This going to be the last of the week of omitted updates. Hope you enjoyed the surge and it helps make the wait easier. Chapter 42 is a ways off. Thanks for the patience.
He never liked seeing her cry. It tore at him, reopened bad memories, made him feel guilty, every time, because he couldn't stop it. He's getting more suspicious each time she initiates, that he's an apparatus to her, an object of her terror that has to be confronted. Like him and small rooms. He feels inanimate and worthless each time he makes her crumple into an inconsolable mess, each time he falls into her orchestrated routine of trying to prove she's okay and her failing.
The sleeping arrangements were problematic, especially when it started raining and didn't stop for the remaining three days of the lap. The outposts only had the one room and he couldn't sleep in the rain. It was tough to suppress his base instincts to jerk himself off to their eager giggles and hushed whispers, or the slippery sounds of friction. It was mortifying when one reached out and tried to pull him into their tangle of limbs, assuring him that they wouldn't say a word, no one would have to know.
He's startled to find she's gone when he gets out of the shower. He tries not to draw the parallels, rationalizes that there's no war and no one at risk. The feeling of rejection is the same. The want he feels for her to be truthful is the same. His desire to chase her is not. He's not chasing this time.
Tris stood across from him, sending chastising and reproachful glances at the obnoxious taunts. She put her hand hesitantly out onto his shoulder, he leaned in, covering her cheek and neck with his rough calloused fingers.
His hands were smaller, but not less powerful or strong. He wasn't as gentle or as careful with her, seemingly to giving her more credit. Even though neither of them felt right about it, the intensity tugged at the tension between them. Like diving into a cold pool, he pulled her to him and touched their lips letting his practiced hands meander down from her chin across her shoulders and, sending chills with each finger tip, down her spine. In the howl of the crowd, they had silence between them before he roughly pushed at her hips and split them apart.