A/N: I had this Allegiant AU fanfiction called "Resurgent" where Tris survives and one of the side ships were Peter/Christina. Other than that, I never really thought about making any kind of fanwork for the said ship until now. The title is based on the song "Embrace It?" by Skykick Ranger (it's a song that was used in the second season of Love Sick: The Series). I know the ship sounds new to you guys (and to me as well) so for now, we're all in the stage of "Embrace It?" just like the characters of this fic.
It was one of those nights - those nights some few years after Chicago and the world outside the wall had been reunited.
Peter Hayes was one of the many who tasted life where the faction system was no longer in place since many decades ago.
This was a freedom that he was a stranger of. And speaking of things he was a stranger of, he was a stranger of another thing - a crazy little thing called love.
He had fallen in love before but this was a different one. He'd found himself starting to fall in love with someone who he'd never expect to fall in love with. Even this someone admitted to sharing the same sentiment as him in one of those nights when their friends would put them on a "Hot Seat".
He'd fallen in love with her when Chicago's faction system had begun to crumble but he never got the courage to admit it to her...Especially because she was in love with someone else. Even when that someone else had passed away before the faction system finally collapsed, he still couldn't bring himself to admit it to her.
To think that he was once a Dauntless. And she was once a Dauntless. And before that, they were both in Candor. Supposedly they should find it easy to admit their feelings for each other because the faction they were born in taught them to be honest and the faction they ended up in taught them to be fearless. Two things that were needed for one to confess their true feelings to a person they've been interested in.
Christina is her name. She had charmed him in some way he could not thoroughly explain when they first worked together with Four and Tris to bring down Jeanine and her forces.
When he saw her determination to bring Jeanine down and bring justice to every person in Chicago, he was in awe. He was in awe that a woman who had gone through hell and back since initiation would still live up to the values that her birth faction and the Dauntless have taught her. He never had such characteristics as he had tried to get rid of his Candor side as soon as he stepped into Dauntless - he entered Dauntless thinking of himself first - thinking of the tougher man he'll become when he gets accepted into that faction, even if it meant lying his way into the faction and surely, his old faction wouldn't be happy about it if they did find out.
When she had gotten mad at him for being a jerk so many times from their childhood in Candor to their days in Dauntless, he was still in awe which he found real strange. He was supposed to feel repulsed towards her but his feelings say otherwise.
And it appears that until now, he had no more repulsion for the woman as he now laid beside her.
Her face conveyed bliss that night but he remembers when it showed him grief in the days when her first love, Will, had just died.
He remembered how it took her years to open up to him about the grief that she still carries until this day (because the first love never dies in one's memory). He understood why it took so long for her to open up to him about it and he even expected her never to open up at all. Makes sense because at some point, he'd inflicted misery to Will's life when he was still alive.
Until today, all that Peter could wonder was how he and Christina still managed to stick together when their relationship before this was full of distrust.
Christina says it was because he proved himself to be a changed man who was ready to risk his life for the people he valued so well. Particularly in that one time he saved her best friend's life after the Erudite had detained her.
Peter says that it was gratitude that drove Christina to return the feelings to him in that one time he saved Tris from Jeanine by helping her escape the Erudite headquarters. Granted, she was once a Candor, she was really damn honest with that gratitude. And her feelings towards him.
But he was a Candor too, yet he had so much hesitation to tell her the truth about his feelings so much that she didn't know what those gestures of trying to relate with her meant until that one night when he just decided to admit it already. The same night when he was relieved because she reciprocated. It was the night when Caleb had proposed marriage to Cara.
Their relationship was not one that was needed to be rushed and it took some years before it finally arrived to this night. The night when they first slept together.
If there's one common question between Christina and Peter, it would be "Shall we embrace it?"
Embrace the relationship they have formed?
Embrace the circumstances that led them together to this moment?
Embrace themselves for who they are?