Acquiescence

Eric and Tris each acquiesce to the wants of the other, but Tris finds him just as much an enigma as before, and still can't bring herself to give up her own secrets. Sequel to 'Concupiscence'. Rated M for sexual content.

When I started writing 'Concupiscence' I really didn't anticipate it being any more than a one-shot, buuuuut as we all know muses are fickle things and my muse refused to let go of this 'verse. Thus, this was (very slowly) born, and look out for the final part of the trilogy sometime in the future (I can't promise anything re: dates because university is starting soon for me (GAHHH) but I'll do my best!)

Rated M for sexual content; some potentially upsetting scenes involving mention of blood; slight D/s undertones (but again, only if you squint).

Predictably, normal service resumes the next day.

Eric can say what he likes, but Tris is pretty good at keeping secrets and acting like everything is fine – well, as 'fine' as things can be at the moment, given the current turmoil their entire society is in.

Both of them spend the next morning on paperwork and administration, cooped up in their offices. Tris's body is grateful, a mass of sore muscles still, but her brain wants answers; answers that she can only get by talking to Eric, and to do that, she needs an opportunity. Going into his office would be too conspicuous, and going into his apartment too brazen: Tris finds herself wishing she had a knack for subtlety beyond the passive-aggressiveness of Abnegation. Which faction is good at sublety? Not Dauntless, for sure. And the Candor saying that 'politeness is deception in pretty packaging' speaks for itself. Either way, Tris could use some subtlety, and right now she has no idea how to get it.

The afternoon brings the council meeting, and that, surely, is going to be tricky: their colleagues are perceptive in their own ways, and a meeting in which they don't argue would be a strange one indeed. Eric and Tris aren't known for getting on, after all, and before they approached each other with barely contained animosity under a veneer of civility. Or, at least, that's what she thought. Perhaps Eric simply wasn't good at being polite.

Candor, too? she wonders, but then dismisses the idea: Eric's too fond of manipulation to be a Candor. Straight-talking is reasonably Dauntless, too, after all, and backstabbing Jeanine like that is something no Candor could ever carry off.

So are you Erudite and Dauntless?

This is the question that's been on her mind for hours. She wants access to Eric's simulation footage, but that would be like painting a big red sign, sticking it in the pit, and telling people to go and look at it, declaring herself Divergent.

Tris pictures Tori's brother at the bottom of the Chasm, and shivers.

Still, though, she's got more than one reason for wanting to see Eric's fear landscape: what is he afraid of? She has no idea, and doesn't quite know why she wants to know, except his knowledge of her fears gives him leverage over her somehow and she's determined to be on equal footing. When she does see Eric that morning, in his brutally tidy office, he's as brisk and business-like as usual, answering her queries with the cold efficiency he's known for amongst leadership and delegates new tasks to her. Both of them, then, are seemingly happy to hide any relationship (if that's what it is) away, and it sends Tris's thoughts into a fresh spin when she leaves, returning to her own (much less tidy) office half an hour later.

Lunchtime comes and her plans to corner Eric are curtailed by none other than Four, who sits down at her (previously solitary) table with unrestrained urgency.

"Stay away from Eric, Tris." he tells her, ignoring his own plate of dubiously-flavoured chicken casserole in favour of staring her down. "He's dangerous."

"Why are you telling me this?" she nearly snaps, but just about manages to keep her tone even. "And why should you care?" Yes, why should he? Despite all his warnings and cryptic looks and all that, when's Four actually done anything for her? In the attack on Abnegation she didn't see him.

"I work in the control room, remember? I saw you both going into each other's apartments yesterday. You can't trust him, Tris. It's for your own safety."

"My own safety?" she echoes incredulously.

"Yes." Four looks impatient. "Listen, just stay away! You don't know what he'll do, Tris – your best bet is to just go along with whatever plans he's got but not let him in any further than that." He looks around them then, makes sure that no one's watching their conversation. "I deleted your simulation footage for a reason. Don't make Eric question that decision any more than he has already."

She feels sick. All this time, she thought she'd hidden her Divergence well enough – that she'd satisfied Tori's warning – but now, it's obvious that isn't true.

"Whatever you think, Four, I trust my judgement." she answers coolly, trying not to let the blind panic inside show. "And at the moment, I'm inclined to trust it over yours." Tris gives up on her own mushy casserole, having stabbed it aimlessly with a fork, and leaves him alone, sulking. Her stride is so purposeful that, when she's put her tray away, she doesn't notice the bulky figure in front of her and nearly falls flat on her face when she collides with it.

"Tris." Long fingers steady her shoulders for a second longer than they perhaps should.

"Careful, Eric." she hisses quietly. "I thought we were keeping, quote, 'whatever this is', quiet?"

"We are. Look like I'm telling you something important." Obediently, Tris schools her face into her default 'serious, professional' expression, and he nods minutely. "Come for dinner tonight: seven o'clock. And don't try and do anything stupid like bring food with you – this one's on me."

"Noted." she mumbles, and wants to protest the necessity of the 'no bringing food' comment, but realises it's probably not worth it.

"Now, actual business: reread the council agenda before you arrive. I think it might get messy." Eric scowls, presumably at the situation they're both going to get into shortly. "Let's just say I'm not anticipating Happy Families on this one. Bud and Ryn likely won't agree, and I'm not at all sure about Harrison, either."

"Agree on what?" Tris mentally runs over the council agenda in her mind and instantly sobers. "Oh. You think that they won't agree to send some of the military force to rebuild Abnegation." she presses her lips together. "Can't you overrule them?" It's a silently acknowledged fact that Eric is head of the Dauntless Council, whether anyone openly admits it or not, and he does have veto power over the rest of them.

"It would look bad, and siding with you would seem strange." he sighs, runs a hand through his hair in what Tris recognises as his standard gesture of frustration. "But see if you can't gather some ammunition before it starts. I'll see you there." he glances at the cafeteria, frowns. "And do yourself a favour and get a sandwich or something. God knows it looks like there's nothing nutritious in that casserole, and you just chucked away most of yours."

Remembering the events of yesterday, Tris snorts. "Have you given yourself the additional task of making sure I eat, or something?" His answering glare makes her fall quiet and she raises her hand in mock surrender. "Okay, okay! No bringing food tonight, eat sandwich now, got it. I'll see you at the council meeting."

She does get a tuna mayo sandwich.

…And she rereads the agenda too.

Damn him.

When she's skimming over the agenda again, she understands what Eric means: numerous potential minefields litter the seemingly innocent-looking proposals.

Agenda: 3rd November

Persons anticipated: Eric Coulter, Bud Mason, Caryn Edwards, Tris Prior, Harrison Slattery, Etta Irwin (secretary)

Item 1: Proposition of sending portion of military force to assist Abnegation rebuilding alongside factionless

Item 2: Proposition of aiming to reduce Erudite access to simulation data: what are the legitimate grounds for research based enquiries?

It carries on it the familiar detached vein that characterises most of Eric's documents, but Tris can already guess how much debate these are going to spark: Eric's bold to even attempt to get the leadership team to agree on them. Something unpleasant coils itself in her stomach at the thought of the political dance ahead, and she inwardly tries to steel herself.

How can I use my Divergence and hide it at the same time?

I need to take myself back to the Abnegation attack. I need to remember how I escaped detection then.

Tris makes herself breathe through her nose, out through her mouth. It occurs to her that she doesn't deal with stress as well as she used to, after this – simple tasks can send her spiralling into anxiety when she's unsure or tired and this is important. Dauntless have to help Abnegation, and it's not just about the building – it's about the government. Eric knows that and so does she. Helping with the rebuilding shows support for the reformed Abnegation head Council and refusing it will do the opposite. Ryn, Harrison and Bud must know that too, and that's why it's contentious.

Massaging her temples, she abandons the remaining half of her tuna mayo sandwich (to hell with Eric, he'll just have to deal with it) and slumps at her desk.

"Why should we support Abnegation?" she wonders out loud. "What reasonable grounds do we have, as Dauntless?"

There has to be an answer. She can formulate an argument, surely, in favour of Abnegation: she just has to think, embrace her Erudite side.

It's almost ironic – that the faction she probably despises the most is the one she has to espouse right now.

As she trudges down to the conference room, Tris hopes it'll be enough.

"Well done, Tris." Eric tells her as he lets her into his apartment hours later. He sounds tired, at a loose end, documents littering his coffee table, but sure enough, pleasant smells are emanating from the open-plan kitchen-diner: Tris isn't familiar with half of them but manages to identify lamb chops, accompanied by some sort of grain and hot salad.

"You shouldn't've cooked." Tris frowns as she dumps herself on the sofa. "After today's train wreck, I'm sure you've got enough on your plate." she winces. "Pun not intended."

"You persuaded them, though." he manages an exhausted version of his usual smirk as he stirs the various pots on the go. "As I thought you would."

"Want a hand or anything with the food?" Tris asks casually, moving towards the kitchen.

"No, I need a break… sit there and rest yourself. I don't see much of a let up coming anytime soon: we need to get these moments while we can." he sighs, and Tris wants to reach out, to say something to help or comfort or anything, but instead she presses her lips together and stays put as she's been asked, because Eric'll only get crabby otherwise and accuse her of being a Stiff again, and she's not sure she wants that.

A few minutes later, he waves her to the table, and the aroma that comes from the plate is pleasant.

"Tease me all you want, can you tell me what this is?" Because while lamb chops are all well and good, there are about three components that she doesn't even recognise on her plate. Eric snorts but indulges her, pointing to each ingredient in turn.

"The grain is quinoa, and the lamb chops are flavoured with dukkah. Don't ask me exactly what that is but it's some sort of spice the Amity manufacture and it tastes pretty damn good so I add it to various things, some more successfully than others. And the quinoa salad has grilled halloumi in it as well – that's a type of cheese."

"Very healthy." Tris observes wryly. "Trying to fatten me up, are you?"

"Of course. I'm planning on selling your meat on the black market pretty soon."

Dark humour is something Tris has come to appreciate in Dauntless. Crude jokes were frowned upon in Abnegation, considered too hurtful and selfish, but the brash, occasionally morbid Dauntless humour suits Tris far better. It makes her smile much more than the tame Abnegation 'knock knock' jokes that constituted comedy, and even then those were rare. After all, why spend time laughing and joking around when there were so many things that could be done to better their society? But Dauntless are predictably brutal in their jokes – already, a significant number have been made at her expense. Ultimately, though, they make her smile, because she's close enough to these people to let them make jibes at her without the risk of being offended, and that's the good part: the camaraderie.

It's funny how she can twist the Abnegation values so easily: how painting them in a bad light has almost become second nature to her now, to help blend in in the black faction. But in reality, Tris knows she'd never seriously criticise her old faction, Dauntless or not, if nothing else because her own personality prevents her from ever truly turning her back on it. After all, how can you escape yourself?

The meal is good: Tris adds cookery to Eric's list of skills as the soft cheese, crispy salad and tender meat marry in her mouth to create something she'd definitely go back for seconds for, far superior to cafeteria food or, indeed, anything she's ever constructed in a kitchen. Eric looks pleased, happy to see her a little less tense and, once again, conversation is minimal, both of them unwinding over the meal. When she tries to talk about work he looks thoroughly unamused and swiftly changes the subject back to food, and so she resigns herself to leaving all actual professional matters until tomorrow.

"Four wants to talk to you, you know." Eric tells her suddenly. "He keeps pestering me. I told him that meeting with him was at your discretion." Tris snorts into the remnants of her salad, twists a strand of pale blonde hair in irritation.

"I'm afraid he'll keep pestering you: I have no intention of indulging him and his paranoia." she pauses, bites her lip. "He ambushed me in the cafeteria today. He told me to stay away from you, you know."

"Did he, now?" Something dark and slightly dangerous flashes through Eric's eyes. "And what did you say?"

"Well, I would have gone on a long tirade involving the fact that I've got no time for his petty vendettas, but as it was I just told him it was none of his business because I was too busy getting rid of my disgusting chicken casserole." Tris feels her lips curl up in amusement, but Eric looks preoccupied and she wonders whether there's more than simply rivalry behind his dislike for Four – something beyond the world of initiate rankings and teaching methods, something more important. But she can't indulge herself and ask: she has to suppress that impulse, because although Eric might not be an ally of Jeanine, she's not sure if he's an ally of hers yet, and she has to tread carefully.

Tris won't let the next body at the bottom of the Chasm be hers, after all.

Pressing her lips together, she takes Eric's plate and her own, starts to wash up. Eric joins her again and they carry out the chore in companionable silence: she washes, he dries. When they finish and his hand trails down her back, she finds herself leaning into the touch easily and quickly reciprocating, arms wrapping around his waist and pressing their lips together, standing on tiptoe to reach him. She feels him guide them backwards into the bedroom and he pushes her impatiently onto the bed.

"I thought you said that patience was a virtue, hm?" Tris teases, unbuttoning her jeans slowly. Already unclothed, Eric growls low in his throat, and must decide she's not moving fast enough because he starts undressing her with a sense of urgency that wasn't there before. Her jeans and shirt go flying, and then her bra, sailing out of the bedroom door from the force of his throw. Some detached part of her brain wonders how she'll find her stuff when she has to get dressed again, but her attention gets drawn back to Eric when he bites down on her neck, sucking and nipping over the bruises that are already there. A whine builds in her chest and she grips onto his shoulders more insistently, drawing their bodies closer together.

"Now who's the impatient one?" it sounds simultaneously dark, lustful, everything she wouldn't get in Abnegation, and Tris is beginning to feel warm. Eric's pupils are already wide with arousal and suddenly Tris has forgotten why she ever felt unsure of this – why she ever doubted it.

"Stop playing around." she half-whinges, but Eric just laughs and the finger tracing her sweet spot moves achingly slowly: she tries to get more friction but fails spectacularly.

"Good things come to those who wait." he drawls low in her ear, biting lightly at the tender cartilage. "Maybe I'll teach you how, Tris."

"To hell with that." Her patience is rapidly exhausting: there's nothing Abnegation about this encounter. "Give me –" She trails off as he replaces his finger with his lips, teasing the outside of her folds softly, and Tris feels her clit throb, neglected and whines again. She feels Eric's chuckle as his lips move down her thighs, and his hands press hers into the mattress. It's slow, frustratingly slow, and she squirms: she wants him to move back upwards, but there's no rushing Eric: even as her hands try to move, he pins them back to the mattress and the weight of his torso imprisons her legs.

Eventually, she sighs, just tries to let the sensations wash over her, and her eyelids flutter shut. It's relaxing, to just lie there and be given pleasure like this, even if it's annoyingly slow. She wonders if that's Eric's goal – to relax them both.

Suddenly, though, the intensity increases: finally, finally, his lips enclose her clit. She looks at him through blown pupils and his grey eyes are full of mischief as he softly sucks at it, kissing her folds in between.

"Let me return the favour." she says quietly, almost like she doesn't want to get rid of the miasma of calm between them. Eric just raises an eyebrow and continues his gentle ministrations, and strangely enough, the heat in her abdomen builds – first minutely, but then more and more noticeably. Tris feels herself smile contentedly and begrudgingly concedes that waiting for it does yield good results: she comes almost gently, the tingles of pleasure trailing up and down her abdomen and through her core. Before Eric can say anything, Tris manages to roll out from under him and attaches her lips to his cock, her long, pale fingers tracing his length softly. She takes his slow approach, and smirks when he groans in frustration.

"Tris…" It's breathy, and his hand curls into her hair. "You've made your point."

"But have I?" she teases, stroking the soft flesh slowly and deliberately, and she sees Eric's eyebrows furrow.

Tris makes him wait, draws moans out of him, and her lips upturn in satisfaction. The temptation to say something snarky – to rib him for finally not being the one in control – is very strong but she tamps down on it, decides to make the most of the experience, and sucks him off until he comes down her throat with a long groan.

Both of them smile.

Tris can't sleep.

She left after their after dinner activities concluded, Eric pleading yet more paperwork – and after the Council meeting, she can believe it. She's not even got too many leadership responsibilities yet, and she's definitely swamped – God knows what the burden's like for Eric. In initiation he'd seemed impervious to fear, immune to stress, but now she knows otherwise, and it's difficult not to feel for him at some level. As much as she might resist it, Eric's becoming three-dimensional to her now: a human being, someone complex with thoughts and feelings and emotions. At first, he was the source of irritation, anger, contempt for the system – then he was the object of lust. But he's invading her life, almost inexorably, and she can't ignore that for much longer.

She gets out of bed, deciding maybe to walk it off, so she pulls on a set of nondescript Dauntless clothes and trudges out into the hallway. Her feet move mostly on autopilot: the Pit is almost silent, unnerving in how dead it is – Tris expects to see more late night revelers but encounters barely any, bar Four hunched over a large beer, and she studiously avoids him. But to be fair, it is a midweek night, and most of the workforce is stretched to capacity dealing with security issues that have arisen due to the attack: in the day, most of them are out in the field now, and Dauntless itself becomes half empty – something she didn't see in initiation. After all, she was too concerned with the training room and the board that resided within it to care much about the rest of the complex or its inhabitants.

It makes her wonder what late night in Abnegation would've been like, if she'd stayed: low lights, empty streets, less sleep because lie-ins were self-indulgent. If sleeping was difficult in Abnegation, she'd be expected to do something virtuous with the additional time: do more sewing, organise more food boxes for the factionless, do another family member's chores to ease their burden. Here, at least, there's no expectation of that sort – and in his current mood, Tris supposes Eric would be extremely displeased if he found her working on paperwork at 1 in the morning. She can envision the conversation now, the scolding that would certainly follow the teasing: 'Can't keep up, Stiff? Resorting to midnight soirees with your paperwork?' and 'Really, Stiff, do you expect to be functioning well tomorrow morning doing this?'. Her eyebrows furrow at the thought, but then she chuckles a bit: her head's become quite adept at mimicking Eric, and it might come in handy later.

Even quiet, there's something about Dauntless that's fundamentally alive: like the building has a core that keeps on beating even in the small hours, like the fire keeps on burning low no matter the time. Abnegation dies in the absence of selflessness, but Dauntless seems to go on and on and on and on. As she muses, Tris keeps treading along on autopilot, eyes unseeing except to move out of the way of other insomniacs like her, and so she trudges down a maze of hallways without much thought.

Her feet lead her to the fear landscape room.

Tris stares at the bare walls and the line of syringes and makes a decision: a Dauntless sort of decision. The needle still stings as she sinks it into the juncture between her neck and shoulder, but in her mind it barely registers. Initiation has prepared her for this, at least, and the needle no longer fazes her: instead, she's learned to focus on what's to come as her vision blurs momentarily and she braces herself for the new sensory onslaught.

The crows come first. Tris knows she can handle this fear: she steps into the water and envisions a lake, a way out even as their beaks assault her skin, and sure enough, when she resurfaces its in the glass cube filling with water. She ignores the pipe and instead begins to chant internally. Her head is her greatest weapon – it can outrun any simulated construct. She's proven that time and time again when given the opportunity: her brain wouldn't yield to Jeanine's serum any more than it would yield to the fear simulation, because she can't be controlled like the rest of them can. She's immune to the power of suggestion.

The glass is weak. The glass will shatter if I touch it. It will shatter if I touch it.

The water's barely up to her waist when the entire transparent pane falls to shards at a touch of her finger: in the simulation, she is God; she can control anything, fear or not. She can understand why Four got so drunk on that power now: why the control that simulations brought was so attractive to him. It's attractive to her now: this, at least, she can succeed at. The only variable here is her: nothing else can change without her will.

I'm Divergent. I'm strong. I can beat this with a hand behind my back.

It becomes a game. Sick, twisted, but a game.

The next fear brings being bound to rough wood: to flames licking at her feet, her legs, her thighs. The sounds of laughter ricochet off of the walls and Tris stares into Peter's eyes, helpless and out of control and humiliated.

But she just smiles at him this time. The knowledge that she can win easily here soothes her, makes the whole affair edge to the comedic side.

"Hello, Peter." she greets, almost conversationally.

"Tris." Fake Peter sniggers as the flames flicker up to her waist. He's smug and a coward and absolutely repellent to her, and the thought of what might come next if she gets it to work makes her snicker back. Tris closes her eyes, ignores his next words, and sure enough after a few seconds she feels the bindings dissipate and his howls of pain as he burns up are sickeningly satisfying.

As she expects to see a bedroom, perhaps containing Eric instead of Four, instead she sees Will, holding a gun. She's clutching one herself (semi-automatic pistol, her brain supplies on autopilot) and she knows he'll shoot her if she doesn't shoot him first. But his features are undefined, almost like the faults of her memory in real-time: the shape of the eyes is vague, and the mouth is all but gone – Simulation Will is almost like a sculpture gone wrong, like the artist got bored and left it unfinished. The gun, though, is rendered in painstaking detail, each curve of the metal exactly how she remembers it: the trigger, the barrel – currently pointing into her face.

Suddenly, her mind goes blank. Her breath comes in quick gasps that hitch in her throat, almost like her body's reluctant to breathe. Her view of Will blurs and flickers, and her grip on the gun goes slack.

All of a sudden, Tris finds she wants to cry. For Will's sake and for her own. She's upset and she's afraid, because the fact of the matter is that even though she's a leader, even though she's strong, even though she's proved herself, the fact still remains that she watched both her parents die in front of her, her brother is a traitor and she killed a friend in cold blood.

And there's nothing she can do about it, Divergent be damned.

Vaguely, Tris registers the guttural scream that forms in her throat as she throws the gun out of her hands and into the gutter, skidding out of her view.

"Shoot me, Will." On her knees, she stares into his half-formed face and tries to steady her breathing, because this is how it should have gone. She should have died; should have died and done the right thing instead of shooting him and paying the price for it. Christina, as good as dead: she wanders around Dauntless like a ghost, the only change in her expression to cry or to shoot a glare at her. As she should.

Sometimes, Tris wishes that she wasn't Divergent: that she could be part of the flock, that the burden of change doesn't lie squarely on her shoulders, that hiding away wouldn't be necessary. But she knows that that won't happen: instead, her Dauntless side will have to take her forward, and someday, maybe soon and maybe a long time away, she'll have the power to change things for good.

Searing pain briefly registers in her skull before the trio of grey figures appear in front of her again. Each of their faces, at least, is how she remembers it: Caleb, shut up in the Candor justice system, has never seemed so far away, but in the simulation he's only too immediate. Slate eyes, the mirror of her own, bore into her face so intensely that when Tris raises a hand to the skin there she's surprised to find it intact.

"It's all right, Tris." he tells her, giving her the patient, slightly exasperated expression she saw all the time when they were children: when she'd failed to act appropriately selfless, when she'd disappointed him. She's letting him rot in Candor for betraying her: she has disappointed him now. She's failed him by not stopping him soon enough, by not discouraging him, by not showing him that Erudite were the villains all along and that going there should never have been an option for him: that he should have stayed with their parents.

"We know you have to." says her father.

"We don't blame you." Her mother's expression is painfully kind. She remembers the Candor expression that you can 'kill someone with kindness' and right now, she agrees with it: her mother's expression now sends fresh tendrils of guilt spiralling through her every nerve. She wants nothing more than for them to shout at her – for them to tell her that she was the one at fault, that she failed in her duty to protect them – but instead, all they do is stand still and smile. Tris ignores the gun on the table and plants herself on the floor, refusing to engage with it, but despite her obstinacy the simulation refuses to move on, and hot tears prickle at the edges of her eyes.

In the end, though, she knows what she has to do, because god knows she's done it enough times.

Tris picks up the gun on the table and shoots herself square in the forehead.

Awareness comes back slowly: the cool tile of the fear landscape room registers on her back, the cold seeping through the thin fabric of her shirt, and the lights momentarily blind her as she contemplates the absence of intimacy in the landscape – what Eric has essentially succeeded in doing. She lets herself lie there for a moment, reorienting, before pushing herself up, turning to the door, mentally brushing herself off: you got through it. You're still strong.

But the sight that greets her makes her freeze.

Eric stands stock still in the doorway, staring at the monitor.

The trilogy will be completed with 'Incandescence'.

Reviews are always a delight, and I love constructive criticism too.

(The 'you've got too much on your plate' pun actually was unintentional – it was only when I reread in editing that I realised it, hence the 'pun not intended' line that followed!)