#memorifics

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 wonders what came over her - why she followed him outside last night. Then she wonders why he was screaming, what is following him so closely that he never has any peace. It’s not any of her business, it really isn’t, but the broken thing inside him is clawing its way out, and she’s always been a lover of broken things.

She has three classes today, back-to-back, starting at noon. She waited to get up until she heard Raven, Lexa, Octavia and the boys leave. It’s just her and John now.

The thought should terrify her. Instead, she feels only a flutter of anxiety, one she doesn’t plan on examining the cause of just yet.

She dries off, gets dressed and goes downstairs, her wet hair slapping against her leather jacket, which is basically the nicest thing she owns aside from her knife set.

“Coffee?” John asks without turning around, sliding her a mug. She takes it in her good hand, feels the warmth of the ceramic, sips at it, and grimaces at the taste.

“It’s black.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Cures exhaustion.”

She downs it in mere minutes. Her stomach rumbles but she doesn’t dare go through the fridge. She hasn’t gone grocery shopping yet, and nothing in there is hers. She hasn’t even opened up a bank account, and the $50 sewn into the lining of her backpack is going to disappear faster than she would like.

She doesn’t need to eat - at least, not yet. She needs a job. She needs some sleep. She needs to pretend the last five years were nothing. Not necessarily in that order.

“Do you think I should get my tattoo removed?” she asks John suddenly, breaking the stillness of the kitchen. Anyone else and she’d be shrinking in her seat right now, but he’s different. She senses something in him, a small thing, like a brief flame - something that shivers and aches to be wanted even as he pushes all hope of that away.

They’re one and the same, she supposes - both alike in their hatred and want of the world.

“Which one? The one on your face?” A grimace of guilt shivers over his expression. She wonders why.

“Yeah.” She taps her left hand against her knee. The fingers twitch, sweat in her wrap. She doesn’t take it off. “It’ll keep me from getting a job, right?”

John shrugs, an easy thing. The slim lines of his shoulders are appealing. When he turns his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye, she sees his sharp cheekbones and dry lips. I’d like to bite those lips, she thinks, and then wants to thump her head against the counter in frustration.

“No,” he answers. “Screw them. Cover it up with makeup if you want to, but don’t take it off.”

He says it forcefully, as if he’s pushing words from his lungs with great effort - as if it costs himself something to give them up. She watches him, wary, but he says no more.

“All right then,” she says.

An endless silence stretches before them. His phone vibrates on the kitchen counter. He looks at it and gives a small sound of disgust. She peers at it just as it starts ringing.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” she asks.

“No.” He swears under his breath, then swipes the phone open. “Leave me alone,” he growls, then hangs up.

Emori slips from the stool, reaching for her backpack. She doesn’t look up, and she doesn’t look back.

Classes are blissfully mundane, a departure from crowded prison computer labs, every due date a fight to the finish. She might be “street trash,” as her old foster family reminded her, but she was - is - smart.

There’s a nontraditional student in her beginner’s public health class. Her name is Anya, and Emori likes her instantly. There’s something about her sharp tongue, her harsh tone and her no-nonsense approach to the system’s failings that appeals to Emori.

She rips the lining of her backpack to get to her money, then goes to the small grocery store near the school. She buys cereal, coffee, milk, bread and ham. It costs her fifteen dollars. She also pockets a Swiss Army knife and two chocolate bars. She doesn’t pay for those.

There’s a strange ache settling in her, a longing of sorts - a sadness rising up to choke her. She’s afraid, she thinks, and nervous. What is she doing here? What is she trying to prove? She’s stupid and small and, shit , what if she had been caught stealing. She would have been sent back for sure.

She feels herself shiver in the September heat. She can’t go back. Won’t. She grits her teeth, bares them, frightens a pigeon cooing at the street corner.

“Hey! Emori!” It’s Octavia, standing on that same street corner, books cradled in her arms, her brother at her side. She looks happy, content and safe. It makes Emori want to scream, but she bites her tonge and molds her lips into a smile. She seethes on the inside even as she, but on the inside, she’s seething. She’s a closed book, a ghost in a house of self-made pain. She is nothing if not a con artist. Her ability to fool others with her bravado, sharp smiles and  pretty tongue is nothing new.

She watches herself, as if from a distance, greet the younger girl and nod at her brother. She feels relief when he doesn’t nod back.

“How were classes?” Bellamy is asking both of them. Emori lets Octavia talk. She watches herself pay attention, kick a rock off the sidewalk. Octavia is talking about chemistry. Emori is thinking about the feeling of a swing set chain, cold against her forehead. She’s thinking about her naked hand, John’s fingers, his claim that it is “badass” to be deformed and unwanted.

“Mine were okay,” she answers on autopilot when the siblings turn to look at her. They’re so alike with their angular jaws, harsh noses and lips set automatically into fine lines. Their skin is nothing alike, nor is their hair, but if you saw them for half a second, you would know they belonged to each other.

She and Otan never shared that. They were asymmetrical in all the wrong ways.

Bellamy holds out a hand. “May I? I’m going to the house anyway.”

He wants to carry her bag of groceries. What a gentleman, she thinks wryly. She hands it over. The knife and chocolate in her pocket are heavy. The chocolate is probably melting. She takes it from her jacket and tucks it in with the milk to keep it cold.

“Why are you wearing a jacket?” Octavia asks bluntly. “It’s, like, a hundred degrees out.”

“It’s only 87,” Bellamy corrects mildly, but he’s wondering too.

Emori shrugs. “Thought the classrooms might be cold.” The lie is good.

She smiles to herself. Of course it’s good. It’s her. 

John has paper taped to his walls.

She didn’t see that last night. She only saw him, his flailing limbs, his contorted body and all the ways his face screamed for help. When she walks past, it flaps in the breeze from the open window. He’s smoking. A bottle of beer sits on the floor.

“Hey stranger.” She taps on the doorframe. “Care for a bite?”

He looks confused until she tosses him a chocolate bar. “Doesn’t chocolate go with wine?” he asks, bemused, tentative.

“Wine’s too bougie for us,” she replies, laughing slightly. “Can I come in?”

He blinks at her. His eyes are blue, rimmed with a dark edge. Beautiful. So beautiful. “Sure.”

She sits on the floor with him. She takes off her jacket, watches his eyes follow her arms, the jut of her collarbone under her v-neck. Chills run down her spine, but in a good way.

He bites into the chocolate, eyes on the wall ahead of them. The paper on the walls are pages from books. From here, she can read some of it, but not all. Lines jump out at her, lines he has underlined, highlighted, destroyed by circling with a harsh black pen.

I’m sorry I came to your party and seduced you and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

Poor sad thing. Is that him? Someone else? Who hurt him? Why is she here, sitting on his floor, sitting beside this boy who locks his bedroom door at night, but leaves it open in the morning? Why is she here, in the dust, looking out at an endless sky, a college town, the endless possibilities that belong to everyone but her?

“You ever going to tell me what you were in for?”

It takes a moment for her to realize he’s talking about prison. “You’ll have to earn that,” she replies. A smirk, a grin, and he’s blushing, eyes cast down, beautiful lips spread in an almost-smile.

“How do I do that?”

She hums, reaches for his bottle. “Answer for answer.” She takes a swig, hands it back to him. “Who was calling you this morning.”

“Someone I wish I had never met.” A sip, a sidelong look. “Why were you arrested?”

“I was careless. I got caught.” A bite of chocolate, sugar sliding down her throat. Her leg itches. She unties her boots. “What did you dream about last night?”

His eyes darken. “Not being able to say no.” He stiffens, gets to his feet. She scrambles up, and his body shifts to accommodate her invasion into his space. They stand before one another, nearly head-to-chin, arms-to-hands. He takes her left one in his and runs his hand over the cloth. “Why do you hate this so much?”

She’s breathing hard. He is too. He licks his lips, and she feels a shock in her veins. “I- it’s-”

Fuck. The best lies hold truths. So where is her lie? Where is the only thing she has to fall back on?

She looks at his face, eyes searching hers, wide-set over a long nose. “It’s the worst thing about me.” Honest enough to hurt her.

Bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

He scoffs. “I doubt that.” He turns away. The game is over, and she is standing there, vulnerable, in the center of a room that isn’t hers, a house that isn’t hers, a life that isn’t hers.

“It’s a reminder,” she starts, and she’s whispering. Why is she whispering? “It’s a reminder-” she starts again, louder this time, “that I am nothing. That I will always be nothing. That I am erasable and alone.”

You poor sad thing.

John turns. “Emori.” His voice cracks on the second syllable. “You… fuck. ”

She flinches. On the inside, a knife is connecting with her cheek; the club’s music hammers in time with her heart; her brother is on the other side of bulletproof glass, but he is not himself.

“You are not nothing,” John whispers vehemently, desperately, surging forward to grab hold of her bad hand. “You’re not . Don’t ever say that.”

She looks at his hand on hers. Her eyes fill with tears. Her shoulders tremble once, twice, her hand twitches, and then he’s lurching backward as if she’s slapped him.

“I shouldn’t have- I’m sorry- I’ll-”

“Don’t be.” She reaches into her pocket, wraps her hand around the cold pocketknife. “I...I’ll go.”

He nods, turns away, reaches for the empty beer bottle. She closes the door behind her, hears a loud epithet and breaking glass. The bottle wasn’t meant for her, but the shards on the other side of the wall cut her all the same.

She goes outside after dinner, and sees Jasper lying in the grass.

“You okay?” she asks. He turns his head, and she sees tears on his cheeks. “Shit, what’s wrong?”

He laughs, ugly and broken. The cheerful boy she met last night is peeling off his mask. “Life fucking sucks, that’s what.”

“Care to elaborate?” It’s what one of her professors says. She likes it, likes the way she coaxes ideas out without making them obvious, without making a wrong answer shameful.

“Oh, right,” he laughs again. Someone so young shouldn’t sound so bitter. “You weren’t here.” He pats the grass beside his leg, and she sits. “I had this girlfriend, Maya. But it wasn’t some stupid high-school romance where you get one another off once in a while and kiss under the bleachers.” He sniffs. “It was real. She was real. Real and beautiful and funny. She liked art. Really depressing art, which was fucking hilarious because she was so happy and innocent.”

Emori sits, plucking at the glass with her bad hand, listening to Jasper as he spills his guts, purging himself of a story she understood, the bloody truth of an accident and a bad surgery and a young boy having to watch the girl he loved waste away to nothing.

Bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

“That sucks,” she says when he’s finished.

“Yeah.” He sits up, groans, rubs the back of his neck. “I’ve been a shitty friend to Monty. I was horrible to him; hell, I tried to kill myself last year, and I don’t think he’s gotten over it.”

“You two are like brothers,” she reasons quietly. “That kind of thing doesn’t go away overnight.”

“Am I ever going to be okay?” he asks, quietly vulnerable. A light on the front porch switches on. When she looks over her shoulder, John is leaning against the railing, another cigarette in hand, close enough to hear Jasper’s question and her answer.

“I think,” she starts slowly, “I think your ‘okay’ has to change. You’ll always want her. You’ll always miss her. But I-” I have to believe it stops hurting after a while. “I think you’ll feel better the longer you live.”

She hears John shift. She isn’t sure if what she said was a lie or the truth. She’s prepared to believe it’s both.

“Have you ever lost someone?” he asks.

The pain, a dull and rusty knife, plunges into her heart. “Yes,” she answers quickly, not thinking, not feeling. She had her time of mourning in a prison cell.

“How did you deal with it?”

She smirks, remembering. John lights a second cigarette. “I started a yard fight in prison.”

Jasper laughs, nods in appreciation or respect. “Did you win?”

She nods. “They said it was too close to tell. But I won.”

They sit in silence for a while, near the tree full of screaming crickets, the abandoned bird’s nest. John goes inside, up to his room. Raven is talking on the phone. A tall girl with long messy hair - Luna, she learns - sits on the railing of the back deck and looks up at the sky. Bellamy sits beside her and they talk. Monty brings Jasper inside. A car rolls past the house. Emori loses herself in the press and slide of the world turning, the rise and fall of her own chest. She slips away into a dazed numbness, a dark place where the world is allowed to happen to her.

“Come inside.” It’s John, back again. It’s dark now. When did it get so late? She hasn’t seen a car in hours. “It’s almost one in the morning.”

She’s about to say something when a car pulls in, tires crunching in the gravel driveway. She turns, squints into the headlights. Beside her, John freezes. He looks like a cornered animal, like a hunted man.

“John.” The windows roll down, but the headlights stay on. The engine turns off. A girl stands half in, half out of the driver’s side. Black hair, tight jacket, plump cheeks, mean eyes. Emori wants to sneer at her just on principle. “You’re ignoring my calls.”

John’s face is the picture of terror. Above their heads, Octavia’s light flickers on. Emori hears a window slam shut, Jasper and Monty’s shouting, Raven’s swearing.

“Get the hell off my property, Ontari,” Raven snarls, banging the screen door open. John flinches. He’s white-knuckling the porch railing.

John starts to move, striding off the porch in swift steps, pushing past Raven and shoving the girl against her car, his hand around her neck.

“Murphy!” Bellamy shouts. Emori scrambles to her feet.

“Not so fun when it’s you, huh?” John growls in Ontari’s ear. “Leave me the fuck alone. I’m done with you, I’m done with your bullshit, I’m done .” He shoves her again. Her head thumps against the car. “Get out and never come back.”

Emori finally moves. “Let go of her, John,” she says, tugging at his arm. “Let go, it’s not worth it. Let go.”

He does. He reaches for her, hands grasping, shaking, fisting in her shirt, closing around her wrapped hand. Ontari glares at Emori, and she feels her blood boil.

How dare you look at me? she wants to ask. How dare you hurt him?

“Is he your bitch now?” Ontari’s addressing her. Emori sees red.

“Fuck off,” Emori spits, turning away, and then Ontari’s hand is on her arm, twisting Emori back around and spitting in her face.

Emori stands there, saliva running down her cheek, hand clenched into a fist, breath coming sharp.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” John shouts, lunging for Ontari, prying her hand from Emori’s arm. “Get the fuck away from her, you sick-”

“Murphy!” It’s Bellamy, all deep voice and righteous anger. “Enough!” He jogs down the stairs and separates the two of them, all but shoving Ontari back into her car. “Don’t come here again,” he tells her, bodily hauling John up the porch steps.

Emori watches Ontari’s tires spin, scattering gravel and grass. Her spit is warm on her cheek. She wipes it away with the wrap on her hand.

“Are you calm?” Bellamy is asking John when she approaches the steps. John looks up at her, eyes unreadable.

“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice sounds broken.

You poor sad thing.

“What happened between you two?” she asks. Bellamy tenses. Raven moves aside so Emori can sit beside John. Octavia, Jasper and Monty are at the front window, peeking from around the curtains, eyes wide.

“You don’t have to say anything, Murphy,” Raven says. It’s a lawyer’s warning. You don’t have to incriminate yourself. You don’t have to lie. You don’t have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.

John shakes his head. “We dated until the middle of last year.” Bellamy bows his head, as if he’s resigned to the story. “It...it wasn’t good. Healthy. Whatever.”

He looks up, turns to Raven, then Bellamy. “You know the story already.”

It’s a hint to leave. They take it, walking backwards into the house, closing the door softly.

When they’re alone again, John sighs. “She cut me off from them. I thought she was just jealous. I didn’t mind. But then it got worse; she started-” he clears his throat. “I said no. But that didn’t matter.”

Emori knows what he’s alluding to. Her heart hurts.

“I figured, what’s the problem? My mom was shit, so this was fine. Nothing new. And at least I had someone.”

“Someone loving you their way is better than being alone,” she murmurs. She understands.

He looks at her. The tears in his eyes scare her. “Raven and Bellamy helped me get out. I started living here and it was okay. I’m still...I’m still dealing with it though.” He laughs. It’s ugly. “Which is to say, I’m not really dealing with it.”

He pulls down the collar of his shirt, shows her the ugly scars around his neck. She touches them softly, with cold fingers. He shivers.

Bruised and ruined. She feels sick. Bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

“I’m sorry for what she did to you,” she whispers.

He sniffs. “It’s over now.”

“Is it?”

He laughs. “Shit. I forgot.” She doesn’t know what he means. His glassy eyes say that he doesn’t either. “No, it’s not, I guess.”

They sit there in silence. It might be her imagination, but the tension is bleeding from his shoulders. He leaves his shirt askew. Every time she sees the scars, she is angry.

“I hope it stops hurting,” she whispers.

“It does. Sometimes.” He reaches for her. She stays deathly still while he reaches out, touches her hair, her cheek that’s still sticky with spit. “I wish…” he shakes his head. “I felt guilty talking to you. As if she would be angry. As if she still matters.”

“Why me?” she asks. “You talk to Raven and Octavia all the time.”

“They-” he sighs, frustrated, out of words. “They’re not like you. They’re not… They don’t understand. You do.” He huffs out a laugh. “I don’t know how, but you do.”

It’s enough. More than enough, actually. She can feel herself smiling, glowing like the fireflies flashing in the tree branches above them.

“I’d like to take you out,” he says softly. She blinks in surprise, shifts when he turns, reaches for her hand. “I can’t promise I won’t be a shitty boyfriend. Hell, I’m not asking to be your boyfriend. I’m just asking for a date.”

It sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “Okay.” She nods, smiles when he smiles.

“Okay?” He sounds shocked. She doesn’t blame him; she is too. She barely knows the guy. But she knows enough. She knows about his nightmares. She knows his laugh, his little smiles, his love of chocolate, his hatred of his own reflection.

She’s seen enough. Enough to say yes. Enough to pretend she has a conscience.

Still half-asleep, he stumbles downstairs, lured by the smell of waffles. Bellamy and Octavia are already in the kitchen, along with Raven and Miller. Bacon sizzles on the stove, popping whenever the younger Blake jabs it with a fork.

“Morning, sunshine,” Raven says jokingly, giving Murphy a side hug. He lets her, though he flinches as soon as she pulls away. His skin crawls from her hands on him, and he hates it - hates it so much he wants to throw up and die, or at the very least, go back to bed.

He takes a piece of bacon from the pan. His fingers ache from the heat. Miller watches him carefully, but Murphy does nothing, says nothing. He eats the meat without tasting it, feeling the delicate skin on his tongue burn.

“Wow, your mouth is, like, indestructible or something,” Octavia comments. “Bellamy would be reaching for an ice cube right about now.”

“You’re one to talk,” Bellamy grumbles. “You couldn’t even handle the pico de gallo Raven made last week.”

“It was spicy!” Octavia defends. “Who in their right mind makes something that hot?”

Murphy sits at the breakfast bar and tunes them out, staring out into space and letting his eyes unfocus, then refocus. They eventually land on the fridge calendar, and he stares at today’s date, where Emori arrives is written in bright red pen.

“Raven,” he calls. “When’s the new tenant moving in?”

“She should be here soon,” Raven replies. “And the least you can do is call her our roommate.”

Murphy rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

It’s as if their conversation summons her. There’s a knock at the door, and Murphy goes to get it because it’s either that or watch Bellamy destroy the waffle he’s trying to remove from the iron. It’s painful, honestly.

The girl in front of him is small, a little shorter than him, with long, dark hair, wide eyes and full lips parted in surprise. When she speaks, he hears a bit of an accent. “I- Which one are you?”

“What?”

“I only know your names.” She tilts her head. “Are you John?”

There’s something about his name on her lips that makes him shiver. “Yep,” he says, popping the ‘p,’ purposefully stiffening his body language. He looks past her. A van is trundling down the road, away from the house.

Raven chooses this moment to appear behind him.

“You must be Emori,” she says, sticking her hand out and shoving Murphy aside in the same motion. “I’m Raven. We talked on the phone.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says, shaking her hand. Her tone is gentle, but she doesn’t smile. Murphy sees lines around her eyes, but the set of her brow tells him something different.

She is not happy.

The ratty old duffle bag in her hand and the backpack on her shoulders are the only personal belongings she has. Murphy takes the bag from her and leads her upstairs, to the room next to his - the room that used to be Luna’s.

“I don’t know what Raven told you,” he says, dropping the bag on the bed. “This used to be Luna’s room. You’ll meet her at some point - she’s always over here. She moved to graduate housing this semester.”

“Graduate housing? What’s she studying?” Emori looks out the window. They’re on the second floor, so there’s not much of a view.

“Psychology.” He smirks. “She’s not the best person to have around in a house full of fucked-up people.”

Emori doesn’t say anything, just looks at him. Her eyes are brown, he realizes, and full of questions and something darker - something that makes him ache when he looks at her.

You will be alone always , he tells himself, remembering the poem he fell asleep reading last night, the one that almost made him cry, and then you will die.

He had his chance, and it was spent over and over, in a bed and a house that no one wanted, that no one loved.

“This is all you have?” he asks, motioning to her bags, then shoving his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t even see anyone stop to say goodbye.”

Her shoulders hunch forward, her eyes shutter, and he wonders what exactly he said to frighten her. “It’s all I need.”

“Do you want...help?” He thinks better of the question the moment it leaves his mouth. The door is open, but everyone else is downstairs, and the music is loud - too loud - and no one will hear him.

She laughs. The sound makes him jump at first, and then he freezes. Oh , he thinks, letting the sound roll over him. It’s warm and low, tumbling from her throat over her lips. “I think I can manage. But thanks, John.”

He leaves, goes next door to his room, and flops down on the bed. He hears her padding around, her boots thumping against the worn wood. He examines the burns on his fingertips from the bacon. They’ll be gone by tomorrow.

“What do you think of her?” Raven asks Murphy, pointing up the stairs and settling next to him on the couch, resting her bad leg against the footstool kicked haphazardly to the side.

Murphy shrugs. “Seems like she’ll be quiet. Which is good, because I’m not about to share a wall with someone who’s up all night.”

“Yeah,” Raven snorts. “Because I totally picked her to room with us because of your personal comfort and safety.”

“Shut up, Reyes,” he laughs, shoving her gently. She laughs and reaches for the remote, turning on the TV and leaning her head on Murphy’s shoulder.

“I’m glad we’re friends again,” she murmurs. “I’m glad you’re here instead of there.”

He feels himself tense, then relax when she doesn’t say anything more. He hears a creak on the stairs and looks up sharply, sighing when he sees Emori looking down at them.

“You can come down,” he says to her. She looks to him, then to Raven, and descends the stairs like she’s ready to fight, right fist clenched, jaw set. She sits on the arm of the couch, right near Murphy’s arm, and looks down at them both.

“Girlfriend?” she asks.

Murphy shakes his head. Raven laughs. “No,” she says. “That would be like oil and water. We’re just close friends.”

She looks to Murphy. Murphy says nothing, just shifts uncomfortably. He can feel her presence; she’s close - too close - and he almost wants to shy away from her. He forces himself to breathe normally and clenches his hands into fists. Raven doesn’t notice.

“You can sit with us,” he finally says, motioning to the spot near Raven. Raven scoots over so Emori can sit comfortably. He breathes a sigh of relief.

“What are you majoring in, again?” Raven asks her.

“Social work,” she says quietly, toughly, with a firm chin, as if she’s expecting an argument. “I’ve got an associates, but I’ve got to get the bachelors now.”

“Oh, so you’re a junior?” Raven grins. “Me too. I’m in engineering, though, so kinda different. Murphy’s a sophomore, but he’s undeclared.”

Emori looks at him over Raven’s head. “You’ve got time,” she tells him, as if she thinks he’d be worried about that sort of thing. In reality, he can’t be bothered at all.

They turn their attention back to the TV. Raven falls asleep after a while, her head still on Murphy’s shoulder. When he looks up, Emori is looking back at him.

“Settled in okay?” he asks, voice low, heart in his throat. What is he doing? Why is he talking to her?

She nods. “I guess.”

“Glad to have your own room? I used to share with Bellamy - it sucked.”

She shrugs again. Her left hand is wrapped in some kind of cloth, and she picks at it. Murphy wonders why it’s covered up, why it’s so stained, why she feels the need to shrink into the couch. “I shared a room for a while. It’s not so bad.”

Murphy snorts. “I’d hate it. People going through my shit, talking, snoring .” He rolls his eyes. “Bellamy’s snoring was the worst.”

“Well, they had bed checks and curfews, so…” she doesn’t meet his eyes. He frowns in confusion. “Besides, it’s not like you’re allowed to have anything personal in prison.”

She looks up, and their eyes lock. Her defiant chin says what’re you going to do about it? Her eyes plead for acceptance.

Murphy doesn’t know what to say, but he knows he should say something. “We’ve all got our shit,” he says. It’s fucking pathetic, but better than nothing. “Are you reformed or whatever?”

She smiles. It looks like relief, like a sharp knife. “Hell no.”

He likes her a lot more after that.

In rare (read: nearly-impossible) form, the entire house eats dinner together, crowded around the dining room table that is really only meant to seat four. Raven’s idea was for Emori to get to know them all a little better. So far, it hasn’t backfired horribly, much to Murphy’s relief.

Murphy cooks: a pot roast with garlic butter, biscuits and green beans. Emori’s eyes grow wide when she sees the amount of food on the table. He thinks she even mutters holy shit under her breath. She waits to eat until everyone else is halfway done, staring at her full plate and fisting her hands in her shirt.

“Okay, so,” Raven announces once the initial feeding frenzy is over. “Lets throw it back to freshman orientation and go around and say our names and majors and shit.”

“Jasper Jordan, freshman,” Jasper gives Emori a wave. “I room with Monty here,” he points his thumb at his best friend, “and I’m majoring in chemistry.”

“Monty Green, freshman, computer science.”

“Octavia Blake, freshman, criminal justice.” She gestures to Lexa, who’s sitting across from her. “Lexa’s the same, only she’s a junior.”

Lexa finishes chewing her bite of food, then waves at Emori. “What she said.”

“And you already know me and Murphy,” Raven finishes, leaning back and taking a satisfied sip of her beer.

Emori gives a small, general wave, then takes a tiny bite of food. “This is good,” she tells Murphy. “Thank you.”

He nods in reply, then smiles ever-so-slightly when he looks up to see her smiling back at him.

She helps him with the dishes after dinner, loading the dishwasher one-handed and humming along to the music playing from the living room. Octavia and Lexa are printing out their syllabi for tomorrow’s classes, Raven is trying to fix something that could either be a dvd player or a weird-looking roomba, and Monty and Jasper have escaped somewhere upstairs to play video games.

It’s quiet, almost peaceful, and it makes Murphy anxious.

There was a time when he would get in trouble for even looking too long at Emori. But that time has passed, so he looks freely, cataloguing the slope of her nose, the flecks of amber in her eyes, the clumsiness with which she uses her left hand. Her body is buried under layers of clothing, and he sees faint scars under her eye and along her collarbone. Prison mementoes? Or something worse?

She looks up at him, mouth twisted wryly, eyes sparkling, and he realizes she said something, but he can't remember what.

There's a moment of panic, of confusion. What would the consequences be for not listening? But she grins, a flash of white teeth, and says, “Were you looking or listening?”

“You caught me,” he says drily, face the perfect picture of snark and sarcasm.

She chuckles. The sound is warm, like her laugh from before. He feels his stomach do a slow roll. “I asked if you had class tomorrow,” she repeats nonchalantly, like he's not an idiot for failing to pay attention.

He pictures his schedule, then shakes his head. “No.”

“I do.” She shuts the dishwasher and pushes the button to make it start. “I’m going to stay on campus and walk around after, though. Just to see where everything is.”

I'll go with you, he wants to say, but his throat clamps down around the words. She takes her right hand, brushes it against the kitchen towel, then pulls her hair over one shoulder. It's like a muddy waterfall, but prettier.

Murphy shakes his head at himself, then climbs the stairs to his room.

He's woken in the middle of the night by someone shaking his shoulder.

“Get the fuck away from me!” he cries, scrambling backward, colliding against the wall. He will say no this time, he will, he's so tired-

It's Emori. Hair wild, eyes unfocused, confused. Her lips are pulled into a worried line. “You were screaming,” she says, and her voice is rough, ungodly.

“I'm sorry.”

She looks like she wants to touch him. “What happened?”

Murphy shrugs. “The same shit.”

He remembers the dream. A rope, the knife, creaking of floorboards, a broken phone, Raven’s frantic calls.

He can't go back to sleep.

There's a park across the street, and he goes there. He sits on the swings, and Emori follows, like a ghost, because he didn't explicitly tell her to get lost. There’s something in her that welcomes the darkness in him. She takes it in like it’s nothing more than a cup of tea after a long day, like it’s as easy as picking the lock on his bedroom door.

Twice, she inhales, opens her mouth as if to speak. She doesn’t, and he's grateful. Breathing the night air feels like crying.

“I only woke you up because it sounded like you'd be better off here than in your dream,” she murmurs when the sun breaks through the darkness. How long have they been sitting there? An hour? Two? Three?

“Thank you,” he says, and then the guilt rolls over him.

You will be alone always, and then you will die.

He studies her after she leans her head against the swing’s chain and closes her eyes. Button nose, firm chin, right hand clenched into a fist, left hand-

Oh.

It’s long, covered in dead skin and bloody patches and scars, fingers welded together like pincers. It looks like a tree branch. It looks strong. It looks like her. He feels a strange affection for it, for the little nub on the side of her hand near her pinky, for the rippling muscles at her wrist.

“It’s hideous,” she says without opening her eyes, like she knows what he was thinking, like she’s determined to say the opposite.

He reaches for it, and she lets him lift it up, lips parting in a shaky sigh as he runs his fingers over it. He hates rosebud lips, but not hers. “I wouldn’t cover it up,” he says, and he’s so honest he thinks his head might explode. “I think it’s pretty badass.”

Several things happen at once. The sky gets lighter, and so do her shoulders. She laughs, smiles, eyes crinkling at the edges, turning to liquid amber. “Liar,” she says, but she’s still laughing.

He can make someone happy.

“It’s not all you are,” he tells her, echoing Raven, echoing Luna, echoing the shrink he went to see all of once before he found better absolution at the bottom of a bottle.

“It’s all they see,” she replies, eyelids fluttering. The faint arch of a tattoo curls over her cheek, her nose, her brow. Was that always there? He can’t remember. He lives in a fever dream, one foot in the present, the other in a dusty bedroom.

“It’s not all I see,” he says. He sees life, a girl without scars, so soft and hard at the same time. He wants to ask her about prison, about life before and life after. He wants to know if she still wakes up in chains.

She opens her eyes, looks up at him. He imagines she’s leaning against his shoulder. He pretends her warmth is spreading through him, filling him. “I guess you’d better keep an eye on me then.”

He smirks at that, and the fever dream feeling disappears. It’s him and her, and she did have that tattoo last night, only he hadn’t noticed. The birds are chirping, and he sees Octavia’s light on across the street.

He’s so tired. His shoulders slump. He leans his head against the chain again and closes his eyes.

“Let’s go,” she says, standing, boots scuffing the dirt. He doesn’t let go of her hand until they walk through the door.

“You left it unlocked,” Raven says, not looking at her, looking at him.

Murphy ignores her and climbs the stairs. He collapses into bed, shoes on, and waits for Emori to leave.

“I locked that door,” he remembers aloud. “How did you-”

She smirks with a quirk of her brow. “I picked the lock.”

Emori chuckles self-deprecatingly. “Liar.”

He shakes his head. “After six years, shouldn’t you know me a little better than that?”

“True,” she concedes. He presses a kiss to her wrist, then one to her thumb, then her palm. “John…” she murmurs. “What are you doing?”

When he looks up, her eyes are glassy, unfocused. “Nothing. I just really love you,” he whispers, lifting his head to kiss her. It’s a bit awkward with the Rover’s door between them, but she hangs half-way out the window to meet his lips, wrapping her right arm around his shoulders to bring him closer. He pecks her on the lips, the nose, the cheeks, the eyelids while she laughs, relief at being alive after six years of hell coursing through both their veins.

“Nice to see the passion hasn’t died,” Monty quips as he passes them, a bundle of firewood on his shoulders. Madi walks beside him, Clarke’s makeshift rifle in her hand. From the looks of it, she was about to show Monty the strap, which was inscribed with the names of the dead. Murphy tried to read it earlier, but it hurt his heart too much.

“Bite me,” he says to Monty without venom. Madi catches onto what the exchange meant and lets out a loud wolf whistle, sending Emori into a fit of laughter.

“Where did you learn that?” Monty asks, almost scoldingly, and Murphy joins Emori in laughter.

He pulls open the door and pokes her in the leg until she slides over so he can sit beside her. “Mm, much better,” she hums, tucking herself against his chest. He kisses the top of her head, cards his fingers through her hair. She sighs, burying her face in his chest. “You still smell like the Ring,” she complains.

“I’ll roll around in the dirt later if it’ll make you feel better,” he suggests impishly.

She whacks him on the arm. “No, John. Although,” she says, reaching up to stroke his cheek. “You should shave. It’s getting too prickly.”

He leans down to rub his cheek against hers. “What, not a fan of this?”

“Stop it, John!” she says, but she’s giggling. He grins when she presses a kiss to his stubbly cheek. “It’s too itchy. And you’re ridiculous, just so you know.”

“Said the thief to the cockroach,” he retorts, kissing her a little longer this time, letting his lips linger on hers. Her smaller hand comes up to knot in his hair, tugging lightly at the too-long strands, and she presses her tongue to his lower lip in a way that makes him shiver.

When they break apart, they’re both breathing heavily. He reaches for her badass hand again, bringing it to his lips once more, kissing the welded fingers. “It’s like a little claw,” he says affectionately, kissing her palm.

She reaches for the wrap he brought her. “Hardly ‘little’,” she mutters. “Say goodbye, John.”

“No,” he grumbles. “It’s cute.”

“Shut up.” She pulls it from his grasp and begins winding the cloth around it, from her wrist up. Even after three years of leaving her hand uncovered, she can still disguise it with rapid dexterity. It makes something in Murphy’s heart hurt.

“What if they still throw me out for this?” she asks quietly, all playfulness gone, as she rests her head against his chest again. “When we open the bunker...what if all I am is a stain to them?”

Murphy shakes his head, taking the cloth from her hand and finishing the job for her. “You won’t be.”

“You don’t know that.” Her lips are trembling. “What if everything goes back to the way it was? What if they cast me out again?”

Murphy sees the weariness in her eyes. After six years of acceptance, would she have returned to the ground only to be worthless again? Was that all she was meant to be?

No. Murphy calls bullshit on that.

“They won’t. And if they try, I won’t let them.” He nearly spits the words, he’s so determined.

Emori frowns. “How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t be,” he says honestly. “But wherever you go, I’ll go too. I’m not leaving you. Not ever.”

“John,” she whispers, and then her lips are on his again, the kiss deep and thorough, her hands pressing him back into the seat. He lets her straddle him and kisses her neck, her collarbone, the spot near her jaw that makes her jolt and shiver.

“I love you,” he whispers into the warm skin of her shoulder, the soft fabric of her shirt. “I love you so damn much.”

“I worried you would get tired of me in space,” she confesses suddenly, in her blunt way, sinking back on his thighs, her feet dangling awkwardly off the seat.

Murphy shakes his head. “I will never get used to you, Emori. I never want to get used to you. You’re really fucking incredible. And kind of scary,” he adds as an aside because it’s still true, even after all those years.

She laughs, throwing her head back. He watches in fascination as her hair scatters over her shoulders, flowing like a waterfall down her back. I can’t keep my eyes off of you, he wants to tell her. I want to spend the rest of my life making you laugh. I want to spend forever trying to deserve you.

She’s staring down at him, he realizes. Her small hand is stroking his hair, running through the messy strands, smoothing it out. “You’re beautiful,” she murmurs. “You know that, right?”

He shrugs. “As long as you like what you see…”

“Shut up,” she says again. “You are. I like looking at you. You’re the only good choice I ever made.”

“That’s a pretty shitty commentary on your life,” he quips, leaning up to kiss her, shivering as she runs her hands down and over his chest.

“I love you, John,” she whispers against his lips before pulling back just a fraction to look at him. When he opens his eyes, she’s practically glowing, eyes smiling at him, skin pleasantly warm. “I love you more than anything.”

He nods, throat nearly closing up, and pulls her down for another kiss. They stay like that, kissing and touching, until Clarke flings open the door of the Rover and tells them they’re not allowed to “defile where I’ve been sleeping for the past six years, for the love of God!”