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"Wow, Bellamy's got nothing on you."
He knows he's the last person she wants to see. The sadness is coming off of her in waves, and Murphy thinks he can feel them, or maybe he's just sad himself. Oh well. The only way he knows how to deal with sadness is to do something bad for attention, and maybe this is it. It doesn't show in his features. Finn was a fixture but not a friend.
The line of Clarke's back looks so solid and strong even in this moment.
"What?"
She turns around, and the knife's not in her hand anymore, but her fingers are bloody. She's probably trying to go back to her tent and hide. Raven will hate her. Murphy knows Raven well enough to know that. And Bellamy will try to give her a speech probably, one of his classic speeches, but they're only good for a crowd, not for one person. Murphy knows that too.
"Bellamy's got nothing on you. You know, leader-wise." That's not what he means. He means that he thought he could relate to Bellamy when they first landed. Bellamy was ruthless, and he was in charge, and he would have done anything to get ahead. Still true, probably. But now he's more reserved, and he thinks of the good of the group first, and he's not dark anymore. He doesn't hurt people anymore.
Clarke, though? She hurts people all the time.
She's a mercy killer, and Murphy wants to dig at her for it. He wants to hit that place inside her head. He wants to get her upset with him, because that's his tantrum this time. Maybe she'll hurt him too. Or maybe she'll commiserate. "Yeah," she'll say. "There is that part of killing that feels so good."
"Shut up, Murphy," she grumbles, and she continues walking. Murphy considers letting her go. But he doesn't. He can't. What is he supposed to do, anyway? Go talk to Bellamy? Do his something bad with Bellamy? Not a chance. Bellamy's given Murphy a second chance, and he's not even the one who believes in second chances. Murphy can't fuck that up. Other people here, they'll get a free pass for grieving. Murphy doesn't get free passes.
"I'm trying to compliment you," he says, lightly jogging to catch up to her side. And he can tell he's hit a nerve. She's glaring now, gritting her teeth, and her bloodied hand is in a fist.
"I said shut up."
"I saw you crying. When you killed him. I never cry when I kill people. You shouldn't feel bad. You had to do it. You were just--"
And she turns and grips him by the collar. And suddenly her knife is back out. And it's still got Finn's blood on it, and it's pressed to his throat.
Murphy can't stand it. She's looking at him with this hard, crazy sort of look, and he's seen it before. But he's never seen it up close like this, and it's hitting him in his stomach, and he can smell metal. Blood. Murphy loves blood. He loves killing. He loves seeing Clarke like this, so dark and so beautiful.
She won't kill him. Clarke never wants to kill him. She always votes to save his life.
"Clarke," he says, voice low and eyes lit. "You're turning me on." He's not lying. He's hot. He's at least half-hard. But he's getting off on this in more ways than one. He's getting to her. He's digging his dirty nails in.
He expects her to shove him away then. But she just presses the knife a little harder into his skin, and it hurts, and Murphy starts breathing heavy past his lips.
"You're sick," she says.
"Yeah," he says. "You gonna kill me too? But oh wait-- That's right. You only kill people when they're gonna die anyway."
At that point, she does shove him off. "That's not true," she says. She speeds up her walking, but Murphy stays at her side.
He raises his fingers to his throat, where Clarke managed to cut him a little. There's blood there. He swipes at it with a finger and sucks the finger into his mouth. "Come on," he says. "You don't want to go be alone in your tent. That's where you're going, right?"
She gives him a sideways glance.
He continues. "You shouldn't be alone right now. I'm the only one who gets it."
"You don't get it."
"Maybe not. But I want you. And I don't wanna be alone either." He lets a little weakness slip into his expression this time, a sad sort of distance in his eyes, and she answers with more glaring.
But she doesn't reject him anymore. And when they get to her tent, she shoves him inside.
The darkness seems so complete. Everybody's awake outside, with lit fires, but the tent's darkness is heavy, and Murphy almost hurts himself falling when Clarke pushes him down.
She settles over his hips. She presses the blade to his cheek. And Murphy can't help but moan, heat flushing his skin and making him feel sweaty. It's easy to feel sweaty out here. They aren't clean, and the grime's always covering his skin, but he knows it doesn't matter right now. Clarke isn't clean either. She's always cleaner than him, but she's not right now. She's all wounds and blood and guilt.
He's imagining being inside her. He knows he won't last long. But the heat doesn't come.
Clarke shoves at her own pants. Murphy helps her get them down past her hips because he doesn't want her to have to stop with the blade. And then she's sliding her own fingers between her legs. She leans down over him, rocking against him and making little grunts next to his ear, and it takes everything. It takes everything not to sit up, take the knife from her, shove her down. He could take her. He could hurt her. He could make everyone mad at him.
But he just whines. Sometimes she moves in a way that gives him friction, and he makes noises that are increasingly desperate, strained.
"Isn't this what you wanted, Murphy?" she says, taunting him.
And he answers with a hand in her hair, touching her as softly as he can given how much he wants to slam her pretty head into something solid. "You smell like...blood," he croaks out.
Clarke makes a soft sound. A moan. Murphy wants to have caused it. But he can't be sure that his words meant anything to her, and that train of thought leads him somewhere uncomfortable. He feels sad. He's so hot and so twisted up, and his sounds are pathetic.
Clarke's still moving against him, but she takes the blade from his cheek. She closes that bloody hand over his mouth and nose, cutting off his air.
Oh God. The need in his stomach grows unbearably heavy, and he shoves his hips up against her as she keeps rubbing herself, her hand and her heat rocking against his thigh.
He feels safe. Clarke is a healer. She knows how long she can keep him like this. Right? But she doesn't stop even when his self-control--that thing that's keeping him from hurting her--runs out. And he fights it. And he's genuinely scared. And she stops touching herself to take up the blade again, holding it to his throat as he claws at her hands.
Murphy didn't realize Clarke was stronger than him. He didn't realize she was a real killer. She's looking into Murphy's eyes, and all he sees is hard crystal staring back at him, and his legs are kicking too.
But she lets up. She lets up and immediately tosses the blade away, holding his shoulders down.
"Murphy--"
He's gasping, and he's resisting her, but she keeps him pinned.
"Murphy, it's okay."
Eventually he calms. But he's angry, and he can feel the anger twisting in his stomach, along with the arousal that refuses to dissipate. "Fuck you," he says. And his voice comes out even grittier than usual, weaker.
"I was testing myself," says Clarke. "I'm not a killer like you. I can control it."
Murphy nearly laughs. Okay. Like he's some mindless killer himself. "Good for you. So can I." He's still thinking about blunt force trauma and Clarke's skull, and yet here he is, forcing himself to calm down so they can do more of whatever they're doing. And she's looking at him with a half-glare now, a sad sort of look, like what he's said has both confused and hurt her.
"Go on," he says. "Finish. You didn't finish."
He should kill her. Maybe he'll do it, later on, when he has the advantage again. He's sensitive about near-death experiences, you see. He feels angry and turned on, yeah, but he feels a little sick too. Clarke might have failed her test. She might have failed and gone on with it.
But he feels for her, right now. Because she's not finishing. She's just looking down at him, and then she's looking down at his torso, a strand of hair falling into her eyes. She's so broken. She looks more broken right now than she did when she was crying.
"Let me do it," he says.
"We can't have sex," she says. "It's too dangerous."
There are many things he can do and not fuck her, but he understands. "Do you want to have sex? Is that why you're saying that?"
She nods. She's still not looking at his face.
"I'll pull out. You've fucked me up enough, I think I can hold back now."
She swallows, but she nods again. "Alright."
And he sits up carefully. She moves off of him. She sits down next to him, removing the rest of her clothes.
He's removing his own, but he's momentarily distracted by the full shapes of her breasts. God, he wants her. He wants to feel her shake around him.
Once they're both naked, they carefully come together, and the tight heat is nearly too much. He wants to fuck her raw. He wants to do it fast and all at once and finish between her legs, but he's got to control himself. He's got to be the noble darkness, like Bellamy.
Clarke's hands are soft as she touches at his shoulders. Her eyes are soft too now, as she looks at him. "Come on," she says. He can hear the want in her voice. This is so much better. She's hot because of him.
He moves his hips. He bends down to kiss her while he does it, and they rock together, her soft body so warm against his dirty bones. He likes being close like this. He likes the way her breasts feel pressed to his chest. And eventually he does fuck her hard, and she makes little whimpery moans, digging her nails into his shoulders.
Her orgasm comes first. She convulses around him, and he shoves her away a little violently, finishing with a hand around his own length. He wants to cum on her, but he doesn't. He doesn't want to wake up the violent, dirty part of himself with something like that.
"Murphy..." She sits up to pull him down, her hands gentle again, her lips pressing against his neck.
He sinks into the blankets with her. She feels good against him, snuggling with him face to face. But he can feel anger breaking through his afterglow, and he has trouble relating to her post-fuck softness.
"You can't do stuff like that to me," he says. "It makes me feel sick."
For a moment, she looks confused. She touches at the sides of his face. But then recognition seems to dawn on her. "I'm sorry."
He thinks about killing her. He tests himself with the thought, trying to see if it feels good, like planning all the others. But it doesn't. He doesn't want her to die. She doesn't deserve to die.
"Just don't do it again," he says.
"I won't."
She draws close and kisses him, her hands stroking over his hair. And he relaxes a little into it. Nobody ever touches him. Nobody ever wants to put their fingers in his dirty, matted-up hair.
He nuzzles into her, breathing softly against her skin. "Not unless, you know...you want to sit on my face or something," says Murphy.
And Clarke laughs. She laughs against his ear and then she kisses him again. And Murphy forgets about death and murder for that one short moment, his head gone quiet, his gritty darkness lost in her healing warmth, which will always outshine how murderous she gets when she has to.