Work Text:
“It was my decision, you know,” Abby says, pulling off her latex gloves and putting them in the makeshift bin, “I guess… well, I didn’t think we’d be here to deal with the repercussions of it.”
Marcus leans against the low working bench, folding his arms. He smirks a little when their eyes meet.
“You remember we took a vote on that, right? It wasn’t just you, most of the council agreed it was a good – sensible idea,” he says.
“Hmm.” She is silent for a moment, turning away from him to strip the stretcher down. “Under my professional advisement.”
“Why are you so keen to take responsibility?” Marcus watches her back as she slowly limps around the end of the bed, bends down and pulls out some more disposable sheets. He hesitates on his next words, briefly considering the underlying implications of it, before saying it anyway. “You don’t have to mother the whole camp, y’know.”
Abby halts halfway through putting the new sheets on to look him square in the eye. It’s a look he can’t quite decipher – one he hasn’t seen before, he thinks… or maybe he has, briefly, at some point in their acquaintance. He doesn’t like it.
“I’m sorry,” he says, unfolding his hands and walking over to the other side of the temporary bed to help her finish for the next.
Marcus feels the heat creeping up the back of his neck as they work. It’s tentative times, even though he thought that maybe things were moving… somewhere, between them. Not somewhere romantic, necessarily… not that he hadn’t thought of it of late, just, well, moving away from the terse relationship they had once shared. It wasn’t something he’d particularly enjoyed on the Ark, but at the end of the day, he hadn’t given a damn whether Abby had liked him. He had just been doing his job. Her respect was not something he’d ever really valued, nor wanted, until they’d crashed to Earth, and the realisation that he was completely alone had smacked him full on in the face. Everyone seemed to have someone else to cling to, to hold on for, to spur them on to survive, and nowhere was that more apparent to him than Abigail Griffin. In her presence, he found himself grieving not only for the mother he’d lost, but the child he had never had, and indeed, never wanted. That was, until that point. His guilt, his insistent desire to atone for everything he had done, stemmed from that thought. He didn’t want to be Kane anymore. He didn’t want to be the man who’d rejected love in favour of law and death. Abby had helped him with that. They’d balanced each other out over the months, and now he is no longer Kane, but Marcus. At least to her, but he doesn’t care, all he wants is her approval, her love-
Wait, what?
Marcus feels himself blush, but before he can delve back into the mess of his mind, Abby is speaking, and her words slice into his brain.
“You don’t have to be sorry, Marcus.”
“I do. I…” He glances up at her awkwardly, their hands both coming to rest on the bed between them. “With Clarke gone… it was a thoughtless comment.”
“No, you’re right.” She sighs, staring down at the stretcher. “I’m trying to compensate. And it’s hard…”
“Because you miss her?”
She laughs at this, genuinely, and looks up to meet his gaze. It makes him smile.
“You would think,” she says, “don’t get me wrong, I do miss her… a lot, but I meant it’s hard because there’s so many pregnant women around now, and it reminds me of when I was carrying her…”
There’s a wistfulness to her look that he fleetingly wishes he could share. In that instant, Marcus wants to feel exactly what she’s feeling – unconditional, parental love, he imagines – because it looks so painfully beautiful to him.
“You miss it,” he says without thinking.
“Hmm. I do.” Their eyes meet as she says this, unwavering, and it’s so intense, Marcus feels himself swell a little and lightly pulse against his zipper.
“Anyway.” She breaks away, blushing a little and taking a step back from the bed as she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I completely forgot about the council’s decision to send the 100 down with no contraceptives whatsoever… and that we might have to deal with a baby boom.”
“At least it’s a welcome change from war. It’s nice to have something to celebrate, something positive,” he says.
“The first generation to be born on Earth. Seems almost impossible. Who’d knew there’d be so many, and all due at once.”
“Teens will be… teens. Especially without rules.”
She raises an amused, teasing eyebrow at him. “Speaking from experience, are we Marcus?”
He grins.
“Well, I can’t boast seventeen offspring.”
Abby sniggers a little, “God, joking aside, let’s hope each has a different father, otherwise this will wreak havoc on our gene pool.”
He shrugs, starting to become a little more serious again. “We need to start making babies.”
It hangs in the air between them. They both know what he means, and yet they’re both thinking about the unspoken insinuation in his words. Marcus can see it in Abby’s eyes, and he knows she’s feeling that same carnal tug he’s feeling, and it’s radiating from deep within them.
“Men remain fertile throughout their lives. You can still settle down, find a wife of childbearing age –” she starts.
Marcus’s lips are on Abby’s before she can finish. He finds her kissing him back just as viciously, her hands flying up to cup his face, before her fingers start twisting into his hair.
“I don’t… want a… wife… of… childbearing age,” he gasps between their kisses, pulling her hips hard against his. “I… want you, Abigail.”
“Oh… God… Marcus.”
Grabbing her thighs, just below her buttocks, he abruptly lifts her up, just enough to get her seated on the edge of the stretcher.
They’re probably going to regret this at some point, he thinks, because either Clarke will come home one day to find her mother fucking the man who floated her father, or the rest of the Arkers will find out about them, and there’ll be long discussions about professionalism. Or something else.
But Marcus Kane can’t bring himself to care, because the only thing he gives a damn about is her.
And shit, he thinks as joy envelopes him in her warm embrace, he might just love this woman.