Sad-girl-autumn-version - Sad Girl Autumn

a boy who's nice that breathes, i swear he's nowhere to be seen

i love.

How Sebastian Stan Survived Communism and Became Hollywood’s Most Daring Shape-Shifter

So you need somebody who can play the Winter Soldier, Trump, and Tommy Lee? We’ve got the guy.

Sebastian Stan, who can currently be seen in Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, photographed in February in Palmdale, California. Jacket by Prada; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

The sun is going down fast, and Sebastian Stan is trying to get inside a locked Romanian church. This windblown Monday in late February would have been his late father’s 70th birthday, and before the day is gone, he is determined to light a candle and say a prayer in the old man’s memory at a place that had meaning for them both. Stan was born and raised in Romania, where faith and superstition became rooted together for him. “Whenever I’m in a church, I have to go like this three times,” he says, making the sign of the cross with his right hand. “I have to do it. And I have to do it three times before I get on a plane.”

Just before we arrived at this Southern California church in pursuit of the sacred, Stan was indulging the profane. Is there another way to describe an encounter with a remote-controlled talking penis? The actor is based in New York, so when he visits LA, as he’s doing now to attend the Academy Awards, he has a full to-do list. Today, that includes a visit to the makeup studio Autonomous FX, which won an Emmy for transforming Stan and Lily James into Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson for the Hulu series Pam & Tommy. The whole day is a microcosm of what has established Stan as one of the more daring and endearing actors working today. He thinks deeply but has a wild side too.

We’ll get back to the robo-penis later.

Jacket by Dior Men; belt by Artemas Quibble; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage; vintage pants from Front General Store.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

It’s getting late, and Stan has to hurry through rush-hour traffic to get right with God for his father’s birthday. The Biserica Ortodoxă Română Sfânta Treime (or Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church) that he wants to visit to light the tribute to his father is meaningful to the Romanian immigrants who founded it, but it’s no soaring cathedral. It’s tiny, a single-story white stucco structure with a squat steeple that’s hidden behind much taller trees. Across the street is the headquarters of the Bilt-Well Roofing company, which is a comparatively much bigger operation.

Stan left Romania more than three decades ago, but it’s still a core part of him. So is the uncertainty of growing up in a place where the government dominated and demoralized its own citizens—which makes him especially attuned to authoritarianism in his adopted country of the United States. His old accent is gone, of course. Few who have seen him onscreen as the Winter Soldier in a decade and a half of Marvel movies—including the upcoming outcast team-up adventure Thunderbolts*—could find a trace of it. Stan’s character of Bucky Barnes is as all-American as his closest friend, Captain America. The character was a Brooklyn native, but Stan took on a neighboring Queens inflection for another famous (or infamous) performance, playing young Donald Trump in the scathing true-life drama The Apprentice. The role earned him both a best-actor Oscar nomination this year and the enduring rage of a vengeful, unchecked president.

Suit by Emporio Armani; shirt by Giorgio Armani; necklace and watch by Cartier. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

New faces and new voices were exactly what drew Stan to acting in high school. He moved to the US in the 1990s, and—as an immigrant kid still struggling to adapt to the language and culture—it was a lot more fun to be Bum Number Two in a production of Little Shop of Horrors than it was to be himself. “I just remember how fun it was to try to change everything,” he says. Being onstage turned a shy kid into a scene-stealing extrovert—and he was good at it. His mother sent him to summer theater camp not far from their new home just outside New York City, and by the end of high school, he was being cast as the lead in Cyrano de Bergerac. He was a good-looking kid, but he still loved hiding his face beneath Cyrano’s oversized nose. “You’re dressing up, you’re putting on fake beards, you’re walking differently, you’re changing,” he tells me. “You take big swings. You take bigger swings than you do when you’re a young actor coming to LA to go on pilot season auditions and they try to cast you as yourself—and you’re only allowed to play yourself.”

“SEBASTIAN HAS ALWAYS BEEN REALLY FEARLESS,” SAYS CHRIS EVANS. “YOU CAN SEE THAT IN HIS CHOICES. HE TAKES BIG SWINGS.”

Stan prefers to push himself to the background. He is not an oversharer. He’ll talk about characters or stunts or the meaning he sees in a particular movie or TV show, but while fans know every detail about the lives of other performers they adore, Stan has built a following while keeping the specifics of his own life somewhat obscure. The pilgrimage to light a candle for his dad is something he would ordinarily have done by himself. But Stan agreed to share something of himself for this story, in defiance of the actorly part of his personality that wishes when you looked at him, you’d see someone else.

He pulls on the handle of Holy Trinity’s main doorway. It doesn’t budge. “Doesn’t look very open,” he says. He’s not ready to give up. He walks around the church’s property and finds an older man sweeping up outside the congregation’s neighboring all-purpose hall.

Stan opens his arms and addresses him with a traditional Romanian greeting of respect: “Sărut mâna…”

I kiss your hand.

Coat by Miu Miu; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier; vintage pants by Carhartt from Front General Store.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

A week later, Stan is wearing a Prada tuxedo. It’s the night of the Academy Awards at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, and instead of trying to win over a skeptical church janitor, he’s trying to reassure his fellow actors and filmmakers that he is just fine, despite losing best actor to Adrien Brody earlier in the evening. (The VF Oscar Party is off-the-record, but Stan gave us permission to set the scene.) Most well-wishers now come to him with condolences, but he didn’t expect to win, and in some ways he may have avoided a bigger headache.

Trump has made political retribution a hallmark of his new term in the White House, and he was enraged by the sheer fact of The Apprentice’s existence. The movie, written by veteran journalist and Vanity Fair special correspondent Gabriel Sherman, depicts Trump in the 1970s as a needy wannabe mogul, eager to escape the shadow of his powerful father and being taught by Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) that underhanded tactics are a shortcut to success. When the movie was released last October, a month before the election, the once and future president unloaded on it via Truth Social, calling it “a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job,” and adding: “So sad that HUMAN SCUM, like the people involved in this hopefully unsuccessful enterprise, are allowed to say and do whatever they want.”

It’s unlikely that Trump had actually seen the movie at that point, but Stan has little doubt that he’s watched it since. “I would put money down he’s seen it 100 fucking times, of course, because he’s a narcissist,” Stan told me the previous week. “And I bet you there’s certain things he likes about it.” Such as? “How he looked,” Stan replies with a smile.

Pants by Brunello Cucinelli; vintage T-shirt and boots from Stock Vintage. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

He is too modest to say it directly, but he’s more handsome than Trump ever was, even with the prosthetic makeup that thickened the actor’s neck and dental devices called plumpers that pooched out his lips and jowls. Autonomous FX did those makeup effects too, allowing him to look more like the disco-era version of Trump. Capturing him physically, while also surfacing the scared and desperate young man beneath that exterior, is what earned Stan his Oscar nomination. “He loses his humanity. I guess that’s essentially what happens,” Stan said of the movie. “As an actor, all you’re trying to do is just look at these very human things and identify with them.”

That doesn’t mean he wants Trump to put him at the top of his enemies list. Before the Academy Awards, Stan said he was trying not to worry about potential retribution and didn’t think it would happen, unless…“I don’t know, maybe if I win the Oscar, which is like 0.0000 percent.”

“HE’S WILLING TO PLAY UNLIKABLE CHARACTERS,” SAYS JESSICA CHASTAIN. “HE’S NOT HAPPY TO JUST BE A CONVENTIONAL MOVIE STAR.”

So yes, he’s feeling fine at the party. He took with him other honors from the backslapping season, like when Jane Fonda name-dropped him while accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. “While you may hate the behavior of your character, you have to understand and empathize with the traumatized person you’re playing. Thinking of Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice,” she said.

Stan said her shout-out was “maybe better than winning an Oscar.” “I wasn’t at the SAG Awards,” he continued. “I wasn’t nominated. I didn’t go. But somebody told me to turn on the TV because Jane Fonda mentioned my name. I would never have thought in my life that she would know who I am.”

Jacket by Prada; vintage T-shirt and boots from Stock Vintage; pants by Prada; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

Then there was the actual trophy he won, a Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy, bestowed on him not for The Apprentice but for A Different Man, in which he plays a man with a disfiguring genetic condition who undergoes a radical medical procedure to look more “normal.” The back-to-back recognition caught the attention of Hollywood’s power brokers, including Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who has been working with him for nearly 15 years now. “To see him winning a Golden Globe for one movie and then being nominated for an Academy Award for another movie in the same year is pretty darn impressive,” Feige says.

The Golden Globe win stirred unexpected emotions in Stan. “You never really think that you’re going to be up there,” he’s told me. “I realized from that Golden Globe moment that when it happens, it’s massive. You can’t help but reflect on everything and everyone that contributed to you getting there.”

One of them is Annabelle Wallis, Stan’s partner of several years. The couple had kept their relationship private before the Globes, when she accompanied him and got an “I love you” callout from him on the stage. Wallis joined Stan at the Oscars as well, wearing a forget-me-not blue Grecian-style gown, and he introduces her happily to me at the Oscar party. (She has heard all about our adventure trying to get into the Romanian church.) Wallis is an actor herself, best known for The Tudors and Peaky Blinders, but their relationship is not something either of them discusses. “I feel like it’s really difficult nowadays to be able to have any privacy whatsoever,” he said. “It’s the one part of my life that I try to keep somewhat for myself, even though it sort of ends up being out there.”

Stan gets that protective streak from another person who helped him get where he is—his mother, Georgeta Orlovschi, who also accompanied him to the Oscars. She raised him for many years as a single mom after she split from his father when Stan was young. “They were both very strong individuals with very strong personalities,” he says. “Neither wanted to be justified by the other. I think they both had a rebellious spirit.”

Hat by Nick Fouquet; necklace by Cartier.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

His father later disappeared completely, going into exile in the States. Constantin Stan was a cargo-ship worker who helped fellow countrymen evade government persecution that pervaded Romania in the decades after World War II. “He was a bit of a hero in my town,” Stan says. “My parents were part of the youth that were standing up to Communism. My father was helping people escape the country illegally, to the point where he was a wanted man. And he himself had to flee.”

Stan grew up not really knowing the man everyone else knew by the nickname “Tino,” apart from occasional telephone calls. But if his dad could vanish, it seemed plausible that his mother might too. Then one day she did.

Stan was about eight years old when his mother fled Romania to set up a new life for them abroad. Throughout his childhood, government mismanagement and corruption had led to food scarcity, fuel shortages, and electricity blackouts. The eventual revolution culminated in the downfall and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989. “I watched him get shot on television,” Stan says. “I remember that.”

The aftermath wasn’t necessarily better. “It was chaos,” Stan says, noting “how many orphaned kids were in Bucharest after the revolution because everybody didn’t have money. Nobody knew how to live. They’d been so suppressed.” He spent a year with his grandparents before joining his mother in Austria. “She came and got me when she finally had a job and established herself enough there in Vienna,” he says.

Sweater by Loro Piana; pants by Schott NYC; necklace and watch by Cartier; vintage tank top from Stock Vintage.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

The anxiety he felt about losing her continued even after they were reunited. “She was working. She was playing piano at night when she could, and then she was teaching piano all day long. So at 9 or 10 years old, I was taking the trolley to school myself. I was taking the subway back myself,” Stan recalls. “Then I was coming home and I was alone, and I would have to make myself food and I’d do my homework and I’d wait for her to come home. That was a lot of alone time for a kid in a foreign country.”

He learned independence, but it scarred him too. “I remember waiting for her to get home and worrying: What if she doesn’t come home? I can see how that’s worked against me in certain ways and how it’s totally benefited me in other ways. You have a lot of time with your imagination when you’re a kid like that alone. So I feel I’m very good at using my imagination to believe certain things, which helps me in a way. But then there are times where I’m feeling a degree of uncertainty and lack of control over my life that can be paralyzing.”

“MY PARENTS WERE PART OF THE YOUTH STANDING UP TO COMMUNISM,” HE SAYS OF HIS ROMANIAN CHILDHOOD. “MY FATHER WAS HELPING PEOPLE ESCAPE THE COUNTRY ILLEGALLY—TO THE POINT HE HIMSELF HAD TO FLEE.”

Stan was around 12 when his mother began dating a man named Anthony Fruhauf, who was the headmaster of a small private high school in central New York. When they got married, Stan’s mother made plans to move with her son once again, this time to the United States. “He was really kind. My stepdad was a real influence in a good way,” Stan says. “In those early years in America, speaking English with him at home I think probably led to how I lost my accent.” He was all right seeing it go. He wanted to belong.

All this surfaced when Stan was onstage accepting his Golden Globe. “This is for my mom who left Romania in search of a better life, and for my stepfather, Tony, who took on a single mom and a grown-up kid,” he said, hoisting his award as his voice broke. Pointing heavenward, he added: “Thank you for being a real man.”

Coat by Bottega Veneta; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage; vintage pants from Front General Store. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

Despite craving stability, Stan learned the value of taking chances, which has earned him a daredevil reputation among his actor friends. “Sebastian has always been really fearless,” says Chris Evans, who first appeared opposite Stan in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger and costarred with him repeatedly as the Marvel Cinematic Universe expanded. “You can see that in his choices. He takes big swings. When that Trump movie was kicking around, I remember thinking, I wonder who is going to take this job? It’s just got so many strings attached to it. And I was so unsurprised when I heard it was Sebastian.”

The devil on Stan’s shoulder urging him forward was Jessica Chastain, who became a close friend after they worked together on 2015’s The Martian and later the 2022 spy thriller The 355. “When we were on set for The 355, that’s when he first told me he had had the offer to play Donald Trump. A thing about Sebastian that people might not realize is he’s very, very thoughtful, almost to a point where he overthinks things. It could cause a little bit of stress. He was like, ‘Well, what do you think? What would you do?’ I said, ‘Do it.’ I was like, ‘What do you have to lose? Take a risk.’ As long as it doesn’t cause you physical danger, if something scares you—do it.”

Chastain saw Stan do that very thing in 2017’s I, Tonya, in which he played Tonya Harding’s then husband, who hatched the scheme to sabotage her rival, Nancy Kerrigan. “When so many people are trying to make you this conventional movie star, it’s a risk to do something that isn’t that,” Chastain says. “He’s willing to play unlikable characters. I find that executives have trouble with characters that may be complex and have dark sides to them. He really embraces that. He’s not happy to just be a conventional movie star.”

Coat by Loewe. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

Marvel Studios was looking for a dark side when they were casting the role of Bucky Barnes in the first Captain America movie in 2010. Stan was a relative unknown, though he’d had a recurring role on Gossip Girl as a pathological liar of a rich kid. “You could see that he has so much inside him and so much behind his eyes. I’ll never forget that,” Feige says. “I said to Stephen Broussard, who was one of the producers on Captain America, ‘He’s going to be a good Bucky, but he’s going to be a great Winter Soldier.’ ”

Bucky evolves into that villainous alter ego in subsequent MCU stories, going from fearless soldier to shell-shocked prisoner of war and, eventually, mind-controlled assassin who struggles to break his programming and redeem himself. Getting the part was beyond game-changing for the actor. “I was actually struggling with work,” Stan says. “I had just gotten off the phone with my business manager, who told me I was saved by $65,000 that came in residuals from Hot Tub Time Machine.” He’d played the smarmy bully in that comedy a year before. Now it was his salvation.

Since then, the Winter Soldier has become one of the most beloved and relatable characters in the MCU, even though his story is far from the traditional everyman narrative. Bucky resonates because he’s damaged goods—the patron saint of fuckups struggling to do right. The arc culminates in his new lead role in Thunderbolts*, with Bucky leading a team of former troublemakers and outcasts. Feige says that, without Stan, the character’s strange journey wouldn’t have been the emotional gut punch it is.

After lunch, Stan goes to his appointment at Autonomous FX. The headquarters is tucked near an ice warehouse and a scrapyard in an industrial neighborhood of Van Nuys. Stan is trying on a pair of fake teeth that slip over his perfect pearly whites. The goal is to give him a more regular-guy look for Fjord, the movie he’s shooting in Norway with filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, a fellow native of Romania.

There’s a story behind these teeth—dating back to before Stan got braces as an adult. “When I got Invisalign, I was so obsessed with them,” he says. “The more you wear them, the faster they work. So I actually wore them at the fucking Captain America: The Winter Soldier premiere. I have them in and I’m smiling with them and people can tell. I was self-conscious because my teeth were always a little….” He splays his fingers into crooked angles.

The prosthetic teeth are modeled on Stan’s own before he fixed them. Stan has another blast from his past waiting for him too. After the fitting, Jason Collins, the founder and lead creative force behind Autonomous FX, takes Stan through the workshops, where sculptors are making limbs, bodies, and demonic babies. On the shelves, busts of other actors like Christian Bale and Annette Bening, used for previous projects, stare down with vacant eyes.

Collins and his company essentially provide the level-up version of the fake beards and noses that Stan first loved about acting in high school—except occasionally X-rated. As part of this nostalgia trip, Collins brings out a plastic tub with the remains of the robotic erection from Pam & Tommy. The latex has dried out and decayed away. This penis “character” was voiced by Jason Mantzoukas and had strong opinions about the Mötley Crüe drummer’s romance with the Baywatch star. It was a risky creative choice by the showrunners but added levity to the series and was inspired by Lee’s own autobiography, in which he banters philosophically with his sex organ.

The makeup team and the actor forged a bond along the way. “It really becomes a partnership,” Collins says. “We stare at him for weeks and months at a time. So we know the physical structure. We know what the span of his legs is and all that other stuff.”

“You get to know the actor very well,” says Stan. Their earliest meeting involved figuring out how to fit a prosthetic over his actual privates and snake cables for the controls down his backside. “When I first came here, they made a replica to work on. So they had to cast this,” Stan says, gesturing to his crotch. “I remember you’re like, ’All right buddy, well, I guess it’s good to meet you.’”

Jacket by Bottega Veneta; vintage T-shirt and boots from Stock Vintage; belt by Artemas Quibble; necklace and watch by Cartier. PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

After the makeup shop, Stan heads for the last stop of the day, the Orthodox church. After a persuasive conversation in Romanian, the custodian agrees to unlock the chapel for him. “Vezi ca pana,” Stan says. You’ll see it’s only for a moment.

As the doors swing open, the faces of saints stare down at us from rows of miniature shrines, not unlike the busts of the famous actors in the prosthetics lab. Both places represent things Stan believes in—the ability to transform into something new and a yearning to connect with something beyond yourself.

Stan doesn’t claim to be especially religious, but the Holy Trinity chapel takes him back to that fearful time living under Communist dictatorship, when he put his faith in higher powers and prayed for the best. “We would go to church a lot when I was little,” he says. “It’s still tied into certain things for me, because I felt such a degree of powerlessness over decisions being made early on.”

STAN IS NOT AN OVERSHARER. BUT HE AGREED TO SHARE SOMETHING OF HIMSELF HERE, IN DEFIANCE OF THE ACTORLY PART OF HIM THAT WISHES WHEN YOU LOOKED AT HIM, YOU’D SEE SOMEONE ELSE.

Stan and the man he wants to commemorate with a candle were estranged for years. He and his father finally reconnected when Stan was around 18 and began visiting Los Angeles for auditions. The New York kid would save money by staying with his father, who had settled in the San Fernando Valley (not far from the makeup shop, actually) and worked, once again, in shipping. The periodic visits brought them closer, and the relationship stayed tight until his dad died unexpectedly from COVID on a trip back to Romania in 2021.

Stan sometimes thinks his father’s story might make a good movie. In Romania, Tino was legendary for sneaking contraband Western goods like blue jeans and bananas into the country while smuggling dissidents out aboard the same vessels. “He worked hard and he loved America and he believed in being free,” Stan says. “I have always made the argument that immigrants to some extent are more patriotic than even the people that are born here because they don’t take things for granted. At least that’s what I saw in my father.”

The janitor guides us to the back of the church, where there’s a small side room with a votive stand arrayed with unlit candles.

“Can you give me one second? I’ll be right back,” Stan says.

He disappears into the shadowy alcove and strikes a light.

Later, driving away from the chapel, Stan tries to explain why he felt so compelled to go there. “I think it’s just the acknowledgment of how fragile we all are. Sometimes you go somewhere where it’s really not about you. It’s a moment to let go. Turn off for a while,” he says. “You don’t have to be anything in there. You don’t have to think any which way.”

Jacket by Balenciaga; belt by Artemas Quibble; vintage T-shirt from Stock Vintage; vintage pants by Carhartt from Front General Store. Throughout: hair products by Rōz; grooming products by Tom Ford Beauty.PHOTOGRAPH BY NORMAN JEAN ROY, STYLED BY EDWARD BOWLEG III.

He says something similar via text two weeks later, when he’s in Norway, starting work on his new role in Fjord—with his new teeth that resemble his old teeth.

“The feeling is always the same. Like it’s the first time,” Stan writes. “It’s always a mix of fear and hope. It’s losing yourself. It’s a free fall. Every time.”

personally if i were an artist and teenage girls happened to gravitate towards my art i would consider that the highest fucking honour imaginable

when men roll up their sleeves. ok whore

MILF (man I love frank castle)

Hi! Hi! I have been reading your Eric Coulter fics and I don't know if you're still into Divergent but i can i request a eric coulter x fem!reader where they go from rivals to lovers and literally everyone in Dauntless has bets on them to be together?

'rumors of rivals' - eric coulter

masterlist

Four’s got another pet project, but for once, it isn’t you.

It’s a habit of his, one he’d do best to kick. Although Four may like to keep his indifferent silence and pretend as if he were a shallow-hearted Dauntless through and through, he’s got a soft spot for the people he likes. He’s got a knack for finding similar souls and winning them over, even as he acts as if he couldn’t care less about any of you. He did this while you were an initiate, and now he’s repeating the process with one of his new trainees, a girl named Tris.

Since you don’t work the initiates, you haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting Tris Prior, although you’ve heard Four talk about her often enough that you have a good gauge of her likes, dislikes, and every single conversation she’s had with your friend. For someone who claims that he couldn’t care less about anyone but himself, Four’s awfully attentive to Tris.

It makes you laugh, both when he’s around and not. Despite Four’s claims otherwise, it seems that even the toughest of Dauntless fall victim to their hearts every now and then. Despite Four’s claims otherwise, that’s one test you won’t be failing. Four may have fallen in love, but not you. Not a chance. The only decent one around here is Four, and he’s clearly besotted with Tris. No other men even come to mind.

Four and Tris catch up to you, and he begins the introductions. “Y/N, this is Tris, the initiate I’ve been talking about. Tris, this is Y/N. She’s a good friend of mine.”

Tris smiles at you. “It’s nice to meet you, Y/N. Four has said a lot of good things about you.”

You laugh. “It can’t be more than what he’s said about you, trust me. I think all of our conversations are now about you.”

Tris laughs too, evidently surprised at your camaraderie. “I’m sure he’ll argue with that, but I’m glad to hear it. I have to say, I knew what to expect from a Dauntless Leader, but you’re way nicer than I expected.”

You grin. “Oh, trust Four to talk up my reputation. We’re not all totally dramatic around here.”

Four rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right. As if you’re not locked in one of the worst rivalries Dauntless has ever seen.”

Tris widens her eyes, curious. “What are you talking about?”

You fold your arms across your chest. “Four doesn’t mean anything because he doesn’t know what he’s saying. There’s nothing there.”

Four scoffs. “Of course there’s something there. Tris, Y/N’s just denying it because she’s too embarrassed to admit that she’s totally obsessed with beating Eric at everything.”

Tris claps a hand to her mouth. “Wait, I know what you’re talking about. Everyone in the faction has been gossiping about Eric and one of the other Leaders. You don’t mean that–”

“Yes,” you admit reluctantly. “The rumors are about me. They’re just jokes, though. Nothing to take seriously.”

Four arches a brow doubtfully. “Of course they’re not.”

You swat him in the shoulder. “Anything more on the subject and I’ll push you off a roof, Four. Watch your tone.”

Instead of taking your threat seriously, Four just cracks a rare grin and keeps his triumphant silence. In all honesty, he’s not wrong about the gossip, and neither is Tris. You have been rivals with a certain Eric Coulter for most of the time you’ve been at Dauntless, if not all of it, and beating Eric at anything from a fight in the ring to glowing recommendations from the other Dauntless Leaders does indeed make your day like nothing else.

At this point, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. There’s no way you could ever like Eric, he makes it impossible to so much as smile around him. He’s insufferable, that’s all, and he always has been.

You remember that from the very first day you arrived. Eric had been through initiation a year before you, so of course he swaggered about the faction like he knew everything and you knew nothing at all. It didn’t matter that you mastered every challenge that initiation set before you, it didn’t matter that, at the end of your training, you came out with the highest rank. No matter what, Eric would always boast that he’d done it better when he was an initiate. And, since the two of you weren’t in the same year, there was no way of proving him right or wrong.

Once you graduated initiation, your ill-fated relationship only took a turn for the worse. Both of you were gunning for positions as Dauntless Leaders, and did everything in your power to claw to the top. It was a common assumption that only one Leadership position would be vacated, meaning that one of you would succeed and one of you would do the worst thing possible for a Dauntless:  you would fail.

Instead, both of you were appointed as new Leaders, and now you’re forced to spend even more time with him than before. Eric is more hands on, especially with his new position as an initiation leader, whereas you’re more devoted to strategy and all the ways to keep Dauntless as a faction running as smoothly as possible. The two of you clash whenever you so much as step into a room together.

Over time, this rivalry has drawn the attention of the entire faction. There’s hardly a soul in Dauntless that hasn’t witnessed the two of you going for each other’s throats at some point. Last you heard, some faction members were even going so far as to place bets as to when the two of you would get together, but that’s absurd. You and Eric hate each other. There’s simply no way you’d actually manage to get over your mutual loathing to fall in love.

“He’s an unpredictable asshole, I don’t know what else you want me to say,” you growl to Four.

Instead of being answered by your friend, however, a new voice joins you, one that makes you want to put your fist through a wall. “Are you talking about me again, L/N? I’m touched.”

Four and Tris exchange some interesting glances, which you definitely don’t appreciate. You turn to glower at none other than Eric, who’s somehow emerged out of the throngs of Dauntless milling about to appear right by your side. It’s as if he was summoned from your mere thoughts alone.

“So you heard me talking about an unpredictable asshole and immediately assumed it was you? That’s lovely, I didn’t know you had such great self-esteem.” You hiss.

Eric just grins. “You’re always so kind to me. Truly, it makes my day.”

You glance to your opposite side, hoping to deflect onto Four, but you notice that he and Tris have somehow disappeared into the crowds again, leaving you alone with Eric. You’ll have to chide him about abandoning you later, once you manage to shake Eric again.

Eric notices the changing subject of your attention and chuckles. “They left already? Can’t say I blame them.”

“Neither can I,” you fire back. “Having to spend time with you isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy.”

“See, that’s the difference between the two of us,” Eric intones, holding up a finger appreciatively as he speaks, “There’s no punishment I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It’s because I’m capable of doing anything to eliminate those who would rise against me. It’s what makes me a better Dauntless. I’m not surprised that you lack the courage.”

You groan in annoyance. “It’s a saying, Coulter. Goodness, I see why you’re not an Erudite. Critical thinking is not your strong suit.”

Unfortunately, Eric doesn’t seem particularly affected by this insult. “I’ll leave the critical thinking to you, L/N. The glory of battle is mine as always.”

You arch a brow. “Remind me who kicked your ass the last time we met in the ring? I’m sure the glory of battle was totally on your side then, too.”

Eric’s voice turns razor-sharp. “How about a rematch, then? Tonight. That is, if you can’t manage to talk yourself out of facing me again.”

You stop walking, meeting Eric’s eyes dead on. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Scared?”

“Not a chance,” he fires back. “I’ll see you then.”

With that, he stalks off, leaving you fuming yet again. You could name a hundred encounters that have taken place exactly like this one. It’s strange, you’ve always prided yourself on your control of your temper, but something about Eric Coulter just drags out every bit of irritation and passion from your heart.

Glancing around, you see that more than a few people have turned to look at you and Eric as you passed by, and are now whispering to each other. “Shut up,” you mutter at no one in particular, but it doesn’t seem to do anything to stop the flurry of gossip.

Great, now you’ll have another rumor to add to the mix. As if you needed any more. Grimacing to yourself, you set off again. You’ll be looking to tonight’s fight with Eric, if not for a release of anger than anything else. It would feel good to beat him up again, you decide, and it’s about time his ego got knocked down a peg or two.

Eric is waiting for you in the empty gym when you let yourself in later that night. The two of you arrive at the same time whenever one of you challenges the other to a fight. It’s become a sort of tradition. You know exactly when and where to find each other because you’ve done it so often. It comes to you like breathing, like living. Instinctive, intuitive. You and Eric may not see eye to eye on most subjects, but in the ring, it’s like he’s your double.

You and Eric face each other warily on the ring. There’s no one else here, not after hours, so the entire gym is empty. Even the smallest of sounds are amplified by the solitude, each shuffle of your feet from side to side sending ripples of echoes up to the high ceiling before bouncing back down again, creating ghosts of your every movement. The lights are dim. The shadows lengthen Eric’s already numerous tattoos, making him look as if the darkness could swallow him up entirely if you were to turn away for even one moment.

You lunge first, mostly as a feint to get his attention. At your level of fighting experience, both of you know better than to truly attack first. Eric aims a blow at your midsection, but you duck just in time, dropping low to kick his legs out from under him. Briefly, Eric loses his balance, but manages to regain it in time to send a returning strike your way.

On and on, the fight progresses, the tide rolling from you to him back to you again in an endless circle. Eric manages to pin you first and huffs out a triumphant breath, but you get him the next round. You’ve spent enough nights like this that every move seems familiar. Although the precise victor of the fights may switch off from night to night, the actions themselves have been done so many times that it feels like muscle memory.

You’re sure it’ll be a night just like any other, but then something strange happens when Eric wins again. Both of you have ended up on the surface of the mat, and after briefly striving for the upper hand, Eric manages to make it there first, and he swings his weight over you, pinning you to the ground. His hands lock your wrist onto the mat like cuffs. You try to throw him off again, but it doesn’t work, and the two of you rest there, panting from the exertion, but worst of all, looking at each other.

You wait for Eric to move off of you and begin the cycle again, but strangely enough, he doesn’t. Instead, Eric looks, he looks at you like he’s never seen you before in his entire life. You feel as if you couldn’t move a muscle, and lie there perfectly still. One twitch of a limb, one wrong breath, and he might react, or worst of all, leave. You don’t know why, but you know for certain that shattering this moment would destroy you both.

Slowly, carefully, Eric releases his hold on your arms, but you don’t swing at him. The erratic rise and fall of his chest has slowed as easy breath returns to him, but when he had held you down moments ago, you could still feel his pulse thundering in his veins, tumultuous and irreverent like the clash of a thunderstorm.

“Y/N,” Eric whispers, low in his throat and urgent. You don’t know what to say. You’re not sure that there is anything to say, not without giving something away, a secret so terrible and all-consuming that to utter it aloud would use up all of you, leaving nothing behind but the ghost of a person who had once been you.

He’s waiting. For what, you don’t know. Or, you don’t want to know. Both of you are on a precipice, the edge tall and mighty, but unlike the roof back at the entrance to Dauntless initiation, you do not know that the fall won’t kill you. You could survive this jump, sure. But you could also break your bones in the leaping, and come out of this a ruined version of someone who had thought they knew everything about Eric Coulter, and then learned otherwise.

The indecision is too great, and so you do something utterly befitting someone of your station, and you run. Eric doesn’t move when you suddenly slip out from under him, nor does he stop you when you leave the gym. It isn’t a Dauntless move to flee from a fight, but then again, you transferred here from your home faction in the Choosing Ceremony, so the habits of the brave haven’t been instilled in you completely. You still, it seems, have a lot to learn.

The walk back to your apartment seems treacherous. There aren’t that many people out at this time of night, but you swear that of those who remain, every eye is on you. Haven’t you heard the rumors? Isn’t it true that these people have guessed what you are when it comes to Eric Coulter? If they see you, they will know.

You crawl into your bed and hope for sleep, but nothing comes. You stare at your ceiling in the dark, wondering what you’ve done. You’ve claimed to hate Eric for a very long time, but the way you felt in that ring, with him looking down at you– None of that was hate. You haven’t felt an absence of anger like that in such a long time that you’ve almost forgotten how to name that emotion entirely.

You get up the next morning, exhausted and confused, and complete your daily duties in somewhat of a haze. Every one of your moves feels mechanical. Eric is busy with the initiates, so your paths shouldn’t cross. When he finds you later that day, then it must mean that he sought you out intentionally. You’re not sure if that’s for better or worse.

You do your best to shake him, but he tracks you down eventually, pulling you into an empty room and shutting the door behind him. “Y/N,” he says urgently. “We should talk about last night.”

You don’t want to, not when the way he says your name reminds you of the way he’d whispered it last night, soft and careful, none of the things you have ever associated with Eric. It wasn’t as torturous as you expected, being alone with him without a fight to separate you. In fact, if you weren’t on guard, you would even admit that you liked it.

When you remain silent, Eric sighs, frustration beginning to tinge back into his breath again. “I know something happened. We can’t just pretend otherwise.”

You glance back up at him. “Can’t we?” You ask. “We can go back to fighting all the time. I’m sure it would come easily to both of us.”

You’ve become an expert at provoking him over the years, but now, in the face of all your attempts, Eric’s gaze remains neutral. “Is that what you want?”

Yes, you start to say, but for some reason the words dry up in your throat and the only thing that comes out is a terrible, awful exhale, “No.”

Eric hasn’t let go of your hand since he pulled you into this room. He seems to remember it now, his thumb rubbing light circles back and forth against your wrist. “Neither do I. Turns out, the only thing I like better than fighting you is when we aren’t fighting at all.”

You’ve never understood it when people say their heart skipped a beat, but you feel it now, the stuttering of desperate hope locked between your ribs. “So– you want–”

“You, Y/N,” Eric interrupts. “I want you. I always have.”

When he kisses you, it tastes like victory. Hot, brave, triumphant. A thousand nights undefeated in the ring couldn’t light you up with a fire half this bright. Sometimes, the rumors are true, and sometimes, the very man you thought was your greatest rival was instead your best love. Eric is all of these things, but most importantly, he is yours.

requested by @simoneashwinis, i hope you enjoy!

divergent tag list: @dindjarinneedsahug, @poisonmenegan, @ozzynka, @rogueanschel, @with-inked-solace, @gods-fools-heroes, @23victoria, @manyfandomsfanvergent, @imwaysthelastchoice, @drinking-tea-and-be-obsessed, @crazyhearttragedy, @alexs-1967s-blog, @aoi-targaryen

all tags list: @wordsarelife

I want to point out that in this scene (after they say “Our Mother of Victory, pray for us) Richie is crossing himself the Eastern Orthodox way as opposed to the Catholic way—right shoulder to left shoulder instead of left to right. Ebon’s mentioned in a couple different interviews that Richie is Ukrainian, and the Ukraine is primarily Eastern Orthodox. Here’s a quote from an interview he did with The Guardian (after mentioning that he was baking rye bread lol):