Eric Coulter, you’re a bastard • part 3 – “being honest”
Divergent • Mini-Series AU
How do you say sorry when you have fucked up basically everything? Eric isn’t sure. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to ever earn your forgiveness. On the other hand: why should you forgive him? He had made the mistake of his life.
A story about Professor Eric Coulter, Harold the chimpanzee, midnight coffees and fries in the auditorium. You and Eric, Ms. Giraffe and Mr. FBI, trying to conquer life together until Eric did what he thought would be the best for you.
Pairing • Eric x Reader
Warnings • language
Words • 1.8k
Eric Coulter, you’re a bastard • masterlist
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////////// 2 days ago //////////
Eric should’ve told you a long time ago. He never found the right moment. Now he knew there was never a right moment for breaking such news. And the worst thing about the whole situation was that it wasn’t even him who had told you. Carlo had took that chance away from him. But to be fair: If Carlo hadn’t told you, Eric wasn’t sure if he had had the guts to tell you at all.
He wasn’t sure what to do. He only knew you knew because Carlo had texted him to be prepared because he would drive you to Eric’s place.
Checking his phone every thirty seconds, he tried to pin down when you must arrive at his building. He was too out of his mind to be able to tell the right amount of time, though.
Loud banging on his apartment door made clear you were there.
„Tell me it’s not true!“ You were storming in after he had opened the door. Your face was red, your eyes swollen but you damned your hardest to shut the tears out. „Tell me you didn’t report me because I freed Harold from the zoo! Tell me it wasn’t you why they took him away again!“
Eric couldn’t answer. He couldn’t say to your face that it indeed had been him. His silence was answer enough, though.
You hurried up to him, grabbed Eric by his collar and shook him. „What the fuck did you do!“ In the past you had shouted at him for various reasons in various volumes and ways. This time though, with your face right in front of him, the pain in your scream nearly knocked him out. „What the hell did you do?“
Eric couldn’t respond. Your pain was locking up his throat. When the tears in your eyes slowly started to roll down your cheeks he couldn’t look at you anymore and turned away.
„I’m so sorry, Y/N. All I saw was you suffering with the situation and I wanted you to feel better. You’ve been caring for your father, for Harold, been managing the rescue centre and studying at the same time. You worked yourself to exhaustion. I just wanted to take some weight off your shoulders.“
„You… what?“ You didn’t let him look the other way. You wanted him to see you. „You seriously thought it would help me if I didn’t have to care for Harold anymore? You know nothing!“
„That’s not true! I’ve been there! I’ve been with you for two years and the one thing I learned in life is that everyone has it’s boundaries. I couldn’t look at you anymore, working yourself out and breaking under the responsibility.“
„You didn’t have the right to do that! It’s not your decision, Eric. It’s mine. I decide how much I am willing to sacrifice until I surrender.“
Eric knew that now. He had made a mistake. The mistake. The one he would lose you for. „I love you-“
„Don’t you dare say that!“ You wiped away your tears harshly. „If you loved me you wouldn’t have done that.“ You tried so hard to keep all the emotions that were coming up under control. It was even harder to accept it had been Eric who was responsible for Harold being taken away again. And the hardest was that you knew what you had to do next.
Two years ago you had fallen so easily for Eric. Till this day you had never really stopped. You weren’t sure if you were ever able to stop after this day. You just knew that this was something you were never able to forgive. He had betrayed you the worst way possible.
Even now, feeling such a wrath towards him, you still wanted to kiss him. You wanted to love him and fall asleep on him, waking up and finding out it was just a bad dream and everything was fine. But that wouldn’t happen.
„Look at me.“ He didn’t. „I said look!“ Again, you were not allowing him to turn away and avoid the sight of the pain he had caused. „We’re done, Eric. We are done.“
„Y/N, don’t! I’ll do anything to-“
You couldn’t hear him begging. Because if you listened your broken heart might would’ve given in somehow. On your way to the apartment door, walking away from the man you had thought you’d spent your life together with, you gathered the strength to say your last words to him. „You leave me alone. You don’t call, you don’t text, you don’t come around. When you see me on campus you don’t come up and talk to me. It’s gonna be like we’ve never known each other. Only then I may be able to forgive you some day. But I doubt that will happen.“
When you shut the door, the tears came back and this time you didn’t fight them.
////////// 1 year ago //////////
The night had been absolutely fine. Eric was drunk. You were drunk. The two of you had broken the law a little again. But the night had been good. Until you got back to Eric’s place.
Almost all your nights out ended in a fight. It was always you wanting to go home, even in a heavily drunken state, and Eric didn’t want you to. You wanted to check on your dad, even though he was always sleeping, and Eric always tried to convince you to stay because there was a nurse in the house when your dad was sleeping and you and your brother gone.
The fights were always intense, and loud, because Eric went extremely soft when drunk and you lost every restraints.
Fighting about the same old things was like riding a bicycle. You two were so good in it, it was almost like you fought after a script some director had handed to you.
„For fuck’s sake lemme go home, Eric.“
Eric had grabbed you with an arm around your torso and kept you away from the door. „If you go home like that the only thing you’ll do is throw up in front of your dad’s bed instead of my toilet.“
„I can throw up wherever I fucking want!“ To prevent you from storming out of the apartment and get run over by the next car, Eric’s hands where all over your body, trying to hold you back. „Don’t touch my boobs. I’m mad with you.“
His hands weren’t even placed on your body with purpose, just randomly. He soon started kissing your neck while you were still winding in his arms, though. „Just stay, my love.“ There he was, the softie. „Lay down with me, enjoy yourself and don’t worry. Your dad is being taken care of.“
And you, losing every restraints, also meant your mood could shift so easily from one extreme to the other when you were drunk. You didn’t care about holding back tears or emotions anymore. „But he needs me.“ Crying your eyes out, drunk, and in Eric’s arms was a common end to your fights.
„Y/N, you need to allow yourself some time off.“
„I had time off! Like six hours tonight. I should be with him.“
„To sleep in the chair next to his bed and wake up with an aching back?“
You stopped winding in his arms and turned around to face Eric. If you had been sober you wouldn’t cry in front of him. But you weren’t sober.
He brushed the tears away with his thumb and still held you close with his other hand in your lower back.
„He needs me.“ To distract yourself from the burning tears, your fingers were all over Eric’s face. You had a thing for touching his beautiful face, letting your finger move to the beauty mark above his eyebrow, down his nose, over his lips and repeating it over and over again. It calmed you. You had never found out why but those touches had been one of the many anchors Eric provided for you. „I need him, Eric. I need him to wake up.“
„I know.“ He pressed his lips, you just had been caressing with your fingertips, against your forehead. The booze in your veins shifted your mood again. You dragged his lips away from your forehead to your own lips, demanding his proximity. Getting lost in him was the only time where you were sure to survive whatever would happen in the future.
„Y/N.“ Eric had a hard time taking a break from kissing. „Move in with me.“
It wasn’t the first time he asked you. You knew his reasons why he still asked you and Eric knew why you still declined. He didn’t think you’d change your mind out of a sudden but he still kept asking. And he would continue until one day you’d say yes.
„Only for tonight.“ With a change of mood again and a smile forming on your lips, you dragged him to the bed. As long as your dad’s condition was the way it was you would never move in with him. At some nights, though, when Eric had convinced you to stay, you liked to imagine you didn’t have to leave the next morning. Some nights, you just really wished you could live with him and have an ordinary life like any other woman your age.
////////// current day //////////
Completely devastated Eric left your front yard and drove home. Even though, you didn’t move in with him, still everything in his apartment reminded him of you.
He had slept with the mattress on the floor for a long time. Until you had stayed the first night over. You had demanded to build up the bed after you woke up the next morning because your back was aching.
He stared down to that bed and only saw you laying in there. Just covered by the sheets, hair all over the pillow. In a rush he grabbed the mattress and pulled it off to the ground. He kicked down to the slatted frame, broke the single slats. When he still didn’t get any satisfaction from it, he turned to the books in his shelf. One after another flew across the room. In the end he found himself in front of the mirror, looking at himself. What had driven him? He had let them take Harold away from you after they finally had stopped searching and the police closed the case. He thought he would do you a favor but all he did was inflict more pain on you. What a man was he?
A man that clearly didn’t deserve you. Never had and never will.
Shards were bursting from the force of his fist hitting the mirror. The blood dripping from his knuckles finally satisfied his self hatred and made him sink to the floor. Eric was done. He had destroyed the best part of his life, that was you, and with that, he finally let the tears come in. And he couldn’t stop anymore once he had started.
