A/N: Hey guys! In celebration of the news that Evan Peters will be back for Season 2 of American Horror Story, here's the next installment of my and ScarlettWoman710's fic. In other, sadder news, I may have just accidentally deleted the The Sporting Life sequel I was working on. Damnit!

Anyway, enjoy!


"When's the funeral?" Tate asks after lugging his dufflebag upstairs, when he's seated at the round table in the kitchen, "because I really can't stay past Sunday."

"Why, big meeting comin' up?" Constance beams from the refrigerator, bringing over a polished tray of sweet tea, Adelaide's death obviously the farthest thing from her mind.

He was catching a red-eye to New York on Monday for lunch with a big name director interested in casting him in a leading role for his next picture. He'd done movies before, played the love interest or the one-dimensional villain a few too many times, but this would be different. If everything went well, this would make him a household name and this could get him Oscar buzz.

Goodbye television, hello A-list.

"Uhm, yeah, kinda."

"That's so exciting, Tate! What's it for?"

He hated talking about work with her. Sure, all things considered, he really couldn't complain about how things had turned out, but growing up with the weight of such unattainable expectations thrust upon him had been stressful to say the least.

Constance moved to Los Angeles with big dreams and when they went unfulfilled, she promised herself the next generation of Langdons would be stars. But much to his mother's chagrin, neither Adelaide nor Beau were designed for fame. So she shelved the idea, busying herself with caring for her two abominations and sucking off the guy next door that worked in theater.

That is until her next child came along. Tate. He was perfect, a precious child that grew into a handsome boy with charms and wiles fit for Hollywood. She'd started him in commercials for diapers and juice, then clothing ads which quickly evolved into TV spots and, his senior year of high school, Tate's big break. He was cast in a teen drama that would run for six seasons and be syndicated for a number of stations.

That was the beginning. That was how he ended up with a house in Malibu and a loft in Manhattan. It was why he would never have to worry for money as so many did. But fame wasn't without consequence. It was the reason his Dad left. It was where his drug habit started up and it was why he couldn't stand the only parent he had left.

"Some movie about World War II," he shrugs, tacking on a cynical. "because they definitely haven't done enough of those."

His mother tuts indignantly, pulling out the seat opposite her son and reaching out for her box of cigarettes.

He slides them her way and watches her light up, still waiting for a response to his question about the funeral date, gathering that she isn't ready to breach the subject when she just gifts him a brittle smile and luxuriously puffs away at the stick between her fingers.

Guilt. If he were a betting man, he'd wager that's what kept Adelaide out of their conversation. Constance had been cruel to her the poor girl's entire life. When his mother wasn't ignoring her, she'd mock and belittle Addie, barring her from all the things normal girls wanted to do, like make friends and play dress up.

And now, only in death, was she realizing she'd made his sister's already difficult life absolute hell. She never got to tell Addie how sweet she was, how smart or pretty or kind.

Adelaide went to her grave under the assumption that she was something to be pitied and feared, a monster, not a girl.

Constance has to live with that.

Drumming against the tops of his thighs, Tate chews a flake of chapped skin from his lower lip and turns towards the window, eager for a distraction, the side fence and crumbling brick off to the left suddenly reminding him of the girl he'd seen washing down her car outside. He can almost see her cryptic smile reflected in the pane, mocking and winsome at the same time.

And idly, he wonders if she'd recognized him, doubts it. A girl like her probably spent more time reading books than watching TV or at the movies, could tell you more about the tumultuous life of Gatsby's Daisy Buchanon than US Weekly's Lindsay Lohan.

"Who moved in next door?" Tate asks in what he hopes is a casual voice after another moment's speculation, dragging his eyes away from the soap swirling down the gutter and nodding towards their old home.

Constance visibly bristles, ashing and pursing her lips, the lines around her mouth stark in their ugliness against the otherwise well-preserved loveliness of her face.

"They're new," she shrugs, flippancy a poor mask for her obvious bitterness. "A doctor - well, psychiatrist, and his wife."

Tate hums in acknowledgement, mentally crosses out his curiosity about the car in their driveway and lifts his glass of tea for a sip.

"There was a girl outside...?"

His mother narrows her eyes and glances out the window as though she can see her out there right now, plucking up her rose bushes or taking a shit on the porch.

"Violet," she drawls, "that girl is nothing but trouble. Smokes like a chimney and sneaks out after midnight to do Lord knows what."

Lowering her voice to a venomous whisper, she leans in close for dramatics, "Once, when I went over with fresh muffins for Mrs. Harmon after the birth of their sweet baby boy, she answered the door in just her skivies! Didn't seem phased one bit to be chatting with the neighbor, let the door hang wide open and everything. "

Tate smiles at the conjured imagery of her lounging against the door frame, sunglasses slid halfway down her nose, tapping her toe impatiently on the hardwood while his mother blunders through a frazzled 'hello' and 'goodbye.'

"Violet."

Pointedly ignoring Constance's scowl, he tries the name for himself, mouthing the word a few times, wriggling his glass distractedly.

The ice clinks and he draws a design in the condensation, mulling over the way his teeth sink into his lower lip on the V and the way his tongue plucks at them on the L., and even the quiet knock of his mouth when it closes over the T.

"That's right, Violet," Constance snaps irritably, "but what are we doing talking about her? You still haven't spilled the beans on what kinda stuff you're working on right now. I want all the juicy details."

On the list of things he wants to spend his afternoon doing, divulging his Monday plans is right up there with jumping from the roof and performing a self-castration.

So, pinching the bridge of nose to keep from losing his temper, he pushes back from the table and leaves his mother with a conciliatory, "maybe later," before heading up the stairs, the gram of cocaine he'd packed into his shaving kit all but screaming to him.


The next time he sees Violet is just twelve hours after the first time.

It's past midnight and he's out roaming the sidewalks with a cigarette trapped between his lips.

He doesn't smoke, not when he isn't drinking, but there was something about being cooped up with Constance that made him itch for that nicotine burn and wonder why he'd ever kicked the habit.

The streets are empty and the houses are dark and from the top of the hill he can just see the lit up smog of Hollywood.

He's strolling back towards his house, head bowed to reply to a flurry of drunken texts from a recent ex, when a clattering across the street draws his attention.

He pockets his phone and chases the noise with his eyes.

Squinting through the dark, he can just make out the form of a young girl slinking out her open window and tiptoeing over the roof tiles to a place where she can drop down safely onto the grass.

Violet.

Her name sounds resplendent even inside his own head.

He's crossed the street and is leaning over her fence with both elbows propped against an iron bar by the time she scrubs the grass stains out of her knees.

"Do mommy and daddy know you're out past curfew?"

In a hurricane of pin-straight hair, she whips her head in his direction, but the sudden fear in her frame melts and is replaced by a smug confidence as soon as she meets his gaze across the yard.

"You," she huffs, dragging in a calming breath and smoothing both palms over her hair, "thanks for that. Nearly shit my pants."

Tate grins around the filter of his cigarette and her eye catches on the vibrant orange that burns awake with his inhale.

The grass, wet from late evening sprinklers, squelches between her toes as she saunters over and outstretches her neck, popping her lips, glaring up from under her lashes when he just stands there and looks at her.

"Gimme."

He feigns ignorance, but she snarls so instead he rears back and out of reach, making a teasing show of his next drag.

"How old are you?" It's pathetic how badly he wants to know, how badly he hopes for anything above seventeen.

"How old are you?"

"Ha. Ha. Very funny."

She grins up at him, a mean toothy little smile, and pushes up onto her tiptoes, both hands clamped around fence slats for the balance necessary to teeter close.

A few bats of her lashes and he caves with a sigh, lining up the webbing of his fingers with her lips, letting her nurse a few mouthfuls of smoke before reeling the cigarette away.

She closes her eyes and sways from the fence, shutting out the world for a moment to just enjoy the drag, twin spires of smoke curling out her nostrils. Then her eyes snap back open and she holds his stare while feeling out the fronts of her teeth with her tongue.

"You're Constance's kid, huh?"

"You know her?"

"Kinda-sorta. She's been over a few times to chat up my mom or whatever."

"Weird."

It wasn't. She was always poking her nose around that old house and its current inhabitants, like maybe one day a family would offer up a spare bedroom to her.

When she wasn't pushing Tate into the public eye, she was trying to wheedle her way back into that house.

Violet shrugs, disinterested, and scrapes the muddy balls of her feet against the lowest fence rung.

"You wanna kill this?"

She lifts her face up from her toes to see what he means and nods, plucking the shrunken butt from between his fingers and sucking until the pads of her finger and thumb burn.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he pats it quiet, watching as Violet grounds their shared cigarette into the bogged grass.

She looks smaller than when he'd first seen her this afternooon, at least a head shorter than him with tiny hands and bony shoulders. Younger too. Fifteen or sixteen at most.

Well, fuck.

Then, before he can kick up another conversation or beg her age, a battered jeep pulls up next to them in the gutter, music pouring from it's open windows, and Violet swings around the yard, through the front gate, and out into the street, bare feet slapping the concrete as she goes.

The jeep's packed with kids who make room for her when she climbs up the bumper and wedges herself between two boys in the backseat.

He turns in time to see her manic wave, lifts a hand in goodbye, and watches the jeep turn around in his mother's driveway, follows it until it whips around a corner at the end of the road and disappears out of sight.

There are Hollywood parties across town and a contact list of girls ready to suck him off at the barest text, but after sizing up his shoe next to a wet footprint on the sidewalk, Tate walks back home and falls asleep with Violet's name and rough guesses to when her birthday is skittering around inside his head.


A/N: Thanks for reading!

I can't wait for season two of AHS to start so we can all start shipping Evan's new character with Tate, Violet, and everyone else!