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Murphy had never been content with his body.
He'd always been a bit on the skinny side, some would describe him as wimpy, weak, and he hated it. He’d gotten bullied for it in the Ark, being the weak little boy who couldn’t fight back. His mother could barely afford to feed him, and sometimes he would just look at himself in the one tiny mirror in their compartment and cringe at the way his ribs protruded.
It made him angry. It was just another factor that contributed to him being the snappy, quick-to-anger person that he was now. The one who wouldn’t trust anyone. The one who nobody could trust.
He thought he had gotten better. On the ground, he was better fed, better worked, actually had some definition to himself rather than just bone-tight skin. He thought it was better. He hoped it was better.
But that was before he looked in the mirror.
It was the first night back in Arkadia, after the ALIE incident at Polis. He’d been beaten and tortured, but he’d come out alive, and he was thankful for that small mercy. He was also thankful to have the skills to slip past Abby, who was insisting that everyone get checked over for wounds before being allowed to retire.
So now he was standing in one of the empty Ark rooms, shirt off, staring at himself in the mirror. And he felt like that same weak, bitter child again.
Expect it wasn’t the tightness. It wasn’t the hollowness.
It was the scars .
There were so many of them, crisscrossing over his torso like a twisted piece of art. Some of the older ones were white and faded, barely visible against his pale self, but other, newer ones stood out in glaring red. His fingers trailed along one that followed the bottom of his ribs, feeling the raised flesh. There was one just above his hip that looked enflamed, glistening with fresh blood. He must have reopened it sometime on the journey. He hadn’t even felt anything.
They were just scars, he knew that. Just scars. But all he could think of was weak .
It flooded his mind, taunting him, screaming at him. He trembled as he stared at himself, the scars seeming to get brighter and brighter by the second, more and more angry, harder and harder to ignore. He growled, closing his eyes and trying to block it out, but the thoughts wouldn’t go quiet, they wouldn’t go away, go away, go away!
Murphy barely even had a second to realize what he was doing before his fist was slippery with blood and glass shards clattered onto the metal floor.
He looked back at the shattered mirror, the bits and pieces still held in place showing a warped image of himself. In this way, the scars didn’t look like scars anymore. He stumbled backwards away from the mirror, back hitting the wall, and he slid down onto the floor. Tears left wet trails down his cheeks, and he could feel the pain radiating from his bloodied, ripped fingers, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting the thoughts out of his head.
“Murphy?” Someone knocked on the door insistently. The nagging feeling that he should recognize that voice tugged at his mind, but he was too jumbled to pick out the voice. “Murphy, are you alright? I heard something break.”
He sniffed, pushing his face into his knees. He didn’t want to face anyone right now. Didn’t want them to see what a failure he was. How weak he was.
Murphy didn’t hear the door open, but whoever it was must have opened it, because he felt small hands grab his, careful to avoid the glass bits still embedded in his skin. Soft fingers brushed through the blood, ever so gently removing the shards. He glanced up, meeting ocean-blue eyes that shone with tears.
Clarke didn’t say anything, only focused on the task at hand. When all of the glass was gone, she shrugged off her jacket and used it to carefully wipe at the blood. “I don’t have any bandages,” she murmured. “You’ll just have to be careful with these.”
“You- you’re not going to make me go?” Murphy whispered, trying to choke back the emotions caught in his throat.
Clarke looked up at him and smiled, her face so open and relaxed and yet so emotional at the same time that it made him want to give in. “I know how you feel, Murphy,” she answered. “You probably don’t want to go anywhere, do you?”
He shook his head, watching as she finished cleaning the blood off his hands. It still leaked in small trails from his cuts, but it was cleaner than before, and for that he was thankful. She squeezed his wrist reassuringly. “There you are.”
Clarke tried to gently tug him up, but as soon as he let his body uncurl he remembered the entire reason why this was happening. He couldn’t let her see . Murphy recoiled instantly, ripping his wrist from her grip and tucking back into himself, face buried in his knees. He heard Clarke shuffling around, felt her heat settle at his side, almost close enough to touch if he leaned over just an inch.
“I remember one day,” Clarke spoke suddenly, voice hushed and soft. “I was maybe thirteen. My dad had to leave work to come get me from my lessons because the head had called him, saying I had hurt a kid. They said I would need to be disciplined for putting my hands on another student. My dad was silent the whole time, like he couldn’t believe I would do such a thing.”
She fell quiet for a few seconds, as if considering, reminiscing. Murphy kept his quiet, too. He liked hearing her voice, talking to him. It made him feel safer, knowing she was there with him.
“When we got home, my dad sat me down on the couch and asked why I had done it.” Clarke let out a shaky sigh, and Murphy found himself leaning in closer, wanting to help her but not knowing how. Clarke seemed to catch on, shifting closer so that Murphy was leaning against her side.
“I told him that the kid had been- had been saying some things to some of the other kids. That he would call them weak and pathetic and useless. And I- I hated it. I hated how someone could do such a thing. So I interfered. I went up to him, and I called him out on it. Saying he shouldn’t be saying things like that. Which was dumb, I know, but I was headstrong. Impulsive.”
“Still are,” Murphy muttered against her shoulder. Clarke snorted, leaning her cheek against his hair. Murphy felt entirely surrounded by her, and he loved it.
“I guess I am,” she agreed. “But he fought back at me. Called me privileged, prissy, things like that. Which I was used to. That wasn’t what bothered me.” Murphy felt a tear drip onto his hair. “He- when he realized that his words meant nothing to me, he tried- he made a grab for me. By now, it was past time that classes had started, so there wasn’t really anyone else around.”
Murphy felt his stomach roll. He knew where this was going, and it felt almost achingly familiar. “You don’t have to tell me,” he whispered.
“I know,” Clarke mumbled back, leaning heavier against him. “But I want to. I hope- I hope that telling you this will help you trust me. Tell you that I am here for you. That I do know what you’re feeling. And I hope it will make you feel less alone.”
You make me feel less alone . Murphy didn’t say that, though. He only nodded.
Clarke sighed. “You probably know where this is going,” she said. “He- he pushed me back against the wall, pinned me there. Pressed himself against me. Forced his lips onto mine. I remember feeling so many things, in that moment. Disgust. Resentment. Anxiety. Terror. But I was so, so angry. So angry that he could just get away with things like that, angry that he thought this was okay. So I fought back. Caught him off guard, managed to cave his nose in, and I doubt I broke anything past that, but he must have had bruises all down his chest afterwards.”
Clarke’s breath hitched, and she turned to press her face into his hair, gasping, tears falling onto him. Murphy was crying too, soaking her shirt with it.
They sat together, crying onto each other, for a few minutes, before Murphy summoned up the courage to speak. “He was the one to attacked you,” Murphy said softly, “and yet you were the one who was punished.”
Clarke nodded. “My dad made sure he got the wrong side for it, though,” she responded. “After I told him, he immediately went to the council, demanded that the kid be punished accordingly. I don’t know exactly what happened, but as bad as it is to say, I hope he isn’t down here with us. I hope he died on the ship.”
She was quiet for a few more moments. “I didn’t tell you that so that you would feel sorry for me,” she said. “It’s over and done with. Has been for a while. I just- I want you to know that you can trust me, Murphy. That I trust you.”
“Pretty shitty peace offering,” Murphy mumbled, and he felt pleased when she shook with suppressed laughter beneath him.
“I know,” she sighed. “But will you accept it anyway?”
“Sure, fine, whatever.” Clarke shoved him lightly, and he couldn’t help but chuckle. He knew he should probably get off of her now, but he didn’t want to. He felt safe here. And she didn’t seem in any hurry to move either, so he let himself stay where he was.
“I guess I’ll return the favor then,” he said, suddenly serious. “And before you say anything , I am not just doing this out of obligation, Maybe partially, but I’m not.”
Clarke shifted them slightly until he was settled more comfortably in her side, her arm now curled over his shoulder, fingers tangled in his hair. “Okay.”
Murphy took a deep breath, steeling himself for this. “I was- I was one of those kids who would get picked on. For being small, weak, useless. That was me. My mom, she couldn’t afford enough to keep us both fed, so the few meals I had were always unfulfilling, barely enough to get by. The other kids, especially those who lived better lives, would mock me for it. Because I was small, I had no muscle, nothing but skin and bones. I was the weak link.
“I remember that I would look in the mirror and I would hate the person who looked back at me. Hate the way I could count each rib. Hate how hollow my cheeks were, how caved-in I would always look. I was the bare minimum of being a human. And I blamed myself for it.”
Murphy hugged his knees tighter to his chest. “It got better on the ground. There were no mirrors to look at myself in. And even then, I knew I had gotten stronger. Wasn’t as weak as before. I thought I would be okay. But when I looked at myself in the mirror today, all I could see was the scars. Proof that no matter what, I will always be weak. That I’ll never be enough.”
“Oh, Murphy…” Clarke’s thumb rubbed circled in his shoulder, her other hand reaching across her body to rest on his knee. “Scars don’t make you weak. Scars are proof that you survived, not that you’re weak. They prove that you’re strong .”
Murphy shook his head, face buried in Clarke’s shoulder. “Not strong enough.”
There was silence for a few long moments before Clarke started to pull away. He panicked, impulsively reaching out to grab her, but she didn’t go far, crouching in front of him. She met his eyes as she carefully picked up his injured hands, bringing one up to her lips to press a kiss to his knuckles. He stared wide eyed even as she broke contact to focus on the task at hand, lips brushing over each indent made by his earlier incident.
She repeated the pattern on his other hand, being ever so gentle, ever so careful, and it brought even more tears to his eyes. When she finished with that hand, she turned it over to press her lips to his palm, glancing up at him again, and the sheer feeling in her eyes was enough to make the tears spill onto his cheeks.
But she didn’t stop there. Her nose skimmed over the skin on his wrist, searching, and she found the little nick just below his elbow, a scar he remembered getting on the Ark when he was younger. He remembered tripping, falling into a table, tearing the skin on his arm. He’d cried and screamed but his mother wasn’t there, and nobody else gave enough of a shit about little Murphy to care.
But as he felt the careful press of Clarke’s mouth on it, he knew. He knew that he’d never be able to look at that scar without thinking of this moment. Never be able to look at any of them, if she continued the way she was, her goal seeming to be to smooth over every single mark on his skin.
Murphy was shaking, tears dripping onto his bare chest, watching Clarke with rapture as she dragged her lips along a long scar on his shoulder. Murphy shuddered as her nose brushed his neck, and for a second he had a flashback to the feeling of rough rope pushing at his throat, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. Clarke didn’t linger there, instead switching sides to take his other arm, kissing the inside of his elbow.
Murphy felt like he was melting into the ground and floating above his body. Everything inside of him was coiled tight, explosive, unrestrained emotion, and he didn’t know what to do with it. He felt like everything in him was boiling to the surface, and he didn’t know how to contain it.
“Clarke-” he choked out, desperate for something, anything , but Clarke only hushed him.
“Let me do this for you, Murphy,” she whispered against his skin, and he turned to look at her, their faces barely inches apart. “Let me help you. Please.”
Murphy knew he must look like a mess, and he felt a second of shame for ever letting someone else see him like this, but this was Clarke . So he nodded, not trusting himself to say any more. He would let her have her way. And maybe, hopefully , she could help him.
Clarke set a hand on his thigh, glancing up at him in question. He knew what she wanted, but still, he was hesitant to give it. Everything in him screamed to keep it secret, not show his weakness, but he was too far gone. He knew that. So he fought. And slowly, hesitantly, he uncurled himself, baring his scarred torso to her.
Clarke’s eyes didn’t linger anywhere, immediately bowing her head to kiss his collarbone. Murphy let his head fall back against the wall, breathing heavily as he struggled with his emotions. Clarke paid him no mind, trailing down his chest, making sure to kiss over every bit of skin that had even the slightest scar.
Yeah, he’d never be able to look at his scars the same way again.
It was then that Murphy realized this was possibly the most intimate moment he’d ever had in his life. This was the most vulnerable he’d been in years . He was sitting bare-chested against the wall, Clarke kneeling over him, lips dragging along his skin, and the feelings that stretched between them were so thick it was choking.
Clarke dipped down and back up, until her lips were trailing the hollow of his throat. Murphy’s breath hitched, and he could feel the panic rising in his chest. Her mouth touched beneath his chin, swerving down to the side, where she pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the corner of his neck and shoulder.
Clarke pulled away before it could become too much, and suddenly her face was right in front of his, noses almost brushing. She was kneeling between his knees, one hand on the floor by his hip and the other pressed against his ribs.
Clarke’s expression was soft, curious, open, so, so open, and he could imagine his was much the same. She opened her mouth to say something but seemed to think twice of it, instead leaning closer until he could taste every exhale she let out.
And then she was kissing him.
Murphy sighed into the kiss, letting himself fall into her. She brought her arms up around his shoulders, holding him close, and he felt ensnared, enraptured, and he never wanted to leave that feeling. He forgot his pain, his sadness, the ever-constant voice telling him he was weak suddenly not a constant anymore. It was like a breath of fresh air.
Clarke pulled away, her forehead pressed against his. Both of them were crying, and as their eyes met, they were laughing. Collapsing into each other and laughing.
“You’re amazing, John Murphy,” Clarke mumbled into his cheek. “So, so amazing.”
He pressed a kiss to her chin. “So are you, Clarke Griffin.”
She showered kisses over his face, both of them giggling and smiling so hard that it hurt.
And despite the emotion of the night, Murphy was happy.
Even if it was only for a second, he was with Clarke, in his room, collapsed on the floor surrounded by broken glass, and he was happy .
And that was something he hadn’t felt in a long time.