A/N: So this happened. I doubt my updates are always going to be this quick, but this chapter flowed and you gave me lots of incentives with all the reviews and favourites/follows.

I woke to the sound of the shower running, and even though I want to ignore it, I can't. My brain won't let me get back to sleep once it registers the ache in my jaw, born of gritting my teeth all night in frustration that the bed was too big and too cold without Tobias in it with me.

But I wasn't going to beg him to come to bed after he lashed out at me like I'd done something wrong. And like it had as I'd tossed and turned our argument replayed in my head. I flop onto my back, raking my fingers through my hair, trying to find some calm. And miraculously, it works. I start taking steady deep breaths, and eventually feel it fade completely.

I peel my eyes open, squinting at first, until they focus on the cracked bathroom door, the light on the other side illuminating the steam prettily. I still frown at it. It's a stark reminder that even in a place where he feels safe Tobias' fears are still present. Even if he's not in a closet he doesn't like small space or darkness.

Two minutes after the water shuts off he stands in the doorway, toweling the last of it out of his hair. "Are you still mad at me?"

I know it's all the apology I'm going to get because if there's one thing Tobias and I both struggle with it's our pride.

I sigh and roll over, getting comfortable again. "Come lay with me, Tobias."

I hear him toss the towel away and then he's lying face-to-face with me, watching with thoughtful eyes as his hand finds them hem of my shirt under the covers and creeps up, tracing the rungs of my spine. I don't know what it is about his hand on my back, but it feels like love; feels more like love than words do.

His eyes are a curious shade of blue; deep like sapphires except for the patch of light blue in one that more closely resembles my color than Marcus'. I get the feeling he's waiting for me to say something. "What?"

His eyebrows pull together, puckering the skin between them. "Do you think you'll be as honest about what you like, as you were about what you don't like?"

I feel my cheeks blush traitorously. "I like what you're doing right now," I whisper, trying to hold his eyes with mine and not give into the embarrassment I feel at his question.

"What else?"

I give in and close my eyes; it's easier to be honest when I don't have to see his reaction. "I don't know what I like."

What did he want? A map? An instruction manual? All the times I'd touched myself in the last year... I had no idea what I was doing. I was just finding something that felt good and kept at it until I came. They were furtive, stolen moments of selfishness late in the night while my parents slept down the hall. And they were completely disconnected from anything real; I'd never been touched by any boy until Tobias.

"Do we have to talk about this?" My voice sounds tortured.

"Yes," he says simply. I feel him shift, feel his warmth as he pulls himself closer, and then his lips kissing the sensitive spot behind my ear that leaves me breathing heavy. He pulls away. "Hey... look at me." He waits until my eyes slowly open. "Are we okay?"

I trace his lips with the pad of my finger, trying to think of a way to take control of the situation just like I did in the simulation, just like I had a week ago with his hands up my shirt teasing me and making me squirm.

"You said you think about me," I say slowly, "about us... together."

"Yeah," he says warily.

"What do you think about?"

His eyes bore into mine for a moment, and then he looks down, looks away, looks anywhere but me as his cheeks burn red. He coughs slightly, "Tris, I..." He sounds embarrassed, flustered, and suddenly I find that I am much braver than I was before.

"Not so easy is it?" I try to keep my voice from sounding too smug, but I can't keep the smile off my face. I hook a finger under his chin and tilt his face up, and press my lips to his. "You could always show me."

Immediately his eyes snap up to mine, jumping between them. And even though his are brimming with apprehension, there's hopefulness too. He dips back down, kissing the spot behind my ear again. "Tell me if I do something wrong."

"Okay."

I card my fingers through his hair. It's longer than it was when I met him; long enough to twist around my fingers. "I like it when you do that," I mumble through a smile. "I like it when you kiss me there and down my neck, and across my ravens."

And, obligingly, he does just that. This I like; being in control dulls my fear down to the same kind of nervousness everyone else feels at being touched intimately for the first time.

After a minute of laving at me Tobias moves his hand from where it's gripping my shoulder, down my side so that his fingers press into the spaces between my ribs, but his thumb can reach out and flick at my nipple. It's territory we've tread before, but not quite familiar yet, and it's his way of upping the stakes without pushing me too far.

But the combination of his attentive hands and lips leaves me pressing my legs together, desperate to feed the warm, throbbing ache starting in my core.

I tug him back up and kiss him, prying his lips apart with my own to deepen it. His hand grazes further down my side, so lightly that I can't stop writhing and curling into a ball as he hits a particularly ticklish spot. He smiles at me devilishly and does it again, making me gasp and giggle and slap his hand away.

And so quick I don't even realize it's happening his lips replace his hand, warming up the spot that had been chilled by my shirt twisting up as I tried to writhe out from under him in the first place. He noses at my at the edge of it, bunched up just below my breast, like he can't decide if he should move up or down.

I'm not sure either; both prospects are mortifying. If he moves up then he'll come face-to-face with my breasts; he'll see exactly how inadequate they are. If he moves down... well, there's my sharp, jutting hip bones, but the bigger problem is exactly how far down he wants to apply his lips.

Suddenly I have a whole new set of worries revolving around whether or not I'm still smooth and bare, and how I'll smell or taste; if he'll like it or not. I have the momentary urge to flee, but it's not like last time. This time I'm debating if I should run in the bathroom to lather up and carefully run a razor across my pubic bone just in case.

It's enough to make fear flutter in my stomach, but it's not enough to completely erase my desire for him. It does tell me I'm not ready for either though. I close my eyes, and behind the velvet dark of my eyelids I see him hovering over me, telling me to be brave before he injects me with the simulation serum for the first time.

I need to take control, I tell myself sternly. I search around trying to find something I am comfortable with and remember last night before the party, and Tobias' hand creeping up the inside of my thigh. Just the thought of his long, delicate fingers moving closer to where I wanted them most had me breathing heavy all over again.

Before I can think about it too much, before fear or nervousness or embarrassment overtakes me, I pull his face towards mine with one hand, and grab his wrist with the other, pushing it down so that it's flush with the elastic band of my underwear. And with a gentle prod and an encouraging nod, his fingers sink beneath it.

I have to make a conscience effort to allow enough space between my legs for his hand, and my own are restless, needing something to touch or do to keep from shaking because as much as I want this I'm still nervous. His fingers are gentle and curious at first, lightly gliding up the seam of my sex because even though I hadn't notice it before I'm wet, dripping want, and I can't help blushing when he smiles knowingly.

But his touch feels electric and soon it cleanses every other thought from my mind. He presses harder, gently prodding me open with just the tips of his fingers, and my hips follow the movement of his hand without volition; instinctively trying to guide him where it feels best. I arch into his touch as he presses the length of his finger inside of me.

From somewhere far away I notice that his breathing is as heavy as mine; that his muscles are just as tightly strung as mine; that his knee is pressed just as deeply into the bed as my heels are as he hovers me.

I try to stem the flow of embarrassing noises bleeding past my lips, but it's a battle I lose when Tobias' traces up the pulsing vein in my neck with his nose and whispers, "I like listening to you; I like knowing I'm the one who's making you do it."

All I can do is nod weakly, too lost in the sensations he's creating to do anything else. For a while his slow, careful movements are enough, until they aren't. I'm close, right on the edge, but I need something to push me over, and whatever it is, he's not doing it. I squirm around, trying to find an angle that works better for me, but it doesn't go unnoticed.

"Let me," he practically begs, and even through the haze in my brain I love it, love knowing I have this power over him.

He shifts closer, inadvertently pressing down on just the right spot with the heel of his palm to make my hips buck and my back arch.

"Like that?" He asks as he does it again, making my breath catch in my throat. A second later I see his gloating grin through my slitted eyelids.

I'm not sure if I want to wipe it off his face, or just make him feel as good as he's making me feel, but either way I fill one of my hands with him. He's hot and hard and heavy even through the thin fabric of his boxers, and I know my hands are as sloppy and uncoordinated as his were last night, but I don't care.

It's an awkward angle for me, so he helpfully thrusts up roughly into my palm, mimicking the way his fingers are moving inside of me. I tilt my face into his shoulder. "Faster." It's a one word plea, and just like before he seems only happy to oblige me.

All it takes is a dozen light, quick strokes with his palm pressing down on my clit before I come undone around him. Pleasure surges out from my center, riding a wave of heat that warms me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

By the time I come back down I can barely breath and I feel the light sheen of sweat slicking my skin. "Did you...?" I pant out, but I don't get any farther than that before I feel Tobias nodding weakly against me.

He pushes himself up from where he's slumped half on top of me, and captures my lips in a kiss, his are impossibly tender as I feel his finger slide out of me, leaving a sticky brand around my hip where he holds me.

"We should have done this sooner."

He leans his forehead against mine. "Yeah," is all he can say for a while. Eventually he pulls away completely, disappearing into the bathroom to clean up. I roll over onto my side, feeling sleepy and sated, enjoying the way the sheets smell like us before I feel him get into bed behind me. His arms wrap around me and he buries his face in my hair, and the sleep that I had to fight for last night comes without effort now.

The fridge is empty, completely barren except for a half empty bottle of water sitting forlornly on the top shelf. "I think we're going to have to rejoin the world of the living," I smirk over my shoulder. I hear Tobias groan from where he's laying on the bed.

I can't blame him. We spent Saturday and Sunday not getting dressed, barely getting out of bed, and living off the meager supply of cold cuts and bottled water in the fridge. We probably both had things we should be doing, but since we didn't need to do them they were easy to ignore.

I slam the door closed and pad across the floor, climbing over Tobias to my side of the bed. He reaches out, hooking a hand around thigh to keep my leg draped across him. "Sooner we go, sooner we get back."

He turns his head and looks at me, a finger reaching up to brush across my cheek. "You know that's not true. As soon as we leave you'll run into Christina, or I'll run into Tori and Harrison, and then we'll be stuck."

"I know, but I'm starving." As if to accentuate the point my stomach rumbles hugely.

He laughs and rolls on top of me, trapping me. "Fine, but next weekend we're stuffing the fridge full of food and not leaving from Friday night to Monday morning."

Five minutes later we were walking towards the dining hall, his arm slung across my shoulders, and mine around his waist. I thought of everything the kitchen might have available tonight, if I'd rather have roast chicken and mashed potatoes or spaghetti and meatballs, but I'm so hungry it all sounds good.

In the end, the chicken won out. It takes two trays to carry all the food we grabbed: one carrying a whole chicken and a slice of chocolate cake, the other a bowl of mashed potatoes, a salad, and our drinks. This isn't the plain, Abnegation food we grew up on. The chicken is cooked until the skin is crispy and golden brown under the dusting of savory herbs covering it, and the potatoes are rich and creamy with butter and faintly taste of roasted garlic.

"I have to go back to the Hub tomorrow," Tobias says as he quickly strips the skin and meat off a chicken wing and tosses it aside. "If you need help with the simulations just ask Harrison, he used to work in the Control Room with me."

"Okay. Are the trials going to start tomorrow?" I ask around a mouthful of potatoes.

He shakes his head. "Wednesday. The corrupt Dauntless are going to be first, and there's nearly two dozen of them. It's going to take a while."

"Most of them will end up dead, won't they?"

"Depends on what crimes they confess to under the truth serum, but probably."

Before the war I would have felt some discomfort at the thought of that, but now, having seen innocent people dragged from their beds and executed in the streets, I don't. Despite being raised Abnegation I understand now that the only fitting punishment for some crimes is death. I wonder if the Abnegation jurors will feel the same way.

Miraculously, we actually get through half a meal completely uninterrupted before Zeke plops down next to us. "Tori's been looking for you," he says without preamble, and no sooner are the words out of his mouth then we're joined by her, Harrison, Bud, and Liam.

"Where the hell have you been? We thought you died."

I don't miss the look of irritation Tobias throws her as he picks at the desiccated chicken carcass between us. "You know where my apartment is, if you needed me so badly you could have come by."

She scoffs into her cup of tea. "I'm not going anywhere near that man cave you call an apartment. Besides, I didn't want to intrude on anything," she adds with a sly smile that leaves my cheeks burning.

"Yeah, man, you really need to move into the Pire with the rest of us," Zeke interjects. "We can't have one of our fearless leaders living in some shithole bachelor pad."

"Hey, I like our apartment." I say defensively.

"What did you need to talk to me about?" Tobias cuts across us.

"Just finalizing our jurors," Harrison says. I don't know him well, but he always seems so steady and calm and, like Tobias, thoughtful in a way most Dauntless aren't. It's reassuring. "We decided on Zekes' mother Nahla, Liam, and Lauren."

"It's good the first two are older, they won't have to fight for the respect of the other factions." And just like that Tobias is no longer my boyfriend, but one of the leaders of our faction, making decisions that help keep the rest of us alive.

Zeke throws a roll at Tobias, which he easily knocks away. "Don't call my mom old."

"I didn't. I called her 'older'."

"Oh, well, that's okay, I guess," Zeke smiles making the rest of us laugh.

The rest of the meal passes amiably, the conversation drifting to less important topics as Tobias and I split the piece of chocolate cake between us. But just like he had anticipated by the time we get back to our apartment it's late and we're tired.

As he washes his hands I come up behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face against his bare back - I've stolen his shirt again. His hands are wet where the reach behind him to hold on to me. "I love you," he says softly.

"I love you, too."