Tris started to silently cry through her thoughts about what moving on would feel like. Would he break it off all at once, would he just stop talking to her, rush past her in the hallway, slip supply requests under her door when she was at lunch? Would he wear that Abnegation smirk and keep his eyes down, stay politely fake for the rest of their lives? Would she never see her Dauntless friends again? Would they all take his side? Would anyone ever love her, hold her? Maybe if she never told them what she did, someone would.
She only looked small when he had time to think about it. It crossed his mind once, in initiation, that she was projecting how she felt, how she saw herself; or maybe he was projecting onto her how he thought she should feel. In either case, she looked fragile, worn out and thinner sitting on the bench. Her skin lacked the usual vibrance and luster. Her hair was tatted and hastily pulled back.
She came alive when she took in the black pants and his un-Dauntless boots that settled into her fixed stare.
These lips are as foreign to him as the aggressive press of her hands. There's hesitation in her quick and needy grasp. She's not tentative about where she places his hands. And there's no doubt that she's building off a story she scripted in her head.
He feels like his insides are being torn out with each heave of his stomach. That can [of food] had been dinged and damaged, but most of them were. It had smelled alright enough. Or maybe it didn't. He had to keep moving, through the cramping, the heaving, the knowledge that he was dehydrating minute by minute. When he finally collapsed into the structure, he whimpered and succumbed to tears in the corner, writhing and wishing for death.