Sometimes, the muse must be appeased and sometimes that appeasement means two updates in one day. WHAAAAATTT? I know, the universe is indeed bananas.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed, you are the coolest of the cool and I owe you all giant medals of some kind.
Also, I kinda lied in the first chapter author's note, reviews are pretty cool and I may be kinda addicted to them now.
ON WITH THE LITS!
Chapter 4
Fucking fuck Eric and his fucking fuckableness. FUCK! That had been her mantra for the past 30 minutes. Do you know how hard it is to carry a larger-than-appropriate-drinking-capacity-sized container of water across the most ruckus and rowdy faction in existence? Not damn easy! Motherfucker, free cake had a better chance of lasting five minutes in the dining hall than she had of getting this damn jug discretely back to the storeroom. It wasn't like there weren't buckets there, she just didn't think Eric would take kindly to mop water ending up on his face and in that disturbing cut marring his forehead.
She wasn't even sure what had happened at first, but that split second look at the ground in her rush to the door before Four had showed up had told her everything she needed to know. The Damn. Fucking. Knives. They HAD to be maliciously possessed how else in the MOTHERFUCKING HELL would those damn inanimate objects be clearly fucking with her head so continuously?
Apparently in his haste to get the fuck away from her and probably do utterly horrific things to Four's face, he had utterly neglected to factor into his calculations cursedly slippery pieces of metal lying forgotten on the floor. To top off the indignity, a shelf had apparently tried to break his fall in the most unhelpful way possible, gouging his left temple gruesomely. She would have and probably still will laugh hysterically when this convergence of baffling and traumatic events stop assaulting her.
Please god, don't be brain dead, she thought for the fiftieth time since her epic bucket quest began.
Yeah, cuz we've got unfinished business, that traitorous part of her brain purred.
She really must have completely lost her mind because god, she was still tingling all over from that delicious display. Even if he woke up and couldn't remember any of it, she was set up for life in alone-time fodder. Oh god, what if he did have amnesia?
Well, she wasn't going to say anything. That's all there was to it.
How would you even start a conversion like that?
"Well see Eric I literally tried to fuck your brains out. Luckily, there were some knives lying precariously prone on the floor so I only got away with like half of it. See ya tomorrow!"
Yeah, there would be zero awkward questions from that kind of starter.
Finally, the sanctity of the training room lay ahead. Please don't be dead and/or brain dead she thought one last time.
Eric was still lying pitifully on the floor. She put down the bucket, and retrieved the mobile-sized medkit she'd BORROWED from the infirmary. She carefully knelt down beside him and looked at his for once relaxed face.
Huh. It was almost adorable.
Fuck it, it was adorable.
His brows weren't furrowed and it was as close to smiling as she'd ever seen him. And by that, she really just guessed it was because he wasn't frowning. She caught herself reaching out just to touch it in wonder. She started at the cheekbones that could probably cut glass. But they just looked quiet and strong when his glare wasn't sharpening them into razor blades. And then his lips that were probably still red from her kisses. They were so deceptively soft. She shook her head. There was time for musing his boyishness later.
She knew head wounds always bled like a mother and looked much worse than they actually were but the red currently oozing from his temple was still unnerving. Not to mention the blossoming purple backdrop it was sporting. Her plan was to clean it at least a little so he didn't look so much like he'd been shot. Then, she hoped to god he would wake up enough to hobble to the infirmary. The bucket was for that phase. She used some of the sterile cotton swabs to get the blood taken care of until she could actually see the cut. Damn, that was probably going to need stitches. Of all the things Eric hated, it seemed doctor visits came first and doctor visits that involved needles was a close second. His pissy moods after visits like that only seemed to rival his pissy moods after they spent a day together.
She took out the alcohol swabs from the medkit. God only knew what kind of crap the years had crusted on that unsuspecting shelf and she wasn't taking any chances.
"Straight isopropyl for this one, soldier" she said quietly, taking a long gentle swipe across the split in his skin. Maybe the stinging-
He only remembered a momentary blackness. Like a long blink when your eyes are clearly in the mood for a sleep you can't or won't give them. But somewhere in that split second, a fucking hornet's nest must have converged on his left temple because-
"HOLY FUCK THAT STINGS!" Eric sat bolt upright and almost doubled the number of head injuries in the room. Then the dizziness hit him like a goddamn ton of bricks. For the life of him he couldn't understand why he was lying down. He had a distinct memory of standing up the last time he checked. Much as his ass clearly had earlier, the pieces began to fall into place.
Four touching Zenia.
Zenia all alone.
Eric touching Zenia.
A lot.
Orgasmically a lot
Oh god, he didn't-
He swiveled his vision straight to Z's wide eyes across the room where she was still clutching the smelly hornet cloth. Fuck his mother had to be rolling in her grave over that last thought. No son of hers would be even briefly forgetting something as pedestrian as the chemical composition of rubbing alcohol by smell.
"Z, I didn't-"
"It was the knife. On the ground. I don't know how it got there but it was, right behind your foot and when Four showed up-"
"Shit, he didn't see-"
"No, no! I mean, he came to the door but I kept him out."
"Thank fucking god for that." He said, his hand reflexively going to the strange itch at his temple. He hissed when it got there.
"Your head-"
"What..?" he was staring at red dipped fingers
"When you fell, I guess you hit your head and you were out cold for like half an hour. I was trying to clean it when-"
"Yeah, what in the hell were you using by the way? A damn cactus? Maybe some steel wool dipped in stomach acid?" He bit it out to distract himself from the distinctly unmanly thoughts of rolling to the floor and vomiting furiously.
"You giant fucking asshole! Pardon me for giving a damn that you not die in this dank ass storeroom!" She threw the bloody cloth at him and stood up, officially done with his shit for the night. So what if she was immediately going to bring herself to screaming orgasm out of relief and memory of his stupid lips. He could get his own concussed ass to the infirmary.
In hindsight, immediately standing to stop her had been a horrendous mistake. He only got out a strangled "Z, wait-" before he was making a distressing amount of noise on his way back to the floor again. Damn fucking gravity.
When he came to, it was because of pain again, but this time it felt like maybe someone had decided his arm might work better someplace that wasn't attached to his shoulder.
"Damn it Z, you could wait until I'm actually dead before trying to hide my body with dismemberment." he groaned back to life realizing he was standing instead of spilled on the floor like he last remembered. He must have forgotten to mark "Fuck With Eric's Head Day" on his calendar.
"Oh my god, you're actually alive." Zenia sobbed. Holy shit, why is she crying?
"Z, why-"
"Just try and move your feet a little, we're almost to the infirmary, just stay with me." It was then that he realized there was a prodigious amount of blood dripping off his face and on to his shirt and her shoulder under his arm and just about everything in a five foot radius. Oh, the tears made a little more sense now. And the stars, too. All the spinning stars…
"No no! Damn it! The door's right there-"
Too late, he thought disturbingly peacefully, as he slipped out and down again. Or up. He wasn't in the mood to guess where he'd end up this time.
She was absently biting her nails nervously watching him on the gurney. She could see why he hated this place. He didn't belong in a sterile, cold place like this anyway. Dauntless was fortunate to have the best medical equipment Erudite could spare. You didn't want your soldiers dying left and right like those useless pre-war saps, now did you? But shit, if there was ever a man whose entire countenance protested and contrasted this icy laboratory, it was Eric.
And it was even worse seeing him all lifeless again. In the storeroom it had been almost cute because it was still more hilarious that serious, but holy fuck, that second fall had scared the shit out of her. The doctors had said he'd only broken his nose and opened up the cut on his temple a little more, but the amount of blood pouring down his face had made it look like he'd bashed his skull in completely this time. Head wounds, man.
He was still out three hours later. The effects of the injury, a powerful pain-killer, and some super serum that was supposed to heal up everything in an eighth of the time. She'd been away from Erudite so long, she'd forgotten how staggering the advances were that they made every day. Scary almost, once you looked at it from the outside.
He was going to be pissed. That was super obvious, but she couldn't really bring herself to care right now. There were too many huge feelings hanging around to deal with. She was feeling pretty dizzy herself over all of it. Maybe she should see if Erudite had cranked out a simplify-your-life serum yet. Obliterating amounts of alcohol seemed like an attractive alternative at the moment to be honest.
He groaned awake for the third time today, and she had no idea where the irrational giggle came from, but she didn't have the energy to stop it anyway.
"Shit, I'm really not a fan of today." He said groggily, trying to stand up.
"Well, it's only been today for like 15 minutes, sooo… I'm guessing you mean yesterday sucked as well?" She snarked, trying to get the sarcasm back into their officially weird relationship.
He just sent her a glare and tried to sit up, slowly this time. He was wiser now about the bitchy gravity situation.
Once the doctor cleared him to go, he was halfway down the hall to his apartment before he noticed Zenia was following him.
"Can I help you?" He said, giving her an odd glance.
"There's no chance in hell I'm letting you hobble all the way across Dauntless to die on some uneven bit of the floor again."
"You were in the room for the part where the doctor completely cleared me to leave ON MY OWN because of that wonder potion they shot me up with, right?"
"Well yeah, but-"
"Go home, Z. Training, bright and early." He said with acidic cheeriness. He turned and started walking down the hallway again.
The wall was suddenly surprisingly hard on his back.
"Listen here, shit for brains, I thought I'd fucking killed you three hours ago and if you think for one millisecond you're getting away with not explaining what happened thirty seconds before your suicide marathon, you've got another thing coming." She rushed out lowly, looking straight into his distracting eyes and poking his solid chest. He was breathing hard but not panting. Deep heaving breaths and looking her dead in the eyes.
"I really want to kiss you right now." She admitted breathing just as heavily.
"If I let you do that, we'll never make it to my place." He said honestly. His eyes drifted longingly to her lips. Maybe the brain damage wasn't all fixed.
"You are right. Move it, big boy." Z huffed, grabbing his arm and setting an impressive pace.
"How do you know the way?" he asked suddenly very worried of her answer.
She laughed a little guiltily.
"Well you remember that one time, with the door lock-"
"I fucking knew that was you! I kept telling Max to send your ass straight to wall duty for that shit, but noooo! 'How could Zenia have access to a re-key requisition?' he said. 'That's too elaborate for even your little spats' he said. I had to sleep on a damn table for a week for that!"
"Hey! How was that even a microgram worse than your lackey Hal tattooing some choice words on my forearm, huh? I still get funny looks over why there's a random, awkward, giant fucking tree covering everything from my wrist to my elbow!"
He huffed and muttered, "You're still gonna pay for it."
"I certainly hope so." She muttered, smirking royally and regaining their rapid pace.
Damn, this was going to be fun.
Annnnnd, cut! Look at that mother! I know, not the most thrilling material in the world, but I suffer from the need for some plot with my porn. The next chapter though…