A/N: Oops I totally forgot to post this here. I upload most of my fic these days to AO3 under the same username. Anyway! The fics from the fourth round of the AHS Exchange have been revealed so I can finally share that I wrote this fic. c:
It won Best Overall Fic which is pretty amazing considering some of the other fics that were written. Thanks jandjsalmon for putting all of that together and thanks to ScarlettWoman710 and Gray Glube for keeping me sane.
If you want to check out the rest go here: ahs-exchangeDOTlivejournalDOTcom
Love you guys!
xx
Deadlines are bullshit.
So is the body's reaction to them. Stress.
There are canvases like headstones set up against every stick of furniture, some of them still white and glaring while others burst with colors and movement.
Sad music plays from an open laptop on the window seat. Outside, in the dark, it snows.
Violet wipes a smear of cadmium red across her forehead, stains the corner of one blonde eyebrow. The sharp stink of turpentine is making her dizzy but installation is in eight hours and there are still pieces left half-finished and not started.
Set up for her first solo show.
At one of the most relevant galleries in town.
It would be exciting as fuck if she weren't so terrified.
Dorian, a grey cat that has taken to snoozing on her fire escape before she'd shown mercy and let him in, walks figure-eights around her legs.
"Screw off, hairball," she hisses after nearly tripping into a wet painting and righting herself at the last moment; her paintbrush blots a smudge of turquoise on the sofa arm.
By the end of the night there won't enough paint thinner in the world to save the apartment, her hands, her hair.
Dorian meows and curls up behind one of the propped canvases, makes use of it like a tent.
Violet, stepping in bare feet over rinse cups and open newspapers covered in brushes, retreats to the kitchen for a rag and hot water to soak up the couch stain.
She's rounding the counter with arms outstretched for the soap when the power cuts.
"MOTHERFUCKER!"
The corner of the microwave leaves a dent in her forehead.
She wants to feel out if it's bleeding, but her hands are covered in paint.
Setup is in eight hours and her paintings aren't finished and it is pitch-fucking-black.
From across the hall, there's a loud, though amused, "Sorry!"
Her works are like landmines while she edges through the dark for the door, intent on tearing the a new asshole for the shithead responsible. Luckily, only one painting topples during her blind walk. Please god, don't let it be something wet.
Once the chain and deadbolt are open, Violet steps boldly out into the hall with eyes open and unseeing, and screams.
"Which one of you degenerates fucked the power?!"
There's the telling squeak of floorboards in more than one direction that mean she isn't alone in the hall, but other than that there's silence.
Violet counts to ten. It's what her therapist-father was always asking of her as a girl.
She counts to ten, to twenty, then out loud to thirty. She breathes in, out, in, and tries not to think about how fucked she's going to be come morning if she isn't ready to install or how her reputation as an artist will already be in the shitter.
"If nobody fesses up to this shit, I swear to God I'll burn this entire apartment building down."
More silence.
A squeak.
The door across from hers opens.
"Wow, who crapped in your cereal? I said I was sorry."
She doesn't know the voice and she can't see a face, but her hand finds the guilty asshole's cheek with a hard, precise slap.
6C laughs. Violet fumes.
"Whatever you're doing in there - washing your laundry or running a meth lab, I don't give a shit - better not cut out the power again before tomorrow morning or I will break your fucking neck, you got me?
Warm breath. A shuffle of movement. "Yes, ma'am."
"Good," Violet says, working the air out of the knuckles in both hands, before disappearing back into her apartment to find her phone and wait.
The Super gets the power back on in about twenty minutes.
The painting that fell had been wet. It leaves a nice imprint on the cream-colored rug in front of her couch.
Violet screams.
But she gets everything done. Without taking even a ten minute break to rest her wrist or smoke, she gets each and every piece to a place any outsider would call complete.
Two friends with a van waiting in the alley a few blocks down buzz in just after six to help with transporting and installation.
Violet fingercombs her hair and puts on a new sweater over the one she'd been wearing. Everything smells like chemicals and death, but her friends will understand.
They bring her a bouquet of wildflowers that she puts on top of the fridge for now, knowing Dorian will nibble the petals, and an Americano with more shots than letters in her name.
"Fuck, this is why we're friends," Violet coos, arms reverently outstretched, holding the coffee to her cheek for a moment of bliss before they brave the cold.
It takes three or four trips each to get everything downstairs safely. The van in the alley's trunk has had shelves installed for this type of thing. Only one homemade canvas scares them, her largest piece - 4x4 feet - but with a little rearranging it fits.
She says a prayer to God, and also Jesus, and shuts both heavy, white doors.
"You guys wait here. Get the heater going. I've gotta run upstairs and brush my teeth, put on deodorant, y'know."
It feels like there isn't enough time, not until she's gotten her paintings installed and her name and artist statement up on the wall and one hundred other little things done. Then she can rest. And hide, because, Jesus Christ, she looks like a fucking tweaker.
Hair in a bun and in a clean pair of jeans, with minty breath and mascara, Violet steps back into her flats and locks up; she's lathered in lotion to conceal the worst of her Artist stink.
The elevator ride is quiet. People are up all around her, but few of them are leaving for work yet. The air when the doors open is new-morning crisp, she's only just slowed down enough to take notice. It turns her cheeks and nose pink, her lips red.
On the way out the front door, she passes someone at the mailboxes sending off a letter. Hunkered over in a sweatshirt and pajama pants, a man with ridiculous, crazy blond hair looks up at the sound of her footfalls. "Morning," he says amicably, flashing an electric white smile.
Violet's steps stutter. She traces the sweep of her hair back to her bun and blinks doubletime.
"Hey," she manages after a short delay and steps around him, eyes on the side of his face, on the leftovers of paint colors still crusted in his hair.
Almost at the van, she fantasizes about going back inside to ream him out for the night before and maybe to get a better look at him, but climbs into the back seat and lets his open smile be swallowed by nervous energy and the angry sounds of Friday morning commute.
Set up takes nine hours. She knew it was an all-day thing because of art school, but it doesn't make the whole ordeal any less exhausting. By noon Violet is laying flat on the tile in the center of the gallery space, directing her friends, whom have risen in attendance, as to where each piece should be hung. In her crazed dash this morning, she'd forgotten to bring a level; thank Christ there's an app for that.
There are black curtains over the front windows, hiding her show from the street until it is unveiled at the opening reception tonight. She imagines them stopping people on the street, peaking curiosities.
Ben and Vivien are coming, separately and with their idiot SOs. They've both left multiple voicemails about it, letting her know they're in town, asking if she wanted to meet up for dinner one night.
She doesn't.
Their facade of supporting her isn't admirable. Neither of them have cared to visit until there was an event they can attend, then later brag about to their social circles.
Ben likes to think of her bright-colored abstractions as Rorschachs. They're not.
Vivien worries about her being so obsessed with death. That's not her concept, not only anyway.
They don't get it. They can't see why she'd prefer an overstimulating city to the suburbia. They think her friends are weird.
It's all irrelevant anyway.
She doesn't care.
Everything wraps up by 4:30. The podiums with postcards and information are out, the catering is taken care of, the ambiance is set.
Violet has three and a half hours before the gallery opens. She is a flight of butterflies. Four years and almost $100,000 of debt and this is going to give her the first idea of whether or not everything was worth it.
She sleeps for two hours, walks in the front door and passes out on the couch with an alarm set on her phone.
When it goes off she swears it had only been fifteen minutes. Her bones are still heavy. It takes a while staring at Dorian batting the gauzy white curtains to remember what tonight is, but even after that, she still moves slow.
Adrenaline and delirium will wake her up the closer the reception grows. Right now, everything is surreal.
A shower puts movement back into her, the water washing off last night and most of today, leaving her brand new when she steps out onto the rug and swipes wet fingers over her phone screen to turn the music up.
Conor Oberst sulks through the speaker.
She blowdries and straightens in a towel, then bends to the mirror for makeup.
And I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss.
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it.
Her lips look painted with fresh blood, but her hand shakes on the eyeliner, so difficult to make each eye match.
They better serve something hard at the show. It will take more than champagne to kill these creeping nerves, to stomp the hiccups out of her heart.
Armor isn't heavy metal tonight, it's black stretch with a dark floral pattern. Violet turns on the carpet in bare feet facing a mirror bolted to the back of her bedroom door. The thick black stripes running down the sides of her dress boost the illusion of curves.
All this make believe, makeup and frizz-free hair and this clinging dress, make Violet feel like she should be hung in the gallery next to her Untitleds. But agents and collectors want the package deal.
Tonight, she needs to be as pretty as her paintings, just as interesting.
The stilettos still boxed up, a gift from her mother, are too much though. She wants to bring something of herself downtown, a reminder that this entire reception is bullshit. It's her art that matters.
Her phone lights up with another missed call, buzzes half a minute later with a voicemail. Violet feeds it into her clutch without looking at the screen.
Dorian wraps around her bare legs, reminding her to grab a coat, and purrs something of a good luck or goodbye when she's slipping out the door.
Black on black velvet oxfords don't click-clack down the stairs like high heels would have. They thump, thump, thump twice as slow as her heart is beating.
Showtime.
There's a line forming down the side of the building when she arrives, people huddled with cigarettes and easy conversation. The sight of them all does something funny to her stomach. Her skin is freezing, but it doesn't bother her, just background noise to the main attraction.
The gallery owner and one of the curators are busy working when she gets inside. They pull her in for hugs and cheek kisses and spew praise. Violet tries to keep up with their gushing, but her eyes wander to the preparations that have been made.
Everything is perfect. Lights from the ceiling shine down on each painting, there are white twinkle lights hung around two podiums filled with articulated animal skeletons. The air inside is warm and the tile s swept. Her name looks beautiful in Helvetica at the entrance.
Her phone buzzes again. Friends on their way probably. Maybe Vivien or Ben.
The curator disappears for a moment and returns with three glasses of champagne. They toast to her and clink glasses. She waits until they're not looking to down the entire flute in one tip.
Macarons in pretty pastels on a plate have been placed at the long table near the back of the gallery where they store leftover prints from other exhibitions. The finger food looks amazing.
Violet isn't hungry.
A boy, someone who must also work for the gallery, introduces himself and takes her coat. When he's back from a locked door there are keys in his hand. His walk to the front of the gallery is measured in empty breaths and the slow swell of sound.
She feels her heartbeat everywhere.
The front doors crack open, letting in small talk, a freezing wind, and then people. It's a steady trickle of mild excitement that Violet watches in slow motion as her own joy hits.
It's happening. Her first grown-up, real world art show. As a little girl, making art was the one dream she wasn't afraid to want. Watching as it swings low and within reach steals every sad, bad feeling she's ever had and shuts them out.
Her parents are some of the first people inside, careful to admire Violet's work on opposite walls while the space between them fills up with bodies.
Vivien finds her first. "Honey, this is so wonderful. I am so proud of you," she coos, drawing Violet into a hug, petting down her hair. "I overheard people talking about putting an offer in on one of your pieces.
Violet smiles and nods, her brain on autopilot. It's so loud. There are so many strangers' faces looking into her paintings, it overwhelms.
Letting her mother pluck a rogue eyelash from her cheek, she waves Vivien off to check out the rest of the gallery and quarter-turns to embrace her father.
"Violet, you're a vision," he says, turning her in a circle with his hand in hers overhead. His eyes crinkle with his compliment. She smiles and nods.
"Thanks, Dad."
Ben lifts a drink from the long table and sips. "I think I'm going to need one of these in my office," he grins, gesturing to the room of color. The ice in his glass bobbles against the sweating plastic of the little cup.
Violet grins. "That'd be pretty sweet." Then she's swept out of sight by a arm linked within her own.
"Hey, bitch. Too cool to answer your phone?"
Madison Montgomery kisses her own fingers before pressing them to Violet's lips. It's their deal.
She and Violet met in high school, freshman year: glass art. Now she's a big shot movie star with a penthouse on each coast. She's the first person Violet is truly happy to see. Some of her nerves unspool.
Madison offers a sip of her drink. Violet pulls most of whatever's inside. "Hey, bitch," she parrots back. "Where's Leah?"
Leah's the girlfriend. A-list pouts. "She had a nursing final, couldn't make it."
After a little more catch up they walk the room together, Madison giving her review of each piece; she wants one of the triptychs for her bedroom.
More and more people flood in, filter out. A few old professors stop by, they love how her art has progressed, how she has incorporated something of William Turner's style into her recent series.
Everyone writes sweet nothings in the guestbook with gilded edges.
Violet talks and drinks, gets swept up in anxiety and finds her footing again.
Two hours deep, her eyes stumble onto a strange-familiar face.
6C makes eye contact and threads his way through the crowd towards her. Violet looks for Madison, sees that she's occupied with two people in the far corner.
If she weren't four drinks in, she would probably feel something about this meeting. Guilty, pissed off, embarrassed?
All she feels is her hand sliding automatically into mystery boy's grip.
"Hello 6D," he says slowly, ducked down a little to hold her eyes.
Violet blinks. She feeds him her name, moves her hand like you should when it's locked with a stranger's.
"Hi Violet, I can see now why you needed the lights on last night. I'm Kyle. Really diggin' what you've got going on here."
Residual anger flares up and then fizzles at the reminder. "Wait, how did you know that was me? And how did you know I'd be here? Kyle, are you a stalker?"
He smiles that whitewhite smile that curls at the ends, and sways a little. After a dramatic pause, he tells her about the postcard pinned to the residents' bulletin board. "And yeah, okay. Maybe I asked the old lady in G who the pretty blonde was."
Maybe it's that he's tall and handsome or maybe it's just because she's drunk, but Violet fits into a smile of her own and laughs. "Creep."
"Psycho," he returns warmly. His cheek is paint-free. His hair too. Violet could change that.
That last thought catches her off-guard, she shakes it, steadies herself on the pre-washed bright navy of his blazer and the logo t-shirt he's wearing underneath.
"Khakis are for old people and Best Buy employees," she informs, and he opens his mouth in a laugh.
Kyle shrugs. "Well, we can't all look like that." His eyes are on her dress, her legs.
Suddenly she feels the cold in a room full of body heat and breath.
Other people in the peripheral are wanting her attention, asking for it with silent eyes. "Well it was nice meeting you, Kyle-"
"Are we good? I mean, can you forgive me for yesterday?"
Violet pretends to consider him, full on too much vodka to have any real animosity for someone so handsome. "I'll think about it, but you will never fuck with my lights again."
Kyle chuckles, "Scout's honor," and waves her off with a low bow. "Nice to meet you, Violet."
She sees his mop of gold bob through the crowd a few times in the next hour. He spends time with each of her paintings and gets involved in tiny conversations over the ones where he lingers.
Violet takes to smiling and nodding again, surrounded by adoration. Most of the people who think they've got her art figured out are so wrong, but she listens patiently to their hairbrained opinions, all the while sipping drink after drink.
By eleven, she's wasted. There aren't enough macarons and finger sandwiches in the room to save her. Her mirror pep talk earlier in the bathrooms about not getting too drunk tonight didn't account for how having eyes all over her and her work would feel. There were just so many people talking at her, pointing, shoulders and chests skating by when she moved.
The lights are too bright and everywhere. She rubs at an eye gone fuzzy and smears eyeliner.
Vivien finds her up against one of the few bare walls attempting to appear sober.
"Hey, honey. How are you?"
Violet just looks. Her eyes are probably glassy. The room spins.
Vivien doesn't take notice. "So, I saw you talking to a tall man earlier. Are you two…" She crosses her fingers with a smile. Violet reaches forward to physically separate them.
"No."
Her mother shrugs. The next time she opens her mouth Violet can see that there's something sad on her tongue.
Fuck no. Not tonight.
She can't think about that tonight.
The crowd parts and she can see Kyle putting on his coat by the door. Violet snaps her arms around Violet in an aggressive hug, "Bye, Mom. I'm not feeling well. Let Dad and everybody know for me okay?" And before Vivien can respond, she is cutting through the dwindling number of people straight for Kyle.
She latches onto his arm, woozy but decisive. "I need to go. Take me home."
Kyle startles and then grins when he sees it's her pawing at his side. "Okay," he replies easily, draping his coat around her shoulders instead of his own.
Shit. She left her coat in the back room. Whatever, it will still be there for the closing reception.
"Yeah, It'll still be there," Kyle agrees, which means her brain to mouth filter has clocked off for the night.
Great.
Fortunately, she sleeps the entire cab ride home.
Kyle holds her hair and bag when she pushes out of the car door to puke against the front of their apartment building.
He pays the driver and carries her up six flights of stairs when she won't stop crying in front of the Out of Order sign on the elevator.
"My hero," she babbles, righting herself with hands on his chest when they reach their floor. "Thanks for the ride, lift, carry. Whatever."
Kyle has been smiling this entire ride home. He must be straight out of a Disney movie. Violet reaches to touch his teeth.
"You're cute."
He tries every key on her ring before the door opens. "You're cute," he shoots back, bending low for her arms when she lifts them. She swings on his neck for a second, feet in the air, smile high, and then drops down and totters into her apartment.
The door is already shut when she remembers to say goodnight.
"Bye!" she yells through the wood.
There's a melodious knock and a quiet, "goodnight," from the other side.
Violet sleeps in her dress on the couch.
When she wakes up Dorian is curled up on the small of her back and there is cat hair in her mouth. The ripe taste of vomit too.
The portrait of an artist.
The texts in her phone from after she left are, for the most part, understanding. Madison left a voicemail demanding they lunch before she jets off to New Zealand to start production on a new movie. Her parents record that they'll both be in town for a few days and hope to spend some time with her when she's free.
Maybe.
She strips and soaks in a bath so hot it turns her skin pink, then brushes her teeth, twice.
Her hangover is vicious.
"Why didn't you start some coffee?" she gripes at Dorian who chirps and follows her into the kitchen, batting after the loose threads hanging from her towel.
It's below freezing outside, snow shaken out of the sky in a lazy flurry. Violet dresses in black fleece-lined leggings and a mustard sweater, wraps her throat with taupe knit.
After lunch, she's going to hole up at home for the rest of the day. Last night filled her social quota for the month at least. Being happy and engaging exhausted Violet. Home alone with a canvas and paint is where she belongs.
Sliding toes cold from hardwood into new sherpa moccasins is orgasmic. Her eyes are half in the back of her head when she opens the front door and nearly trips over a rolled newspaper on her mat.
Violet never put money into a subscription. Print is dead. Still, she picks it up to guess which one of her neighbors is missing the news.
On the front page, off to the right side, there is a little bolded title that's been circled in blue ink.
Her show got a review.
Holy fucking shit.
Buzzing, any sleepiness and nausea temporarily muted, she stuffs the entire paper into her bag to read it together with Madison at the café.
But first she tears off a corner and scribbles a quick Thanks Kyle, stuffing the note under his door because it seriously could not have been anyone else. The entire building hates her.
She doesn't tell Madison about where she got the paper or even mention the neighbor living in 6C; it isn't important. They do, however, flip to page nine together and devour the rectangle of text regarding her show.
They're calling her approach to Memento Mori refreshing and her execution brilliant, claiming that Violet Harmon might be one of the most important blossoming artists in the city.
"Fuck. And they even used a sexy picture of you, I'm jelly. This week's People magazine has a photo of my ass fat on the cover."
On the surface Violet scowls, but deep down she's butterflies.
She's might really fucking make it. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
No more freelance work, putting somebody else's ideas on paper or wasting her talents on soulless advertising.
Free. No longer the little bird with clipped wings, Violet could be really and truly free.
Madison and her gab and sip bloody marys for the better part of an hour, but it's not until Violet gets back home that she feels she can really celebrate.
Taking Dorian into her arms, she spins in a dizzy circle to The Ramones alone in her apartment, slides in socks with the heater breathing warmth.
"We're gonna be okay," she whispers against Dorian's fur, "we really, really are."
Her chest holds a lighter heart than she can ever remember.
Kyle asks her out to dinner that night, and Violet, she says yes. After a shitty college boyfriend, she hasn't watered any new relationships. Home alone on Friday nights suits her better than heartache, but something about Kyle feels easy, harmless.
They go to a Greek restaurant he found during his own days of higher education; it's good. There's no sitting room, and that's fine. Kyle towers over her in a green school sweatshirt and cargo pants while they enjoy gyros and a local band plays in a wide empty corner. Violet wishes they sang about more than girls and fucking, but it's a free show and Kyle looks to be enjoying himself, his head moving in time with the bassline.
Kyle tells her he's originally from Los Angeles then moved to New Orleans when his parents split, then here. He's an engineer, one of the few people lucky enough to find a job straight out of school - reluctantly, Violet high fives him about it.
It's the same twenty questions game she's used to, but tonight doesn't feel like a date. Even though Kyle pays and looks at her mouth when she talks, there's no pressure.
After dinner, they shiverwalk two blocks to the movie theatre. A french independent film just opened the night before, but they end up seeing the new frat pack comedy instead.
The past two days have felt like a cheery made-for-tv movie and the way Kyle kisses her at the end of the night is no different.
"I want to see you again," he says after the mini lip lock, his voice low and his eyes half-shut.
Violet rolls her eyes. "I live across the hall." Her hands are hanging onto the front of his sweatshirt. The door to her apartment is open.
"You can come in if you want," she says, stepping over the threshold, putting a strip of metal between them. Kyle drinks in what he can see of her place from the doormat like it might reveal the secrets of the universe, but politely declines after a moment's temptation.
"Nah, I've gotta be a gentleman about this, but maybe we could go out in a few days?"
It's the beginning of something that doesn't need a name.
Some nights when he's home from work and she's not painting or having awkward dinners with her parents, Kyle will cook or they'll go out. They trade on where to eat and who pays for what and after food, usually they'll go somewhere else, meet up with friends or go for drinks just the two of them.
Most of the time it's easy, but there are conversation snags. Kyle gets skeeved out by her cynicism sometimes and even moreso whenever she talks about anything morbid. Mr. Positive only wants to banter about movies and tv, rage over which of his teams lost the night before.
It doesn't feel like a forever thing and maybe that's what she likes most about the whole idea. Violet doesn't find herself replaying their nights together before sleep, doesn't imagine the fit of his lips against hers when she's painting. He doesn't distract. But he's cute and he's nice to her and it's kind of wonderful knowing you could cut and run without feeling torn open.
They haven't fucked yet, but he's been flat on his back without a shirt on, worn bruises from her mouth under his uniform polos the next morning.
This thing between them is just two stops from innocent.
"I've sold almost all of my pieces," Violet tells him one night, cocooned in babysoft fleece on his sofa. There's a game on, but neither of them are giving it much attention.
Kyle picks a piece of popcorn out of his fingers with his tongue. "Sweet! Doesn't the gallery take a percent though?"
"Yeah, forty," she shrugs, and speaks the rest hidden in layers of blanket with a quiet smile. "But I'm still going to be making like thirteen grand."
His eyes go wide as coins. "No shit?! Congrats, babe!"
She flinches at the pet name, but leans into his offered kiss, pushing happiness through her hands and into his skin.
She's had too many good days. Too many hours without feeling hollow, too many true smiles and finally having a sense of self-worth. Too many good phone calls about art with happy voices on the other end of the line. Too much life.
It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped.
Violet wakes up the Sunday before her closing reception mid-panic attack. Her lungs are made of origami, folded up within themselves without any room for air. Her heart is a stone over coals, melting a hole through the back of her ribs, ready to spit itself onto the sheets.
The dream she'd torn herself from hadn't been fantastical except for the fact that they were together again. Sitting on a riverbank with sandy feet and books, taking pictures of the summertime insects.
Turned over under the blankets with her face pressed down into the mattress, Violet can almost see the different cloud shapes in the neverland sky.
The air outside her covers is freezing.
She drags in breath after breath, pushes out a sob. In, out. In, out.
Why, why, why.
The stage lights go out on everything good in her life, everything being missed. Violet screams against the fluttering ache in her sides from crying, wholly consumed by all that they can no longer share. The opening of her show, the last book of their favorite series, the new restaurant on 8th with the best malted milkshakes in the world.
Every moment is half-experienced alone.
The entire world feels monochrome.
Dorian hops onto the bed and snuggles up on top of the covers. He pushes his nose against the barrier between them, makes a curious sound but Violet remains buried, wringing herself of yet another wave of unbearable loss. They are neverending, still crashing against her with the same force of the very first, years ago.
"I hate you," she grits out, her fury aimed at the universe. It's so horribly unfair, having to push forward alone, living for two.
Her gums are slick from crying, she can't breathe through her nose anymore, just takes wet gulps of the air and sinks.
It's a knock at the door that finally retches her from the bed. Throwing a plum sweatshirt over her sleep shirt and without bothering to change out of thermal pants into anything socially acceptable, Violet answers the door looking through ghosts of tears.
Kyle is standing there holding an empty measuring cup. Something in her belly squeezes, it's like seeing him for the first time.
She can't make out his expression before it turns to something vaguely concerned. "Are you okay?"
No.
Not even a little bit.
She closes her eyes to keep her breathing somewhat even, letting little stutters of breath pass through open lips, and slowly lifts her hands up to Kyle's chest, anchors them in the open flaps of his dark flannel shirt.
He breathes in, a full, long breath that leaves her envious.
Violet surges up to steal it.
The glass in his hand drops. It doesn't break.
In a flurry of movement and wanting to forget, Violet leads him backwards into her apartment, bangs the back of her leg when they fall in a heap back onto the couch.
Their teeth click on accident, but Violet wants him purposely vicious. "Please," she feeds in past his lips, tearing at everything keeping them from touching skin to skin.
Kyle hesitates, pulls out of more than one kiss like he wants to say something, but doesn't. It has never been like this between them.
She speaks over his uncertainty with her hands, her teeth.
"I just really, really need you to fuck me, okay?" she whispers with hardly any voice, her throat in ribbons from remembering. With a tiny amount of distance, she finds his eyes, "can you do that?"
Silence long enough for her to realize her feet are freezing, notice there's stubble on Kyle's jaw.
Violet follows the up-down bob of his adam's apple and then a switch flips.
Hand coming up around her jaw, he presses all of himself more firmly down and takes her mouth, making sounds of his own when she whines. "Like this?"
The strung up ache in his voice drowns a little of Violet's loss, puts things like the pressure from his hips at the forefront of her mind.
Her mouth goes dry. She settles for tying her legs around his waist in answer, maps the expanse of his back with her hands and soothes freshly popped blood vessels in his neck with her tongue.
The whole city block goes lopsided when Kyle strips off her bottoms and fumbles open the fly of his jeans in a clumsy rush to meet her demands. His face against her neck and his shoulderblades winged level with the ceiling, she opens her legs up around him.
"Do it," she breathes, the back of his shirt raked up around her wrists and the heater growling overhead.
Her words roll through him, trickle down every step of his spine, and then he's pushing inside.
Everything from there is a Jackson Pollock painting. Forceful and impulsive, entirely id. The only thing inside her head is wanting to put the drag of their skins on canvas with color.
Her mouth is full of prayer when she comes, shaking.
Kyle pulls the blanket onto her lap that'd been folded on the back of the couch and peels himself away from her, gets back onto his feet before she's back in the atmosphere.
Violet would probably feel the creep of embarrassment if she weren't so fucking blissed out. She unfolds the blanket over her legs and watches him . "Sorry about that."
He doesn't respond, just looks down at her shaped like a comma on the couch with a nest of hair around the sides of her face, then turns to pick his shirt from where Dorian's snoozing on the floor.
Violet scrambles up to sit, blinks everything back into focus.
"When did you get that?" she asks slowly, pointing at Kyle's arm. On his left tricep there's a dotwork tattoo of some kind of bird skull. "I thought you hated tattoos."
The muscles in Kyle's back shift, reminding her of the way feathers ruffle. He doesn't turn to face her again, pulls on his flannel one arm at a time looking at the door.
"He does."
Tate.
The tall blond that fucked her into a coma earlier in the day was not Kyle, but Kyle's brother.
Twin brother.
Violet discovers this and more during a phone call with Kyle. She doesn't mention anything about how she and this Tate really met, feeds Kyle an easy lie that she'd seen him and his bird tattoo in the hall earlier.
Getting her head around the idea that there are two of them takes a while.
Twins. Her insides whine.
"Yeah he's staying with me for awhile."
Fucking his twin, even though it had been without her knowledge, feels like a betrayal. And Kyle is nice, he likes her.
Violet holds the phone with one shoulder, mixing up a salad on the kitchen counter. "Why?"
Silence on the other end of the line.
"Just until he gets into a new place," Kyle says quickly, and then, "do you want to do something tonight?"
Subconsciously she shifts on her feet, the ache of Tate earlier still between her thighs. "I've got some phone calls to make, art stuff. But tomorrow, yeah?"
"Sure. Night, babe."
Violet hangs up.
She eats without the tv or music on, sits on the couch where she'd come apart just this afternoon and feeds Dorian little slivers of cheese.
With the sun gone again, the unbearable strand of thought from this morning presents itself again, always lurking just below any temporary respite, but she doesn't cry. She presses her legs more firmly together under the blanket over her knees and remembers Kyle's brother with his breath in her ear and his hands holding her, pinning her in place for his hips.
The entire situation should revolt her, and it does - Tate will be sporting a black eye tomorrow - but it just felt so fucking good too. A loss of control she hasn't allowed in forever.
After midnight, Dorian hogging up half her pillow, Violet falls asleep and dreams of double.
Kyle surprises her the next afternoon with tickets to a basketball game.
"Sports are stupid," she says, sitting cross-legged in front of a new painting. The brush in her hand is still.
Working with others around feels strange. Her color exchange is private.
Ever optimistic, Kyle just laughs. "Whatever. Seeing them live is fun. Shitty food and beer and yelling, what's not to love?"
Violet eyes him from the floor.
"Come on."
Her to-do list is empty, lunch with Vivien and a hundred emails checked off. She folds with a long-suffering sigh. "Fine, but give me like twenty minutes to look a little less homeless."
He smiles, does a little happy boy victory dance. "Yesyesyes. Okay, just come over when you're ready."
Evil twin is sprawled across an armchair reading when she lets herself in. He's not just wearing different clothes than Kyle, but a different face altogether. It's settled into a quiet scowl. (How did she ever think he was Kyle?)
His eyes pull up from the pages at the click of the door. Violet is wearing a burnt orange sweater over a light denim shirt, her twiggy little legs peeking out in their usual black leggings.
"Hi," he says, expression plain. His eyes look so much darker than Kyle's, their stare is heavy. Above one cheek is a purple-black crescent from her fist.
It is physically painful to keep from branding a red mark shaped like her palm across his cheek to match, but Violet manages, screws her mouth up into a wry grin. "Hi."
She feels his eyes all through the apartment. Kyle is in the kitchen shaking up mixed drinks. "Hey you."
Good twin beams and reaches to pinch at her cheek. "You're so cute it's annoying. Have you met my brother, Tate?"
Her eyes roll on their own, settle where Tate is spread out in his chair. The book in his hands looks old, the title too small to read from here but printed in gold on dark leather. "Kinda. Why aren't you going?" she asks, voice raised in the long room.
Tate raises an eyebrow. "Sports are a fucking joke, like Bieber concerts for middle-aged men."
Violet doesn't want to laugh. She chugs the drink Kyle has just poured them and follows his quick exit. doesn't let her eyes wander this time. "Okay, bye."
It's so loud in the stadium, whistles and drunks and those clappers people hold at either end of the court to distract the players.
Violet has three beers and some of Kyle's nachos. He cheers and groans with the crowd, peeks through his fingers when the other team's lead grows in the fourth quarter. She halves her time laughing at his reactions and trying to guess what Tate had been reading.
Probably something depressing, or fucked up.
After, Violet pets Kyle's hair in the back of the cab. His head is in her lap, one arm hugging her shins. "I told you. Sports are stupid."
Kyle isn't really sulking, but he huffs. "Shut up, you."
Usually this is where the night ends. Out of the taxi and up the elevator, but Violet doesn't kiss Kyle goodnight and disappear. She follows him into his dark apartment and lets him lead.
They're both in giggles over some crazy guy from the elevator. Kyle presses his finger against her mouth.
"Shhhh, my brother is asleep."
"That beer was disgusting."
Kyle hiccups. "I know."
She wants the feeling of yesterday. The total eclipse of every bigbad in her head. She reels herself in against Kyle's chest somewhere near the 4-disc stereo and talks to the dark. "Let's go in your room."
Kyle feels out for Violet's face with one hand, cups her cheek so gently. "Okay."
These apartments are only one bedrooms. Tate must be somewhere out in the black, sleeping on the couch or not.
They make it to bed and bury under covers. Violet takes off her leggings and the button-down under her sweater. Kyle strips until he's just in boxers and pj pants. She's glad the dark spares her the Superman print.
"So, maybe we try baseball next?" Kyle whispers, scooting into Violet's space, putting his arm around her shoulders.
Violet makes gagging sounds. He kisses her quiet.
It starts slow and simple, but Violet doesn't want that. Early on she tips up to straddle Kyle, her hair irritating and everywhere.
His hands are featherlight on her waist, even his mouth is cautious.
"Do you want to have sex?" she asks bluntly, rolling down over where Kyle's hard. Are Tate and him identical? Dicks too?
He does want to.
They do.
It isn't like it was with Tate. She doesn't give herself over, can't disappear into the rhythm of them together. Kyle holds her like she might break and for every push-pull of their bodies she is too present, too aware.
With Tate everything was raw. Need and flow. Like painting.
After, Kyle holds her up against his chest and they talk about nothing.
"My closing reception is this Sunday. Do you want to come?" she asks, a little sweaty, her skin sticky where they're touching.
"Like a date?" His voice is a tease.
"Whatever."
"I'll be there."
In the morning Kyle wakes up early to make her an omelette before work and sits at the table while she eats.
Halfway through he notes the time on the microwave. "Holy shit, I've gotta go." Sharing a peck, he grabs his bag and keys from the chair and bolts. "Take your time, stay 'til whenever. See ya, babe."
The door clicks while her mouth is still full. Kyle is a pretty great cook.
"Morning, babe."
Tate materializes from nowhere and takes a seat opposite her at the table. His nose is wrinkled in mocking distaste.
Violet shoves in another forkful, speaks with her mouth open. "Fuck off."
He's wearing a dark red sweater with a stretched collar that shows his throat and plaid sleep pants with no socks. Under one ear is the tiny flower of a bruise she made.
"You didn't tell my brother about us."
Tate's sudden reveal of the elephant in the room pulls Violet's eyes. She regards him with a scowl and stabs at another hunk of egg. "There is no us."
His smile is infuriating.
"And neither did you."
It only grows into a full display of white teeth. They look just the same as Kyle's. Everything is so identical about the two, yet underneath cotton and skin they couldn't be more different.
Kyle is blue skies and a bird's song. Tate is the glaring grey before a storm.
His eyes are dark and tired, but they remain intently upon her while she eats and takes loud, obnoxious sips between mouthfuls. Violet won't be herded from the apartment.
"Don't you have a job?" she fishes from the kitchen sink with her back to him, scrubbing veggie bits down the drain.
Chair legs squeal over hardwood. Tate is next to her a moment later, crowding in front of the sink to wash out the mug she'd left at the table. "I'm an independent contractor," he says, close enough that his words stir the hair framing one cheek.
Violet rolls her eyes. "What does that even mean? For what companies?" She pads across the tile and back into Kyle's room to grab her bag, the pj pants he'd lent her sweeping up dust bunnies, miles too long.
Tate props up in the doorway. "It's boring." His sleeves are now pushed up past his elbows, forearms corded with muscle and folded; it's distracting. "Kyle tells me you're an artist."
She nods, hooking two fingers into the heel tags on her boots. "I paint."
A six foot shadow follows her to the door, even gets it open when she lifts full hands uselessly at the knob.
It's awkward, leaving now, like the end of a date. Waiting for a kiss or an easy let down.
Violet shuts her eyes against it, presses through the doorway with a quick, "later, evil twin," but then there's a hand around her arm, fingers almost able to touch their thumb. She feels porcelain-made but it isn't the same feeling Kyle inspires. He holds her like he's terrified she might chip. Tate grips aware that closing his fist would do damage, and choosing not to.
Her traitorous skin blooms under his rough palm.
Only when she looks back viciously does he release her. "Goodbye, Violet," he says without a smirk, and is still standing at the threshold of his brother's apartment when her own door shuts.
Violet throws herself into canvas for the next six days. She paints with broad strokes of gold and the darkest, velvet brown, creates impossible chiaroscuro landscapes with disappearing depth.
There's never any time gaps between series. She is always creating, getting lost in motion and color. Painting becomes gravity, grounds her reckless mind. And it has become so untameable lately. Kyle was supposed to be easy, fun, but with the introduction of Tate their rhythm is a mess.
Morrissey pours out from under the door of Kyle's apartment while good twin is at work. One afternoon it sounds like things being thrown. Wednesday after a shower, Violet finds a thin book slipped underneath her own: Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. There's a note on the inside cover.
Ever read?
-T
She gets rainbow fingerprints all over the pages that day devouring it, peering into them over a bowl of soup, only resting the spine when her eyes get heavy.
Kyle is light. He asks for nothing but her company.
Tate isn't easy that way.
The day before the closing reception, Violet texts Kyle during a smoke break on the patio. She pushes a little hill of snow over the edge with her shoe, pulling smoke.
You better look good tomorrow.
His reply is instantaneous.
For you, duh. :-P
Despite herself, she smiles, rocks back on two legs and wonders about what's next.
That night she doesn't cry about what is lost but looks forward. What happens after the show ends? She'd been working towards her own solo exhibition for so long and before that, graduating. This is the first time in Violet's adult life that the next step is unchoreographed.
There don't have to be blond boys or even this cityscape in the next year. Nothing is keeping her hair, she's not tied to anywhere in fact.
It's scary, but with Dorian curled around her head and purring, she gets enough sleep.
"Yeah, seven. You can just come over if you want." Violet has Kyle on speakerphone, busy shimmying into a burgundy dress with long sleeves and a white peter pan collar.
The closing reception is generally more intimate than the opening. There will be friends and family, perhaps a few people who haven't had a chance to see the show yet.
Ben had a patient crisis to deal with, but Vivien flew back in.
"I'm stuck at work losing my mind over a deadline. I'll meet you though. Save me one of those little pink desserts."
Violet rolls on thick black tights. "Yeah, yeah. It's barbaric that they've got you in on a Sunday, but fine. See you there."
Dressed and made back up into a pretty false front, Volet spends time at the long mirror with eyes unfocused to see double.
Another night that can't be shared.
She's crying when the cab door shuts and throughout most of the ride, re-applies makeup at the curb with the meter still running. "Thanks."
The curator greets her at the door, her voice a happy buzz. Sales have been incredible. Nearly every piece has sold. The woman makes Violet promise she will show her next exhibition here.
From there she is handed off to friends and family. Ben's tart is there: Hayden. She and Violet hover before engaging in an awkward side-hug.
"Shit, little girl. Everything looks awesome. If you're going for some deeper meaning, I don't really get it, but it's eye candy, that's for fucking sure."
Violet rolls her lips. "Yep, thanks. Glad you could make it out." And with that she moves on, only capable of so much civility when it comes to one of the factors in her parents' divorce.
Acquaintances from school have heard of her success through the grapevine. They all demand selfies and impromptu critiques from her of whatever bullshit they're currently working on.
Nobody, not even the gallery owner, comments on her drunkenness or abrupt departure before.
Kyle is standing apart from the crowds with the largest painting, wearing an emerald blazer, and light brown corduroy pants.
Tate, not Kyle.
His aborted attempt at a cheery hello deflates. "You're good," he sighs, but still moves in to clip her cheek with a kiss. "Kyle couldn't make it, tagged me in."
Violet feels for her phone, remembering that her dress didn't have pockets.
Tate grins. "Yeah, he tried calling you."
"Well, fuck. I don't need a chaperone. You don't have to be here. You can go. I only thought, maybe he would want to come."
A friend in her sightline gathers Violet's attention with a little wave and then proceeds to make questioning wide eyes at Tate.
Violet shakes her head, the gesture causing Tate to turn and look too. He puts an arm around her shoulders and nods.
The friend giggles.
"Asshole," she mutters, shaking his arm and retreating to where her mother is talking with the man serving drinks in the back.
Vivien hands off her cocktail with a smile. "Hey, girly. How's it going?"
Violet takes the glass and sips. She folds into Vivien's arms and squeezes tight with one hand. "It's good."
When she pulls back something sad passes over her mother's face during the short silence and Violet splinters.
Tonight, she chooses not to ignore.
"Everything is so hard without her," she breathes, fighting to remain calm. "It's never going to get any easier."
Vivien rubs over her back in comforting little circles. "I know. But she would have been so proud of you. And probably a little jealous too."
They both laugh wetly, wiping underneath eyes to stay running mascara.
Somebody in the back turns on a stereo, delicate classical music descends upon the crowd.
"So, who's the boy? I saw him at the last event."
Violet is still standing with closed eyes, fighting tears. They open and slide over to Tate across the room after a moment. She opens her mouth to correct her mother, explain that they are two very different boys, but only shrugs.
"Just this guy from my building."
Vivien jostles her playfully. "He's cute."
Violet laughs and steps out of the conversation, away from the topic of twins and back to where Tate is reaching inside his jacket for a cigarette. His eyes lift at the pit-pat of her shoes. "Want one?"
He had been too far away to hear her talk with Vivien, to see her cry.
"Okay."
They leave after ten, Tate hanging back while Violet hands out farewells, hugging her mother twice. Arrangements will be made for her pieces that have been sold. A check should find her within the week. Any remaining paintings will need to be picked up within the next day or two, before the next artist installs. Someone will remind her of all this tomorrow.
Violet is drunk, but not embarrassingly so. Just enough to teeter between chatty and sad. She plays Tetris the entire cab ride back. "High score, motherfucker," she informs the driver. His eyes in the rearview mirror are unimpressed.
It's fucking freezing out, but Violet isn't wearing a coat. She lights up after Tate is already inside the building. He's waiting in the lobby when she's done.
"You're pretty good," he tells her, letting her lead to the elevator. "What draws you to impressionism?"
Violet steps into the lift. "Shut up."
He smiles, takes the Zippo in her hand. "Were you crying earlier?"
That gets her full attention, round brown eyes rolling all the way up his face. Even with a scowl, her lip trembles.
"Why?"
"None of your fucking business."
They're quiet the rest of the way up and through the hall. Inside, Violet is a storm. She just wants to get inside her apartment and out of these clothes, she wants to fall apart in quiet.
Fumbling through her coat pockets for keys, there are new tears stinging to be loosed.
"You can't end the night like this," Tate says at his own door, watching her. "Come here."
Violet shakes her head, wipes at her eyes with each shoulder, still looking.
Then there's a hand around her wrist pulling, two arms for when she stumbles forward into the dark.
Tate's voice is in her ear. "Don't be sad," he says, steadying Violet against his chest. He spins her to face him and brushes over her cheekbone with his thumb.
Everything underneath her skin lights up, drowns out the very rational reasoning of her brain.
In the light of the windows, she stays very still and lets Tate smooth his hands down her neck, over her shoulders, settling them around her arms. His lips are soft and cool when they touch down again on her cheek, the edge of her jaw. Moving her curtain of blonde, his kisses descend the side of her throat, stopped only by the high collar of her dress.
"Why do I want you like this," he wonders aloud, guiding the zipper at her nape down, down, down.
Dark red pools around her ankles on hardwood. The light from outside makes her skin look almost white against the black of her underwear.
Tate's hands are everywhere at once, mapping out each slight curve and dip. Soon, he's on his knees holding her waist with his lips just to the right of her bellybutton
Violet absently sifts curls of blond through her fingers, a little dizzy on her feet. "I'm dating Kyle," she says, disrupting the rhythm of him breathing. There are no intentions behind her words, maybe not even any truth.
The grip on her hips flinches tight. "Why?" he asks so feathersoft against her tummy, top teeth strumming the elastic of her underwear.
She opens her mouth to reply, but any words are forced aside by a low moan. Tate coaxes her legs apart with gentle fingers on her thighs and puts his mouth over her cunt, presses his tongue up against thin cotton. The heat of it alone makes it near impossible to remain standing. She grips at his hair and sways.
It's a key in the door brings them both back to the real world. Tate is on his knees and Violet is mostly naked and Kyle is out in the hall.
Fuck.
Violet gulps for air like a man drowned and bolts for the bathroom with her dress. There isn't time to stitch herself back into full composure. Quickly, she dresses and after a false flush, resurfaces.
Kyle is on her immediately. "I'm so sorry, babe," he's saying, hugging her close, kissing her crown. "My boss is a fucking asshole, wouldn't let anybody leave. How did it go?"
Drifting in the family room, Tate holds her attention over Kyle's shoulder; his eyes are hard. She looks instead to the door.
"Good, it was good. But I'm fucking tired. Call me tomorrow?"
Kyle relaxes at the lack of venom in her voice. "Of course. Sweet dreams."
She can't dodge his kiss, feels guilty twice over but leaves with a painted on smile.
"Night, boys."
Tate's stare has teeth. It's still hooked into her skin even after she's back in the safety of her own apartment and weighted down under blankets in bed.
Violet trails her fingers down the path he took with his mouth just before sleep takes her, hollow little hips rocking up into her hand, chasing that feeling she left back in 6C with the wrong brother.
Kyle calls that next afternoon. His 'hello, how are you' sits in Violet's voicemail all day.
She isn't out of bed until noon, cries under the covers for a while and texts her friends. They're all revved up about a spoken word happening in the evening.
Maybe, she sends them. Time away from her apartment and without the boys next door might do her mental state some good.
Tomorrow she will go down to the gallery.
The sky shifts from brittle grey into a dark blue-black and all the while Violet sits with paint. It's not until a young man brings chinese takeout around six that she's woken from the flow art pulls her into.
Veggie chow mein works miracles on her mood; she chews loudly. Dorian sits one cushion over to watch her eat, nibbling little bits of noodle when Violet allows.
"Sorry, no chicken," she tells him when he sticks his face into her carton with an irritated mrow.
The fortune cookie is delicious, but she wants to set the little slip of paper that spills out on fire. It lays curved atop her knee, pink lottery letters showing through the words.
The cure for grief is motion.
Violet tears the phrase into confetti for Dorian to chew and spit, then heads into her room to change: a black sweater and muted green cords.
Her fingers fly over the screen of her phone in little ticks.
I'm in. Meet you there.
The spoken word is fantastic. A local poet that goes by the name Queenie rocks the microphone, spitting capital-T truths and after, everyone goes in for shots at the bar.
She gets back home at almost three a.m., her footfalls heavier than is strictly polite at such a late hour.
Tate is digging for keys when she gets onto their floor. Is it coincidence she's always running into him and not Kyle now?
Too drunk to be quiet, Tate's eyes cut to where she's tip-toeing down the hall.
"Drinking to forget?" His tone is bitter.
Violet toddles over to stand right in front of him. "Can we not do this right now?" And then up close, she sees. "What the fuck?"
What happened?
Tate's knuckles are swollen and slick with browning blood. There's a cut in his lip and bruising that's just starting to surface across the bridge of his nose. His teeth are messy when he smiles.
Violet looks at him extra-long, until the irrational smile fades and Tate sghs. "I didn't hurt Kyle, okay? So you can stop pretending to give a shit."
Then his door is open and Tate is gone.
For the next month Violet stays away from Kyle and Tate when she can help it, even though it's a shitty thing to do. Kyle doesn't deserve her cold shoulder, he's done nothing wrong, still in the dark about so much.
Sometimes at night she'll take his calls, talk in whispers under the blankets like she's past curfew, but when Kyle asks to see her, she shuts down, gives him a quiet goodnight.
It's better this way. Less hurt.
Ben ships her an old typewriter for Christmas. It sits on Violet's coffee table for two weeks before she finds a place for it by the window and feeds in a sheet of blank paper. Vivien sends a camera, something expensive with spare lenses and a leather bag to hold it all.
It's perfect.
Photography becomes her new distraction. Violet takes pictures of absolutely everything, macros of bugs in the plants on her patio and portraits of Dorian asleep, long exposure landscapes of the sun's ascent in the east.
Her coffee table is littered with prints needing frames. The little remaining white space on her walls disappears beneath grainy Black And Whites.
She spends New Year's Eve with old friends in an expensive suite. Madison kisses her twice, Leah too. Her lips are a kaleidoscope of pinks and reds by the end of the night. They write down impossible resolutions and then light the corners with cigarette breaths.
Some days facing the day feels impossible. She stays hidden.
Emails flood in about her paintings.
A gallery in San Francisco wants her for a group exhibition to showcase contemporary talents from all over the country.
Life progresses despite Violet's frequent breakdowns and misdirection.
One cold weekday in January she wakes up with an artistic itch in blossom. It demands now, now, now.
Everyone in her contacts is either working or asleep. Nobody answers the phone.
Violet pops out of bed and throws a wool cardigan over her thermal, skips out of her apartment wearing grey sweater leggings and knocks before her brain has a chance to power up all the way.
It's well over a minute before the door opens. Black t-shirt and red sweats swing into view: Tate. He looks half-asleep, eyes opening fractions wider at the sight of Violet standing there. "Hey."
A rush of something tumbles into her belly and out through her skin in tingles at the simple sight of him. Shaking the sensation, she nods. "Yes, hi. What are you doing right now?"
He raises a brow, wipes the crust of drool from the side of his mouth. "Sleeping. What do you want?"
"Shower, then come over."
Twenty minutes later Tate is sitting on a rug of newspaper with his bangs clipped back by a black X of bobby pins.
Violet is draping his face in colors, camera shuttered safely at her hip.
"Please tell me this is not lead-based," Tate groans, and she giggles.
"Don't move."
His chest is bare except for a few tendrils of burnt sienna that trail over cheek and throat and clavicle.
Dorian nudges against a pointed knee with his nose before settling at Tate's side.
Some of the paint is starting to chip around his mouth and eyebrows, Violet doesn't mind. It adds texture. "I thought you were only staying with your brother for a little while," she prods casually.
The energy in the room feels charged, but not with the same gnawing need only he seems capable of inciting.
Tate half-shrugs before he forgets and stiffens. "He was doing me a favor at the beginning, now I think me staying is good for him. He's lonely."
Violet pauses to snap a few pictures of her process, prickled with guilt. "Did you live with him in New Orleans? What was that like? I've always wanted to visit."
The paint chips at the hinge of his jaw when Tate breathes sharp. "No, I didn't. When our parents split he went with Dad, left me with my mother," he says slowly. The tendon in his neck is a thick line of reigned distress.
She hides the hurt and anger in his face with broad strokes of dark blue, fires off more photos. There's a depth in his eyes that transfers, it leaves her lungs empty the way good art tends to.
"Do you have any siblings?" Tate asks after a pause, closes his eyes for her paintbrush.
Violet cuts a jagged line of scarlet down his ear and neck. The rinsing cup slips through her fingers and spills muddy water all over the carpet.
Tate watches it soak in. "Violet?"
She knows by his stare that she must look pale, a haunted house that moves and breathes. "I did," she says, the confession fragile, tiny.
Letting someone else in on the tragedy that is losing half your world doesn't make anything easier. It isn't a weight lifted, just another reminder that this is real, living with absence. A puzzle with a missing piece shaped like her favorite person.
Tate looks helpless for a long moment, watching Violet's face flood with sadness, and then moves, crawls past tubes of paint to reach out. His fingers curls up underneath Violet's ear, into her hair. "I'm so sorry, Violet."
She sags into the comfort of his kiss, opens up under his mouth, but for only a second.
Wrongness blankets her in panic; she forces him back. "How could you do this to Kyle?" she quivers, "he's your brother-your twin! And he likes me."
Tate is stunned by her rejection for a beat, then his own face turns sour. She fights against him collecting her in his arms. "He doesn't deserve you. You're not like him, Violet. Not nice or simple, ready to settle down and watch sitcoms with 2.5 kids and a labradoodle."
Violet stands and then they're both up, the space between them livid. "You don't know anything about me," she accuses.
"You're wrong, we're the same." His voice is even, it coaxes, but Violet thrashes when he drifts near (even though he's right, they are).
"No! Kyle is your twin. Why don't you fucking cherish that? Nobody will ever understand you the way he does, will ever feel the way you do!" She's bubbling into hysterics. How could Tate have Kyle and not think their relationship precious, sacred? It isn't fair.
Any pretense of calm lifts. Tate scores slashes into his painted face with bitten nails. His face twists and the rainbow cracks. "Kyle left! He abandoned me with my mother and never looked back. Living with the sane parent meant he got good grades and a scholarship for college. Me, on the other hand? I went to juvenile hall. I don't owe that motherfucker anything."
Violet shrinks down, curls into a ball on the floor and covers her ears, her face.
"You could know me, Violet," Tate says, careful again. He crouches next to her and puts a hand on her back.
She's shaking with silent sobs, split down the middle. With Tate there is the glimpse of an intangible bond so reminiscent of what she had with Zoe, but indulging in it feels like betraying what she and her sister shared. Watching Tate disregard his connection with Kyle, allowing herself to be an accomplice to that, makes her stomach churn.
"Get out."
There's still pressure on her back, a hand carding through her hair to secure a lock behind an ear, the dusting of affection against one cheek.
His touch is too much, she's too sensitive for it. Even fingertips hurt.
Violet uncoils to shove at Tate's chest, screams her throat raw. "Go away!"
Then he's gone and she disappears completely into the ugly comfort of mourning.
Kyle calls three days later.
"Can I see you?"
Her feeble dismissal is overridden. There's a knock at the door and determination against her ear.
"Open the door, Violet."
There are ruined shreds of canvas all over the apartment. Kyle tiptoes over them as though they are still worth something and crushes Violet into a hug she can't deny.
"I've missed you," he says into the warmth of her neck. The open sadness in his voice sits like lead in her belly.
There's nothing to say for it. Violet leads him to the couch and curls up at his side in day-old clothes. "I'm sorry, for everything."
Kyle shakes his head, tips up her face. "Shut up, it's fine. I never wanted to trap you, okay? So you're into my brother-I owe him a little happiness anyway. I can live with that, but I don't want it to mean we can't hang out."
Of course he would be understanding, a fratty Disney prince. Violet picks at the hem of his bright green polo, rests her knees against his thigh.
Her devastation lifts in layers.
"I'm a piece of shit. I shouldn't have ignored you. Stop being so cool about everything."
Kyle laughs. "I'm the cool brother," he says, smiling less high than he used to, but the crescent of stunning white makes Violet's own smile start and soar.
'We could always have a threesome?"
There's a beat of silence. "Ew, sicko!"
It's light and easy the way he's always been. Violet lets herself leak a little joy and quickly they shift into friendly chatter.
He tells her about his Christmas back in New Orleans and New Years, the desperate housewife that had jumped him for a kiss when the ball dropped. She shares the pictures on her camera of Tate wearing paint and Kyle asks if he can pose too. "Obviously, you're both handsome as fuck."
"That's very true. So what's your game plan with Tate anyway?"
Violet wilts over his lap, pulls a curtain of blonde over her face. "I don't want to talk about him."
A hand threads into her hair, clearing out tangles. "Damnit, why aren't there two of you?" he teases, then spends the next five minutes apologizing profusely and soothing her back towards sanity. "Shit, babe. I had no idea."
But after they say goodbye that evening with long hugs and plans for the weekend, Violet sleeps soundly through the entire night, dreams of four people with two faces and doesn't wake up crying.
With Kyle's easy forgiveness, everything shifts into perspective.
Violet isn't violet at all. She's closer to plum or thistle, every color out in autumn. Muted greens and tans, red more like changing leaves than apples.
Inside, her palette looks like Tate's.
From that first mistake meeting he had been olive and burgundy, grey like the sky when it rains and you're warm beside the window.
Kyle wasn't quiet colors. He beamed lush greens and citrus orange, summer in full swing.
He didn't fit like Tate and Violet together, too loud to be cohesive, but they both needed his warmth, the hopeful sliver of blue during a monochrome winter.
It was simple, it was color theory.
She wakes the next morning full of sleep, eyes lifting open clear, not puffed up from crying. From the light, it must still be early. The sky is a watery blue, the air outside the covers is crisp.
There's no rush to meet the day. Violet remains in bed, lets only her arm leave the comfort of blankets and only to retrieve a cup of water from the night before.
Somewhere in the main room, Dorian is skittering after a ball that jingles.
A few minutes later, the knob on the front door ticks like it's being turned this way and that. It doesn't warrant worry, probably just someone on the wrong floor with the wrong address.
Tate appears in the open doorway of her room.
"Oh."
He's wearing a copper striped sweater and dark denim jeans. The look on his face is careful, it reminds her of Kyle.
She watches without more words as he toes out of his shoes where she leaves her own in the corner, and approaches the bed, lifting back the covers and sliding in next to her.
There's no hesitation in letting him get up real close so that their legs are touching. "Hi," he says, but the softness in his voice does nothing to stir the silence in her room.
Violet brings one hand up to lay over the side of his neck, the ends of her fingers reaching to disturb his wild curls. "Hi."
Even just being together like this, when Violet closes her eyes she feels him everywhere. The touch of his palm against her back blots out a little of the emptiness she is always carrying around. With both hands against her skin he's able to hold in all the good.
"How'd you get in here?" Violet wonders, rubbing the soles of her bare feet over his socks.
Tate smiles more with his eyes than mouth. "I know how to pick a lock."
The tips of his fingers are cold against her lip. She doesn't care how he got in, just that he's breathing mint in her bed, under the covers.
She hums at the feel of his frozen skin meeting her sleepy-warm face. He kisses each corner of her mouth in affectionate ritual before tilting her jaw for a proper exchange.
Violet blooms into the kiss, taking time hugging each of Tate's lips between her own, sucking at the little swells of rosy pink that spend so much time as a scowl when she's not around.
"My pretty percocet," Tate sighs, rolling her up to straddle his hips, the two of them safe under the blankets still.
Innocent exploration gives way to the little twitch-push of her pelvis. Violet eases him out of his sweater and her own thermal, slinks out of her bra.
In bed with her he's warming up. His chest isn't so chilly when she lays down over it again and puts her lips under his chin.
Her wanting comes in pulses, beating drags of need that scrape all the way through her and then lift just long enough to pull a breath. "I wish I could paint this."
Tate kneads his fingers into the dimples of her lower back. "Paint what?"
"This," she stresses, meaning the way his bare sides feel against the inside of her knees and the look he gives under heavy lids and whatever it is about Tate being near that feels like flying.
They slip-slide slowly against one another and work out of the rest of their clothes. Tate rolls to cover Violet again and fills her with his fingers. One, two, she paws at his calves with her feet, makes half-sounds while he watches. "Good girl," he praises, thumb against her pulse point.
Violet kisses the pad of that same thumb moments later, lets Tate pull open her jaw and press against the wet pink of her tongue. She closes her lips around the intrusion and laves, tugs with both hands over his shoulder blades wanting for his weight. "Please."
His fingers leave her empty but only to help pin up one thigh against her chest. Another hollow breath, an involuntary "fuck," and Tate's sinking.
The slow connection punches air from the pair of them. Violet gets one ankle hooked up over his shoulder when Tate folds down tight against her, his forehead touching her collarbone.
An electric current bounces under her skin between Tate's mouth working its way down her breast and the unhurried rhythm of empty, full.
"Feels so good," she tells him in little snags of sound. His hands pulling her hips to move deeper, her heart that isn't beating with a broken wing, his hair against her throat. Her place in the universe.
This thing with Tate belongs at the Guggenheim museum, the Louvre, locked up behind bars or glass.
The images behind her eyes upon orgasm are modern art.
Her legs tremble. Inside, she sings.
The come down last forever, the two of them side by side with sweaty chests looking into the ceiling. Violet's got her right leg wrapped with Tate's right. The hair at the back of her head is in tangles.
"I can't believe you fucked me under false pretenses," she sighs some time later, and it takes him a minute to realize she's talking about before they knew each other.
Stirred, he turns up onto his side and draws fingertips over the slick skin covering her ribs. "Yeah, that was fucked up, let's just scratch it from the record-but I do have to say that you were pretty goddamn demanding."
Her face breaks into a shy smile at the memory. "Whatever."
They spend the day naked in bed until hunger draws them out, then dress and leave the apartment linked. Tate doesn't let go of her hand all the way down the stairs and into a taxi.
The breakfast menu during lunchtime and a silent film from the twenties, dinner at home out of cartons and a hundred kisses but not one of them goodbye.
Six months later Violet's second solo exhibition opens. The gallery stays at occupancy for hours, the reception is incredible.
Hanging all over white walls are huge photo prints starring the people she loves wearing paint. Madison in purple kissing Leah halved with green. Ben with stripes of dark blue all down his cheeks and chin. Vivien blinking through a blindfold of rose.
Alone on one wall is the biggest print of all. Inside of it are two boys, one of them dressed in lifeless hues and the other camouflaged with brilliance.
Outside the frame they mingle at her sides while guests sweep past to ooh and ah. Kyle is happy to chat with people that recognize him from the picture, but Tate stays in orbit wherever Violet drifts.
He's dressed in a dark grey sweater and wheat-colored jeans. Vivien reaches to adjust the white collar that peeks above his collar. "You must be Tate," she beams.
Violet waves off the woman she'd been speaking with and curls her fingers around the hem of Tate's sleeve. "Yeah, yeah. Let's make this fast. Tate, Mom. Mom, Tate."
They shake on the introduction, but Viven isn't through yet. "You were at Violet's last receptions," she says, shaking a knowing finger. "I remember now. Or was it your brother?"
Violet and he trade a quick look, she shrugs. "Who knows. It's hard to keep track with twins."
"Don't I know," Vivien chuckles quietly, and neither of them trade sad eyes. They both feel Zoe here . "So, Tate, what do you do for a living?"
Seconds pass.
"He's a bank robber," Violet says lightly, leading Tate then from her mother's worried laugh.
Kyle rounds on them seconds later with a cream puff in one hand. "Hey, lovebirds. Ready to go?"
"Yeah, just let me tell everyone bye."
Tate smokes outside while Kyle texts on his phone, the two of them talking. Violet exchanges emails and cheek-kisses with potential connections and promises to call her parents in the morning to schedule some kind of get together with each of them, separately.
"Bye guys!" The entire room chimes back.
It had been exhilarating, but holed up with so many people to engage takes everything out of her. She naps for most of the cab ride home, curled up with her head in Tate's lap and her legs folded in Kyle's. Tate carries her in the elevator, turns right where she used to turn left and leads the way to their apartment. Fresh roses are tied together in a tall glass of water on the table from earlier in the evening. Some of her paintings are on the walls between action movie posters and venue placards.
Kyle flips on the television and flops down with Dorian quick to settle on the headrest nearby.
"Night, Kyle," Violet yawns, on her feet again to kick out of shoes and fish for a bottle of water in the fridge. Tate is already in their room stripping down to just boxers.
An arm pops up and waves by the tv. "Ni' night. See you in the morning. The show was awesome, babe. Ten out of ten, would recommend."
Bruce Willis' voice fills the front room, followed by a string of ridiculous explosions.
She leaves Boy A to his movies, drawn to the back of the apartment for Boy B.
There's still a hole in her heart and bones that aches so bad she thinks she might not make it some days, but living here with Heart and Soul has helped to finally turn the volume down on Violet's grief. The portrait of Zoe they'd hung for her together in the family room as a surprise was only one of a thousand reasons she knows this is all caps: MEANT TO BE.
Violet wiggles out of her periwinkle dress and hangs it back in the closet, wanting to waste no time before she's crawling up into bed and squirming over to Tate's side. His laugh is a pleased rumble against her chest.
"What's so funny?"
Tate feels up along the underwire of her bra with greedy fingers and laughs again, right into her hair. "I can't believe you told your mom that I was a bank robber."
Violet wraps her arms and legs around him, her missing piece found, and lets loose her own laugh into the sticky summertime air, into his lips that descend to smother it.
"Fingers crossed she never notices you on the news."
A/N: Thanks for reading, babes! If you dug this universe, rejoice, because Gray Glube is writing an amazing sequel to this that should be out sometime. c: