Prompt : prompting a sequel or prequel or whatever you come up with in the 'marcus is a cop and kisses abby under the mistletoe' verse BECAUSE I NEED MORE *-* thank you!
Akachan wanted a sequel to her Christmas gift so here we go!
Must Be Fate (2)
Marcus didn't know when he had started thinking about the kids as his kids. He wasn't sure there had been a starting point.
Maybe it had been the first time he had arrested Bellamy while he was stealing coughing syrup from the drugstore and had let him go after a firm dressing down once the boy had explained his baby sister was sick and there was no money to pay for medicine – and if the boy had left with a bottle of coughing syrup Marcus had paid for, well… he had just been doing his job : protect and serve.
Maybe it had been after the third time he had had to deal with Bellamy for stealing food, after the endless thirty minutes he had spent pleading his case with Captain Jaha, when he had calmly but firmly explained to the kid that he was done talking people out of pressing charges against him and that it was the last time they would be letting him go easy, sixteen or not. Bellamy had nodded, thanked him albeit bitterly, and had looked older than a teenager ought to look.
Maybe it had been the time he had met Bellamy in the street with a split lip and a dark bruise on his left eye the boy wouldn't explain. He had never gotten the story out of him – although it wasn't really difficult to guess, Aurora Blake's 'boyfriends' weren't exactly nice men – and the kid had refused to let him drive him to the hospital, arguing that the mother of one of his friends had checked it out already. Marcus had offered to talk to his mother but Bellamy had grown defensive – as resentful as he sometimes was, the boy loved his mom dearly – and had barely accepted the food Marcus had bought for him at a nearby dinner. He would have saved half of it for his sister if Marcus hadn't told him to eat his full and hadn't bought another portion for him to take home.
Bellamy didn't like being in anyone's debt though so maybe it had been the time right after that, when he had offered the kid a job – a ridiculous one, that had only been a pretense to make sure the boy would stay on the right side of the law, fed and uninjured. Maybe it had been during the few hours spent showing Bellamy how to take care of bonsai trees and the various flowers around his house that he would now be responsible for. Gardening wasn't about talking and Bellamy wasn't much of a chatterbox but somewhere between dirt and clippers, they had found ways to communicate.
Maybe it had been the time, not long after that, when Bellamy had showed up on his doorstep with his fourteen years old sister in tow because their mother was entertaining and he didn't want the girl to hear. If Bellamy was difficult, Octavia was a tiny thing with a rebel princess attitude, a chin that kept jutting in the air, and an endless amount of sass – Marcus would have probably taken offense a few times if she hadn't looked so damned sad, hurt and lost underneath.
Maybe it had been the time when he had stepped into his guestroom only to realize so many of Octavia's things had migrated over from the Blake's house that it might as well lose the "guest" part or when he had given up going into his study because the convertible couch and the rest of the room were now Bellamy's space.
There had been so many moments over the last two years that it would have been hard to pinpoint the beginning.
Most days, Marcus didn't even try.
His life hadn't been particularly happy or sad before, he had been drifting in his existence, trying to do his job in the best way he could, dedicated to the people's cause. He had been used to late nights at the office, frozen food, and dining alone in front of the TV. Now he came back home more often than not to Bellamy complaining about his job as a janitor – it was temporary while the boy figured out what he wanted to do, university was too expensive and he had repeatedly refused Marcus' offers for help – and to Octavia listening to music far too loud. Sometimes, his living-room was full of kids camping on the couches, armchairs or on the floor, cramming pizza in their mouth and watching a movie. Gradually, he had gotten used to Raven, Clarke, Finn, Jasper and Monty coming and going.
Selfishly, he preferred those days to those the kids spent at their own home because then the house was cold and dead and he felt lonely. He didn't know how their mother was dealing with their deserting, they never had any contacts. Somehow, it felt like the arrangement was fragile and could collapse with the wrong word.
"Are you done with the brooding?" Bellamy mocked, punching his shoulder.
Marcus startled a little and glanced at the boy on the passenger seat before going back to watching the road, realizing that he hadn't been as focused as he ought to with four kids in the car.
The trip from his to the Griffins' house wasn't a long one but he had had to detour to pick up Jasper and Monty and the streets were so peaceful on that Christmas day that he had been lulled into a false sense of security. He didn't know who had the idea of spending Christmas together. Clarke had invited Octavia, Octavia had invited Bellamy, and he figured Abby had surrendered and invited the rest of her daughter's friends. As for him… He wasn't quite certain what he was doing there. Clarke had invited him, while she and Octavia had been working on some biology at his kitchen's table and when he had tried to refuse, she had shot him an impatient look, had told him her mother now expected him to show up and that he better do so in a proper suit.
Which was why he was wearing a suit – unlike the teenagers who were all wearing casual outfits. He sensed there was a set-up somewhere in there but he had failed to get anything out of Bellamy.
"It's Kane." Octavia snorted from the back seat. "Kane is never done brooding."
"Maybe he's not brooding." Jasper suggested, wriggling his eyebrows. "Maybe he's thinking about Mrs Griffin…"
That was followed by some laughter from Bellamy and Octavia and a woohoo sound from Monty.
"Okay, okay… Very funny." Marcus deadpanned. "Please, try to behave at least today. Call it my Christmas gift."
It was probably telling that he was Marcus or Kane but Clarke's mother was Mrs Griffin.
Abby Griffin was something of a legend to him. Most days, he didn't understand how the group of friends could work because despite their close ties none of the teenagers seemed to agree on anything but there was one exception to that rule and that was Clarke's mother. Every last kid who regularly visited his house had a story about Abby.
Bellamy's one-time-girlfriend-slash-Octavia's-other-best-friend-slash-Finn's-ex-girlfriend (keeping up with the group's dynamics asked a lot out of him) Raven was the one who seemed to love Abby the most. She had apparently allowed Raven to sleep in their guestroom for a whole month when she had nowhere to go, had taken her under her wing, and had helped her find a job as a mechanic.
To Jasper, she was the woman who always had too much food and packed him with leftovers to bring back home – and she always added cake which, for Jasper, was everything.
Abby had nursed Monty back to health after a wrong attempt at fabricating his own moonshine.
Abby had talked Finn through a difficult time.
Abby had raised single-handedly her daughter after her husband had died in a car crash and, if Clark was anything to judge by, she had made a splendid job out of it.
More importantly to him, Abby had taken in Octavia more time than the girl could say when things were too rough at home and had patched up Bellamy quite a few times too. Bellamy wasn't as at ease as his sister in the Griffins' house but he was adamant, as were all the other kids, that it was a safe place to go in case of troubles.
In short, Marcus had been hearing tales of the wonderful Abby Griffin for two years and he might have developed a small case of hero worship. So when Octavia had called a couple of weeks earlier because she and Clarke needed a ride back, he had jumped on the occasion to finally meet the woman his kids could never shut up about.
He had almost been scared of being disappointed, man of little faith that he was.
The kids had always gone on and on about how kind and generous she was even though she could be scary when angry… But no one had said she was beautiful.
And no one had said either that she had no idea who he was.
He had stupidly assumed that because they were all talking about her to him, they were also talking about him to her.
"I think you've got it bad for her." Bellamy snickered.
Marcus shot him a glare.
"Like you can talk." Jasper scoffed.
"True, brother." Octavia teased. "At least Marcus kissed his Griffin girl. How long have you been staring at Clarke with lovesick puppy eyes again?"
"I didn't kiss her." Marcus protested. "There was some mistletoe."
"Sure." the girl drawled out, rolling her eyes, before patting his shoulder. "Let's blame the mistletoe."
"Yeah, it's not like you actually steered her right under it. Smooth, Kane, really smooth." Bellamy mocked.
"And it's not like you went on two dates with her, right?" Octavia added with a ruthless smile.
"It was just coffee." he grumbled, for what must have been the hundredth time – Octavia was never short of teasing on that front. He went ignored.
"Oh, two dates already?" Jasper laughed. "When's the third? Maybe you will get lucky… It's on the third date that it gets exciting…"
"How would you know?" Monty taunted.
Jasper made a face at his best friend. "I know enough to know Marcus is going to take Mrs Griffin home, if you know what I mean, next time he…"
"Drop this." Marcus cut him off. "Now."
He had used the tone the kids knew better than disobey and thus the conversation swiftly drifted to safer topics.
It wasn't long before the car stopped in front of the Griffins house. Raven's battered pick-up was already parked in the lane behind Abby's car. The kids didn't wait for him before rushing inside and, he noticed, they didn't bother to knock either.
He rolled his eyes and opened the trunk to grab the gifts and the food he had insisted they brought over – because his mother had obviously made a better job at raising him than he was doing with the kids since they thought it perfect fine to show up empty-handed when they were invited somewhere.
He was so busy trying to carry everything and grumbling about it that he didn't notice her approach until she was right next to him.
"Hi." Abby greeted him. She startled him so much that he bumped his head against the trunk door and dropped everything. She looked more amused than remorseful. "Sorry." she winced. "Did you hurt yourself?"
She reached out before he could answer and buried her fingers in his thick hair, feeling his skull for a wound of a bump. He stood there transfixed by her gaze, unable to do anything but glance at her lips every so often. He hadn't been lying to the kids, there had been no dates, just coffee grabbed between her shift at the hospital and his at the station… There had been no more kissing. Some flirting, yes, definitively, but nothing serious or defined and Marcus desperately wanted to ask her out on her real date but was waiting for a right moment that was never coming.
His case of hero worship had been steadily turning into a crush since he met her. Marcus could feel himself falling. Fast and hard.
"No wound, not even a bump." she declared. "You will live."
Her fingers ran in his hair a few more times and he suspected it had nothing to do with looking for injuries.
"Is that your professional opinion?" he smirked.
She shrugged and dropped her hands from his hair only to run them over his torso to smooth imaginary creases on his suit.
"You cleaned up good." she observed.
"So did you." he retorted. The kids may have gone for casual but she hadn't. She was wearing a navy blue dress, her hair was loose and she was absolutely gorgeous.
She tucked a strand behind her ear and nodded to the inside of the trunk where presents and the plastic food containers laid upturned. "Do you need a hand?"
"As much as I would like to say no and impress you with my strength… Yeah, I do." he joked.
She grinned at him and reached inside for some of the presents only to straighten up with a small branch of mistletoe between her fingers. He didn't know how that could have ended up in there. For a second, he thought it was the kids but then he thought maybe she had brought it from the house.
"Mistletoe." she commented with a detachment the spark in her eyes completely denied. "Must be fate."
"Why fate?" he asked, echoing her own question from a few weeks earlier.
"Because it has been entirely too long since you last kissed me and I'm starting to think you're not interested after all." she replied, surprising him with her frankness.
"Abby…" he said quickly, alarmed. "I am very much interested."
A corner of her mouth quirked up in a half grin. "Well, what are you waiting for then?"
The right moment, he wanted to say before realizing the right moment was here and he would be a fool not to take it.
He leaned in slowly, brushing his lips against hers, leaving her plenty of time to move away. She clearly lost patience with him because she tangled her fingers in his hair again and pulled him closer. His hands found the small of her back, her lips parted slightly and he took full advantage of it. The kiss wasn't the innocent peck the first one had been. This one was hard, deep, and it left his heart racing in his chest. Eventually, it slowed down to small pecks but he only stopped kissing her because she was shivering in the cold air.
"Merry Christmas." he mumbled against her lips.
"Clarke hung a lot of mistletoe around the house. I'm guessing that has to do with Bellamy…" Abby hummed. "Stick close to me and Christmas will be merry."
What was he to answer to that?
He obeyed her command instead, staying close to her at all times.
And Christmas was merry.