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Abby had always been beautiful to him. Even at the height of their rivalry on the Ark, Marcus had been willing to admit (to himself, of course) that he was attracted to her. Her constant and confounding ability to infuriate him had done nothing to lessen that attraction.
That feeling wasn’t the same as the one that ballooned in his chest now. This one was warmer, fuller: it was the bloom of a lasting attachment that could only grow from a deep and true understanding who she was, and who he was, and who they could be together.
This was Abby in the privacy of Marcus’s bedroom, the warm glow of a desk lamp making a golden halo of her hair; this was a comfort and familiarity that he’d never dared to let himself imagine on the Ark.
It was also well past midnight, and Abby existed somewhere between frustration and exhaustion.
Marcus didn’t want her to leave. Tomorrow, he would carry out a coup - he would kidnap the Chancellor and leave the camp behind. He would leave Abby behind. There was no way to know when he would see her again.
He didn’t want her to leave, but she was dead on her feet and keeping her here with him wasn’t fair to her.
She was seated at the desk. Her shoulders were hunched over as she studied the inventory manifestos in front of her. Marcus stood and approached her, sliding a hand over her shoulder when he was close enough to do so.
“Go to bed, Abby.”
She sighed, but there was more than weariness in the sound. “Okay.”
Abby stood and headed for the door to his room, realized that she’d left her stack of papers on the desk, and turned around to nearly run face first into Marcus’s chest.
“I forgot the -”
Marcus kissed her. He hooked a finger under her chin and angled her head upward as he leaned down, and nothing in his life had prepared him for the soft warmth of her lips on his.
Abby responded as though she hadn’t been half asleep a heartbeat ago: she pressed herself into him and reached one hand up to scrape her nails through his beard, her mouth falling open beneath his in a soundless gap when he traced the swell of her lower lip with his tongue.
Her thoughts were wild and hazy when Marcus finally let her go.
“Maybe I should leave papers on your desk more often,” she mused.
Marcus smiled.
(Later, in Polis, Abby’s first moment of clarity - the first fracture in ALIE’s control of her - came when she walked by a small desk covered in papers.
“Papers on the desk,” she muttered, but there was no one around to smile.)