Disclaimer: I don't own The 100. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1:Anon on tumblr wanted: "Abby love/hate sex." – Set somewhere between 1x01 and 1x05 – before the Ark knows if the 100 survived on the ground.

Warnings: sexual content, graphic scenes, rough sex, biting, spanking, hurt/comfort, adult language, oral sex, nudity.


"Abby!? What the hell do you think you are do-"

She didn't know how it started. How they got from butting heads in Earth Monitoring to arguing their way down the hall. Carving a path through citizens and Ark personnel alike as something she hadn't felt for years simmered deep in her belly like a low-banked fire. But considering she was the one who followed him through the door of his quarters and caged him in when his back was turned - fisting her hand in his collar before yanking his lips within reach - she had a pretty good idea who started it.

She hissed violence between her teeth and bit down into the curve of his bicep when he hiked her up against the wall. Soaking in the pained grunt that left his throat before his hand came down, whip-crack hard against her ass. Stealing a brutal kiss from her as the suddenness of it made her arch - suspended in that place that existed somewhere between pain and pleasure - before leeching back where the burning throb had started to ache and spread.

The next time he came within reach she set her teeth into the curve where neck met shoulder even harder. Just to prove a point. Finding something to remember in the way the tendons of his neck flared and strained. Making her warble an unsteady song when he threaded his hands in her hair and yanked her away. Giving her teeth a new occupation as he caught her lower lip between his and trickled red down her throat.

It was everything she didn't know she needed until that exact moment and suddenly she was insatiable for it. Egging him on when he ripped the collar of her shirt trying to tug it off. When he pressed her against the wall and let her feel him for the first time. Cock hard against the crux of her hip through his jeans. Already mimicking the act itself when his hips hitched endearingly against hers without his consent. Chasing the friction. Chasing the pleasure in a way she had a feeling he rarely let himself feel.

But that just made it worse.

The idea turned her into a vicious mess of nails and teeth and dark hair tickling between her breasts after he yanked off his shirt and covered her skin with his. Scratching her nails through his hair just to send its meticulous part hazing off in every direction. Spine arcing under the weight of him as gravity sent them stumbling awkwardly against the corner of the bed. Half collapsed as he tried to lever himself up the same moment she wrapped her legs around his waist and kept him grounded.

"Abby, Christ- just-"

She needed to rearrange her bones. She needed to put rest to old lovers and forget the ghosts of familiar hurts. She wanted to reclaim the idealism she'd had in her heart for this place when she'd been younger. She wanted to reset the clock and follow the thread of discontent back to the source. She wanted to remember what it felt like to have what neither of them did anymore. She wanted a piece of what she'd lost the day Jake had been floated. She wanted what Marcus had always seemed to ignore. She wanted-

She just wanted.

Her fingers tangled in the empty loops of his waistband. Pulling at the zipper and buttons until he slapped her hands away and fumbled with it. Leaving her free to shimmy out of her pants and hook her thumbs around the weak elastic of her underwear. Getting a special sort of thrill when she looked up through half-lidded eyes to find his fixed on her. Jeans and briefs half-kicked off and puddled around his ankles as his cock jumped thick against his thigh.

God, she'd forgotten.

She welcomed him back by reaching out to grasp him. Watching his throat constrict as she thumbed the underside, smoothing her thumb down the edge of the crown and back again. Tempted to flick her tongue over the slit, just to get a taste, as pre-cum bubbled up to dome around the tip before she'd even gotten a proper look.

She arched a brow, finding it satisfyingly overeager – desperate even - as his fists balled at his sides. Hanging onto that infamous composure by a hair's breath as he flexed in her hands. Quivering and naked in more ways than one as it occurred her to that this was a two way street. That they were both giving something precious over to the other the same time they were taking.

Maybe she wasn't the only one that needed.

She dug her nails into the meat of his shoulders when he dipped down unexpectedly. Parting her thighs and dragging the hint of stubble down the sensitive, porcelain-pale inner. Soaking her already damp panties as he laved at her center through the fabric. Nuzzling in with his nose as he teased the tension higher. Pinning her down every time she struggled to rise. Eyes dark and slanted sly with arousal and anger before he nudged aside the fabric and pressed his thumb against her clit.

She didn't come apart until her panties where half ripped down one side and abandoned on the floor. Until he had his mouth on her, teeth grazing down the fat of her clit as he sucked and licked. Making these obscene sounds into her folds that were almost as good as the finger he added just before every muscle went painfully on point. Feeling her orgasm trickle through her like individual tendrils of warmth as she bit off a shattered cry.


His face was sheened with her slick and she couldn't stop looking at it. His voice hoarse and raw, a visceral counterpoint to way his fingers were almost trembling. Excitement. Adrenaline. Arousal. Rage. Maybe even all of them at once as he rose from his crouch and loomed above her on the bed. Planting his knee between her legs and giving her something to grind against as he cupped her breasts and dragged his teeth down a trail of rough-shot kisses as she tried to remember how to breathe.

She wanted to box the moment up and preserve it.

She wanted to feel her fingers splinter and break across the smug angles of his face.

She wanted to stay, maybe forever.

She wanted to kick herself upright, gather her clothes, and forget this had ever happened.

Because Marcus was nothing like Jake.

In both the best and worst way two people could be different, somehow they were.

It was the kind of different she could get used to far too easily now that she'd had a taste.

The kind of different that made guilt surge like bile in the back of her throat.

The kind of different that made her hope.

The kind of different that-

Marcus demanded her in a different way. He contorted her. Coaxing things out of her she didn't know could be expressed through fingers and tongue. He touched her and she couldn't help but scream soundlessly for more. He was relentless. He was outside of her comfort-zone. He was new and different and frightening and a lot like solace all wrapped up into one infuriating person that hid other faces underneath his skin.

Because if pain bred wolves then they were the leaders of the pack.

They had a grade curve all to themselves.

She waited until his relationship with balance shifted. Meeting him boldly for a searing kiss, then another. Tasting herself on his lips before she flipped them. Landing astride as he made a surprised sound that might have been the start of a laugh before she ground herself up against him. Punching the rest of the sound from his chest as her wetness added to the ease of the glide. Finding the reaction she wanted when he let his head drop back against the pillows that already smelled thick like him.

It did something to her on a molecular level, giving her the razor edge of an entirely new sort of power as she shook her hair out of its elastic and planted her palm across the center of his chest. Looking down at him for a long moment as his eyes reflected, dilated and dark in the low light. The feeling was intoxicating enough that she forgot to make it hurt when she grasped him by the base and sank down in one slow, overconfident glide.

And oh-

Oh god.

"Fuck, Abby. Yes-"

She spread her arms to brace either side of the corner-wall before she started pushing back, riding him. Getting him deep - right where she wanted as one of his hands came up, flicking across her nipple until she flexed internally. Pushing into his hand for more as her skin blushed pink. Flushing hotly as the air grew warm around them.

She found a rhythm eventually. Something that worked for both of them as he started to meet her, thrust for thrust. Drinking in the breathless curses that left his lips the longer the pleasure stretched. Able to watch the exact moment the anger drained out of him like water through a sieve, replaced by need and want and a hundred thousand slivers of genuine emotion she would have killed for if he'd ever let them show outside this room.

This – what he was here in the moment – was what she needed in the Council Chambers. In Earth Monitoring. In the eastern airlock that bled air and flesh into open space. She wanted this. The man he was when the pragmatic, logical façade fell away. She wanted to memorize every part he tried to hide. To tease it out into the open so she never forgot what this looked like – what he looked like.

They moved together – just like that – for ninety-seven years. For every decade of long kept secrets, differing perspectives, outright deceit and all those painful little rules they'd carried out as leaders of the Ark to conceal the truth. That they were dying slowly and their only real chance of survival was the handful of kids they'd condemned to the surface. They moved together for every hour they'd spend bickering and trying to keep each other alive. Until Marcus was dripping sweat and digging his fingers unto the dent of her hips, hissing into her skin every other thrust and she'd become a creature of pleading, broken noise.

They moved to live.

Moved to breathe.

Moved to-

He came inside her in pieces. With a shocked grunt and pleasure-blind eyes that blew wide like he'd forgotten how as his hips shunted up and he held her still. Grinding himself deep - as far as he could go without thought or filter. Looking up like he'd never seen anything quite like her as he came down slowly - panting.

Still, he wasn't done. Because instead of easing her down or pushing her off – claiming oversensitivity or an understandable need for distance – she watched his hand drift lazily down to where they were joined. Thumbing the swollen nub of her clit until she flooded across his palm and collapsed across his chest. Covering teeth marks and burst capillaries that etched her story across his skin firmly with her own. Breathing hard as they subsided together.


She wanted to feel numb. To dissociate so that it would be easier to forget. But instead, all she could feel was him. His chest, his skin, his heartbeat - all moving boldly against hers. It was the only thing she could feel. In this moment there was no her without him. For better or worse they were joined. Indivisible. He was there in the stuttered exhale that chilled through the sweat that'd collected in the small of her back. In the tentative arm he'd left resting across the curve of her hip. Keeping her there with fingers hooked like gentle claws around sinew and bone.

He was everywhere.

And despite herself, she liked the idea.

She could have said a million words in response. Any one of them would have made what happened next easy. Instead she breathed out slowly, moving so that he slipped out of her – soft and sated – cradled gently between them as the scent of each other muddled and smeared. No longer separate, no longer broken, rather surprisingly whole.

"I'm tired, Marcus," she answered, sweaty forehead settling in the hollow of his shoulder like last rites. Because it was an answer. Just not the one she'd expected to let loose. There seemed to be a lot of that going around today.

The admission should have made her feel vulnerable. Weak. But it didn't. Feeling surprisingly unashamed as the quiet extended past politeness and chorded minute strands of tension through the muscles of his chest.

Honestly, she didn't think he'd answer. Aware on some level that things would eventually have to go back to the way they used to be. To the simmering resentment and semi-friendly animosity they usually operated under. But what she wasn't expecting was to find him staring back at her – eyes searching – when she eventually opened her eyes.

"So am I," he admitted, the words leaving him like a secret. Soft and raspy-rough as the heartbeat of the Ark thrummed on around them. Feeling a strange sort of rightness burrow deep as they remained where they were. Weary witnesses to the universe pushing its way through an unexpected hiccup.

It had nothing to do with the sex or the fighting.

It was this life and the toll it was taking on them all.

That was why this had to work.

Why the 100 had to survive.

Because sooner rather than later, the heart of the Ark was going to stop beating. And call her selfish, but she wanted to make sure that the best parts of them were still breathing when it did.

A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.


- The title, "struggimento" is a rare Italian word meaning: "a combination of gut-churning misery and yearning."