Words In Your Throat
A/N: I finished the third season of AHS this week and couldn't quite get this pairing out of my head. They had so much going on behind the scenes and in between the lines that I felt the need to put it down in words. This is a chronology of the season's events in two or three chapters, reflecting on Zoe and Kyle's interactions. I don't own anything and the lines of dialogue belong to the creators of the show.
She doesn't understand, at first, why the world is playing such a cruel joke on her. Witchcraft? Fine, she can accept that. Committing intimate murder in the literal sense? Not so much.
In moments where her newest revelations don't overwhelm her, she lets sarcasm take hold and muses that it could always be worse. If her touch could kill, or maybe meeting someone else's gaze, like Medusa. It almost makes it laughable to think that her cursed sex is an issue.
But then he steps into her circle of awareness, offering a wide grin and red solo cup. It hurts to think she can't have that with him, if she wanted. With anyone. It makes her irrationally envious of her sister witch, who flaunts around the party with every motion betraying lust.
And she let's herself be mesmerized by the darkness of his eyes, peeking out behind flexed fingers. Pretends that she's nothing but normal and can have any and all intentions here. For one blissful moment.
Reality does its work to shatter the fantasy with ugly truths, escalating far too quickly. Filthy betrayals and trust misplaced turn into a lopsided bus on the street. She finds her dreams strewn about on the pavement amongst shattered glass and metal scraps.
They leave before the screams turn into unwanted questions.
His face stays in her nightmares but she focuses on recovery, moving forward. She even seeks revenge for Madison's sake, anger seeping through with every cant of her hips as she takes a life with full intent. It's her second but there's a world of difference.
The malicious satisfaction she feels this time makes her realize that she's changing. No longer the girl that got whisked away to New Orleans with fear in her gut and whispers behind her back. She's growing into an identity she never knew was hers.
That's probably what makes her agree to head to the morgue. To meddle in what she knows they should leave alone, watching with equal trepidation and eagerness as needle threads through flesh. Staring at a blond head with bruised skin, whose eyes she wants to see open.
She gets her wish, just not the way she expected. Death doesn't go unnoticed and it leaves scars far deeper than wounds from rough stitching.
She's not prepared for the sensation that runs through her limbs when he kills the man who finds them. Fear gets masked by the elation she feels at seeing him again, maybe not quite alive yet but kicking. Her creation, by her decree. It's a sickening kind of pride.
Her better judgement sends shame coursing through her within minutes, rising steadily when she sees the state he's in. Mute and half-animal, shaking, stumbling like a wounded soldier against her side. Her bitchy, high-heeled accomplice has taken off and she's alone with decisions she's not ready to make.
Another witch takes the burden from her, at least for a day. She can't get the sight of him out of her head, the numbing grasp of his hands for her dress, her fingers, anything. To keep her with him. It's a heavy burn in her chest to walk out of that cabin and she tries to blame it on anything but guilty attachment.
Reuniting him with his mother seems like the right solution. The humane one. She refuses to see that it's a coping mechanism to push responsibility away. She's dehumanizing him already, her living, breathing ragdoll because there's no other way to handle it.
She robbed him of a future and she can't face what that really means. It makes her more of a monster on the inside than he'll ever be in the physical form she forced him into.
It's what keeps her awake at night, hearing his cries on a loop. Hiding from her own feelings seems a good idea until his mother calls again. It's more than a sign. She can't outrun her actions anymore by staying in her own walls and it's part desire, part duty that makes her accept the invitation.
Only instead of sizzling casserole, there's the silence of a bloodbath. More of it than she ever wanted to see or thought she could handle. It coats him when she lays her eyes on him, trickles across the healed scars in a reminder of what he did. What she turned him into.
Her fault, his fault, the universe soaking up the irony, does it really matter? Her tears catch on the skin of his fingertips and she flinches away, sees hurt and confusion under the massacre painting his face. It's her choice to decide that those can't be true emotions.
He flees the scene before she can decide to put an end to what she began and she drops the plate beside the corpse. Disgusted with her decision and her own weakness. A real testament to what she's becoming when she stoops to poison. It's cheap, cowardly.
That's not her and she never imagined being someone cold-blooded enough. But that was before she fucked a person to death. Make that two. Her hands shake as she stares at the food and realizes what she was about to do to the only one that matters.
She processes her betrayal only seconds before worry kicks in. Doesn't consider that it's messed up to feel that way after what she planned for him. He's still hers to take care of, however badly that will end up for one of them. Abandonment is still not an option.
But it's clear she's lost him already, somewhere on the streets where other monsters roam with him today. She should be more distraught but rationality manages to override instinct. Maybe that is Fiona's influence coming through but she wipes the counters clean of their traces before she goes.
It doesn't need a spell to figure out where he would have gone on the night of Halloween. She's late and there for all the wrong reasons again, but all that falls away when their eyes meet across the space. He is bare skin and flailing limbs coming towards her, the drops in his hair glisten when he presses his face into her stomach.
His posture speaks of all the trust in the world and she doesn't deserve an ounce of it.
Her throat closes and she holds onto him, even as the damage in the room tells another story. It's the first time she notices how warm he is and how power ripples through the muscles that weren't always his. How intoxicating it is to find him kneeling before her, uttering heartbreaking sounds of anguish. Like she's the only thing that can save him.
The tough front is so hard to maintain when she takes him home, only to chain him to a wall. His gaze eats her alive with accusation and she has to look away. But he's already her prisoner in so many ways - this just makes it literal. Her assuring whispers only go so far and the hand pressed to his chest falls away, she turns her back on him again.
One time too many, it's hurting her as much as him.
Her heart races when she taps back into the rising darkness that makes her decision seem justified. Merciful even. The girl she once was would have refused to touch a pistol but the lightweight weapon seems like the only solution she has left.
He's not getting better for all she can see and if she's honest with herself, she's certain they released something into the world that has no business being here. It's a mistake made in a flurry of emotions and she can only erase those consequences one way.
Messing with death was a mistake and she knows it. No matter how her soul clenches at the thought of putting a bullet into his head. She pictures the blood oozing from the wound, down a face that she is falling in love with. It stifles her with horror but she steels her expression and steps back into the greenhouse with murder on her mind.
He's crying, hands crushed against his skull as he shakes it back and forth. She can only guess at the torment going on in there. It almost lessons the suffocating knowledge of what she's about to do. Ending the pain he must be feeling.
Each heartbeat still tells her differently, no matter how much she convinces herself she's only saving what has remained of him. Her words are hollow in her ears, even if wants to believe them.
"You know how this has to go right? You were a great guy Kyle, but you died. And I didn't let you go when I should have."
His fear is palpable, his frantic body language hits her harder than it should and she finds herself moving closer, too close to stay in control. It slips from her grasp too quickly and suddenly he is the one holding onto sleek metal, tearing the means of destruction from her grip.
She's ready to accept judgement turned back against her because what kind of a goddamn person is she for doing this to him … but then it isn't her head he aims at. And she has no restraint over her reaction when she surges forward to stop him from carrying out her task.
She can't let him go.
The shot almost has her eardrum splitting, death missing her by millimetres. Shards rain down on her hair but she wrenches the gun from his hands before she can second-guess herself again.
His hold is almost bruising when she takes him into her arms this time, clutching onto the one thing in her life that means something beyond pleasing her coven. Tears soak both their shirts but she doesn't care because it's never been clearer than this moment – she doesn't want to let him go. She never did.
Her life has been one big clusterfuck of bad decisions and traumatizing events lately but she hopes she's making the right choice this time around. She digs deep for courage, breathing in the scent of the broken boy folded against her body. Then she removes the spell from the shackle and brushes her hands along the tear tracks on her face, hoping they can do this.
It's too late to go back anyway.
She takes his hand and leads him into their safe haven, through intimidating pristine hallways that generations of witches walked through before, down to the bedroom. Tries to teach him what he knew once, wanting to revive what she saw of the person he was weeks ago. Anything about him that isn't just stolen flesh and blood now.
But she can't stop her breath from hitching the barest of moments when he slaps her attempts away and howls his frustration in wordless garble. If only he could tell her what it is he's so angry about, what exactly his limbs want to tell her that she just can't understand.
So she holds back her own anger with lips pressed firmly together. It's not him, she wants to believe and tries to accept that he needs adjustment time, a sliver of stability for a few days after the turbulence of death, strange faces and being on the run. Not to forget the pain, a haphazard puzzle of a body that's not all his.
Thing is, he really seems to be doing okay if he's able to fuck Madison up against the closet.
The accidental discovery sends her back into the spiral of fury and defeat, knowing after everything that's been done, she's still not able to give him – herself – just that. She slams the door, bolts, the image seared into her mental eye. Slicking her hands in the blood of someone else gives her no peace of mind but it's nothing but a distraction while the sounds of sex still ring in her ears.
There's no escape in this house for long though. The moment she's washed the evidence of her latest crime away, Madison is there again. Right, they are roommates again. The fallen starlet sees exactly what she's in denial about, holds the proposition up for grabs before she's even come to terms with the idea of screwing the undead.
And in the witch's eyes, she can see nothing but serious intent. For once there is no ulterior motive, no questions about strings attached. The girl's slender fingers are decisive when she guides her through the door to the object of their desire. Only she can see that he's so much more than an object and it pains her to degrade him.
Except his gaze is alight with want and never wavers from her as she steps into their circle. Moth drawn to a flame and she's not sure which role she's assigned. So she lets herself believe that this is not just using him.
Prays her powers will not take him away as she loses herself in what they're doing. Wonders where the shy girl from not so long before went, the one who had her first time with another boy and sent him to his grave.
She feels strangely fearless tonight as she drops the towel and arches her back under the other girl's touch travelling along her spine. The heat of his palm against her ribs is what she leans into, finding his lips with her own as clothes hit the mattress. What's a little nudity when she's already been branded with visions of death and terror?
His tongue is rough against the swell of her breast, her own hand pushing down between her legs as Madison takes her turn claiming her mouth. The girl knows what she's doing, teasing out sensations with nimble hands on her flesh that send her groaning into the blonde's mouth. But it's always him she turns back to, pressing kisses across the scars they gave.
And it's her he looks at, even while the other witch drags skilled lips over parts that used to be someone else's. She smoothes her hand across his cheek in encouragement instead, gasping when he responds by slipping stolen fingers into her. Her nails cut into a four-leaf clover, eyes glazing over at the feeling.
When sweat mingles with the water sliding down her hair, their bodies finally joined in a rhythm that's not quite smooth yet, she allows herself release. He's moving, quivering underneath her but not in the agony of rupturing nerves like the last ones.
This is nothing but messy, instinctual lust sending them into overdrive.
It's the sweet relief of that realization that lets her come undone in front of them both, gasps mingling with those of two revived bodies. Lying on the covers in the aftermath, side by side with Madison's cigarette curling smoke above their heads, she feels his hand twining into hers between their thighs.
She squeezes back, all the while focusing on her roomate's hand drifting lazily through his hair and knows this arrangement can only go well for so long. One of them will overstep boundaries they'll never speak about. Her lips press against the shoulder marred with the faint red line of stitched skin before she closes her eyes.
He progresses, slowly but surely and it makes her smile to see him pronounce a word with newfound vigour. He's learning to be patient and when she's not forced to accompany the others on Fiona's field trips, she's with him, being the support system he deserves.
In the afternoon sunlight hitting the creases of concentration on his face, she's the closest to happy that she's been since she came here. He takes to kissing her hand when she has to leave; its imprint a reminder of the devotion she's come to crave. She's falling in love with more than a pretty face.
Introducing a laptop sends him into an excited frenzy and it is astonishing how quickly he adapts to the technology. She takes it as a good sign, memories resurfacing or something like that. The expression he wears when she places Madison's ridiculous headphones on his ears sparks warmth in her chest.
God, she shouldn't be getting sappy, it's dangerous in her life. But she really wishes everything else in her life were as easy. That she could share his concept of the world around him, see how limited it is and revel in that simplicity.
It's almost selfish to want him to function on her level when he's still so blissfully ignorant.
As it turns out, danger is all but crossing their doorstep and she's not sure she can keep him safe from what's coming. There's no way to really, truly tell if he understands what she's saying but he's so close, so heartfelt in his struggle to tell her.
His whispers have jagged edges and she searches the onyx gaze, trying to match them up.
"This … road … goes … two ways."
It's shock and joy and worry and gratitude all wrapped into one overwhelming rush when his arms wrap around her slim shoulders and she can think of nothing else but hold him back. He loves her. With everything she's done to him, all she took from him and put him through. She's so close to cracking in his grasp, wanting to pour her feelings out just the same.
She desperately hopes he's lucid enough to know what his words mean but his gesture speaks the same language. He is hers. Only hers. And she's not going to kill him with her affection because he's already been there and back.
Any words she could respond with get stuck in her throat and she's as mute as he once was, just tightens her fingers in his collar. For that moment, it doesn't matter if he never regains a sense of who he was because the spirit is still there under the layers of trauma. She just has to find it.