The Important Stuff: it's a canon-divergent AU where Tris stays in Abnegation and Tobias leaves Dauntless. So, enjoy.
When the blade cuts across her hand Tris feels like she's floating, like the little stinging slice untethered her from all the things holding her to the ground. Her blood drip drip drips onto the grey stones and she almost giggles at the irony of it all. She knows she should feel anxious or sad or something afterwards, but she doesn't really feel anything, not even the floor under her feet.
Her mother's eyes are troubled and Tris wants to tell her it's okay, she's selfless enough to be the one to stay. But Abnegation don't say things like that so she keeps her mouth shut, trying hard already to be what she needs to be. It's harder when her father wraps his arms around, pulls her close as the other factions and their new initiates file out the door.
The Abnegation frown on public displays of affection, but this is a special day and a special circumstance and she can finally feel something, feel how grateful he is to still have their Beatrice, at least.
Tris stumbles down the empty alley, blinded by her tears and not knowing where she is either way, just that she's away and that's enough for now.
She curses everyone she can think of; her brother, her mother, her father, her faction, herself. But most especially the idiot who mandated that the Choosing Ceremony go in reverse alphabetical order. It should have been Caleb. And if he was still so selfish as to choose to transfer after she did, well… he would have to live with the guilt. Besides, he is clearly the better liar between the two of them, and he could have faked his way through Abnegation initiation the same way he faked his entire existence in the faction before it: easily, and with grace.
But it wasn't Caleb. It was her.
Tris collapses into a derelict doorway, sliding down the crumbling brick with one hand clamped over her mouth to stop the noises clawing up her throat coming out because if they come out her pain will be real. She's manic, she knows, but there's no one here to witness this, and she can't do it anyplace else; being the only initiate means she gets the leaders undivided attention.
The basket in her other hand clatters to the ground, and she's just so angry that she kicks at it, but that's not enough. She snatches it back up and hurls it, as hard and as far as she can. But her muscles are weak and she's shaky anyway and it just doesn't go far enough and she screams in frustration, primal, and that's all it takes for the rest of the sound and fury to come bursting forth and before she knows it she's sobbing and screaming and she can't stop.
Because she doesn't want this life. Not now, not ever, and she hates everything that made her make this choice and she can't undo it now. She only gets one choice and she chose wrong.
Tris isn't living at home anymore because even though her family is in the faction there has to be some separation. But she still sees her parents every day.
Her father is extra nice to her, helps her anyway he can to get through initiation, though Abnegation has never had anyone fail. Still, she's struggling, he sees it, and before he's a faction leader he's a father.
Her mother's silence is her gift to Tris. When she comes back from delivering food to the Factionless - something she'd normally do with the other initiates, except there are none - Natalie helps her get cleaned up, doesn't question Tris' explanation that she got accosted by a Factionless man. It happens - she's not so naive as to think it doesn't -, but it's still not what happened to Tris, at least this time.
It becomes routine. She leaves the Meeting Hall with a full basket and she dutifully distributes it to the Factionless, slowly, carefully, deliberately working her way away from the Abnegation section where they tend to congregate and towards her hiding place. It feels like the only place she can breathe. It's certainly the only place she can cry.
Initiation isn't getting better, but she is able to hide her sadness, her anger, her everything behind a placid Abnegation mask more easily. It's still there, festering and turning into resentment, bitterness, that she tries to only feel when she's huddled in that dirty, disused doorway.
She walks down the alley on steady legs with sure feet, so unlike the first time. She sets her basket down, sweeps her robes up and carefully, carefully lowers herself to the ground. The little doorway is her refuge, her safe place. And when the slow trickle of tears slide down her face she encourages them by opening up those hidden parts of herself, slowing pulling out all the things she's desperate to hide from everyone else until the trickle becomes a torrent.
Tris keeps hoping that with enough tears she can wash them away.
It comes in waves, tides, creeping and encroaching, higher higher higher until she feels like she's drowning, like that's the reason she can't breathe, and then back out again. Some days are worse than other days, and today especially, so she doesn't notice dusk falling around her, doesn't notice the shadow cast across her in it's fading light either.
"You shouldn't be here."
She startles at the suddenness of his voice. He seems even taller because she's sitting and he's standing, but he looks so stern and height has nothing to do with that. All she can really focus on though is that he's Dauntless and here. "Neither should you," she shoots back, bewildered and bold.
"I'm not Dauntless," he grouses.
"Could have fooled me," she says, making a show of looking him up and down, from black booted feet to the black collar of his shirt where tattoos are creeping up his neck.
"And you're not Abnegation," he says snidely. "No wonder you're crying in this doorway every other day."
Her cheeks flush painfully, angrily, mortified that he knows.
"C'mon, get out of here," he says, grabbing her arm and hoisting her up like she's some stray he can shoo away.
"Let go," she grunts, pushing him off with all her strength. He stumbles a few feet and she thinks he wouldn't if he was prepared for it, but he wasn't so he does and that makes her feel a little better.
"Never known a Stiff to fight back," he says, sizing her up.
"Don't call me that," she says, voice whip-crack sharp. She knows she's not living up to her Faction, to her choice with the way she's acting, but she's not anything here other than Tris, and Tris isn't very nice sometimes.
"If you don't get back soon they'll send someone to look for you," he says. "Do you really want them to find you here?"
"Do you?" she challenges. "Because Dauntless isn't supposed to patrol the Factionless anymore."
"I already told you, I'm not Dauntless."
"I don't believe you."
"I don't care."
"Fine. I'll just wait here until the faction leaders come looking for me and you can explain that to them," she says, stubborn. She's still angry, still stuck on being childish and petulant, and there's a part of her that wants to sit back down and cross her arms and pout her lips at him, just for effect.
He takes a step towards her, threatening, but she takes a step back and something flashes in his eyes that she doesn't recognize and he stops, holds his hands up in the universale 'I'm not going to hurt you' sign.
"I'm not Dauntless. I left Dauntless on Choosing Day."
"Why?" She's always been too curious for her own good.
"That's not really any of your business is it? Now. Get. Out. Of. Here.," he says, pronouncing each word through clenched teeth before turning on his heel and stalking away and disappearing into another building across the way.
She flinches again when the heavy steel fire door slams shut behind him, between them.
Tris leaves that day, but she does go back. There's a different doorway around a different corner that becomes her destination, but he's on the way so she makes sure to leave a little something every time she passes.
It's tempting to hide and wait, to see when he comes out to collect her offerings. She doesn't though, if only out of some 'you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone,' quasi-respect.
It doesn't stop her thinking about him though, if only because the mystery of him is a better distraction for her hopelessness and self-pity than anything else. She wonders why he left. She entertains the idea that he was thrown out, that he committed some Dauntless crime that was so heinous he was expelled from the faction for about half a minute. He's not the type, she decides (not that she has any evidence other than her gut feeling to base that on).
It comes with a shock later when she realizes he's handsome. Tris has never noticed boys in that way. There was Robert, but that was different. It was acceptance, or maybe resignation, but he never caused the little curls of heat she feels in places she never paid attention to before every time she thinks of his face and his hands.
Tris' footsteps echo off the asphalt, bounce off the abandoned buildings that crowd so close, that make the alleyway a little strip of empty amid all their clutter. She watches her toes and counts her steps and tries to ignore the way her heart pounds in her chest, nervous. It's a rush, leaving him - whoever he is, her errant Dauntless if no one else's - little gifts of food. She's not sure if she wants to come face to face with him again, but today it doesn't matter because the decision is taken out of her hands.
"Thank you… for the food," he calls out, hesitant.
It's enough to break the steady metronome of her steps, but she still has to take a deep breath before she turns and faces him. "You're Factionless," she shrugs stiffly. "It's what we do."
"What you're supposed to do," he points out.
Her eyes narrow. "Well if you don't want it give it back, and I'll give it to someone who does."
"Have some with me?" His voice is wavering and uncertain and he seems just as shocked by the words coming out of his mouth as she is, but rather than be embarrassed he steels himself. "Have some with me," he repeats, determined this time.
It takes a minute before her feet start moving again, and this time her steps are tentative, cautious, just like her eyes. He's here and handsome and she's not quite sure how to deal with that yet.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he says when she's halfway to him.
That gets her steps steady again, that challenge from him. "I know you're not."
"You've probably never had this before, have you?" he asks, slowly turning the cling-wrapped loaf of banana bread over and over in his hands.
Her chin tips up, proud and defiant, but she doesn't answer him.
He smirks at her but offers her the the bread all the same. They take small, polite bites, him looking at her and her looking at him and both of them looking away when they get caught. Somewhere between their second and third piece they turn into the greedy children they are though, haphazardly picking and pulling at the loaf, cheeks puffing out a little as they eat faster than they can swallow.
"You can have it," he says when they get down to the last little bit.
Her response is a firm, "no," and he looks like he wants to argue with her for a moment before his face softens and his shoulders relax and he pops the bite into his mouth.
But now that it's gone Tris has no reason to stay… And no idea how to gracefully leave, so she just stands there, awkward.
He leans over, rummaging in the box and pulls out two single-serve boxes of vanilla soy milk. She wants to refuse that too, but then her hand is reaching out and wrapping around it and she has no memory of the volition to do that, but she doesn't stop herself either. It's thin and watery on her tongue and much better cold, but even warm it's a sweet compliment to the bread.
"You never answered my question," Tris says, slurping at her straw.
"No, I didn't."
"You will, one day," she nods, certain.
"Are you always this demanding?"
"Yes," she says, still too wrung out to be anything but blunt. "At least according to my faction leaders and my father… who's also a faction leader."
"Why did you stay?"
"Why did you leave?" she shoots back.
He scowls at her like he's sick of their little game and she smiles up at him like getting under his skin is just what she wanted. "Thanks for the bread," she says, her expression teasing as she takes a few steps back before whipping around and walking swiftly up the alley again.
"Hey!" he shouts. "What's your name?"
"Tris," she calls back over her shoulder. "What's yours? Or is that supposed to be a mystery too?"
Her question only makes his scowl deeper, makes the lines around his mouth dig trenches into his skin. "Four."
It doesn't take her that long to figure out who he really is.
They fall into a routine of sharing something to eat after that first day, and as much as Tris relishes the forbidden treats, she relishes the close proximity to Four more. It means she gets to look at him. Up close. A lot. Just like she does Marcus, and neither one of them can hide those eyes that give away the truth.
She doesn't let on to either of them that she knows just in case those Erudite articles were right for once.
It starts with Tris unpinning her hair and ends with Tobias kissing her. The in-between doesn't really matter. His lips cut her off mid-sentence, swallowing her words and her squeak of surprise, and that doesn't really matter either.
She barely has time to register the feel of it before he pulls away again. "I shouldn't kiss you," he murmurs, and it would be embarrassing the way her body tilts forward, her lips chasing his, if she was paying attention to that sort of thing.
"No," she agrees, "you shouldn't."
"But I want to."
"I want you to," she says, her voice as hazy and unfocused as her eyes.
That's all the encouragement he needs to do it again.
xxxx
They kiss for what feels like hours. Her lips are swollen and bruised bright when she leaves him. Dinner tastes all the better because she can still taste him, and when Marcus gives the world's most boring lecture on the dangers of gluttony Tris disappears inside her own head, goes back to Tobias.
She relives each kiss. The first, gentle and tentative. The others growing bolder. When he tugged her against him more insistently she gasped a little and he teased her with his tongue, made her own come out and chase his, draw it back into the soft hollow of her mouth. Just the memory is enough to make her press her thighs together; to ease or inflame the throbbing between her legs, she's not sure which.
By the time the lecture is over her cheeks are flushed and she's breathing hard and Susan watches her worriedly. Her own mother presses a cool palm to her forehead, brow furrowing, and determines that Tris has a fever coming on. She gets ushered to bed with a couple of pills to reduce her temperature and a damp washcloth to rest against her forehead.
Tris doesn't resist because she wants to be alone more than anything right now and feigning sickness is the most expedient way. Once she's sure her mother and Susan and old Mrs. Heath (the woman in charge of initiates) are gone for good she tosses the washcloth on her nightstand and plunges her hand under the blankets, past the waist of her sleep pants, the elastic band of her underwear.
She says a little prayer of thanks that she's all alone in the dormitory. Her fingers start exploring and it's not uncharted territory, but it's hard to translate the occasional jolt of pleasure she felt washing between her legs in the shower to the kind of thing that is going to make her come. Her nails scratch through the patch of hair at the apex of her thighs and then down down down and it makes her shiver.
It's almost embarrassing how sticky wet her panties are, but it just feels so good and it only makes her wetter. Her fingers scissor and search and it makes her shake but it's still not enough. When her fingers graze that little hidden nub of flesh right at the top of her sex her back nearly bows off the bed and it's only because Mrs. Heath is half-death that she doesn't hear Tris moan from her room further down the hall. Tris bites her lip bloody as her fingers work it, and suddenly everything is rushing as fast as her blood and her stomach swoops and she feels something clench deep inside her and oh.
She's panting like she's run a mile when she comes back to herself, back to the empty Abnegation dormitory and the light snores of her mentor drifting down the hall and the quiet drip of the faucet in the bathrooms designed for so many people and now it's just her.
Her fingers twitch, still firmly buried between her thighs and she knows she should stop, but now everything is swollen and sensitive in addition to being hot and wet and she just wants more, now that she knows what her body is straining towards. She smiles, wry and decadent and gluttonous, her pleasure rebellious, and starts the process over again. And again. And again.
And it's never not good, but a half hour and a half dozen orgasms later it's not quite as good and then her mind wanders to Tobias, to his hands, and how much bigger they are than hers; rough and calloused and masculine and oh God. She comes so hard she thinks she blacks out for a moment.
By the time she finally finishes an hour later her panties are ruined and her shirt is drenched in sweat and she has to take a cold shower just to wash the evidence of her activities away. Her legs are weak and shaky as she stands under the spray and she's sure they'll be sore in the morning, but she doesn't think that will stop her doing the same thing the next night.
As she wraps a towel around herself and wrings out her hair she frowns a little. She won't be able to see Tobias tomorrow or for a few days after that and that's normal, but now her absence and his presence have more weight and she should probably be mortified, seeing him and knowing that she's moaned his name into her pillow, but without the haze of lust (because she might as well call it what it is) clouding her thoughts she starts thinking about him and her and why.
Why does he want her? She's scrawny and looks more like a boy than a girl and for a horrifying minute she thinks that might be his thing; little girl-boys or just boys, but either way not really her. But her thoughts come thick and fast and before she can spin off into panic over that one she starts wondering if he just wants her because she's there, because she's nice to him, because she's inexperienced and he can take advantage. She starts wondering if she's the only one he's kissing and that thought bothers her the most out of all of them. It's absurd, but it does.
She strips her sheets off the thin twin mattress and she'd probably burn them if she could, but while Mrs. Heath might not question that she's sweat through them because of her "fever", Tris doubts a ritual burning would be acceptable. As she buries them in the hamper under her used towels they feel dirty, she feels dirty. Ashamed, and maybe a little used. She doesn't feel good anymore, and for the first time since she started… whatever she's doing with Tobias she cries herself to sleep.