A/N: Hey guys! So this tiny story is very similar to my Poison & Wine series, but doesn't fit exactly so I'm giving it its own fic.
Another AU where Violet lives.
Still working on the next chapter of The Curve Of Her Lips!
Enjoy!
"Hey, spooky pants," Tate smiles down from the top of the stairs, the neck of his sweater stretched loose. His collarbones are peeking out. "You're home early."
Violet latches the door behind her and steps inside. She bends down and unbuckles her soft grey mary janes, brushing them into the corner with the outside of her foot. Even in the middle of fall, it's still warm outside; she's dressed in a striped tank dress and red-purple tights.
"Yeah, well, Calculus can suck my dick."
Tate laughs. It's a light, free sound, a sound no one with a past like his should be allowed to make, and in a flash Violet's up the stairs to demand a kiss.
"Violet, you don't have a dick," he grins between light brushes of her lips, hooking an elbow around her nape.
"Yes I do."
He pulls back from the kiss but not out of the circle her arms have made around his middle. "You do? Where is it, can I see?"
She grins coyly. Everything's a game. He flips up the back of her dress and she bursts into giggles, bolting up the stairs towards her room, holding down the hem of her dress as she bounds through the hall.
He catches her just as she gets the door open and together they tumble over the threshold, sway-steering one another towards the bed where they fall, him on top of her, over the railing of her footboard.
"Tate, you're heavy, get off," she groans dramatically, shoving at his chest. But her fists curl into his sweater when he pulls back; she's only teasing.
Leaning down to nose along her jaw, he opens her knees with his hands and begins rocking against her center before their clothes are even off.
Her head rolls to one side so he can bury his face in the bend of her throat and one hand slips into his hair, massaging his scalp with bitten fingernails.
"Did you really ditch just because of math class?" HIs voice is a curious sigh against her shoulder as his fingers wander down her sides and hook into the waistband of her tights.
She doesn't answer, placates him with a soft whine, and pushes up under his sweater to feel out the deceivingly smooth expanse of his stomach and chest.
Taking her silence for a confirmation, Tate clucks his tongue at her in reprimand, mouth above her ear, before rearing back on bent knees to bare her legs. "You know that's only gonna make things worse. Math is like that. Miss one class and you're lost forever."
Rolling her eyes at his lecture, she kicks her tights across the room and curls up to drag Tate back down. "Shut up." Her knees slide over his narrows hips as the bottoms of her feet slide over the bedspread, effectively trapping him where he belongs between her thighs.
His hands curve around her throat and up into her hair to cradle the back of her skull as he leans close to taste her pout: cigarettes and green tea with honey.
The window's wide open over her bed and the soft sounds of early afternoon are being swept in by the breeze. Someone outside is mowing their lawn. A dog's barking. There's the faint sound of children playing in sprinklers up the road.
It's almost easy. It would be if Tate hadn't seen the hickey crafted by someone else's lips between Violet's breasts. It would be if Tate weren't dead.
"What's this?" he asks in a too quiet voice, his lips already trembling. He traces the devastating bruise with the pad of his finger, as though he might be able to rub it out, its conception too.
Violet makes to cover herself but her arms fall limp at the dangerous shine to Tate's eyes when he catches the movement.
She pushes out a caught breath and wets her lips, shifting under his suddenly claustrophobic weight. "Tate, listen..." But her explanation ends there. She shouldn't need one. This isn't how things work with them.
His first tears hit her skin like bullets. They leave dents inside.
How could she forget to keep covered?
A few minutes later they've made no progress. She still won't meet his eyes and he's still rubbing circles against the mark on her chest. His finger is slipping through the wetness that's collected there.
"It's not like I'm your girlfriend."
He knows. He knows. She doesn't live in this birdcage like he does. Nothing here can trap her; she won't even let him try. He knows, but that doesn't mean her words don't cut, a dull blade to the gut.
He would say, "I know," but he's afraid to speak, knows his words would be drowning in this upsidedown mood. Instead he just spills more tears and shakes his head like he can't hear this right now. He can't.
Naked, covered only by a pair of plum cotton panties and by her forever-sad boy, Violet reaches up to stroke the edge of Tate's face with her thumb, regarding him with a sad smile.
"I love you, okay? You know that, but this is - we can't keep having this conversation."
Back when she forgave him for what he'd done to her mother and her family, back when they had their first talk in years, they'd made an agreement: if she let him see her, sit with her, talk with her, love with her, then he couldn't ask for more.
And of course then he'd agreed on the spot. Anything to have her back. To not have to wait a day longer for her. Anything.
But this, knowing that she was growing up outside these walls with friends and lovers that weren't him, was just a different type of pain. It was sharp and vicious, soothed only by the few-and-far-between days when they were happy, when he could just forget about her life without him and take pleasure in her laugh and lips.
"I know," he shudder-breathes, shifting to rest his elbows along the sides of her face, bowing her forehead against her chin.
She bounces her knees in nervous patience against his sides, waiting out the last of his pain, hoping that he'll pull himself together long enough to kiss her again and maybe make her come. It's not like this is easy for her either. It isn't. It's murder. But she's selfish. She'll never find a Tate that's not locked away in Murder House. There are no duplicates or even cheap imitations; she's looked.
"I love you." The three words are set on repeat, each bouquet a gentle reassurance as she threads through his hair with her fingers and traces the back of his hairline.
They lie together quiet for a while, each caught in their own heads, each looking for some alternative to this deal between them, each finding none. And just when she thinks he might have calmed, when his breathing is no longer choppy and his eyelashes aren't wet against her throat, she feels it.
A warm, hot liquid oozes out over her middle. She's assaulted by this slow drizzle. It fills her navel and slips down her sides to stain the bedspread.
He's bleeding out again, his old wounds reopened, his facade gone.
"Tate," she whispers, pulling his face up with both hands at his jaw, drawing his attention to what's happening. When he lifts his head she's able to get a peek between their bodies. His stomach is pocked with holes, his chest too.
Before long she's covered in what can't be called his life and he's deathly pale.
"I'm sorry, Tate, fuck, I'm so sorry." She cranes her neck to kiss his mouth when he sags against her, smearing against her front. His head falls into the bend of her shoulder.
"It's okay," he breathes, her pulse a trembling mess beneath his cheek. "I love you, Vi."
Now her face is wet too and when did that happen? This is why she didn't come home often. This is why she spends the afternoons with her friends and the nights far from him. Knowing always that they're broken is nothing like witnessing it firsthand.
She knows that he's died only when his breath is no longer stirring the flyaways at her nape. As gently as she's able, she squeezes out from under him to strip the ruined blankets from her bed.
He's pretty even in death, the muscles of his bare back taut planes, his face slack and without lines. She only admires him for a moment though, barely keeping it together now, and then she's throwing on a dirty shirt from the corner of her room in case her parents are home and padding out the door, sheets in her arms, towards the washing machine downstairs.
Only after she's stuffed everything in, added soap and closed the lid, does she let herself break too.
Violet slips down the closed door of the washroom and dissolves into hysterics, pulling her hair over her face, letting it stick to her wet cheeks, wishing things were different.
She can have him in death, has only a shade now in life.
To be or not to be, that is the question.