This was a request from my dear kabby friends so here you go ;) Thanks to Akachankami for the beta! Please let me know what you think !
A Case Of Accidental Stalking
Marcus' moves were mechanical, honed by the repetitive task. In the bucket with the solution and then up on the thin rope to dry. There were dozens of film rolls to develop and he was barely paying attention to the end result of his work, too busy pursing his lips at Bellamy in disapproval in the surrounding darkness.
He was strongly suspicious that the reason Bellamy had waited to tell him about the latest development until he had been busy with this was mainly because there was no way the kid could appreciate the full effect of his glaring in the basement turned darkroom. After all, he had been tending to his bonsai tree that very morning and the boy hadn't been in any rush to tell him.
"I went to some length to get you that job." he pointed out.
"I know." Bellamy grumbled, carefully gathering the pictures on the rope so Marcus had enough room to put the newest bash.
"Some experience in security will go a long way on your resume when you apply for the forces." he insisted.
"I know." the kid sighed with irritation. Irritation. God saved him from moody young adults with a tendency for shoplifting he felt compelled to help – and later on kind of adopt.
"You say you know but you also say you might get fired and you don't seem to care a lot about that." he snapped. "Do you want to go back to being a janitor? I thought you wanted a career in the police."
Bellamy glared and grabbed a new roll of film to start the tedious process of developing the pictures on it. "Not everyone can be a detective, Kane."
Marcus simply rolled his eyes at that. "You are a brilliant young man when you want to be. Don't set yourself up for failure like that."
The kid sighed again and Marcus swallowed back a sigh of his own. Opening his house to Bellamy and his sister three years earlier had been the best thing he had ever done and he didn't regret it one bit, he had never regretted it, but there were days when he was sharply reminded he had no place trying to be a parent to kids he had no real authority over. Bellamy was extremely independent and resented his meddling. Octavia was easier in some ways and more difficult in others.
Juggling those two with his job as a Detective was often more than he could do. His hobbies often had to take a back seat and, of his two activities of choice, he often prioritized gardening if only because her mother had cared about that bonsai tree more than she had cared about anything else – excluding him – and it was the last thing he had of her. Photography, while being something he greatly enjoyed, was also something he didn't have much time for. Often, he had to make do with trips to the nearby park which accounted for the fact most of the pictures were of the same water pond, benches, trees and rocks.
He didn't really mind though. He enjoyed the idea of catching the perfect moment. A peaceful fall afternoon or a stormy June morning… It was all in the moment for him.
He and Bellamy worked in silence, in tune with the other, used to doing this together. Octavia had no patience for it and often scoffed at him for not getting a fancy digital camera instead of his old one – he did have a digital camera but he enjoyed the actual work that film rolls entailed. Bellamy, on the other hand, didn't mind spending some quiet time with him.
Quiet time in his house was a thing of the past though.
Really, he should have expected the banging on the basement door.
"Kane, I'm hungry!" Octavia demanded. "What's for dinner?"
Teenagers…
And yet, in about a year and a half Octavia would leave for college, nobody would bother him with requests for food and he found the thought absolutely dreadful.
"I'll finish." Bellamy offered. "There's only a couple of rolls left."
"Thanks." he answered with a small smile. The pictures probably weren't masterpieces but it had been months since the last time he had checked his work. Rolls had been piling.
He was careful not to let the light spill in as he exited the basement, smiling despite himself at O's antics. He started dinner, caving to her request for lasagnas, listening to her chatter while he cooked. She was not so subtly trying to convince him to let her throw a party when Bellamy came back up to the kitchen, tossing a pack of pictures on the counter with a teasing glint in his eyes.
"Stalker much?" the boy joked.
Marcus put the dish in the oven, frowning. "What do you mean?"
Bellamy perched himself on a stool and pushed a picture in his direction. Bored with the subject, Octavia fished her phone off her pocket and started texting in earnest – Lincoln, Marcus figured.
He didn't understand what he was looking at. The picture was from his favorite part of the park. The pond, its elusive fishes, the surrounding rocks, the usual people hanging out at the park on a weekend… Rolling his eyes, Bellamy pointed out a woman caught jogging. Then, he handed him another picture and pointed to the exact same woman on the far right of the frame, her eyes were closed and she was offering her face to the wind ruffling the leaves on the tree above her head.
Picture after picture, the woman was there. Sometimes center and sometimes almost out of the frame… At different times, in different places… Alone or with friends… It looked like Marcus had spent the last few months taking pictures of her.
"She must go to the park a lot." was all he could give by way of explication.
"Sure, tell yourself that." Bellamy laughed. "You're a stalker, Kane." The kid rummaged in the pile of pictures and plucked one out. "I wouldn't mind meeting the blonde, though. Cute chick."
The stranger was with a younger woman on the far left side of the picture, probably around Octavia's age… Her daughter, maybe? They seemed to be having an argument.
Her curiosity piqued, O snatched the picture away to have a look.
"Gross!" she exclaimed. "That's Clarke. She's in biology with me. And that's Doctor Griffin."
"Who's Doctor Griffin?" Marcus asked.
"Apparently, the woman you've been following around and taking pictures of without her consent for the last year." Bellamy grinned, promptly avoiding the dishcloth when Marcus tossed it at his head.
"Clarke's mom." Octavia shrugged, almost adding a doh. "I've been at her house a few times. She's nice." A devilish smile stretched her lips. "Very single too. Clarke's dad died last year."
"Did you hear that, Kane?" Bellamy teased. "She's very single."
"Okay, okay, enough." he sighed.
Of course, that wasn't enough to stop the taunts and the comments. He suffered through remarks about his accidental stalking all dinner and during most of the movie they watched afterwards, to the point he actually rejoiced in the silence once the kids were gone to bed. He snatched the pictures from the kitchen counter before retreating to his own bedroom and settled on his bed, sorting them into two piles: one with the mysterious Doctor Griffin and one without her.
It was a bit disconcerting to notice the pile without her was by far thinner than the one where she featured on the pictures.
He couldn't remember the last time he had developed his films. Four months? Five? Digging through the metal box where he kept most of the work that wasn't good enough to be framed or exposed somewhere in the house, he found more pictures of her. She must have been going to the park almost every day.
And she was so stunningly beautiful, he must have been blind not to notice her before.
There she was, around a year earlier, discreetly crying on a bench near the pond, fingering what appeared to be a ring. Then later, she was there, on the very same bench, but she looked more peaceful, her face was angled upward, the sun was shining on her face, her long hair was draped over her shoulder – and he had stupidly been aiming at the rock on which the sun was reflecting in a way that had made him think of diamond; clearly he didn't have the eye he had thought he had. Another corner of the park, she was having a picnic on the grass, by herself, lost in the middle of other people having lunch, a book propped open on her bag and kept from sliding close by her foot while she ate her salad, wearing blue hospital scrubs. Akardia's General was just around the corner, he figured she probably spent most of her lunch breaks at the park.
There were so many more pictures he started feeling like a creep – an involuntary one, yes, but a creep nonetheless – and he had arrested enough of those to be ill-at-ease with the accidental breach of her privacy. The pictures were like a window on her life. She was laughing with a young Latin-American woman with black hair and dressed with a mechanic overall near the fountain. She tossed her head back a little when she laughed and her hand covered her mouth as if not sure she was permitted the amusement – and he had been aiming at the top of the fountain where a bird was perched. She was arguing with her daughter on a few pictures, Clarke if Octavia was to be trusted, and now she had mentioned it, he remembered seeing the girl around once or twice but he had never really paid attention. On others she was on the phone, distractedly picking up at grass blades, leaning against a tree or simply walking.
His favorites were the ones where she was sitting on the bench near the lake though. Given the frequency in which she invaded those, it must be one of her favorite spots in the park. On one she had her right leg hugged close to her chest, her left one folded around her right ankle and her chin propped on her knee. The wind was running havoc with her hair and she looked like melancholy itself. And he had aimed at a stupid squirrel who had conquered a pile of rocks and looked very pleased with himself.
By the time he had looked closely at all the pictures, he had concluded two things: one, as far as photography went, he was a failure because he had never seen the perfect subject even when it was right under his nose; two, he was desperate to know Doctor Griffin's story.
He carefully put all of her pictures together, not really sure what he ought to do with them.
There were more taunts in the morning and even more teasing once he reached the precinct and his partner joined in on the fun – he was sure it was Octavia who had leaked the whole thing to Indra anyway, he just hoped she wouldn't find it relevant to inform Clarke.
After a couple of days though, the kids moved on and forgot all about the woman in the pictures.
Lucky them.
Marcus found he couldn't quite put her out of his mind.
He didn't exactly plan to look for her. He just happened to be out in the park the next week-end, taking pictures of the same old trees, trying to capture the particular light of that spring morning, when he noticed her jogging past in his lens. She looked focused, wearing baggy shorts and a blue tank top, earbuds on, an iphone dangerously bobbing up and down in her pocket…
He took the picture without meaning to.
Well, he probably meant to but it wasn't exactly a conscious decision.
He felt very bad once it was done. There was a difference between accidentally taking someone's picture while aiming at other things and consciously taking it without their permission. He was an officer of the law and he was behaving like…
It didn't sit well with him so when he stumbled upon her again near the lake, he decided to approach the bench she was sitting on fumbling with her phone. She looked up with a frown when he stood there a little too long, casting a shadow over her. She was even more beautiful up close and Marcus found himself at a loss for words.
He didn't believe in love at first sight.
Of course, he didn't.
It would have made the whole thing even weirder.
He must have been silent for too long, standing there staring at her like a weirdo, because she tore the earbuds from her ears and frowned even deeper. "Can I help you?"
It wasn't actually friendly and Marcus cleared his throat, awkwardly shuffling from one foot to the other, waving his camera a little. "Doctor Griffin… I think I've accidentally been stalking you."
She didn't flinch or recoil and she didn't look away but, he noticed, she blindly unlocked her phone and kept her thumb right over the call app.
"That didn't come out right." he winced, lifting a hand in supplication. "I'm not… I'm a Detective." He nudged his black leatherjacket aside so she could get a glimpse of the badge he always wore on his belt, on call or not.
She relaxed a little but not by much. "Am I in trouble? Because if this is about Mount Weather's facility again, I was right. Yes, I broke in but they were conducting suspicious experiments and…"
He was more than a little curious to find out she seemed to expect trouble with the police but he shook his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about." And then he lifted his eyebrows, a smile playing on his lips. "For the record, you shouldn't admit to a break in to the first Detective who comes around."
"Then who are you and how do you know my name?" she retorted, folding her arms across her chest.
"I'm… Sorry." he winced again. He could almost hear Bellamy in the back of his head mocking him for how smooth he was being at this. "This came out all wrong. I'm Detective Kane. Marcus. I'm Octavia Blake's…"
His voice faltered a little, not sure how he should introduce himself. O had been doing the introduction for as long as he had entered their current arrangement and she always found ways to avoid putting a name on who he was, mostly because legally he was no one. Bellamy was her guardian, he was just the guy who had taken them in.
"Oh, you're Octavia's father." Suddenly she was smiling, tension completely leaving her shoulders. "She told me a lot about you. My daughter's in love with your pictures."
"Really?" he frowned. He had a few of them framed around the house and Octavia always had friends over, he supposed Clarke must have seen them.
"Yes." she nodded, gesturing at him to sit next to her – something he didn't need to be told twice. "She's more into drawing but she has an artistic eye."
Marcus smiled back, riveted by the way her face lit up when she talked about her daughter. Then her previous words caught up with him and he found himself frowning.
"Is that what O tells people?" he asked, a bit hesitant. "That I'm her father?"
She seemed taken aback. "Aren't you?"
Before he knew how or why, he was telling her the story of how he found himself a parent of two – slightly troubled – teens. She looked impressed. And he was all about her looking impressed but not because of that. That was… That wasn't a way to make women interested in him. The kids meant too much to him.
"I've never regretted it." he concluded awkwardly.
"Octavia is a very nice girl." she offered. "I think you did a good job with her."
"She's wild." he chuckled, pleased with the compliment nonetheless. Octavia was a whirlwind on a good day. They loved her for it. He shook his head and cleared his throat, coming back to the matter at hand before it would be too awkward to confess. "Doctor Griffin…"
She waved that off with a small smile. "Abby."
"Abby." he repeated and the name sounded sweet on his tongue. Oh, he would never hear the end of this, he knew, the kids would mock him into his old age. "I have a confession."
He told her about the pictures, bracing himself for the inevitable freaking out that would ensue. Instead of running away in fear though, she laughed.
"I come here almost every day." she confirmed. "It's not really surprising I would end up on your pictures… I'm more surprised I've never spotted you before."
"I blend in." he shrugged. "Why would you notice me anyway?"
"I can think of a few reasons." she grinned and he found himself grinning back. He was good at reading body language and the way her upper body was turned completely in his direction, the tilted head, and the twinkling eyes were all very encouraging.
"I was wondering…" he tried.
"Yes." she answered immediately.
They both started laughing a little.
"You don't even know what I was going to say." he chided her.
"You were about to offer showing me the pictures of me over coffee or dinner." she countered. "And I'm open to both."
That woman, he quickly decided as they exchanged numbers, was something else.
It only took him three dates to understand she was very probably the one.
He turned his interest to portraits after that, hers mostly. She grumbled a bit about it at first because she lived under that stupid illusion that she wasn't photogenic but she soon got used to it. Everyone got used to it really.
If Marcus Kane had a camera in his hands, you could be sure his subject of choice would be Abby Griffin.