A/N: Okay, so this drabble is a gift fic for jandjsalmon. Happy birthday, sunnyside! You have done so much for this fandom, hosting the AHS exchanges and keeping us all in line with loving Parmiga, etc. But more importantly, you are one of my favorite people. So even though I said I was done writing AHS fic for a while, I just couldn't not write something for you, which ScarlettWoman710 then coerced me into posting here. Much love, Jandy! I hope your birthday is superduper awesomesauce!
There's nothing spectacular about the day everything changes, other than it being unusually nice out for August, nice enough that Tate opts to sleep out on the front porch swing the night before.
He wakes early in the morning to the sound of a nearby neighbor walking their dogs. A pair of plump pugs yap happily at a stray cat down the street, and Tate mumbles awake.
Face buried in the seat cushion, flat on his front, he creaks one eye open to chase whatever had dared disturb his sleep. Zeroing in on the pugs fast, all but dragging their owner down the block after the paperboy, he makes a sleepy, murderous sound and turns over.
"Fucking dogs," he grumbles for no one to hear, and pushes up into a sitting position, both hands scratching the dead leaves from his hair. A few months back, on a day when Violet was feeling less than charitable, she'd taken a pair of scissors to his favorite sweater. Two livid snips later, he was stuck in short sleeves, something he's thankful for now at the dead end of summer.
Bleary-eyed, still caught in the purgatory between wakefulness and dreaming, he spots the morning paper - god alone knows why they're still getting it - through the slats in the fence. It's been dropped out front on the sidewalk, not laid carefully on the stoop, or even chucked at the house. Tate feels a sudden kinship with those barrel-shaped beasts and hopes that they've gotten at the paperboy's ankles by now, the fucker.
Tate's sanity swings like a pendulum these days. After a particularly bad fight with Violet or a few too many deaths to regenerate from, his awareness fades. He'll spend a week or two like Charles, going through the motions. He'll sit upstairs and clean a shotgun the old, old owners had left, or cut up expired Vicodin into lines with an expired credit card, mind gone.
But today isn't one of those days. Today, Tate is just tired. And sometimes, even after forty years trapped here, a person can forget. Which is why when Tate ambles down the walkway, limbs sluggish and uncoordinated, he doesn't stop a few feet back from the fence. He wipes the sleep from his eyes, flips open the lock, draws apart the creaking iron, and bends down over the sidewalk to retrieve the sunday newspaper. Only when he's straightened back up, cover story bleeding ink into his palm, does he realize something's strange.
"Huh." He looks from the paper to his shoes and back again, trying to kickstart his brain but having trouble.
Those stupid fucking dogs are waddling back up this side of the block, and their owner looks pissed, so maybe they did get a mouthful of paperboy's tube socks after all. Tate just watches their approach, clutching onto the paper like it might hold the secrets of the universe, until he has to jump into the gutter to avoid being tangled up in their leashes.
"Hey, get a hold of your goddamn dogs," he barks angrily, and the man, the upper class douchebag in the JCrew with the three hundred dollar haircut actually looks back at him.
He heard him?
The reality of what's going on hits Tate like a punch to the gut then. It sucks all the air out of his lungs and leaves him reeling hard enough to miss trendy asshole's sheepish, "sorry."
Shaking all over, he looks down at his feet again, to reassure himself that those are infact his feet in the grime, and that that is the actual gutter outside of Murder House.
He's out. He's free.
Tate doesn't take the time to wrap his mind about the how or why of the situation, however. The first thing he does with this newfound freedom is dart right back inside those wrought iron gates and in through the front door of Murder House.
He can't help but take the stairs two or three at a time, as quiet as he can be with news like this sitting on the tops of his shoulders.
He gets to her room at the end of the hall as fast as his legs will carry him, muscles aching at being abused so early. But he can't feel that, he can't feel anything outside of the knowledge that the spell or curse, whatever the fuck it is that's trapped them here, is gone.
"Violet," he whispers, crouched down at the side of her bed with a hand on her shoulder, and when her eyes do finally open, it takes only a second's recognition before they turn cold.
She tries to yank her arm out of his reach and roll over, but he tightens his grasp on her, the fingers of his spare hand digging hard into the mattress beside her cheek.
"Violet," he says, and she still cringes at the sound of her name in his voice. "Get up. I want to show you something."
It takes a lot of convincing, but eventually he's got her slinking out of bed and into a pair of shorts. "Why?" she grumbles, at being forced into clothes when she's been fine wearing just a tank top and panties for years. Tate just motions for her to hurry up as she slowly draws them up her legs, tired like he'd been a few minutes ago. When she's dressed, he runs a comb through her hair while she bats at his hands, and then they're stepping down the stairs, quiet because he told her so.
By the time they get outside, she's starting to fight him again.
"This isn't fucking funny, Tate," she says through her teeth, putting all of her weight in going back inside, but Tate won't let her. Not ever again.
"Just come on." There's no temper in his voice; he can barely contain the swelling buzz of knowing they're so close. He picks her up there on the porch and carries her, gone limp and stubborn in his arms, out to the gate.
When they're as far as they can go, as far as they've been able to go in the last however many years, he sets her down onto her bare feet and takes hold of one wrist to ensure that she doesn't bolt.
"Try it," he says, gesturing to the gate, and the look she throws him is cutting.
"You fucking try it."
He resists the urge to roll his eyes and manhandles her fingers onto the latch. "Just press down."
Just to sate him and get back inside to her warm bed, Violet does. The latch clicks open and the gate swings outward and with only a little push from Tate, she's out standing on the sidewalk.
It takes Violet far less time to get her bearings than it had taken Tate. Her expression transforms almost instantly, closed and angry one second, and gaping the next. Like him, she looks down at her feet on warm cement, and wiggles her toes.
She stays that way for a long time, watching the sunlight stretch over her feet, squishing a beetle that crawls near. Tate wants to touch her, to say something, but he doesn't. His hands remain useless at his sides, and it's all he can do to keep his excitement from boiling over.
When Violet looks up at last, her shoulders are shaking and her face is wet.
"We're free?" she asks him imploringly, sounding small and more innocent than he can ever remember.
He's struck then by a bolt of fear. What if she leaves him, now that she can? What if she runs and runs and runs, until he can't find her?
A horrible part of him wants to usher her back inside, to chain her up and lock her in the attic for safekeeping, but during his forty-year sentence at Murder House, he's grown. Because of her.
Cautiously lifting a hand, he cups her cheek, wipes at the wetness under her eye. "Yeah, Vi. I think we are."
The smile that splits Violet's face at those words has him wanting to clutch at his chest, it's so beautiful, so pure. Better than a hundred birthdays and Christmases combined. He hasn't seen that smile in over twenty years.
She's still shaking, they both are, and when she stretches up to kiss him, her lips taste like salt and promise.
They stay close like that for a while, twined together, overwhelmed, and maybe it isn't a great idea, because people can see them now, but it seems neither one of them can find it in themselves to care.
When they do draw apart, enough to spread out on the sidewalk and hold hands, they've got twin smiles, shining like beacons in the soft morning light.
"So are we going to get old and wrinkly now?"
"Probably," Tate shrugs, weaving their fingers together, the reality of what's happening still not having dawned on him. Endless possibility ripples through them both however, he can feel it from where their hands are held. They could go to college, or travel, see all the places google earth hasn't been able to show them. No more death and despair. This is their second chance at life. A life together.
As they walk, away from Murder house, towards anywhere and everywhere, Violet swings their joined hands and does a little skip-walk.
"Where to first?" he asks, watching the breeze card through her hair, feeling the rush of it on his own face.
Violet spins to walk backwards in front of him, collecting her hair in a hand ponytail to keep it out of her face. The smirk that settles over her lips is daring. He wants to kiss it right off.
"You pick."
The others will figure it out soon enough. One by one, they'll wander out through that iron fence, past it, into the street and the sun. Maybe Chad and Patrick will patch things up, maybe they'll move on. Ben and Vivian's baby might age up into a toddler at last. Hayden will find someone available who wants her. The pause on everyone's life will be lifted. Maybe even Moira will be able to move on, to find her mother on the next plane.
But by the time all that happens, Tate and Violet will be gone. Together.
Sins forgiven, they'll disappear under the horizon, off to live out all of those pent up hypotheticals.