#emorireyes

He doesn’t answer. He looks down at the napkin spread over his lap. When Raven squints, she sees directions printed in a careful hand. It’s not Murphy’s writing, and it’s not anyone else’s she recognizes.

“Where’s this taking us?”

He doesn’t answer. She can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s gone somewhere else in his head. She leans back in the passenger seat and waits.

She’s beautiful with a split lip and bloody nose. “Damn it, John, you couldn’t have waited another second?”

Murphy passes her a rag for her mouth. “You would’ve gotten killed!”

“I had it handled,” she says with a bloody grin. “You were just scared.”

He shrugs. “Maybe so.”

She smiles again, her soft eyes sharp against the rest of her vicious visage. “Come on.” She grabs his hand. “Let’s go.”

She pulls him along through a maze of alleyways, their pavement shiny from the spring rain, and to the overpass where cars race below at a dizzying speed.

He sits beside her and passes her the bottle of whiskey he’d swiped from the bar during Emori’s first fight. “I knew you loved me,” she crows.

“The alcohol’s what clued you in?” he asks, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. Back there, in the gaps between the skyscrapers, she has to hate him, and he has to avoid her. Here, away from the loud city, he can love her, and she can chose him. It’s nice, consequences be damned.

“That, among other things.” She kisses him. He tastes blood and sweat, salt and tears. When he opens his mouth to her, she lets out a low sound that sends shivers down his spine.

“Love you, John,” she murmurs against his lips. She pulls away and grins, taking a swig straight from the bottle, then passing it to him.

“Um, where the hell are we?” Raven asks, slamming the car door shut and jogging to Murphy’s side. He’s standing in front of an old brick wall with a brown metal security door and a single flickering light that doesn’t do much to ward off the shadows.

“Stay here,” he says, yanking on the handle until the door flails open with a scream of protest and slams against the wall, so hard Raven’s shocked the handle doesn’t dent the brick.

She counts to 20, then follows him. She’s not sure if she’s truly walking silently, or if he’s just too preoccupied to hear her, but he never once notices her presence as she weaves her way around dusty chairs and trash-ridden tables. He’s standing on a low, uneven stage, his feet leaving prints in the dust.

They lock eyes from across the room. He says nothing, only hops down after a long moment and pushes past her, back through the door and the cold back corridor.

They drive another 50 miles or so, weaving through cramped city streets that spit them out onto the highway. He pulls over at a rest stop, which is really nothing more than a collection of cramped, deteriorating brick buildings: two bathrooms, a storage shed and something that might have been a picnic shelter once, before the weeds took over.

He walks to the edge of the woods, and Raven follows, mostly because she knows it might annoy Murphy out of his silence, but also because she doesn’t quite trust that he knows what he’s doing. The memory of him sitting on the floor in front of his mother’s worn green couch with a gun against his chin and tears in his eyes is still too fresh for her taste.

He hadn’t spoken to her then, either.

“Murphy.” Her voice is loud against a backdrop of cicada screams and road noise filtering in through the trees. “J. What are we doing here?”

He doesn’t answer. Raven contemplates putting her foot down and refusing to budge an inch until he gives her some answers, but she knows he won’t hesitate to leave her behind. Plus, the scientist in her is curious about why they’re on this spontaneous adventure when Murphy hates both spontaneity and adventure; he once told Raven he needed at least 48 hours in advance to change his plans, even if his plans were to do nothing.

He tilts his head back and looks up at the sky. There are no stars, but Raven can see the moon.

“There should be more,” Murphy murmurs. “More than this.”

“What?”

He shakes his head. When he looks down, Raven can see tears in his eyes. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

It hasn’t occurred to Raven to be worried about her best friend, but as she watches his slim hands white-knuckle the wheel of his shitty car, she starts to be concerned. The tears never fall, but they’re there, resting on the edge of his lashes.

And then, she realizes. Or rather, she remembers. The memory feels like a faded photograph, blurry around the edges and fuzzy everywhere else, but she can see enough to know what Murphy’s thinking of.

“This is about her, isn’t it?” she asks quietly.

Murphy sniffs, nods. “About time you figured it out.”

She ignores the derisive tone of his voice. “J, it’s been three years.”

“I know,” he snaps. “But I can’t… I can’t let it go.”

“Murphy.”

He shakes his head. A tear spills over. “Don’t. Please. Just don’t.”

Raven shuts up and lets him drive.

2. He was not dead yet, not exactly— parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting for something to happen, something grand, but it isn’t always about me, he keeps saying, though he’s talking about the only heart he knows— He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place— well then, game over.

Raven falls asleep somewhere between midnight and dawn. Murphy envies her, but he can’t sleep. He keeps thinking about her, about her voice and the sound of her laugh and the soft way she sighed when he held her after a nightmare.

That’s why he’s doing this. He doesn’t know what to expect - a grave or a living girl - but he knows there’s a high chance she won’t be glad to see him.

He doesn’t blame her.

“Why are we doing this?” she asks, leaning against the doorway, watching him get dressed. “Why are we fighting?”

He doesn’t face her, doesn’t answer. He focuses on straightening his collar instead. Damn this new job that makes him care about his appearance. But it’s the price he pays for going straight, the price he pays for being able to be seen with the woman he loves.

“John.” Her voice is soft. When he turns to look at her, he sees her twisting the ring that hangs from a chain around her neck. His hand subconsciously moves to the matching one on his left hand. “John, what are we doing?”

He sighs. “Emori…”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I love you, but I won’t let you wall yourself off from me like this.” She holds up the ring. “How can we be a team when you won’t tell me what’s going on? How can we work together when you put a wedge between us.”

He doesn’t have an answer. What else is new.

She steps closer and folds down his collar with clumsy hands. He feels the heat radiating off her. He hates it, but it forces him to stand still.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asks when she moves back. He wants to kiss her on the forehead, wants to apologize for all the hateful things he said last night - things he should have known better than to ever let leave his mouth.

She nods. A glimmer of mischief brightens her eyes. Her cheeks, ruddy from days spent working in the hot summer sun, stretch as she smiles. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He kisses her quickly, a peck on the lips, and ignores her sound of protest when he doesn’t deepen it. She doesn’t follow him to the door.

He’s tried to forget her. It hasn’t worked, and he hates himself for it because he could pull his heart from his chest, but he can’t make himself remove the ring from his finger.

The sun breaks over the horizon, and with it comes the city, sprawling out in the distance, bright and lonely in the wide expanse of sky. Murphy pulls over on the side of the road at the top of a hill and watches the sun coming up. When Raven wakes up, muttering unintelligibly and squinting into the sun, he pretends her dark head on his shoulder belongs to someone else.

They stop at another rest stop so he can wash up and Raven can get some shitty vending machine coffee for the two of them. She gives him a ‘where-next?’ look that he doesn’t acknowledge, choosing instead to peel out onto the highway and roar toward the skyscrapers.

He wonders if she still has her warehouse job. He wonders if Anya makes her talk about her feelings or if she’s spent the past few years alone. He even dares to consider that she’s thrown her ring away.

Raven turns on the radio. He figured she would, figured she’d be bored of the silence, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. Twice, he shuts it off. Three times, she switches it back on.

This time, they don’t stop at the city. The directions scrawled on an old napkin don’t tell him to slow down, so he doesn’t.

“Murphy,” Raven starts as they swerve past the freeway exit and head down an old dirt road. “Do you know where you’re going?”

They pass a graveyard. He knows where they are now. His stomach knots in dread. There are tears gathering in his eyes and at the back of his throat. He doesn’t pay them any mind. He can’t afford to.

“Yep,” he says shortly. Raven raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. She does, however, snatch his direction-filled napkin from his lap, peering at it in curiosity and confusion. “Where is this taking you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m gonna be buried here someday,” she tells him nonchalantly, balancing on the fence post while he hikes himself up to sit on the top rail. “This is where people go when no one wants them.”

“Don’t think like that,” he says. She stands on one foot, then the other. Her hair whips around her face and sticks to her chapped lips.

Damn, she’s beautiful, he thinks.

“You’d bury me somewhere nice,” she continues, “but we both know you’ll die first.”

“Oh?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow at her.

“Between your fucked-up liver and your hatred of food, I’m hedging my bets on that.”

Murphy snorts. She grins that beautiful smile he’s come to know as well as his and plops down beside him.

“We’re not going to live much longer, are we?” she asks. She sounds mournful, and Murphy doesn’t blame her. Between her dead brother and his shitty mother, it’s a wonder they’ve made it this far. But it comes at a cost, like all things do; she lost her agency, and he lost his body. But at least they found each other.

He passes a knuckle over the scar under her eye. “I’ll live as long as you tell me to.”

“I want you to live forever,” she retorts, leaning into his touch.

“As long as it’s with you.”

She grimaces. “Sap.”

He smiles, leans forward to kiss her. She tastes like the dirt road and a lost bar fight. “Love you.”

She leans her forehead against his shoulder. “Love you too.”

He barely manages to pull over before he’s flinging the door open and dry heaving onto the dirt, the memory twisting his gut into painful knots.

“J!” Raven reaches for him, then pulls back. “Murphy, what is it?”

He doesn’t realize he’s sobbing until he tries to speak. “I need her,” he chokes out. “Raven, I fucked everything up. I fucked it up so long ago, what if-”

“Hey, shhh,” Raven tries to soothe him, but it’s clear she doesn’t know what to do in the face of his sudden outburst of emotion.

He gasps himself to some state of calm, and then Raven speaks again. “Is that what we’re doing? Finding her?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He holds up the near-ruined napkin. “This was shoved in my cup holder last week. I don’t know whose writing it is, but these are all places she and I went.”

Raven frowns. He tries to focus on her clever eyes, but he fails. They’re the wrong shade of brown anyway. “You do realize how insane this is, right? That someone broke into your car to leave you this, and now you’re actually following the directions.”

He nods. “I don’t care.” He wipes his mouth and eyes with the back of his hand and closes the door. “I need to know what’s at the end.”

Raven sighs. Murphy entertains the irrational fear that she’s going to leave him, which is absurd since they’re hundreds of miles away from home. He’s been alive for nearly twenty-five years, and he’s been terrified of being alone for more than half of them. The closest he’s ever felt to safe is this.

“Okay,” Raven says. Murphy shuts the door. “Let’s go.”

3. You wonder what he’s thinking when he shivers like that. What can you tell me, what could you possibly tell me? Sure, it’s good to feel things, and if it hurts, we’re doing it to ourselves, or so the saying goes, but there should be a different music here. There should be just one safe place in the world, I mean this world. People get hurt here. People fall down and stay down and I don’t like the way the song goes. You, the moon. You, the road. You, the little flowers by the side of the road. You keep singing along to that song I hate. Stop singing.

There was a time when Emori thought John’s apartment was the only safe place in the world for her.

She plays with the chain around her neck and thinks about him, about his eyes and deft fingers and the way he smiled at her after a fight. She remembers the relief on his face when it was her coming into the bedroom and not someone else. She remembers the joy on his face in the courthouse, outside the church.

“You up?” Anya yells from outside the door, interrupting her thoughts.

“Yeah!” Emori shouts back. After a moment, she opens the door. Anya stands there, hands on her hips. “What? I’m not late.”

Anya raises an eyebrow at her tone but says nothing. She leaves, and Emori watches her go, standing in the doorway to her room, shivering against the rough wood. There’s a restless energy under her skin that won’t stop buzzing. She wants to rip it all to shreds, starting with her bad hand and working up, up, up until it all just-

Stops.

“What now, John?” she snaps. The nausea makes her angry. The fear makes her lightheaded. “What’s your fucking problem?”

He stands up, hands balled into fists. She doesn’t flinch - she knows he won’t hit her - but he’s ruined nonetheless. His face is twisted into the all-too-familiar look of self-hatred.

“You can’t even tell me why,” she whispers. “You can’t even tell me why,” she says.

He runs a hand through his hair. It sticks up at all angles. She tries not to find it cute. “Damn it, Emori-”

“No!” she shouts. “You can’t throw this away just because you’re scared! You picked me! You chose me! You signed a certificate and made a promise that you wouldn’t leave me! So don’t fucking lie to me and say that you want to be done!”

“I didn’t say that!”

She laughs, wrapping her arms around her torso. Her stomach shivers. “You’re sure acting like it.”

John stares at her. “Is that what you think?”

“This is what you always do,” she points out. “You cut and run when you’re afraid of what you’ll do, of losing this. I’m changing, John. We’re changing. And you need to catch up or be left behind.”

He makes his choice. She tries not to regret it when he moves out. She tries to hold firm when he moves back in, and she moves in with Raven. She nearly forgets when Raven moves out and Anya moves in, but it comes roaring back every so often and nearly chokes her every day.

There’s a knock at the door, a scuffle of feet on the porch that Emori can hear clearly thanks to the open windows throughout the house. Her heart leaps into her throat. She feels ink and a coarse napkin under her hands. She tastes blood and whiskey and kisses.

“Emori?” Anya shouts upstairs. Her voice is full of questions. “There’s someone here for you.”

She’s halfway down the stairs before Anya can finish saying her name.

His name dies on her lips the moment she sees him. He looks like hell, looks like thousands of miles of dirt road, hangovers and nights crying into a shitty mattress on a dirty apartment floor.

“Emori?”

She told herself if he ever came, she’d make him apologize - make him ask for her to come home.

“John.”

She told herself she wouldn’t let him touch her.

“I’m so sorry, Mori.”

She told herself she wouldn’t run to him.

“It’s okay.”

She can’t move. She can’t breathe. Anya’s looking at her as if to say want me to kick him off my porch?

“No, it’s not, I-”

Anya moves aside, out of the doorway, and Emori flies into his arms so quickly she startles herself. He wraps his arms tightly around her shoulders and holds on with trembling hands.

“I’m sorry, Emori, I’m so sorry,” he says into her neck. He’s crying a little, and so is she, but she tries to keep it together enough to remember how it feels to bury her head in his chest.

“It’s okay.” She rubs his back with her good hand. “Shh, John, it’s okay.”

She can’t help it. She sees his car, and she can’t help it.

“What are you doing?” Anya asks. They’re only in town for a few hours, and only because Lexa lives here, just blocks from John’s - their - place.

Emori kneels by the shitty red Oldsmobile and wiggles the handle. It pops open. Before she can second-guess herself, she stuffs the napkin in the cupholder.

She shouldn’t have spent the whole drive working on it. She shouldn’t have taken him to every place that would make him miss her. But she did. She does. She closes the door and prays.

“You could just call him,” Anya says.

She doesn’t want to know what he likes. She wants to discover him the same way he’s discovering her. He actually knows things now, knows that she’ll laugh when he nuzzles her neck with his nose, knows she’ll blush when he compliments her in front of the entire house, knows she’ll smile when he kisses her on his way out the door to class.

She hates that too. Not the romantic part, but the attachment part. How dare she fall for someone? How dare she feel safe?

All of these thoughts follow her through her Saturday morning. It’s early; the sunrise is warming the kitchen and she’s the only person awake to see it. For the first time in a record three-day anti-caffeine spree, she makes herself a cup of coffee. It tastes like the morning: nice, safe and a little bitter.

There’s that word again. Safe. It tastes sour in her mouth and makes her clench her jaw. It feels like a lie, even though she’s pretty sure it’s not.

She’s not completely convinced, though. She doesn’t think she ever will be.

She sits on the couch with her coffee, across from the TV cart that houses a tiny collection of action DVDs and Monty’s small, rechargeable roomba that he occasionally programs to chase Raven and Jasper around the kitchen. There are dust motes dancing in the sunlight. A clock ticks from somewhere in the house.

After a couple minutes, the door just off the kitchen creaks open, and Raven limps out, reaching for the coffee pot before she even gets to the counter.

“Hung over?” Emori asks before she can stop herself. It’s been too long; she should be comfortable talking to her roommates by now, but every word she says still sinks like a stone in her stomach.

Raven nods. “It’s been too long since I actually drank Monty’s moonshine,” she grumbles. “Usually I just hold a cup of it to be polite, then nurse a beer to keep Luna company.”

Raven, now bearing her own cup of coffee, plops down beside Emori and thumps her bad leg onto the coffee table. Emori looks at the space above Raven’s foot. There’s a tiredness tugging at her she’d rather not explore, but the alternative is a conversation she’s not sure she can handle.

Thankfully, Raven’s not in a talking mood. She stares off into space, eyes landing somewhere to the left of the TV. Emori watches her, the steady rise and fall of her chest, the twitch of her fingers against her leg.

“You okay?” Raven asks after a moment. “I know that fight with your brother was rough.”

Emori feels a lump rise in her throat. “I’m fine.”

She doesn’t sound like it, even to her own ears. She sounds angry and scared and as bitter as the coffee in her mug.

Raven looks at her and raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you?”

Emori bites her lip and looks down at her hands. “I don’t know.”

There’s a creak at the top of the stairs. Both girls’ heads snap up and over at the same time. John is standing there, looking mildly freaked out at their synchronicity.

“Morning,” he says after a moment, meandering down the stairs and flopping down between Raven and Emori. Emori leans her head against his shoulder, feeling the worn fabric of his grey sleep shirt against her cheek.

He reaches for Raven’s coffee cup, then, when she smacks his hand away with a disapproving glare, makes a grab for Emori’s. She hands it over willingly, smiling softly at John’s sound of delight when he swallows the warm liquid.

“Morning,” he says again, a special whisper just for her. He passes the mug back to her, brushes his fingers over her knuckles and kisses her forehead. Just like that, all her oxymoronic thoughts of safety and fear leave her. She hates how much she loves being able to snuggle into his side, but she does it all the same.

Raven looks over at the two of them and smiles. After a moment, she struggles to her feet. John looks up at her, then over at Emori.

“I’m not trying to make it weird,” Raven says casually, with one of her rare, genuine smiles not far behind. “I’m just hungry. You want pancakes?”

John grins. “You mean, do I want you to make Bellamy bring us pancakes when he inevitably comes over?”

For some reason, Raven’s chest flushes a deep red. “Um, yeah. Sure.”

Emori lifts her head. “Raven, have you found this house another unsuspecting deliveryman?”

“Or deliverywoman?” John asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

“J, I swear to God-”

The doorbell rings. Raven goes to answer it, relieved to escape this line of questioning. Upstairs, Emori can hear several howls of protest at the sound from Jasper, Monty and Octavia. She feels John’s laughter rumbling through his chest and up to his shoulders.

She’s about to say something when his lips on her skin make her stop short. He kisses her cheek, then her temple, then her hair. “You feeling better?” he asks.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” she answers truthfully. It’s a strange feeling, this honesty. It’s so easy to believe that she is capable of transparency. Sometimes, she can even fool herself.

Raven bustles back into the kitchen. After a moment, she pauses, leans over the peninsula counter and shouts, “Get in here!”

Luna pads into the kitchen, her hands clasped in front of her, like she’s not sure where to put them.

“You could have followed me, you know,” Raven says.

Luna shrugs. “I wasn’t sure.”

“It’s a standing invitation,” John notes.

“Ah,” Luna says, and then falls silent. She perches on the stool between Raven’s room and the back door and watches Raven place a call to Bellamy, presumably for pancakes.

Luna makes Emori nervous. She’s contained, but too much so. She’s like a powder keg; the slightest spark could set her off, but Emori doesn’t know what that spark is. The scars on her knuckles suggest a violent past, a past spent doling out pain. Maybe that’s what Emori senses.

“You alright?” Luna asks her, raising her voice to be heard over Raven, who is succinctly roasting Bellamy for something or another.

“Fine,” Emori says, sharpening her voice just enough for Luna to drop the subject.

John tangles his fingers in the ends of Emori’s hair. To escape the shivers running down her spine, she leans forward to set her coffee mug on the table. Behind them, Monty and Octavia clatter down the stairs. Monty picks up his phone from the dining room table and starts thumbing through it while trying to shield the screen from Octavia’s prying eyes.

“Who’s texting you so early on a Saturday morning?” Octavia asks, dodging Monty’s flying elbow.

“Some square who didn’t party as hard as us, probably,” Raven answers.

“‘Square’?” John asks over Emori’s head. “What, are we living in the ‘60s?”

Monty snorts, but his eyes don’t leave the phone. He starts to type, and Emori clocks the small smile on his face as it grows in size and volume.

“Who are you talking to?” she asks, nearly flinching when her voice makes the room go quiet. John told her once that it only happens because they aren’t used to her speaking up, but it still makes her anxious. She’s used to flying under the radar, to being invisible by her own design.

Thankfully, Monty spares her the awkwardness. “Just someone I met,” he hedges.

Emori thinks about letting it go, but she sees the blush on his cheeks and decides to have a little fun. “Would this be that pretty little blonde you met at the bookstore last Friday? You know, the one you tried to hide from Raven and me when you saw us walk in?”

“Damn it, Emori, you weren’t supposed to tell anyone!” Raven groans.

Emori smirks. John sits up a little straighter and pulls Emori a little closer. “Come on, Green,” he says. “Spill.”

“Her name is Harper,” he says. Raven wolf-whistles, ignoring the slap on the arm from Octavia. “We met at the lab library. She’s pre-med, but for research.”

“Raven looks like she’s about to become a human exclamation point,” John whispers in Emori’s ear. She can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up in her throat.

“What’re we talking about?” Lexa asks as she and Jasper come downstairs. A third set of footsteps follow, and everyone in the room turns to gape at Costia as she makes her way into the kitchen.

“Morning,” she says softly. “May I have some coffee?”

“Damn,” Emori mutters to John. “She’s been here what? Twice? She belongs here more than I do, and I live here.”

John inhales, like he’s about to say something, but then Raven starts questioning whether or not Costia had Slept Over last night (“The capital letters are implied in the tone,” Octavia says) and Lexa starts loudly insisting that Costia just came over really early, all the while Monty just looks relieved that Raven forgot about him. Then Bellamy shows up with breakfast and the whole house dissolves into a quiet kind of chaos-slash-feeding frenzy that abruptly ceases when Raven not-so-subtly herds everyone out into the backyard, leaving Emori and John alone on the couch, curled into each other’s warmth, breathing in the silence.

“That was obvious,” he says drily. Emori snorts and reaches for his hand. He takes her bad hand and runs his fingers over the callouses near what passes for her knuckles. “You want to go out there?”

She shakes her head because she doesn’t. She actually likes this, being alone with him. It’s a strange feeling, this trust in both him and herself.

He runs a finger over the scar under her eye, then shifts so his arm isn’t thrown around her shoulders, but instead resting on the side of her face. She has to look at him now. Damn him.

She remembers standing in his room, chocolate in her mouth, their answer-for-answer game, his fear of touching her, her fear of letting him in. She compares that image with them now, their shy touches and the way his eyes flicker to her mouth every so often, and something warm spreads through her.

“I wouldn’t have been okay with this two months ago,” she tells him. When he laughs, his breath tickles her cheek.

“Me either,” he says, and his eyes go to her mouth again.

She remembers her first morning in the house, how she wanted to bite his lips, and is almost relieved that the urge is still there. He’s so beautiful, blue eyes and sleep-wrinkled shirt, soft hands and careful words.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks.

They’re back in her old apartment and she’s waiting for him to ask, but he’s not, so here she is, tossing back her own fear in favor of something stronger. Love, maybe? That’s too much to hope for. She’d settle for his vague acceptance if she thought it would get her something more than a lifetime of being alone.

“Why are you asking?” John murmurs.

They’re on the stairs and he’s explaining why she terrifies him, why anyone that wants anything from him scares him to the point of hostility. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason, a reason she understands.

“Because no one else ever did,” she whispers.

He moves forward and presses his lips to hers. She feels herself gasp, then lets herself sink into the feeling of his hands in her hair and on her waist, his mouth moving against hers, the tentative press of his tongue on her lower lip.

“You belong here,” he murmurs against her mouth. “You belong right here, with us.”

She sighs, reaching up to tangle her good hand in his hair as he kisses her again, soft, then hard, then soft again, as if she’s something fragile, something holy. Her shirt rides up as she reaches for him with her bad hand, and he jerks back as his fingers brush the bare skin of her waist.

“It’s okay, John,” she says, pressing a light kiss to the underside of his jaw. His stubble tickles her nose. “It’s okay.”

They stay like that for a little while, hands roaming under shirts and over skin. Emori realizes that he likes it when she ghosts her hands over his spine, that he lets out a soft groan every time she nips at his mouth. When she finally gets up the nerve to sink her teeth into his lower lip, she’s rewarded with his hands tightening on her waist and his rough, desperate voice gasping her name.

They finally break apart when the back door creaks open and Costia’s apologetic voice announces that she’s just sneaking in to use the bathroom.

“It’s okay,” John says, propping himself up on his elbow (when did they end up lying down?). His voice is still flustered and raspy. Emori feels deeply gratified at the sound. “You can tell Captain Obvious and the others to come back in.”

“He means Raven,” Emori explains to the girl’s baffled expression. Costia nods awkwardly, then disappears into the bathroom.

John kisses her forehead, looking down at her. She smiles up at him.

She remembers his shaking voice: I want to kiss you, and it’s fucking terrifying. I want to fall in love with you, but I’m not sure that I can.

She wonders if it still terrifies him. She wonders if he could ever love her. She wonders if she has managed to trick him into doing so, just another well-done con, or if he chose this all on his own.

Then he kisses her again, grinning like a child, and she realizes that maybe, just maybe, someone actually managed to choose her without any coercion on her part.

The thought makes her want to cry.

Somewhere between cleaning up the kitchen and doing homework, she ends up roped into a grocery shopping trip with John, Octavia, Bellamy and Raven, which is a lot more fun than it sounds, especially since Bellamy seems more and more horrified at the prospect of dragging Raven and John through Target the more time he spends in a car with them.

Bellamy splits off from them the moment they get inside, making a beeline for the books. Raven and Octavia go in search of bread and coffee, and Murphy drags Emori to the frozen vegetables.

“You have to learn to like these,” he says, pointing to the array of frozen green things. “Pick two.”

Emori glares at him. “I’m not a child, John.”

“True,” he says, probably to placate her, “but you do need to eat something even mildly healthy for a change.”

She huffs at him, but agrees, taking out two bags of frozen green beans and tossing them at John, who glares and deposits them into the cart. “Here. Healthy. What next?”

“Want salad?” he asks. Emori wrinkles her nose. “Damn it, Emori, you can’t just eat garbage from convenience stores.”

“Watch me.”

“I’d rather not.” He leads her to the tiny produce section and passes her a bag of lettuce. “Here. Just trust me.”

She lets him lead her around a while more, first to get bread and milk, then to get some chips and salsa. She sneaks a package of cookies and a frozen pizza into the cart, but John pretends not to notice. He does, however, draw the line at a bottle of Coke.

They find Bellamy near the self-checkout stations, thumbing through his phone. The second John sees him, he groans.

“Bellamy, no,” he says as Bellamy looks into their cart, then begins typing.

“Listen, there’s-”

“Bellamy, no,” Octavia says, running up with her and Raven’s cart. “No. No Cartwheel. No.”

“What’s a Cartwheel?” Emori asks John.

“It’s a coupon app that this dumbass insists on using every time we go to Target,” John explains. Behind him, Raven begins another one of her roasts, this one all about Bellamy and his “grandfather-friend tendencies.” Emori can’t help but smile.

As she follows John out to Bellamy’s car with a cart full of food - real food! - and a chest full of laughter, she thinks about all the things she never thought she could have and how close they are to her grasp at this very moment.

It’s nice, but a little disconcerting. It’s nice, but not quite nice enough to make her forget about Otan - not completely.

She stares out the window the whole ride home. It’s just as loud and obnoxious as the ride there, but she can’t find it in her to join in. She looks at John out of the corner of her eye and thinks maybe I should break his heart. Then, maybe I should stop this before it all starts. Then, maybe all of this is more than I can handle, more than I can hold in my two hands, more than I ever deserved.

She wants out. She wants to run. She feels that same flight instinct she’s held onto since the day she was arrested. She feels the same itch that she felt the day Otan first called her, the day she took John to the place where she grew up, the day he kissed her and she actually felt like this life was something more than a hazy dream that would disappear the longer she actually lived inside it.

That’s what this feeling is, she realizes. It’s like she’s living inside a house of glass, and if she touches it, if she dares to think too much, if she dares to settle in and lean back against the wall, the whole damn illusion will shatter and she’ll find herself alone and scared on a street corner or another shitty apartment and this time there will be absolutely no safety net.

“Mori?” John nudges her gently. “You okay?”

He knows. Somehow, he must know what she’s thinking. She blinks, shakes her head, steadies her breathing. “I’m fine.”

She doesn’t look at him. She can’t. She can’t.

“We need to talk,” is the first thing she says when Otan picks up the phone.

“So now you want to?” he snaps. Emori flinches as if she’s been punched. “Where was that last night?”

She hangs up.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” John asks. She’s lying in bed. He’s kneeling on her floor, his cheek against the edge of her mattress. His voice is muffled, but still resigned. “I can tell when someone’s about to run. You have that look.”

She aches. Tears prickle at the back of her eyes. “He was all I had,” she says, because what else do you say to a true accusation?

“I know.”

“I literally owed him my life.” She sits up, props herself on an elbow and meets his eyes. “I don’t know how to feel. And I hate it.”

“I think he’s an idiot for not staying for you. For not coming back for you until it was too late. Family’s family.” He looks down and shrugs. “But what do I know?”

She reaches down and starts carding her fingers through his hair, smiling carefully when he leans into her touch with a sigh. The words I love you well up in her, swift and furious, and she has to gnaw on her lower lip to keep them inside.

“You’re beautiful,” she murmurs instead. He shakes his head. She tugs on the strands of his hair just enough to make him groan. “Yes, you are.”

He looks up at her. His eyes are dark. “Question for question?”

She sighs, sits up, and scoots back so he can climb up and sit next to her. They stack her pillows against the wall and lean back. “Sure.”

“Why are you leaving?”

She blows out a breath. “I can’t stay here. This doesn’t feel real.”

John snorts. “Bullshit.”

She shakes her head. This isn’t coming out right. “This isn’t my life, John. This passivity, this easiness, this pattern of school and classes and having enough to eat - it’s all wrong. It’s not mine.”

“You mean you don’t deserve it?” He sounds guarded, but like he’s trying to understand. Emori will take what she can get.

“I don’t.” She looks up at him, willing him to understand. The ache in her chest only grows stronger. “How long until they realize what I am and throw me out? How long before I’m alone again?”

He reaches for her bad hand and begins meticulously unwrapping it. When she tries to pull away, he holds on tighter. “John…”

“Otan left you,” he says evenly, not taking his eyes off her skin, which is slowly bared to him one scar and scab and flaw at a time. He tosses off the wrap and pushes her sleeve up, turning her palm over so he can brush the worst of the scar at her wrist with his fingers. “That was his choice. Your mom threw you out,” his voice catches on the words, “and that was her stupid, fucking choice.”

He crawls over the bed and kneels near her feet. She’s still wearing her boots: ugly things with the soles wearing out. He unzips one of them and pulls it off carefully. “You did some illegal shit, and, yeah, that was your choice.” He takes off her other boot. “But Otan was right there with you. And whatever happened with Baylis, I’m guessing that wasn’t up to either of you.”

He looks at her, dead in the eyes, and there’s no chance he’ll flinch away this time. Secretly, she’s glad, even as she shrinks under his gaze. Ontari has left him, it seems, and she rejoices in his freedom, however slight and fleeting.

“It’s not your fault,” he says softly, resting his hands on her shins. She tries to look away, but he grips her legs until she turns back to him. “It’s not your fault.”

“John…” She almost laughs, she’s so uncomfortable. His words grate against her ears. She wants to run, run now, run far away before his words shake the glass walls just enough to break them all down.

“It’s not your fault,” he says again, shuffling closer on his knees. He stops and kneels beside her, close enough to kiss her, close enough to reach her. “It’s not your fault.”

“Shut up, John.” She tries for anger, but her voice trembles. She pulls her knees up to her chest. Her eyes burn. Her face is warm. Her left hand weighs a thousand pounds.

“It’s not your fault.” He rests his hands on either side of her face. A single tear falls. John wipes it away. “Do you believe me?”

She lets out a dry, choked sob and shakes her head. “You belong here,” he whispers, kissing her forehead.

“This place is not my home.”

“Hey.” He kisses her nose. “Your home is with me. Okay?”

She lets out another sob. She reaches for him, and he comes to her. He wraps her in his arms and pulls the covers over them both. He lets her cry into his chest for the second time in as many nights and then he kisses her until she’s breathless and laughing as tears dry on her face.

“Where do you think he’s going, exactly?” Ontari snaps.

Murphy struggles to his feet. “Ontari, get away from her,” he says, and the fear coursing through his veins makes this all that much easier. “I’m leaving, you crazy bitch, and I’m never coming back.”

“Like hell you are,” Ontari snarls.

Murphy grabs the duffel bag he hid behind the couch last night before he succumbed to the temptation to finish off his bottle of vodka. “Like hell I’m not.”

“You piece of sh-” Ontari starts to say. She’s cut off by Raven’s palm connecting with her cheek.

“Fuck you,” Raven hisses. Murphy shoves past the both of them and makes it to the elevator before throwing up in a nearby trash can.

The slam of the door makes him want to cry. He doesn’t until he gets into Raven’s car.

Now

They all drive to the lake after classes end one Friday. It’s the only natural body of water anywhere near the city, and while it’s not warm enough to swim, the chilly late September breeze isn’t enough to deter them from setting up a grill and picnic blanket and taking over the abandoned beach with an ill-fated game of volleyball.

Raven sits on the sidelines, a thick textbook propped on her good leg, the pages flapping in the breeze every time she moves her hand to brush hair out of her face. Murphy sits beside her, watching the grill. Monty, Jasper, Octavia, Lexa, Luna and Costia have organized a three-on-three volleyball game that is failing spectacularly due to the fact that only Luna, Lexa and Octavia have any coordination. Farther away, Emori walks near the water, her boots dangling from her good hand.

Murphy watches her go, follows the way the wind whips through her hair. Her existence is like a hangnail: painful in its insistence, but the ache is dull and welcome. He’d rather not think about why.

“You know what this is?” Raven asks, poking him with her elbow until he turns to look at her. She gestures with her fingers, rubbing them together. “A cockroach playing the violin.”

Murphy makes a disgruntled noise, smiling slightly when Raven cackles. The sound carries over to the volleyball game. Luna grins in her direction, then yelps when Lexa bounces the ball off the back of her head.

“Lexa!” Luna glares at her pseudo-sister, snatching the ball up. Lexa shrugs innocently. Murphy looks over at Raven, who’s back to studying, and jabs her in the arm until she looks at him.

“You ever going to hit that or…?”

Raven swats him with her notebook. “Shut the fuck up. It’s not like that.”

Murphy hums noncommittally. “Sure it’s not.”

After a minute, he leaves the burgers to slow-cook and goes to sit with Emori, who’s burying her feet in the sand and tracing absent-minded circles around her ankles with her bigger hand.

“What’cha thinking about?” he asks, sitting close enough to take her hand, far enough for her to push him away.

“How small we are,” she says nonchalantly, as if they were discussing the weather.

“Ah. So, it’s a normal Friday night.”

She laughs once, short and sweet, low in her throat. It sends shivers down his spine, but the good kind. “Something like that. I’m not a nihilist, but I can understand why some people are.”

Murphy tries to recall his first-semester philosophy class. Or, at least, the parts he didn’t sleep through. “You don’t think there’s meaning in life?”

She sighs, shrugs a little. “I do. But it’s not… I don’t think I believe that we’re meaningful. Not really. It’s just what we do that actually matters. Think about it: anyone could have discovered the law of gravity. Newton just got to it first. So what he did goes on, and his name is just the one that happens to be attached to the accomplishment.”

In the distance, the skyline rises over the lake. The impending twilight switches the skyscrapers’ lights on. They twinkle like stars, only more superficial. Murphy hates the way they drown out the sunset.

He shakes off the evening stupor, the slow, soft feelings of contentment and warmth. “What brought that on?”

“It’s nice to know that I don’t matter,” she says softly. She takes the mitt off her left hand and drops it on the sand, running her large fingers over a piece of driftwood left there to rot. “Takes the pressure off.”

“You matter,” he says, reaching for her hand. She allows him to curl his fingers around the scar bracketing her wrist. “Here, now, you matter.”

“No I don’t.” It’s practical, the way she says it, stark and disarming. “There’s nothing I add to the house by being here. Except rent money, I suppose.”

He snorts. “I mean, yeah, but there’s more than that.”

She laughs again, but it’s darker than that sweet sound from earlier. This one makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. I’ve seen things, that laugh says, and I know how to suffer and grit my teeth against it.

“You matter,” he says again, then steels himself against the litany of truths about to come out, none of which he guesses she’ll believe. He’s not even her boyfriend, not ‘officially,’ as Octavia put it with a certain amount of annoying superiority she definitely got from her brother, but he loves her so he’ll be damned if he lets her lie.

“I look for you on campus and get happy when I find you,” he says and the words feel clumsy, but right. “You make me smile even when everything is unbelievably shitty. I like helping you type essays and text messages even though I know you can do it yourself because it makes me feel like I can give something to the world instead of just take. I miss you when you don’t come down for dinner, and I worry too. Sometimes I stay up until your light shuts off just to make sure you’re actually getting sleep.”

He can’t look at her now. She seems caught between discomfort and something else, something that makes her shift in the sand so the hems of her jeans drag in the wet silt and her right foot is propped up in a hollow where lake water rapidly pools.

“John,” she leans forward, catching his eyes with hers. He can’t look away. He doesn’t want to look away. There’s a metaphor there, about flies trapped in amber, but her eyes are deep brown right now, heavy against the bright setting sun. “Thanks.”

He leans forward, pecks her on the lips. They feel dry, like the dry fall air. She grins, and he feels his heart drop to his stomach.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs without thinking. He almost says ‘I love you,’ but bites his tongue. He doesn’t want to scare her. He doesn’t want to scare himself.

“At least someone thinks so,” she says wryly, then hops to her feet, the motion abrupt enough to jolt him from his thoughts. “Come on. Raven’s flipping your burgers. I’m hungry.”

He looks at her retreating form, then back at the horizon, marred by the skyscrapers in the distance and the lake not-so-far. With a sigh, he follows.

When the noise of dinner dies down and the embers in the grill start fading, he lies beside her in the grass, running his fingers through the dying blades. She curls toward him, rolling over her left hand, resting her head on his shoulder. Her smaller hand crosses her body to wrap around the folds of his jacket.

“You’re warm,” she mumbles against his coat, ducking her head down past the spiked red patch on his shoulder.

“Are you cold?” he asks, fully prepared to give her his jacket, never mind that he’d be roasted for that later by Raven and Octavia and probably even Luna.

She shrugs. “Not on the outside.”

He gets it. He’s been cold on the inside for so long, he’s forgotten what it’s like to let anyone warm him up. In the past, it was Raven with her brusque, swear-word-ridden vocabulary and her singular focus on making sure he didn’t starve to death. Now he still has her, but he has Emori too.

Emori, who’s nuzzling into his shoulder gently with a soft sigh, her hair tickling his chin. When he sighs, she looks up, pockmarks denting her cheeks from the spikes on his shoulder. Raven has turned on her car’s headlights, so her face is half-hidden in shadow. She looks eerie, like a ghost or an abandoned spirit.

“What’re you thinking about?” she asks. He wants to say something, but his stomach clamps down on his words. He feels the bile of fear rise up in his throat just like it did after their first date. He sees her ernest eyes, her soft mouth and rough hands, and he’s full of terror and trepidation.

You could break her heart, says the voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like his worst ghost. You could hurt her. You could make her leave forever.

“Nothing,” he murmurs half-heartedly, his mind racing. He’s been down this road before, but he walks the worn path again. He can’t afford to hurt her with all that he is - it would kill him to watch her slowly hate him as time went on - but he can’t bear to tear her apart either. Not yet. He wants the luxury of taking his time with her, of slowly unwrapping her layers and maybe allowing her to burrow a little deeper under his skin.

She gasps in awe as fireflies light up the sky above him, and he realizes that she may not be under his skin, but she’s definitely ensconced in his heart.

He should be angry. He’s not; he’s afraid, but he’s not angry. Not really. He just looks at her and, like always, wants.

He’s about to say something - what, he doesn’t know - but Jasper’s whoop of delight catches the words before they roll off his tongue.

“Look!” Jasper crows, showing Emori the firefly he’s cupping gently in his hands, his face the picture of childlike eagerness. Emori sits up and grins her approval before Jasper lets the bug fly free. It swoops through the air, around and down, and lands in Emori’s hair.

“Oh,” she whispers, craning her eyes so she can see it peripherally. It looks like a tiny fairy light in her dark hair. “John, look.”

He is. He’s looking at her, her face half-lit in the glow of Raven’s headlights. He’s looking at her beautiful eyes, her small smile, her neck and the press of her sharp collarbone under her smooth skin.

He sits up and kisses her, deeper than he did beside the lake. She lets out a sharp sound and presses closer to him. The firefly flies away as her hand comes up to press against his cheek.

Murphy always expected to be reminded of Ontari the next time he kissed someone, but he isn’t this time. Emori is so different - gentle instead of demanding, careful instead of reckless - that he finds himself lost in the rhythm of her mouth and her scars and the little laugh that escapes her when he noses his way down to her jaw and throat.

“Hey, Murphy - oh! Sorry!” Luna jumps back when she sees them. Murphy lets out a frustrated groan, but Emori just laughs, tucking herself against his side in a way that makes his heart jump.

“What?” he asks, trying to sound normal, or as normal as you can when you’ve just been interrupted kissing your sort-of-girlfriend.

Luna has a strange smile on her face: lonely, happy and a little ruthless. Murphy’s reminded of why he doesn’t like her even though Raven does. “Never mind. Carry on.”

She winks at Emori, who starts laughing against Murphy’s neck. He brushes some of her hair out of his eyes and glares at Luna’s back until she’s swallowed up by shadows.

A second pair of headlights joins the first. Murphy turns, half-expecting to see Bellamy’s car, but it’s an unfamiliar truck, rusty and creaking as its owner jumps down from the cab.

Emori tenses in his arms. “Mori, it’s fine-”

But she’s not listening; she launches out of his arms and approaches the driver, snarling, “What the fuck did I say?” in the deadliest, angriest tone he’s ever heard.

“Emori!” Raven yells, trying to limp over to her, her footing uneven on the dirt and grass. Monty scurries to her side while Jasper runs to Emori.

Murphy scrambles to his feet and walks with Raven, but stays a few feet back. Emori’s planted her feet in a fighting stance and something in him knows he won’t be welcome. This is between her and whatever this person brought with them.

It’s a man, probably four or five years older than Emori. He’s staring her down, barely even flinching. The burn scars on his face and down his neck paint a series of gruesome shadows over his pale skin. Emori looks at him as if she knows him - as if she hates him.

“I told you to leave me alone!” She’s shouting as though they’re miles apart instead of seperated by mere inches. “I told you I didn’t need you anymore!”

“Em-” The man’s voice is guarded, nearly conciliatory.

“No!” she cries, and Murphy can see her shoulders start to tremble. “No! You went with him! You left me for him! You don’t get to come back and say you’re sorry and have it all be okay!”

“Go to her,” Raven hisses at Murphy. “She’s freaking the fuck out; go over there.”

So Murphy does, trusting Raven’s read of the situation better than his own. Jasper moves aside so he can reach for her left hand. He runs his thumb over her knuckles to calm her.

The man’s eyes move to his hand. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he growls at Murphy, taking a step forward.

“Get away,” Emori snaps, shoving him in the chest. He backs up, but there’s something almost protective in his eyes and stance that reminds Murphy of Bellamy.

“You’re her brother,” he guesses aloud. “Aren’t you?”

They both look at him, their heads moving in sync, and Murphy’s suspicion is confirmed; they look far too annoyed at their synchronicity to be anything but warring siblings.

“Who the fuck are you?” her brother asks.

“Please leave, Otan,” Emori says softly, her voice trembling. The rage has gone out of her, and all that’s left is weariness. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

“Then come with me.”

She shakes her head. “No. I have school.”

He snorts. “You seriously think you can graduate? You seriously think you - you - could be something?”

The words sting. She flinches, actually physically flinches, and Murphy sees red. He’s about to open his mouth when Octavia beats him to it, shoving past him with her dark hair flying and her words loud and righteous.

“If you were a real brother, you’d be happy she has a good life,” she tells him, and Murphy swears Monty mutters something like ‘great, you got her started.’ “If you really loved her, you’d want her to further her education and have a better life even if you don’t like it. You’d support her no matter what, and you’d fucking apologize to her for whatever the hell it was you did to get her this angry.”

Otan looks at Octavia with a mix of derision and wariness. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.

“I’m not saying I’m too good for you,” Emori interjects. Her voice is strong again. “But you hurt me, and you don’t even understand. You don’t even want to fix it.”

“You made your choice,” Otan snaps and, just like that, they’re back to sparring. “I could have taken the fall and-”

“And then what?” Emori counters. “I wasn’t eighteen! I would have been alone on the streets!”

“You’ve always been fine alone,” Otan argues.

“But I don’t want to be anymore!” Emori shouts, and the entire world seems to fall silent.

A single tear rolls down her cheek. Her left hand grips Murphy’s like a vice. He feels his heart hammering in his throat.

He wonders if this is what it was like for Raven to see him and Ontari argue every night he wanted to leave.

“Em,” Otan starts, then quiets when she steps back. Murphy can tell he knows he’s lost.

“Just go,” Emori whispers. Octavia rests a hand on her shoulder and glares daggers at Otan. “Leave me alone.”

He turns away, hiding his face until he reaches the truck. Emori watches him drive away, then buries her face in Murphy’s chest and cries like her heart is broken.

Maybe, Murphy thinks as he shushes her and wraps his jacket around her shaking shoulders, it is.

She doesn’t speak again until they’re in his room, perched on the ledge of his open window, sharing a cigarette.

“We lived on the street,” she says, her voice low, her eyes tired. “We slept in abandoned houses and under the bridge. We couldn’t go home because Mom would throw me out. We got good at stealing, stripping and selling tech.”

“There’s a guy - Baylis - that ran a...gang, I guess. He let us go on runs for him in exchange for food and a place to sleep. O wanted to do enough to build up his own name recognition so we could get into the trade on our own, not have to answer to anyone. But he got cocky and took some stuff he shouldn’t have. I knew he was doing it, but didn’t say anything.”

She takes another drag. Her hands are shaking. Murphy watches her blow the smoke out the open window. The cool wind ruffles her hair. His clock tells him it’s three a.m. She looks wide awake, and he doesn’t think it’s from the nicotine.

“He found out. He beat Otan, kept me locked up in a dark room. Sometimes he’d come in and-” she swallows hard and averts her eyes. Murphy doesn’t know for sure what she was about to say, but he can guess. Anger, hatred and vicarious shame vy for a place in his veins.

“Fuck him,” he hisses without meaning to.

Emori laughs, that dark sound again. “Fuck me,” she corrects, her voice harsh, her eyes sad.

She passes the cigarette to him. Her hand is warm when it touches his. She runs her right hand over her left arm. Murphy wonders if she still feels unwanted fingerprints seared into her skin.

“Otan broke in one day to get me out, said we were getting away.” Her voice starts to unravel; the steady march of her accented words stutters. “But Baylis came back early, and I didn’t- I didn’t see the knife. Otan said Baylis had a knife, but I got the gun off the table, and O shot him twice.”

She lets out a shuddering breath. “Then the cops showed up. The blood was on both of us and O hadn’t touched the gun with bare hands, but I had.” She leans her head back against the window frame. “I was stupid. I could’ve said O did it, but I couldn’t. He wouldn’t survive in jail; he’s too insensible, too much of a dreamer. And I’d be alone.”

She looks out the window. Her left hand tenses on her knee. “I couldn’t be alone,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “So…” she shrugs. “But he stopped coming to see me. Never said he was sorry either.”

“He shouldn’t have taken your protection,” Murphy says. He doesn’t know shit about being a big brother, but he knows what Bellamy would do, and it’s nothing like what Emori’s describing. “He should’ve taken care of you. And he shouldn’t have left you alone in there.”

She’s silent for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is hollow. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Okay.” He puts the cigarette out. A draft from the window blows his door open, but he doesn’t get up to close it. He can hear Raven, Luna and Octavia downstairs. They’re playing music in the kitchen and probably making a late-night snack. “Do you want to go to bed?”

“Someone’s eager,” she says, and it takes him a moment to notice the wry quirk of her lips.

“Oh, fuck off,” he says without real heat, swinging his legs off the windowsill and reaching for her hand. Someone’s turned up the music downstairs; it’s a slow, sweet song that somehow fits the chilly night perfectly.

“John,” she laughs as he pulls her toward him, spins her once, then wraps her arms around his waist. “John, what are you doing?”

“Dancing,” he murmurs against the top of her head. He remembers another life, another house, another time when his mother would have bad days and his father would waltz her around the kitchen until she smiled. He’s not half the man his father was, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try to be.

“I can’t dance,” she says, then actually giggles when he spins her again, then unsuccessfully tries to dip her.

“You’re doing fine.”

She snorts, resting her head on his shoulder. “Whatever you say.”

He sways with her, feeling her breath tickle his shoulder. “I’m sorry. For what you went through.”

She shrugs. “I’m okay now, aren’t I?”

He doesn’t bring up the nightmares, the flinching or the tears. She doesn’t need that. He should know. “You’re so strong,” he says instead, letting the awe creep into his voice. How could he have ever thought about losing her?

A rap on the doorframe makes them jump apart. Bellamy’s standing there, looking vaguely apologetic. “Sorry,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Raven wanted to know if you wanted some food. She’s making popcorn and Milk Duds.”

Emori nods enthusiastically. Murphy shrugs. “Sounds good.”

Bellamy nods but continues to hover there, only speaking when Murphy cocks an annoyed eyebrow at him. “Emori, I heard what happened earlier. With your brother.”

Emori stiffens. “Oh.”

“He’s an idiot,” Bellamy says gently. “Brothers are supposed to love their sisters and protect them. We’re supposed to take care of them no matter what. And when we make mistakes, we need to apologize.”

“Damn right!” Octavia hollers up the stairs.

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Anyway, if you need anything, I’m around. I know you have these guys and all, but…”

She nods, blinking up at him with those guarded eyes. “Thank you.”

Bellamy nods once, then disappears down the hall. The music changes to one of Raven’s favorite 80s songs. Murphy can hear Emori’s harsh breathing, can almost hear the pounding of her heart.