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I didn’t say it, but I pretended the tears were because he was washing my right arm, starting at the shoulder and working his way down to my hand, washing each finger individually, carefully. He didn’t say anything, just kept going, and when he was done, he cradled my hand in his, gently turning it this way and that, inspecting the bruises and friction burns. The crease was back in his brow, the concerned look back on his face.
“This is my fault,”
he murmured, running his fingers around a particularly large bruise (I think it came from Finn stepping on my arm.)
“It’s not…”
“You did this for me. You wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. You wouldn’t have hurt yourself this way. Only for me.”
“You’re not so special,”
the sarcasm rang false even in my own ears, and he hadn’t used his King voice once since we got there but that couldn’t mean anything, because despite everything, despite how angry I thought I maybe still was at him, how he betrayed me and blamed me for Charlotte and kicked me out and let the Grounders have me, despite it all, Bellamy is good . Bellamy sides with the Princess, and Bellamy is a leader, and Bellamy makes people trust him and follow him and fall in love with him, and I could never be anything more than an annoyance to him, even if I did save his life.
I told myself that over and over as he reached out and wiped the tears from my cheeks with his bare hands before he cleaned my face, washing the tear tracks away without mentioning them once. When I was as clean as I was going to be, he tossed the shirt into the bucket and just looked at me.
“How is your arm?”
I shrugged, which was incredibly stupid, and winced, and he frowned. Then he did the weirdest and stupidest thing he’d done so far, which was to reach out and touch my face again, running his thumb across my forehead and down my cheek, cradling my jaw in one big hand.
So, not to be outdone, I did something even stupider – I pressed forward, touching my lips to his. He pulled back immediately, eyes wide, and I knew it, I knew it was stupid and I shouldn’t have done it. I wanted to apologize, but I don’t apologize, I don’t know when the last time I said ‘I’m sorry’ and meant it was. So instead, I just braced myself, I waited for him to push me away or hit me or even just storm out of the tent, but instead he just looked at me and his hand was still cupping my face, and when I finally managed to look back at him, he sort of smirked at my sneer, and then he leaned forward and kissed me.
He kept his lips pressed to mine as he moved closer, and he’d clearly done this before because I could not lay someone down without breaking a kiss the way he did, being careful of my arm and settling over me, knees framing my hips, supporting himself with one arm and moving his free hand back into my hair.
“I never knew you cared, Murphy,”
he teased, right against my mouth, and I did my best to glare at him, reaching up to bite at his lips.
“I never said I did, Bellamy.”
“You don’t have to,”
he murmured, and his voice was a little too serious so I pressed our lips together again. I could handle it, I thought, the kissing and the way his fingers were tangled in my hair, stroking gently at my scalp, but I couldn’t handle it when his voice was gentle but also serious and he said things like that, said that I didn’t have to tell him I care and meant that he already knew, and his voice wasn’t a taunt but a reassurance. That wasn’t alright, but the kissing was, the way his lips were chapped and gentle against mine even though he was pressing harder and harder, even though he ran his tongue along my lips and then along my tongue, even though he made this deep noise in his throat and ground his hips against mine.
“We can’t do this,”
he pulled back and moved down, pressing kisses to my neck and jaw.
“Not with your arm like that.”
“My arm is fine,”
I growled, because I refused to be the reason this didn’t happen – I refused to back down from this, from anything. He groaned, biting at the join of my shoulder (on the left side, thankfully,) and moving one hand down to press against the front of my pants.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Bit late for that,”
and that earned me more pressure, another bite, and then his lips back against mine. It was different though, the kiss was desperate in a way the others weren’t. That was the wrong thing to say, because suddenly he was upset, he thought I thought he hurt me, that he was responsible. I guess it was one thing if he thought it, as long as I didn’t.
“I didn’t mean that,”
I muttered, bringing my good hand up to catch him by the collar and rubbing just gently against the bare skin of his neck.
“It wasn’t your fault. It was… It was my fault, probably. Everything is my fault, usually.”
But apparently that was also the wrong thing to say, because he pulled back, suddenly, and his eyes were dark and serious in a way they hadn’t been before.
“It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that she fell off a damn cliff, or that I went after her. It was stupid. I wanted to save her, and I put all of you in danger. That’s not your fault.”
“Well it’s not your fault that the Grounders attacked us, or that Finn is a worthless piece of shit,”
I countered, leaning up on my good elbow to run my nose along his neck - he smelled clean, like he’d taken a shower. I didn’t want to even imagine how I smelled.
“So can we just fucking agree that it wasn’t either of our faults, and keep going?”
He laughed, then, warm air against my skin, and kissed me. It was different again. This kiss wasn’t desperate, but it also wasn’t hot and urgent the way the first ones had been. This one was softer, sweeter, and I felt my skin crawl and it was all I could do to roll my hips up against his. I had to press both shoulders back against the bedroll, and I winced, but it was lost in the way both our bodies jerked at the contact. He’d shifted, after he pulled back, and the friction this time was different, harsher, better. He growled low in his throat and pressed me down, rolling his hips hard and fast against mine.
I lost it, whining and gasping for air, and he reached a clumsy hand down between us, opening first my pants and then his own, never letting up that pressure, and I know I was saying his name but I pretended I wasn’t. He didn’t, though, pressing sloppy kisses to my jaw and saying,
“Murphy, oh my god, John ,”
in that stupid, gravelly voice and suddenly I was coming, hot and wet against both our stomachs.
Bellamy did not follow close behind me. He took his goddamn time, his skin hot against mine and his teeth sharp on my neck when he bit and his hand tight in my hair. He said my name, over and over, and I didn’t have the energy to be freaked out so I just lay beneath him, one arm wrapped loosely around his waist, feeling the way he moved and maybe I caught myself whispering encouragement once or twice but definitely not more than three times, my voice wrecked around,
“Come on, come on. Doesn’t it feel good? Come for me. Show me you like it. Come for me ,”
until he did, finally, hot and wet just like mine. And he made this weird noise against my throat while he did, this deep, low moan that almost sounded like,
“Love you, John,”
but looking back, it was definitely actually,
“Wanna fuck you, John.”
Luckily, I didn’t have a chance to respond to what I thought he might’ve said, because he rolled me over onto my good shoulder and slotted in behind me, kicking his pants down and off and helping me do the same before dragging the blanket up over both of us.
“What are you doing,”
I tried to ask, but he just wrapped his arm around me and pulled me tight back against his body and muttered,
“Shut up, Murphy,”
and fumbled behind himself until he hit the lamp. In the dark, in the close warm air of the tent, I lost the battle to stay awake and alert, and the last thing I was aware of before I fell asleep was his lips, just gentle, against the back of my neck.