scraped her nails like ghost-sounds down the nylon side of his tent. He let her in.

Maybe he's just around, a body, an opportunity—something she missed in her months of isolation, an outlet to her frustrations and her fatigue and her fears. Except she could have any damn person in camp if she wanted them. Maybe she's with him because she knows he won't brag. Ms. Griffin the Council Member's daughter in his bed.

Sometimes afterward they lie together in the quiet, listening to the wind in the trees, the footsteps of the night watch on patrol. Low, skittering forest sounds that he can't name. Tree leaves swept off their branches and thrown against the tent. Clarke climbs half on top of him and presses her ear to his heart and he gets his fingers all tangled up in her hair. They talk about the Skybox and he tells her about the arrogant and frightened young men. Then other stories. The long years, the distortion of time, the rituals—visiting day, birthdays, holidays—the new people coming in and the old going out. Less often, they talk about the camp and its progress. Sometimes she tells him about her parents and her friends back on the Ark.

She holds back a lot more than he does. He hears the hesitation in her voice, the care she puts into her words.

But it's all right.