I am clearing up my desktop, finished off some chapters and fics. Including this one.

Ghosts – Vignette 2

It started with her sleeping beside him. It was more comfortable and safer. Hayden had recently been wielding an ice pick and picking off ghosts as they dozed, cackling, watching them die. Violet had no urge to wake up with a bloody handle protruding from her abdomen, her life slowly ebbing away.

And sometimes, as she slept, she would roll close to him, fold herself against his body, let him tuck her smaller form in close. But she couldn't help that. She wasn't even awake.

She didn't need rest, not like a living being. She could go days, occasionally weeks without lying down, closing her eyes. But whenever she was ready, finally exhausted and worn thin, he appeared, like he knew, sensed her need. And he would crawl up beside her. On the bed in their old room, into that nest of blankets in the attic, on the soft green grass of the lawn.

To start with, Tate kept his hands to himself, wary of spooking her, of driving her away. But overtime as her sleepy movements grew more intimate he got bolder. His fingers brushing over her ribs, clutching the defined boney protrusion of her hip. His chest pressed against her back, their legs tangled and intwined. Her hair in his nose, his lips on her ear. And she would sigh, soft and content, wrapping herself further up in him.

Months passed, he had lost track of time again with out living residents in the house, without heat and cable and a freshly stocked pantry, but she kept coming to him.

Tate frequently tried to stay awake during their time together. Wanting to remember the moment in case she decided it would be their last. It was his opportunity to observe her, watch her, love her when she was completely unaware. It was the only time he was happy, comfortable, anymore.

Still, sometimes he couldn't keep his eyes open, lulled by her deep breaths and slowly beating heart, and his eyes would drift closed.

The first time he woke up alone and cursed himself.

The second time her small breasts were pressed into his chest, a hand in his hair, her mouth mashed up against his neck. He tried to shift backwards afraid she would feel him, it, hard and wanting, against her. But her legs held him in a vice.

Violet was fast asleep. Tate didn't move a muscle, just licked his lips and watched her, for hours, until her eyes finally blinked open. She smiled at him, yawned, stretched, and stood up without a good bye.

After that she avoided him. Days turned into weeks and he never caught a glimpse of her, a whisper. But sometimes he felt her. Her eyes on him, her fingers in his hair. Tate began to think that perhaps the house had finally broken him, that he was losing his mind, just as he had lost Violet, the only thing that had ever truly mattered to him.

The next time she came to him he was already asleep, tucked away in a dim corner of the basement, bare mattress on the floor. He awoke to the feeling of a weight on his chest and immediately went rigid. Thaddeaus largely avoided him but that little monster could get desperate when he had gone too long without a victim.

His eyes shot open, adjusting to the light in the room, as he took in her blond head, silken strands of hair cascading over his shoulders, the heat from where her breath puffed out against his shirt, making him shiver.

Violet's hands were tucked beneath his arms, fingers clutching the crook of his elbows. She had a knee on either side of his waist. How had she made herself so impossibly small? And how long had she been there? She was fast asleep.

Slowly, hesitantly, Tate lifted his hands, placing them on her sides, as far as he could reach without disturbing her, and stroked. She snorted softly, mumbled something undecipherable into his front. He brought his knees up, crowding her body with his own, encasing her, and gazed down. She was so beautiful. He hurt just looking at her.

They didn't speak, not much. Violet had offered him some form of friendship. And he lived for her snide comments, her wicked smirks. But he longed to have her companionship again, someone to whisper to, to share with. Someone to love. And, outside of their moments of stillness, of sleep, she had denied him the real intimacy that he craved.

But Tate was patient. Or he could be, when he wanted to be. He had waited seventeen years for the perfect girl to show up on his doorstep. He could wait for her ghost to fall for him again.

She groaned, shifted, sighed, rubbing against him, making Tate stifle a noise of his own, biting his lip harshly to keep it in.

"Tate?" she lifted her head slightly, smacked her lips.

It had been an unimaginable age since she had actually spoke his name allowed, afraid to utter it, that her mouth might get caught around the word, that it might escape as a sob or a moan. Afraid that once she said it, she would never be able to stop, that it would be followed by a torrent of other words she was loathe to say to him after everything, even if they still existed within her.

"Yeah?" he breathed.

"I fell asleep," she rolled her eyes against his chest, hidden from view, and cursing how ridiculous she sounded.

"Yeah," he repeated, her fingers grasping, squeezing him. And Tate thought she would jump up, off and away, sprinting from the room, from him, but she stayed put.

When the silence stretched he shrugged awkwardly in his position, "Want to play a game?" They hadn't played a game since her mother was alive. It was too much of a reminder of better times, a time when she thought they could be happy, living in death, together forever.

But she shrugged back, "Battleship?" Violet was tired of kidding herself, of denying herself, living the lie. Hayden had been an excuse. Over the months she had come up with so many excuses, reasons to be with him, beside him. She clung to Tate and even though some days she still despised him, the days she spent gasping in the bathtub, the water turning red, she couldn't shake him off. Being with him was the only way she felt whole, the way to make the gnawing exhaustion in her bones settle, bloom into something else. Like the house was punishing her for imposing their separation. Then rewarding her for allowing him back in.

"Okay," he nodded, afraid to say the wrong thing, desperate for the chance.

And Violet vanished, just like that, his arms and legs raised, touching nothing but air. He found her in the attic, the game set up on an old crate, fingers combing through her hair.

"What? Did you walk up here?" She grinned, long baggy sweater, one of his he realized, barely covering her thighs as she sat on the dusty floor.

He lifted his shoulders, smiled in return and moved to sit across from her.

"How very of the living of you." And he laughed and then so did she. A real laugh, shoulders shaking, as she rifled through her plastic pieces, placing her ships, nibbling on her lush pink mouth.

"You first," he said finally and she took her turn.

Violet destroyed him. He couldn't get his head in the game, his eyes off her legs. Her eyes on the other hand didn't stop glittering mischievously, sunlight in her hair.

"Okay, so, Scrabble?"

Tate nodded, scrambling to his knees to get the board.

"Be prepared to be dominated, Langdon," she told him with a raised brow.

"Oh," he smirked, "I'm ready." And she actually blushed but she didn't run, just calmly selected her letters from the velvet bag, smiling.