A/N: First of all, I'd like to apologize for taking over a year before I updated this fic, this is because I've been busy with real life commitments the past year and it's only recently that I finally found the free time to continue working on this fic. Anyway, here is the ninth chapter and it will be Peter/Christina centric. I'll promise you guys a FourTris moment in the chapter after this.
It had been three weeks since he saved her from getting hit by a train and Peter Hayes still couldn't figure out why has started to have feelings for Christina. When she wasn't looking at his general direction, he would try to steal a glance of her and when she does seem to notice, she lets out a smirk while he looks at the other direction, pretending to be interested in whatever was in the other direction...which at one point, turned out to be a blank space of a wall.
It wasn't helping that Caleb had noticed that he might have a thing for Christina and when they do get the chance to talk, he tries to ask Peter if he might have a thing for his sister's best friend and all Peter says is "You don't see me asking you if you have a thing for Cara right?" before he cuts off the conversation and heads elsewhere in the settlement unit.
Then Caleb decided, they will have to find a way to get Peter to spit it out. He thought of using the truth serum at him but it was a move too desperate, and besides, Peter will know, he once worked on administering those things on people when he worked with Jeanine briefly during the just-concluded war in Chicago.
"Matthew, how do you get a person to admit their love for someone?" Caleb asked out of the blue to Matthew during their work hours at the Bureau
"You get them drunk." Matthew spoke as he turned his swivel chair around to face Caleb, "When one is drunk, they would say things they'd never thought they've said and mostly, it's true."
"I'm more of someone who takes the logical route to make that person admit their feelings for someone...but you know what, I'm going to have to use your idea." Caleb spoke as he took out his phone and sent a text message to his friends.
"Do you want to grab a drink tonight?"
Those were the words from the text message that Peter got from Caleb. It was strange, an Erudite boy - an ex-Erudite boy to be more precise, inviting people over for a drink. But he didn't mind, he needs that drink, it might be the only thing that will wash away what seems to be his feelings for Christina.
"It's about damn time you asked!"
Peter texted back to Caleb and meanwhile, Caleb was more than pleased when the message got to him. He was finally going to extract that valuable information and he didn't know that it was this easy to attempt extracting it.
It was nine in the evening and Peter made his way to a newly-opened pub right across the Bureau - the half of which was turned back into an airport. Explains why there were so many unfamiliar people than usual in the pub, they were apparently tourists according to the people he overheard talking. But why would there be tourists in Chicago at this very time? There's nothing nice to look like, except maybe if looking at war ruins was their interest.
On the table on the far end was Caleb with Matthew, Tobias and Amar, all with the faces that could equate to "we have been waiting for you". He made it quickly to the table and took a seat, grabbing a mug of beer and chugging it down.
"Hey, that's my beer!" Amar said as he tried to recover the mug from a frenzied Peter
"I don't care." Peter said as he slammed down the mug, "I need the beer. I need it badly."
"Let him be." Caleb spoke, "He's probably had a tough day. He will need a lot of beer."
"In that case, let's give him another serving." Tobias poured down some more beer to the mug that Peter slammed on the table
The four watched as Peter chugged mug after mug of beer to his heart's content. They never knew how much he loved beer. Sure, he was once a Dauntless but even in Dauntless, people didn't drink that much. Caleb meanwhile, patiently waited for Peter to get to the point when he gets drunk and starts to babble nonsense, hoping that one of those nonsense will have to do with Christina.
And then, it happened just like that...
"I have an important announcement to make." Peter spoke loudly before slamming the beer mug on the table again, "I have been hiding this for years and you know what, I think it' about time all of you will know about this." At this point, Peter has already climbed up the table.
"Oh, this is very exciting!" Caleb said with a knowing smile
"I wonder what he's up to..." Matthew placed his full attention to the tall, dark-haired man with curls who was now on top of the table
"He's probably going to swear at everyone, you know intoxicated people." Amar remarked
"You better not talk shit about him!" Tobias glared at Amar, "You know what happens when you piss off drunk people."
"It's about someone!" Peter declared
"Oh, is it about Christina?" Caleb asked excitingly
"You're damn right!" Peter pointed at Caleb and pulled him up the table, "My friend here, has been asking if I liked Christina. And damn right, I like her. Nobody can resist this pretty boy!" he added as he pointed to himself
"You can get off the table now..." The bartender said from the bar, "Those tables don't fix themselves when they break, you know!"
"Who cares man? Are you even capable of falling in love?" Peter shouted from the table he stood on
"But you're surely going to be capable of falling off that table when it breaks" The bartender shouted back
"Peter Hayes, you better explain this!" Christina marched towards a dumbfounded Peter with her phone on hand.
"Explain what?" Peter finally spoke as he tried hard not to catch a glance on the woman who approached him. Christina pointed to her phone, as if cuing him to take a look at it, "Oh that..." he finally said when the video of him declaring his feelings for her while drunk at a bar played, "That's nothing, Christina. I just got drunk, that's all."
"This pretty boy never knew, huh?" Christina looked at Peter straight in the eye to command his attention, "You really never knew that I knew about these certain feelings of yours all along. We were once in Candor. There's no need to hide those feelings, you might as well spill the beans." By now, Christina was already laughing at Peter. Her teasing at him had worked. All those times she'd add "pretty boy" at the end of every sentence when talking to him had worked.
"Okay...Okay, you've caught me!" Peter finally said, raising both his hands up to signal surrender, "After all, nobody really can resist this pretty boy." He glared at Christina as if to wait for her to gush at him.
"Well, well, well...looks like we've got progress!" Tris said with her arms crossed as she leaned on the door frame in that room, "Congratulations Christina and Peter!"
Peter jumped out of shock when he heard Tris and defensively headed for the door, "Tris, pretend nothing happened and uh...go back to making love with Tobias!"
"You're so silly." Tris laughed, "Everybody knows about this. You've got my brother to thank for that. Right Caleb?" And Caleb walked up to the door and nodded to her sister's statement.
"My plan worked!" Caleb declared triumphantly, "Since you wouldn't admit it while you're sober, getting you drunk worked. You've finally admitted it!"
"Damn it Caleb!" Peter laid his hands on Caleb's shoulders, "I was supposed to admit that to her myself at the right time but now she found out. All thanks to that drinking session you invited me to - that turned out to be your plan to get me to admit those things to her already."
"Leave him alone, Caleb." Tris tried to stifle her laugh, "Can't you see that Peter is blushing."
"Oh..." Caleb stepped back and watched Peter's cheeks blush red like a tomato. He'd never seen him like that and he was damn honored to be one of the first people to see him blush like that for the first time.
"Oh my, now my pretty boy is blushing!" Christina mockingly remarked as she stood beside Peter. Drunk or not drunk, whatever the heck he said in that video was most likely to be true.
"Christina, you're not helping." Peter tried to stop himself from blushing further, "And you two, thanks a lot!" Tris and Caleb laughed even more at Peter's sarcastic thanks to them.
Christina sat on the bench outside the settlement unit and looked up at the stars, "Damn, I was successful today." she remarked to herself, remembering the very moment when she found out that Peter seemed to be head over heels for her. The only reason why she achieved such thing was to get back at him for trying to hit on her after he saved her from getting hit by a train.
And then she started to feel something for this man whom she only flirted at for the sake of amusement, "But nah, this is probably just a side-effect of the things I did to make him fall in love with me when I'm not really in love with him." she thought to herself.
"Do you remember that time your mother picked you up late from school?" a male voice asked, "We were in sixth grade, I noticed you were alone. I asked if I could accompany you because my mother hasn't picked me up yet and you said yes?"
She turned to see whose voice it was and it was Peter's. She remembered that moment he recounted. She was in sixth grade, there was that one time her mother had picked her up late from school. She was partly anxious because her mother had never been late, Peter seemed to notice it because his first words when he approached her were, "You seemed anxious, do you want some company?" and she told him that she was. And so he sat beside her and to reassure her, he said, "My mother is probably going to pick me up late too, which is why I'm here."
"Did you see that adrenaline junkie trip himself?" Peter asked Christina while pointing towards fellow sixth-grader Dauntless who just tripped himself while running
"He should have been more careful!" Christina remarked, "Oh wait, he can't. Careful doesn't exist in Dauntless" She and Peter laughed while watching the sixth-grader Dauntless put himself back on his feet.
The entire time they spent waiting for their mothers to pick them up was spent with them making snarky commentary towards the people around them. Whether it was the kids from the other faction or from their own, or that teacher who walked around confidently and didn't notice that his zipper had been left open.
Christina laughed at the memory of that one time she and Peter spent the time together during sixth grade. "With all the horrible shit we've gone through when we grew up, I wouldn't be surprised that you forgot about it." Peter now took a seat beside Christina on the bench, "And you seem anxious right now. Do you want some company?" He said, as if to relive the moment when they first spent time together as children.
"Yeah, I do." Christina said as she looked down her lap, "Anxious about what's next in my life. Uriah's gone. Every single man I've loved is gone."
Peter was about to make a snarky remark when he realized that it was not going to help Christina and she'd surely get pissed at him - and nobody wants to see a pissed off Christina. Unless they want a repeat of that night when she was nowhere to be found and it turned out that she was in the railroad trying to get herself hit by a train.
"I don't know what to say, honestly..." Peter spoke, "I'm not in the right position to answer that question. I don't want to make you upset." And now, Peter gave Christina a hug for the first time and he found it strange but saw that she needed it. Christina clung to him and started sobbing.
Meanwhile, Caleb, Cara, Tris, Tobias, Amar and Matthew were secretly watching them through the window and Caleb was about to fangirl when Tris slapped his shoulder and told him to keep quiet because a serious situation was unfolding just in front of them.