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Her hair was so much darker when it was wet. Longer, too: it reached nearly all the way to her waist. Marcus ran careful fingers through the saturated strands, watching the way they clung to their brethren until the last moment.
He’d started near the middle, but with each pass through her hair his hand reached higher, until he was running his fingers over the curve of her scalp.
Abby hummed in appreciation and tipped her head back. Marcus smiled.
“It’s gotten so long,” he mused.
Abby cracked one eye open to look at him. “I bet I could braid yours.”
He chuckled. Abby turned to face him, and the hair that was still in his fingers was pulled over her shoulder.
“You might like it,” Abby continued. She slipped slim arms around his waist and pressed them together under the warm spray of water. “Keep it out of your face. It’s very economical.”
“I’m sure it is,” Marcus murmured. He kissed her, lazy and sweet, and grinned against her lips when she pushed a hand into his wet hair. “But then you wouldn’t be able to do that.”
“Good point.”
Abby sighed in contentment. She tucked her nose in against his collarbone and breathed in the faint, lingering scent of soap that clung to his skin. She closed her eyes.
Marcus held her to him tightly with the arm draped around her waist. He cradled the back of her head with his other hand, the water hot on the back of his hand and her hair damp and smooth against his palm.
Abby’s hands shifted on his back, sliding up a little farther, and Marcus smiled against her ear. He could feel the cooler, more rigid strips of metal that stood out against her hand.
Abby had three rings now: one she wore on a chain around her neck, to remember; one on her right hand, for the past; and one on her left hand, for the future.
(Abby had started to take them off once, Jake’s rings, when Marcus had held up the thin silver band he’d meant for her.
”Don’t take them off,” he’d said. “I don’t want to eclipse the past, Abby. I just want a chance to be part of the future, if you’ll let me.”
And when Abby, incapable of speech, had simply nodded her agreement, Marcus had slipped his band over the third finger of her right hand.
She’d cried - in gratitude, or love, or something else (Marcus had never discovered) - and switched it to her left hand on the spot. They’d made love until the morning light bathed them in long fingers of molten gold.
There was no ceremony, no holy words to be delivered or friends to bear witness. There was only this: a breathless moment where Clarke looked from her father’s ring around Abby’s neck, to his ring now on her right hand, to the new one on her left; wide blue eyes full of tears as Clarke hugged Marcus like she’d never hugged him before and whispered a choked, heartfelt thank you in his ear.
And that was all the affirmation they needed.)