Concupiscence

Lust can be frightening, but good at the same time. (Or: Eric and Tris get more intimate and somehow, he helps her with more than just one fear.) Partial AU.

A/N: This is for dardarbinx101, who very very kindly wrote me a piece of Eris smut I requested. To say thanks, I wrote this for her off of her prompt (involving Eric and Tris and some sort of public bathroom)! I originally planned for it to be pure smut, but some semblance of plot seemed to work itself in there, and then actual plot and angst, and so I ended up changing some finer points of the prompt for convenience (I'm aware that Dauntless probably wouldn't have communal bathrooms for everybody, lol, and this doesn't adhere to the ending of Divergent). I hope you like it, and sorry it took so long!

This follows most of canon up to (not including) the ending of Divergent, the main difference being no FourTris and Eric isn't a total jackass.

Rated M for strong sexual content. There's a tiny tiny bit of Dom/sub but blink and you'll miss it.

There weren't too many things Tris disliked about Dauntless, but one of them was the communal bathrooms.

After initiation was over, she'd assumed that she'd get her apartment, and that would come with a nice ensuite bathroom where she could do her business with absolute privacy, having proven her bravery and all that. No more exposed washbasins, no more mixed-gender bathrooms.

That turned out not to be the case.

Her apartment, nice though it was, was absolutely devoid of anything resembling wash facilities barring a small kitchen sink that would suffice for washing dishes, but definitely not her body, and a toilet (prone to blockages). When she investigated the matter further, she found that the residents of her floor (namely, her fellow leaders) all shared a row of shower stalls, irrespective of whether they were male or female, and that these were open for usage round the clock. Considering the male-dominated leadership team, Tris was more than a little apprehensive about the whole affair, and so she silently vowed to push forward ensuite bathrooms at the next Council meeting.

Still, though, like most things in Dauntless, she got used to it, despite her Abnegation upbringing – or, at least, she managed to avoid it. She showered at odd times (late at night, in the middle of the day) and so most of the time, none of the other stalls were ever in use when she was there. Small favours, she supposed, because the advanced combat training she was currently undertaking left her muscles raw, and the showers were one of the few ways of relieving that tension – going without would have left her body wrecked – not to mention smelly. And the one time she had bumped into someone, it'd been Ryn, her lone female comrade: she got along well with the older, gruffer woman and so it hadn't really been that awkward. Initiation made her tolerate that, at least, and her Abnegation roots didn't allow her to complain.

Unfortunately, her luck did have to run out at some point, simply out of probability if nothing else. Tris walks in one night at 11pm, sore as anything after the sheer amount of strain Eric had put her under on that day's training, and desperate for hot water to unknit the tension that was currently running rampant in her muscles. Letting out a sigh of relief at the seemingly unoccupied room, she dumps her washbag by the sink and shuts the shabby wooden door behind her, loosening the tie on her fluffy dressing gown as she does so and hanging it on one of the hooks provided.

But then she can hear the sounds of water running, and… are those moans? Of pain? No, they're low, guttural, and…

Tris feels herself flushing pink very rapidly, and the mirror opposite only confirms her suspicions. She turns around on her heel, finding herself not really caring about her sore muscles now, and turns the doorknob to make a break for it.

Except the doorknob wouldn't turn, and the door wouldn't open. She tries it again, and it produces the same result. She catches herself inhaling more quickly, and silently tells herself off: no, don't panic, Tris. You're probably just nervous and have lost the ability to open doors because you're being a bit of an idiot.

Slowly, calmly, she turns the doorknob again.

The door does not open.

It mocks her.

"Shit!" she yells, and claps her hands to her mouth a second later, because she'd definitely not intended to curse that loud. Sure enough, the running water shuts off, and out of the stall walks –

Eric. Of course. Wearing nothing but a towel.

"Did you enjoy the show, Stiff?" he smirks, face just the tiniest bit flushed. "Couldn't tear yourself away, could you? Perhaps I should make an audio CD."

"You agreed to call me Tris." she snarks back, if only because she has no idea how to respond to anything else. "And the doorknob's broken. I fully intended to leave as soon as I heard –"

"Yeah, yeah." he almost sounds a little bored underneath his teasing. "C'mon, Stiff, 'fess up." Expression darkening with amusement, he steps closer, and Tris forces herself to not step back. "I won't tell anyone."

"Look." she says, almost a little desperate at this point, and turns the doorknob again to show him that the door was definitely not budging. That makes his smile fade a bit, almost prompting her to smile herself at the tiny victory. Conversations with Eric are almost like chess, she decides: there's almost always a winner and a loser, and if she can't win, she can at least get to a draw if nothing else.

"Move." he barks, tries it himself. No dice.

"It's not going to fix itself just because a different person turns the knob." Tris sneers, a note of malice in her voice – colleagues or not, that doesn't mean she can't turn the tables a little bit. Eric full-on scowls at that, grey eyes dark with frustration, and rams the door with a tattoed shoulder: it shakes promisingly but ultimately stands its ground, despite the amount of force applied to it. Tris sighs at that and plonks herself on the tiled floor, resigning herself to the rather futile nature of the situation.

"Someone will find us and realise eventually. All we can do in the meantime is just sit tight, I think." Inwardly, Tris's brain is railing at being in such close quarters with Eric of all people, because being colleagues doesn't make them friends of any sort, but what choice does she have? Abnegation had given her patience, and sitting in silence was so frequent that, even after a couple months in the contrastingly loud Dauntless, Tris doubts it would bother her much.

Eric is smirking again. "Or we could do something else."

"Do what?" she answers, curling her lip in wry amusement. "I don't see any available entertainment around here – unless you see some board games or something in the towel cupboard?"

"You interrupted me." Eric tells her, grin looking almost predatory. "I know that in Abnegation they didn't use showers for their intended purpose, but even so…"

"They used showers to shower." Tris all but snarls, standing up off of the floor and tensing with barely contained aggression: her previous amity forgotten. "Listen, if you insult Abnegation one more time, I swear to God I'll-"

"Do what? As today's training proved, I'd still have the upper hand by far in a fight." Cocky ass. More annoyingly, an ass in the right – this time.

Tris remembers being slammed to the ground multiple times earlier in the morning and the way every facet of her fighting style had been scrutinised and, in most cases, critiqued.

"You're puny." Eric had told her earlier. "Without a gun, while you can dodge blows, you really don't do much damage." Says the man who easily has a hundred pounds on me, she'd thought, disgruntled.

She wants to prove him wrong. She would very much like to prove him wrong and wipe the smirk off of his face – make him bleed, or wince, or something that would just take the cockiness out of him.

"You know, Stiff, showers have more than one use." He draws closer to her – uncomfortably close, his scent invading her nostrils: something undescribably masculine, mixed with the sterile scent of detergent. You interrupted me, he'd said. And the heat of his body, now pressed against hers, is surprisingly… good: she finds herself unconsciously pressing back, even though the rational part of her brain is telling her to punch him or knee him in the balls - interrupted or not.

In Abnegation, pleasure was frowned upon: sex was for procreation. Sex in a shower whilst locked in a bathroom with a rival – colleague – whatever was unheard of; months of courting preceded even the most innocent of touches. She hates her own naivete: her parents had been decidedly tight-lipped about the subject, only spouting the prescribed faction doctrine whenever she'd plucked up the courage to ask, and now it really wasn't serving her well. Much to her frustration.

"Earth to Stiff?" he murmurs in her ear, low and – surprisingly – soft.

"I was thinking." she mumbles, biting down on her lip. One of his fingers pries it free from her teeth, traces the slightly swollen flesh: the sensation is acute – she feels every contour of his fingertip, the slight callus on the skin from too many fights.

Tris breathes hard, tries to calm down, to recentre herself. Things are moving quickly, bordering on too quickly, and it's making her head spin. Concern flashes on his face for a split second – or, at least, she thinks it does before it's replaced with the non-expression he normally wears, except tinged with something strange. "It stops if you say so now." The words are simple, matter-of-fact, but his face is doubly difficult to decipher: she can't make heads or tails of it.

Ultimately, though, Tris says nothing.

Cold lips press against hers, hard, and he pins her to the unforgiving wall, an arm imprisoning both of her own. "Did he ever kiss you like this?" he grunts as he maneuvers them (somehow – she isn't really paying much attention) into a shower stall.

"He never kissed me." Tris's voice suddenly becomes unsteady, much to her confusion. "We never –" Eric stops her by claiming her mouth again, redirecting the entirety of her attention to the novelty of the situation. But Four never had kissed her. For someone so brave, he was remarkably reluctant to act on his feelings. Sure, there were implications, subtle hints, but did he ever do anything more than that? No. The only kiss she had from Four was in the simulation – in her fear. Her fear.

Eric, on the other hand, clearly has enough strength in his convictions to act on them. His fingers trace her bare skin with an air of urgency now, and his cock presses against her thighs, showing his rapidly growing erection. She briefly wonders how such a thing would actually fit inside her, but he demands her attention as he slides off her top with practiced ease. Tris helps the process along a bit by pulling down her pyjama pants, thankfully just plain black, but it's difficult to get her mind away from the fact that this was in her fear landscape and –

"It's normal to be scared." he says, calm and steady in her ear. "It's going to hurt a bit, but there's nothing either of us can do about that." Gently, he rolls away her underwear and lines up, enters her in one smooth movement. Tris thinks he's right about the pain, and when he pulls out slightly she can see blood.

Blood.

"Come on, Tris."

"No. Four, no – "

The voices swim into the front of her mind from the simulation, and even though she tries they won't shut off, insistent and inerasable.

"Get off me! I said, get off me!"

"Feeling a little stiff, are we?"

Tris remembers waking from that one sweating, seeing Eric's impassive face watching the monitor and then watching her, grey-eyed scrutiny ultimately making her aware again.

"Want to talk?" he'd asked her gruffly, hands looking unsettled from where they were planted on his knees.

He'd wanted to comfort her, Tris realises now. He'd wanted to give her physical contact that didn't frighten or alarm.

Instead, she'd pushed him away.

"No," she'd bitten out, swinging off of the chair unsteadily and marching towards the door with such intent that it was a wonder she didn't fall over. "I can do this on my own."

Because in that fear, being Divergent didn't matter: knowing it wasn't actually happening to her didn't change anything. Lucky for her, really, because she's not sure if Eric would have kept it quiet the same way Four did. But the sensations, although simulated, stayed like an unwelcome stain on her memory, and it was that fear, not the crows or any of the others, that preoccupied her mind at night in the initiate dorms. Christina writhed from imaginary moths, Will scratched at eyes not burned by acid, but she lay still, imagining the weight of a body forcing her to inertness, imagining pain and humiliation that never happened.

"Tris." Eric's voice is steady in her ear. "Come back." It's an order, albeit a soft one, and it does bring her to the present again: to the physical sensations produced in reality, not via simulation.

"Keep going." she forces out. "It's not going to go away on its own. I need to face it head on." Suddenly, a cold hand brings her chin up to make their eyes meet: he must see something in her expression that makes him continue, and he settles into a steady rhythm. Tris takes some initiative and presses their lips together again given how her arms are out of commission still and pleasure trails through her, warm tendrils making their way through her abdomen. But Eric breaks the kiss to suck hard on her neck, teeth leaving bruises in their wake that won't fade for days.

Tris has a funny feeling she'll need to wear a scarf, or a turtleneck, or something.

"Hey," she starts to protest, but the words die on her lips as his tongue laves at her hardened nipples, lips enclosing the sensitive flesh, alternating between biting and kissing gently. The mixed sensations send her brain into a spiral of pleasure-fueled confusion, and when his hand moves downward, she feels herself shudder, her body clamping down around him when he starts to pinch the soft flesh.

She nuzzles his shoulder, and her hands fight from their prison: the surprise earns them freedom and she rakes them over his shoulders, nails making beds in the smooth skin that they find. Her legs twine around his, too, and he lifts her up: Tris whines at the loss of the pinching, but he just chuckles, low and amused in his throat. Pleasure is still coiling up in her like some sort of knot, and she desperately wants for it to unwind, to get release. Eric's rhythm speeds up without faltering as his fingers trail over her sensitive folds, and when their lips meet, his teeth bite hard enough to draw blood. The pain blurs into pleasure and Tris feels her breath hitch, her legs start to shake, and her movements become more urgent.

"Patience, patience." She feels Eric's smirk against her own, desperate mouth.

"Since when were Dauntless renowned for their patience?" Tris murmurs back, trying to get him to speed up, but all he does is smirk against her lips, and pin her hands back to their previous position behind her back. She groans in frustration, hips bucking against his, but still can't achieve release.

"I don't know," he muses, tone teasing. "It's a valuable quality in any trainee leader…" The tiles are cold against her back, disparate against the warmth of Eric's fingers as he gently teases her clit with a flick of his nail.

"Eric…" she draws out the single syllable, straining against his restraining hand. It comes out as a whine, and the rational part of Tris's brain is telling her not to give Eric the satisfaction of begging, but she can't help it.

"Ask nicely." his voice comes out slightly strained, thrusts slightly less steady, and some detached part of her brain goes ha, pleased it's not just her who's struggling with patience.

"P-please. Please, Eric, please -"

And suddenly, her vision blurs and the knot inside her unravels, and she bites down on Eric's shoulder just to have something to hold onto as the orgasm rips through her, seemingly endless. His pushing becomes even more insistent and sure enough, there's a second flash of warmth inside her a few seconds later. She leans into him, exhausted and slightly limp, and they end up spreadeagled on the cold floor, wet from the lingering excess water.

"We should – " Tris starts tiredly, but Eric silences her with a long finger over her mouth.

"Just take a breath, Tris." So she does, lets herself drift for a while, despite the fact that thoughts are pressing insistently at the edge of her brain.

It's a while before they eventually get up, get dressed, and Eric sets to the task of ending their 'trapped' status. After an age, he breaks the door handle and lets them out that way, but before he can comment again, Tris pushes past him, still unshowered, and wondering what on earth just happened. When he calls after her, she doesn't turn around.

Needless to say, between her confusion and the nightmares, she doesn't get much sleep that night.

Tris doesn't know how to react when she walks in for her advanced combat training the next day to find Eric polishing two guns and hiding his smirk when he sees the scarf wrapped unceremoniously around her neck.

"I can shoot a gun." she tells him steadily, deciding to steadfastly put aside the events in the bathrooms yesterday.

Unprofessional, part of her brain whispers bitingly. Stupid.

Worth it, a much larger part says.

"You haven't held one since the attack on Abnegation." Eric appears unruffled, cool as always, though there's something in his eyes that wasn't there before. "And practice is never pointless, even for the competent shooter." Perhaps, she finds herself musing, Eric is more Erudite than most people realise. After all, so far he's the only one who's noticed her avoidance of firearms ever since she shot –

"Going to stand there all day, St- Tris?" Hearing him correct himself like that makes her feel better, though. Not that she knows why he bothered to.

"No," she snaps, makes herself pick up the semi-automatic rifle he holds out. "I'm just a little tired." Her hands instantly become clammy at the touch of the cool metal, but even so, she still picks up on how Eric's sneer turns slightly smug and lingers on her scarf-covered neck.

"No stamina, huh?" Tris curls her lip and makes herself aim at the nearest target once she's shut off the safety, feels her breathing spike in her chest. She wills her hands not to shake as her finger grips the trigger, but panic washes through her and threatens to drown any coherent thoughts. It's a target, not a person, Tris thinks desperately, but no matter how she tries to approach the situation in her head she can't fire it.

"I thought you said you could shoot a gun?" The words are scathing in theory, but Eric's voice sounds almost sympathetic. "Put it down, Tris." A pause. "It's all right." She rounds on him then, flinging the rifle onto the nearest table and tensing up every muscle in her body like some sort of attack dog.

"All right?" she snarls. "You think you get to tell me it's all right that I can't even hold one now? That last time I tried, I had a panic attack so bad I nearly passed out?" His face stays impassive, but his hand reaches out to hers. "Don't you dare pity me! Because I shot Will, Eric. I shot him, and I – "

"You're having panic attacks?" he questions, cutting her off.

"Only when I hold guns. Otherwise just nightmares." Tris is wary, her eyes unsteady as she looks away. "Why should you care? I'm working on it. Just, I don't know, give me some time." Eyes narrowing into a glare, she stares him down. "And if you tell me I need help, so help me, I'll brawl with you here and now." The words sound limp coming out of her mouth, but bravado's just about the only thing she's got left in this – argument? Conversation? Why can things with Eric never be clear cut? Even if Abnegation was dull, at least it was always simple.

"You don't need help." he tells her, voice strangely lacking in inflection. "You need to talk to someone. Not a professional – " he raises his hands when her hands ball into fists. "Just someone. When was the last time you spoke to moth girl, whats-her-name? Or even Four?" Tris shrugs, shifts her weight from foot to foot. Christina hasn't spoken to her ever since she confessed to being Will's killer, and Four's disapproval at her choice to become a leader ended any respect she had for him. Life has been strangely solitary.

She expects him to rebuke her, maybe lecture her, or even send her away – but she doesn't expect an embrace. His arms enclose her in warmth, and as she buries her head into his chest the soft rise and fall that comes with his breathing almost feels like a rocking motion.

"I think it'd be in my fear landscape, now. Shooting him." she admits into the black t-shirt.

"Well, you aren't the only one that got messed up. You and I, friends? Something must be wrong with me too." she slaps his shoulder lightly and then sobers.

"Friends who had sex." she blurts out.

"Friends who had sex." he agrees, surprisingly softly.

"I really liked it." Tris can feel the blush that adorns her cheeks almost instantly, and feels glad it isn't visible.

"So did I. Otherwise I wouldn't have carried on, you know."

They don't train that day. Eric, whose authority seems to be unsurpassed, now, simply tells her they're taking the day off and tells everyone else the same thing when he's met with enquiries. Tris wonders if he's stepped into Max's vacant role as leader-of-the-leaders. After all, three bullets to the skull meant that Max certainly couldn't carry on.

Tris remembers seeing Eric shooting Max, shooting Jeanine in the control room. Rooting out the guilty in Erudite ruthlessly but sparing all the others. Helping to restore the Abnegation government from its remaining population. For weeks, there'd been nothing but work. She remembers thinking that she'd maybe misjudged him a little, before that feeling had been replaced by a grudge as he drove her like some sort of slave driver as the new leader-in-training. He's a perfectionist, Tris understands that now, but it had grated on her, and still does, even now. Four had forgiven mistakes, but Eric had scolded and critiqued and demanded nothing but the very best, and it was exhausting after weeks of comparative leniency in initiation, even if she didn't realise it at the time how much slack was being afforded to her.

She doesn't realise that Eric's taken her not to her apartment, but his, until she sees the differently-styled furnishings: where hers are mildly decorative, his are entirely dark and sparse. Wordlessly, he guides her onto the black sofa and they spoon, entangled together in a mass of limbs. Tris thinks about how it feels, and the first word that comes to mind is safe. Then content. Then amused because Eric - deadly, rabid, ruthless Eric - is damn good at cuddling: his hand rubs soothing circles in her back, pressing her head into his chest. He pulls a grey blanket over them and it's warm and soft, and Eric's hand doesn't still in its rubbing. The movement lulls her to drowsiness and, between that and the warmth, oblivion comes.

For the first time in weeks, she doesn't wake screaming: Eric has acted as some sort of ward for the nightmares. There's a pile of paperwork sat on the coffee table in front of him which he's using as a work surface, and Tris feels guilt sweep through her: he must be behind on his work because of the attention he's been giving her and her training. Mostly her training. Yes. Almost entirely her training.

"You should have woken me." she mumbles quietly, moving to shift off of his lap, but one tattoed arm restrains her before she can.

"You needed the sleep." he drawls, momentarily stopping his aggressive scrawling. "Or were the bags under your eyes not visible in your mirror? Perhaps I should order you a new one." Tris catches a glance at the paper and the tidiness of his handwriting comes as somewhat of a surprise: she would have expected an untidy scribble but instead sees a near-perfect cursive. Of course, given his perfectionist tendencies, she shouldn't really expect anything else: the formation of the letters is close to immaculate, and Tris wonders how long it took him to learn that style, to make every a and e conform to it.

Ignoring the jibe, Tris wriggles off of his legs and tries to put aside the fact that that was the best sleep she's had since the attack. "I should be working, too." She should. Training isn't her only duty: her own stack of paperwork is only a few walls away, and it won't go away by itself. A reputation for slacking or missing deadlines isn't one she wants to gain, and tired or not, her head doesn't feel nearly as muddled as it did earlier.

"No." Eric answers, voice firm, and when she goes to argue, interrupts her. "Save it. I outrank you and I'm saying no. You look like shit and you need your energy for tomorrow, for the council meeting. If you won't stay here and go back to sleep, at least go back to your apartment and do something… restful."

Unused to Eric being quite so… resolute, Tris can't find any motivation to put up much resistance and so traipses down the hall back to her own apartment. She whiles away the unexpected free time by cooking: simple, Abnegation food. Plain bread, unseasoned chicken, some peas for dinner. Her attempt at recreating Dauntless cake falls entertainingly flat as the cake collapses in the oven and resembles a rockslide, and the icing splits and becomes a gritty, unappetising mess. Then again, it's not as if she's even cooked since the start of initiation: while cooking was a frequent occurrence in Abnegation, here, the communal nature of eating has meant her apartment kitchen has barely seen any use apart from pouring milk onto cereal in the mornings.

At six pm, she's just about to sit down for dinner when there's a knock on the door: Eric.

"I came to check you were following my instructions." he tells her, preempting the obvious question.

"Well, you'll be pleased to know that for once, I have been." she teases, mouth curling into a grin. "I've been cooking." Pausing briefly, she regards him a touch more shyly. "Join me for dinner if you want. I made more than enough for two, if not three. I'm too used to cooking for four people." Sometimes, Tris finds herself hating her Divergence: the Abnegation manners are too ingrained into her for her own good, and in brash, loud Dauntless, they stick out like a sore thumb. But Eric smiles, and for a second, she thinks it's a genuine one as opposed to his usual smirk. "It's just Abnegation food." she warns, not wanting him to expect anything remotely fancy. "I tried to make Dauntless cake and failed spectacularly."

"Abnegation food is fine." he moves about in her kitchen, and looks at home, somehow: a dark figure blending in with the granite countertops. "You weren't even lying, were you? Your Candor friend must be rubbing off on you." His face looks oddly pleased, and Tris wants to headbutt the nearest wall when she finds herself smiling at his approval.

"She's not Candor any more, same as I'm not Abnegation." Tris reminds him, though there's not much irritation in her words. No, Eric's wrong: she's not got an ounce of Candor in her, and denying her Abnegation traits feels deceitful, almost. Being bold around Eric isn't just her trying to even things out a little, it's a necessity. She has to be Dauntless, and only Dauntless: no Erudite, no Abnegation; bravery and recklessness and nothing else.

"Sure about that?" Eric questions, and the expression is uncomfortably knowing. Tris stays silent, ladles chicken, peas and bread onto two plates and dumps two glasses of water on the small dining table with them. Tori's words still echo in her ear: You'll get killed.

She saw Max kill a Divergent right in front of her, and she's not sure that Eric wouldn't do the same, even now. Being against an Erudite takeover isn't the same as being against a Divergent genocide. To know where Eric stands on that would be extremely valuable information, but asking outright would be too risky, and taking the subtle approach might give incorrect results: for all she knows, Eric could very well suspect her of the same. In some ways, despite the threat of Jeanine being eliminated she's still in just as much danger. She still has to hide.

Their dinner is quiet, and lacks the incessant teasing that has so far characterised most of their interactions. Eric eats the drab food without complaint, clears his plate easily, and tops up their glasses. Perhaps she should have offered him wine, but the aftereffects are too unappealing, and anyway, he's given no indication of wanting it. Instead, he helps her wash up, and it's almost like being in Abnegation again, except not as a sister or a daughter but as someone's lover. Tris finds herself wondering if this was what everyday life was like for her parents, at first: quiet and insular. But the calm makes a change from the incessant rushing around that makes up her Dauntless life, and Eric, for that matter, doesn't seem to be minding it much either.

She finishes wiping up the last pan and turns, when Eric's arms envelope her in a surprising embrace.

"What is it that you want?" she mumbles on a whim, and his arms loosen.

"What is it that you want?" The words come back at her, surprisingly snide, although his expression is partially amused.

"We had sex in a shower stall, and now you're coming over and eating dinner, and…" Tris rolls her eyes and pulls back completely, exasperated. "Can you just put a Candor hat on for a minute and tell it to me straight?" He snorts at that, obviously finds her anger amusing, and leans against one of the counters, surveying her with dark grey eyes.

"Do you need to put a label on this right now?" he questions, voice the most serious she's ever heard it. "Is a definition that important to you? Because to be honest, I have no idea what this is."

"I suppose not," Tris acquiesces. "But I don't understand: you hated me in training. What's different now?" And that's what it all boils down to; despite her attraction, despite the way her eyes always linger on his, and pretty much always have (though she never wanted to admit it), she can't understand how it can be reciprocated from someone who seemed to go out of his way to make her life difficult only a few short weeks ago.

"I didn't hate you in training. I treated all the initiates like shit because every single one of you needed to toughen up." His mouth twists unhappily. "I concede I took it a bit far sometimes, but it was in your best interest." he pauses. "This is in your best interest too, you know." And with that, he slides a gun onto the table in front of her.

Tris can't help but flinch.

"Disassemble it." he instructs, and it reminds her strongly of initiation: his scrutiny, the pressure, the gun. Tris forces herself to pick it up – just a simple pistol this time – and turns it over in her hands. Then, almost mechanically, she removes the magazine, opens the slide and removes the ammunition. She can't look up at Eric because the process takes too much concentration – it is, after all, still a pretty lethal weapon – but she wishes she could. Close the slide. Release the firing pin. She can hear Four's voice give out the instructions in initiation as she carries the sequence out, and eventually the pistol lies on the table entirely in pieces.

Something like triumph adorns Eric's face.

Tris finds she's breathing heavily, and sits down on her sofa, tugging a blanket over herself. Cold sweat prickles at her temples, and Will's face swims into view, pale and unchanging and dead, and… she shakes her head, maybe hoping that the images will go away if she can just expel them physically, but deep down, she knows they won't.

Eric's lips brush against her head, and she turns to find he's joined her under the blanket.

"It's called exposure therapy." he murmurs into her hair, and when he feels her shaking, tightens his grip around her. "The idea is to get rid of a fear via exposing yourself to it, as the name indicates. You start gradually and then do it more and more: namely, first you touch the gun, then you disassemble it, and eventually, you fire it." Eric pauses, seems to muse over something. "I think initiates should be given psychology classes about fear. God knows it'd help: practical knowledge is best combined with theory."

"You accused me of still being Abnegation." Tris says, her voice soft. "I think that was hypocritical of you."

You're still Erudite.

Eric stiffens against her, then his mouth curls into a smirk.

"Touche, Stiff." He presses his lips to her forehead, strangely affectionate, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders: they're broader than Four's, Tris notes, and her arms nearly don't make it around his frame. And she notices something else: Eric hasn't pitied her, hasn't told her it's all right, hasn't told her that it's fine that she's scared. Instead, he's explained, he's acted, done something practical, and offered comfort in touch.

She hasn't long held the view that everyone has a little Abnegation in them, but today, Tris thinks its being proven right. By Eric, no less.

"Did you study psychology, in Erudite?" she ventures. After all, he had to have got this information from somewhere, and his former faction is most likely.

Are you Divergent? her brain whispers. Are you more than just Dauntless?

"Yes. It was one of the five key disciplines outlined in the manifesto, so every Erudite dependent received additional classes in it. I knew I was headed for Dauntless quite early on, so I focused on the psychology of fear, and it helped me a lot in initiation." his tone is matter of fact: leaving obviously didn't bother him as much as leaving Abnegation bothered her. Then again, Eric seems to have a knack for concealing emotion: he appeared entirely unruffled when he threw Christina over the chasm.

Four had let slip Eric had been stiff competition; that his ability to stay composed in fear landscapes was unrivalled, better than anyone else's – transfer or otherwise. The only reason he'd come second was because he had three fears more than Four did, which cost him time. Tris believes that easily now, but wonders still what he could be afraid of.

She stares into his eyes, but doesn't find any answers.

"You know you're one of the most closed up people I've met, right? I can't get a read off of you at all." she doesn't know what drives her to blurt it out, instantly turns red (don't be too Candor, Tris echoes her mother's voice in her ear) but Eric just snorts, smooths back her hair from her forehead in a thoughtless gesture of affection.

"Some of us don't like to be open books, you know, and can actually control our facial expressions." his mouth twists from amusement, and Tris can feel her muscles untensing as he rubs steady circles in her shoulder with a thumb.

"Fair enough." she concedes, leans into his touch: after so many years with only the bare minimum of physical contact, it surprises her how much – and how quickly – she's come to crave it here. Eric's lips press against hers again and the gentleness startles her again. Their touches used to be all pain and roughness and, in the bathroom, aggressive and desperate, but his softness now throws her for a loop.

If she's honest, Tris still can't really understand or comprehend how she got from the bathroom, to the training room, to here, but Tris knows that whatever this is between them: between her and Eric – enigmatic, ruthless Eric – she wants it to carry on.

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