Chapter Text
Kane wouldn’t have expected the people of Arkadia to be particularly enthusiastic about this year's Unity Day – about festivities of any kind, really – so close on the heels of their return from Polis. A month or so was hardly enough time, in his mind, for those of them still shaking off the horrors of the City of Light to feel whole enough to throw a huge party.
“I think that’s why they want the party,” Abby explained sensibly, folding her spare clothes and stuffing them into her travel pack. She could be entirely forgiven the slightly irritable snap in her voice, since she was the one who’d had to get up early today, while Kane was still sprawled comfortably across their bed. Two full decades of practicing medicine and parenting had failed to instill Abby Griffin with any patience for mornings; but Marcus had returned home early last night, in an amorous mood, making her forget about packing altogether. So here she was, just after dawn, grudgingly forced to finish everything up before she and Clarke left for Polis after breakfast, and Kane certainly could have tried a little harder not to taunt her about it, but theatrically stretching and yawning to annoy her was far too entertaining.
“What do you mean?”
“They need distractions,” she said, pulling her traveling coat down from the rack. “Nobody knows if the geodesic domes will work, nobody knows if Raven and Thelonious will find anything useful at ALIE’s home base. Nobody knows how long we have. They’re working hard, but it’s hard to blame them for taking any opportunity to let themselves get drunk and stupid for one night.”
“Easy for you to say,” he pointed out, “you’ll be in Polis, where it’s civilized.”
“I saw how many gallons of moonshine Jasper and Monty have stacked out back,” she said dryly. “I’m sure we’ll be able to hear you all from Polis.”
“Why are you including me in this?”
“Because you need distractions too,” she quipped, something ever so faintly mischievous in her voice, and Marcus knew exactly what – and who – she meant.
She zipped her pack closed, sighed, and leaned over the bed to press a kiss on his mouth. Instantly his hands slid up to tangle in her hair, holding her close as if unwilling to let her go. It was still new, this thing between them, they were still sorting out what it all meant, but they’d both lived alone too long to take each other’s kisses for granted. There were no rushed, perfunctory good-night and good-morning pecks between them; no, Marcus parted his warm mouth and Abby sank into it, her hands cradling his jaw, feeling it open and close as he pulled her in deeper, and only the fact that she was already late to meet Clarke forced her - after a long, long moment - to finally pull away.
“I mean it,” she said firmly. “You need to give yourself a night off too. You’ve been working past midnight for the last two weeks. And,” she added, in a softer tone, “I think it’s time.”
Marcus swallowed hard. “I don’t know if he’s ready,” he said in a low voice, feeling his heart already begin to pound.
“He’s an adult, Marcus,” she reminded him. “He’ll tell you if he’s ready. What he needs to know is that you are.”
“Is that why you’re going with Clarke to Polis?” he asked suddenly, and there was no denying the faint flicker of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
“I needed a few days with my daughter,” she answered, a little evasively. “But it's true, I thought maybe you could use . . . a little privacy.”
“Abby – “
“Take good care of him,” she said softly. "He loves you." Then she kissed him on the mouth again, and was gone.
Circumstances forced her to make her second set of goodbyes in private, a depressing necessity to which they'd become resigned. Today's excuse was the night shift's guard report. Kane was still sleeping, she'd informed David Miller in a perfectly calm and even voice, but she would be happy to drop the report off at the guard tower since she was headed that direction anyway, rather than waking Kane to do it after he'd been up working until two a.m. Clarke was already at the Azgeda campsite beyond the gate, and Abby would meet her there.
The camp was only just stirring into wakefulness as she set her pack down on the ground and climbed the ladder, with nobody outside except Monty and Nate Miller at the gates, finishing up their shift, and the kitchen staff out tending the vegetable garden. And anyone could see the tablet in her hand, so her excuse was ready and perfectly plausible.
Still, she felt the same shivery sensation she always did when they were close to each other, a heady combination of aching desire - still so new it hadn't lost its knife-sharp edge yet - mixed with heart-pounding fear about what would happen if they were seen, if their vigilance faltered for even a moment and this was the one time they weren't quite careful enough.
But the moment she stepped off the ladder into that little steel box and Bellamy Blake seized her in his hard strong arms, backing her against the cold metal wall in the only corner of the observation tower that could not be seen from camp, even the secrecy seemed a small price to pay. To have him, to have this, to feel his fiery young heart pounding against hers as he kissed her with a white-hot ferocity. It was hard to remember, while he was kissing her, that there was anything about it to regret.
The whole camp knew by now about Kane and Abby, a development which had surprised exactly zero people. But Bellamy complicated things. It wasn't easy to explain the notion of being in love with two people at once; it opened up a number of relationship questions they simply weren't ready to answer, which led all three of them onto some tricky ground. Clarke and Octavia, of course, deserved to know first, but the infinite complexities of navigating those conversations were so daunting that it made a convenient excuse for not telling anyone yet. And of course there was also the age factor, which was bound to raise a few eyebrows, along with the fact that there was no way to answer the very simple question of "How on earth did this happen?" without making it impossible for the listener to look at the back of the Rover the same way ever again.
Not to mention the practical question of what this meant for Bellamy’s status in the guards as Kane’s second. Relationships between guards had been expressly banned by the Exodus Charter - although, as Raven often put it, “everything fun was banned by the Exodus Charter." And while by this point everyone more or less interpreted that particular clause as moot (Miller and Bryan's relationship, along with Harper and Monty's, were common knowledge), none of those four were the other's commanding officer. Kane had ethical concerns (though both Abby and Bellamy informed him repeatedly that he was overthinking it); he worried sometimes whether, as Chancellor and head of the guard, a point might come in which he'd be asked to choose between having Bellamy as his right hand or as his lover, and he wasn't ready to make that choice until he'd weighed all the options more thoroughly.
And of course it was all or nothing, which made things complicated. Abby couldn't be spotted in the guard tower, fingers tangled in the belt loops of Bellamy's jeans as he kissed her breathless up against the wall, without creating the instant and terrible assumption that she was being unfaithful to Kane, while anyone who had walked in on the two men on the couch in the chancellor's office last night would accuse Kane of being unfaithful to Abby. So until there was a way to navigate the complexities of full disclosure, for now, nobody knew about the three of them except for Raven (who had thus far demonstrated what they all felt to be a remarkably uncharacteristic level of empathy and tact).
In public, both Kane and Abby treated Bellamy with a degree of warm, friendly affection that allowed them at least enough freedom to touch each other. Kane could let himself lay a hand on Bellamy's shoulder during a guard briefing, for example; Abby could hug him when he returned after a four-day scouting trip with Miller.
But that was all.
It was difficult, and wearying, and it made them all a little sad. Every night, as Bellamy disentangled his arms from them and pulled his clothes back on in the chilly darkness between midnight and dawn, kissing them both goodbye before silently vanishing into the hallway so he could be back in his room before he was spotted, Abby found herself wondering why - if the world was going to end in six months anyway - they couldn't just let themselves for once spend an entire night together. She always slept better when she was wrapped up tightly in both their arms, feeling Bellamy's breath warm and soft against the back of her neck and Kane's gentle heartbeat beneath her cheek.
But for now, this was what they had - rushed, desperate kisses up against a cold metal wall, hands tangled in hair, bodies pressed together in the guard tower's one hidden corner, and as Bellamy's lips trailed across Abby's mouth and cheeks and throat and shoulders, hands sliding up inside her shirt to palm the bare skin of her back, she loved him so much that even the secrecy felt worth it, if it was the cost of having him in her life like this.
“I love you,” he murmured into her neck as she stroked his curls and finally, with miserable reluctance, tore herself away.
“I love you too,” she whispered back. “Take care of Marcus while I’m gone.”
Bellamy nodded, looking down shyly with that embarrassed half-smile that melted her heart every time, and muttered “I will” without looking up at her. She stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him one last time, then disappeared down the ladder and was gone.
They wheeled the first barrels of moonshine out into the courtyard around three in the afternoon, and by sundown, absolutely everyone was drunk.
Despite all of Abby’s prodding to take the night off, Kane took one look at the guard roster and decided against it. The two guards posted to the rear gates – on the other side of camp, far away from the fire pit and the moonshine and anything remotely resembling fun – were Harper and Bryan. And though they were too professional to come to Kane and beg to get out of duty so they could go get drunk with their boyfriends, it seemed unfair to make them spend the whole night alone in the dark with no company but each other while everyone else got to enjoy themselves. He finished up his work just as the shift change began at eight o'clock and, with a silent apology to the image of a sighing, disapproving Abby, he zipped on his jacket and made his way to the rear gates to spell at least one of them off.
Bryan was alone when he got there; Harper hadn't arrived yet, which made his decision easier. “Congratulations,” he said dryly as Bryan leaped to his feet, “you’ve won a free pass.”
“What?”
“I’m taking the rest of your shift.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Now get out of here and go find Nate before I change my mind.”
“This is really nice of you, sir,” said Bryan, picking up the jacket he’d been sitting on and dusting it off. “I’m sorry you guys have to miss the party, though.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Harper.”
“I was only three minutes late!” exclaimed Harper, dashing up just as Bryan was headed back towards the campfire. “What did I miss?”
“I stopped by to spell one of you off from your shift -"
“Because Abby’s gone so you have nothing to do for the rest of the night anyway?”
“That is exactly the kind of attitude that gets Bryan a night off and not you,” he retorted as a laughing Bryan scurried away.
“Hold up, did you pick him instead of me because I was late, or because I sassed you?”
“Both.”
She shook her head in mock disappointment. “You know, for a guy I tried so hard to keep from getting executed – “
Kane gave up.
“Fine,” he snapped. “Fine. You can go too. Go be drunk and irresponsible and seventeen –“
“Eighteen.”
“Fine. But you cannot use that excuse again for the next two weeks.”
“Deal,” she said brightly, ruffling his hair affectionately as she strode away. She hadn’t sat down, hadn’t even taken off her jacket, which showed just how confident she’d been all along that he would let her go too. He was getting too soft with these kids, he thought, watching with something surprisingly close to fondness as Harper raced through the shadows towards the commotion on the other side of camp, catching up with Bryan just as he turned the corner.
He tugged off his jacket, folded it neatly on the ground to keep the dirt off the inner lining, and sat down with his back to the high metal wall of the Ark, gazed down the sloping hill at the dark empty fields below, and sighed.
Four hours to go.
You’re welcome, Harper.
He didn’t mind the quiet, actually. There was something soothing about it. Far, far away, the whole vast bulk of Alpha Station between them, he could hear the muffled din of a wild party in motion. From time to time he could even pick out individual voices – here a loud whoop from Raven, there an exuberant cry from Jasper that a fresh barrel had just been tapped. The guards on duty in the tower – older and seasoned, officers who had served under Kane on the Ark – had a far more stimulating shift ahead of them; in addition to being posted at the only entrance anyone ever used (the back gate guard shift was a mere formality and everyone knew it), since the guards were also what passed for internal security amidst the Sky People, it would fall on the two of them to intervene if any fighting or reckless behavior broke out.
Meanwhile, alone under a starry indigo sky, Marcus leaned his head back against the cool metal wall and listened to the distant sounds of a wailing blues song from Jasper’s music player (piped through the outdoor speakers Raven had rigged up for just such nights as this) and felt something like peace.
Maybe Abby had been right. He had little interest in shots of moonshine or a mob of screaming nineteen-year-olds, but maybe he did need a night away from his desk. A few hours to breathe, and think.
Then, “Mind if I join you?” came a gruff low voice, and before a startled Kane could even recover, Bellamy dropped to the ground to sit beside him.
Kane looked over his shoulder, but Bellamy shook his head, smiling, reading his thoughts before Kane even spoke them.
“Just me,” he said. “I told Harper I would take over her shift and keep you company. Nobody followed me.”
“Good,” said Kane in a low voice, reaching out to cup Bellamy’s cheek. “So I can do this.” And then he bent his head and kissed him.
Neither of them had ever kissed men before, until the first time they’d kissed each other all those weeks ago, and it was still an intoxicating sensation they weren’t used to yet. Abby was small and soft, but alive with sharp, potent energy. Like holding a tiny lightning bolt in your arms. She made them both feel big, protective, like a wall between her and the world, when they cradled her close to their chests. But it was so different with each other; Bellamy could match Kane nearly height for height, and it was still a shockingly erotic sensation to feel the pulsing, powerful force of a big man’s body pressed up hard against their own.
Bellamy’s mouth was hot and hard against Kane’s and he kissed him like he’d been thinking about kissing him all day (which, in fact, he had). His tongue slipped softly over Kane’s lips, teasing them open, as they melted into each other, falling deeper and deeper into the kiss until they both finally had to pull apart, breathless and dizzy and beginning to see stars.
“Hi,” said Bellamy, a little stupidly, leaning his forehead against Kane’s while his chest rose and fell, fighting to catch his breath, and Kane burst out laughing.
“Hi,” he said back. “Come here.” And he held out his arms, pulling Bellamy into them to rest his head against Kane’s shoulder.
They sat there for a long time in peaceful silence, looking up at the stars, listening to Jasper’s music and the distant voices, and only the absence of Abby prevented it from being absolute perfect contentment. But Kane remembered her words from this morning, and every time he leaned his head to press a soft kiss on Bellamy’s hair, he wondered.
The three of them had spent some portion of nearly every night together in the past month, and Kane has lost count of all the different ways they had found to bring each other pleasure. But there was one thing he wanted very, very badly to do with Bellamy that they had not yet worked up the courage to attempt. They’d been thwarted, the first few weeks, by Bellamy’s healing gunshot wound; he’d wanted Kane to take him that way that very first time, but Kane had demurred. “It wouldn’t be gentle,” he’d cautioned the boy, sending shivers down his spine, and insisted they wait until he was fully healed. Which he had been, for at least a week or so, but now they were both suddenly too shy to bring up with each other what had felt strangely easy in the reckless throes of their very first night together.
But maybe, Kane thought. Maybe tonight.
Maybe, finally, they were both ready.
An hour passed, then two. It was quiet and peaceful. They talked sometimes, and kissed sometimes. They held each other’s hands. They watched the stars. This amount of uninterrupted time together was an almost incomprehensible luxury, for two people who only ever got to kiss in secret. For Bellamy, who had to sneak out of Kane and Abby’s bedroom every night like a criminal, it was impossibly soothing just to let himself sink down against Kane’s shoulder and be held. For Kane, who had to carefully control every expression on his face, every touch, every word when they were together in front of people, it felt like heaven just to absentmindedly stroke the back of Bellamy’s wrist with his thumb, or drop a soft kiss onto his hair.
They were silent for a long, long time, watching a flock of birds flying in a long V shape through the night sky, passing in front of the moon like something out of a fairy tale, or a painting. Then, “I’m sorry,” said Bellamy unexpectedly, and Kane sat up, pulling away just enough to look at him.
“For what?”
“That it can’t be like this all the time,” said Bellamy heavily, looking away at the horizon, trying unsuccessfully to dodge Kane's gentle questioning gaze. “I mean, if it was just you and Abby, you could – but I’m the reason – “
“Stop that,” Kane murmured, shaking his head. “Bellamy, don’t.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s not because of you,” Kane reproached him gently. “It’s because of . . . everyone. Circumstances. So many different things. It makes it all more complicated, yes. But neither of us would trade it.”
“I’m just saying,” Bellamy began hesitantly. “If you ever . . . if it would ever be easier to – “
“You’re stuck with us,” said Kane firmly, refusing even to let the boy finish his sentence. Bellamy didn’t respond but reached out to rest his hand on Kane’s thigh, sinking back against him with something Kane instinctively knew was relief.
Bellamy left his hand there, and for a long time both of them were too relaxed and comfortable to do anything much about it. But it stayed there, firm and warm, radiating heat through both their bodies as the barrier of fabric seemed to dissolve away, and Kane could almost feel the weight of it, heavy like a promise against the flesh of his thigh. He reached out to rest his own hand on top of Bellamy’s, caressing the rough skin; then, on a whim, he turned Bellamy’s hand over and ran the very tips of his fingers, feather-light, across the palm. It worked. Bellamy hissed a sharp intake of breath and looked up at Kane, who smiled at him.
“Again?” asked Kane, and Bellamy nodded. So he did it again, longer this time, the pads of his fingers breezing so delicately along the lines in Bellamy’s palm that it was scarcely a touch at all. But it was enough to send cascades of shivers all up and down Bellamy’s back, and send a wave of heat slowly beginning to rise up between his thighs. “Abby explained it to me once,” he went on almost absently, continuing his whisper-light, almost ticklish strokes. “Something to do with nerve endings. I wasn’t listening.”
“I can feel it all over,” murmured Bellamy, something like wonder in his voice, and Kane started to say something else but was struck dumb by an unexpected sound.
“What?” asked Bellamy curiously, watching Kane start, then rise to his feet. Kane didn’t answer, but held out his hand to pull Bellamy up. “What is it?” He looked around for the cause of whatever disturbance or intrusion Kane had sensed, and was startled beyond reason when Kane stepped in close and dropped his hands to Bellamy’s hips.
“Dance with me,” Kane murmured, leaning close to whisper into Bellamy’s ear. “I love this song. I haven’t heard it in years.”
“I don’t dance,” said Bellamy, a little bit stubbornly, a rough rasp edging through his voice to cover his awkwardness and embarrassment.
“Just because you’ve never done something before,” he said in a soft voice pulsing with excitement, “doesn’t mean you won’t like it. Or that you won’t be very, very good at it,” he added, his grip on Bellamy’s hips tightening, the second layer of meaning impossible to ignore.
“I don’t know how to – “
“Don’t think,” Kane whispered, his lips so close to Bellamy’s ear that he could feel Kane’s warm breath in his hair. “Don’t think. Just feel.”
“But I don’t – “
“Latin dance is simple. I’ll lead. That means you just let your body follow me. If I pull you towards me, you move forwards. If I press against you, you move back.”
“Is it like a, do I have to count or something?”
“If you start counting, then you’ll just think of the music as being about the counting,” Kane admonished him. “Just let yourself feel the music.”
He angled his hips to take Bellamy’s right thigh ever so slightly between both of his own. Bellamy tried to follow him, gamely taking a step in when he felt a tug from the firm strong hands clutching his hips guiding him forward, and shifting his weight back when he felt Kane push against him. But next to Kane’s effortless, graceful movements, he felt stiff and awkward and clumsy.
“This isn’t,” he tried to say. “I’m not good at this. We don’t have to – “
“I want to.”
“No, it’s okay, you tried. But this just isn’t my thing.” He pulled back just a little, staring at the ground, scuffing his boot in the dirt, the way he did when he was awkward or embarrassed. Kane didn’t press him.
“If you don’t want to,” he said carefully, “of course, we don’t have to. But Bellamy, if you want to, but you’re scared to try because you’re afraid you’ll make a mistake, or you’re afraid you don’t know what you’re doing – “ He lowered one hand back to Bellamy’s waist, and Bellamy didn’t look up at him, but didn’t pull away either. “I promise,” he murmured, “I won’t stop until you get the hang of it.”
Bellamy didn’t look at him. “You’ve gotta stop saying things like that,” he finally murmured, still staring down at the ground. “We can’t go inside for another hour and you’re making me crazy.”
Kane smiled. “Come here,” he said, and pulled Bellamy into his arms. Bellamy rested his forehead against Kane’s, eyes tightly closed, and Kane felt him soften. He ran the palms of his hands flat up and down Bellamy’s spine, soothing him, relaxing him, feeling the tension flow out of him as their bodies melted together.
The step from holding each other, to holding each other and swaying almost imperceptibly to the smoky rhythm of the Spanish guitar, was nearly effortless. Kane held Bellamy close, didn’t press him, didn’t push, just wrapped him in strong arms and leaned the weight of his body against the boy’s own.
“Hey,” he said softly, after a long moment, dopping a kiss onto Bellamy’s hair. “Look. We’re dancing.”
“This isn’t dancing, this is swaying,” Bellamy pointed out wryly. Kane grinned.
“Halfway there,” he amended. “But you’re getting the most important part.”
“Which is?”
“How to relax your hips,” he said, hands resting lightly on the waistband of Bellamy’s jeans. “You were really rigid here before. You have to soften it.”
“You’re talking like I know what that means and I don’t know what that means,” Bellamy complained, a hint of the uncomfortable tension creeping back in, but they were both temporarily distracted as the exact same song began all over again.
“Didn’t we just hear this one?”
“There’s a repeat function on Maya’s music player,” Bellamy explained. “Sometimes when Jasper gets drunk he forgets how to turn it off. And he won’t let anyone else touch it, so – “
As if on cue, they heard Nate Miller yell at the top of his lungs, “TURN THIS FUCKING SONG OFF!”, followed by an equally booming retort from Jasper, “I LIKE THIS FUCKING SONG!”
“PLAY THE RAMONES, YOU EMO BASTARD!”
“NUH-UH, I’M GONNA PLAY THIS ONE TEN MORE TIMES JUST ‘CAUSE YOU WERE A DICK!”
And then, as both voices collapsed into hysterical drunken laughter, accompanied by a cacophony of others, Kane turned back to Bellamy and grinned. “Well,” he said, “since we’re going to be hearing this song at least ten times – “
“More, if Miller tries to turn the thing off again.”
“Plenty of time for a dancing lesson then,” said Kane, stepping around behind Bellamy to press his body up against him from behind.
“What are you doing?”
“Follow my hips,” Kane murmured. “It’s easier this way. Close your eyes. Just move with me.”