Author's Note: ... so I guess I'm not immune to slightly smutty Violate. Oops. Hope you guys don't mind my foray into these waters. But, hey, like the summary says: teenagers will be teenagers, and that's a big part of this fic. So, I guess I'm bumping the rating up, because my plot bunnies are no longer innocent, holding-hands-and-smiling types, HA.

Speaking of sexy Violate fics, if you haven't read stuff by Gray Glube or ohyellowbird, what is the matter with you? GO FORTH AND LUST, FRIENDS. Also, Tjoek is writing something wildly brilliant, and you all should be in on it. Sharing is caring, y'all.

As usual, you guys have been awesome with your reviews, please continue to let me know what you think!

PS: Violet mentions "Old Spice Guy" in reference to Luke. This was inspired by the amazing YouTube vidder hurleybirdprod's "American Horror Story Crack #1" video, found here: y-o-u-t-u.b-e/Y5HvOyPjmSU (obviously without the hyphens), and make sure you have a change of undies, because you will probably piss yourself laughing. Okay. I'm done now.

PPS: ...I really miss this show, you guys. :(


Cough into Your Sleeve

The giddiness foams right into her brainstem straight from her heart. Violet is silly with it as she jogs up the basement stairs, her head swimming and her palms damp and tingling with an excitement she can barely contain, but she does, because her hard-girl façade has to stay in tact even without an audience.

Or, at the very least, until she's secure within the privacy of her bedroom.

She honestly didn't expect him to agree to the whole 'date' thing – she even felt pretty hokey suggesting it. But when he accepted the notion with little to no hesitation, and certainly no judgment, taking her hands and squeezing, and all he did was stare right into her … man, that really got her, you know?

Violet was glad it was dark. Pink was all over her, she knows it even now.

When she hits the landing, she tries her best to shut the basement door without a creak, though the house is ever selectively helpful, and it betrays her with a broken, rusty cry. She winces and freezes, thinking she hears shuffling above her. But the house quiets into a numbing hum, and she slips her flats off and carries them between her fingers as she slinks around the staircase railing.

"What are you doing, young lady?"

Her spine goes cold, and Violet whips around to find her mother exiting the kitchen. She's got an expectant look on her face and Violet's been familiar with this situation, with that expression - raised eyebrows, shrunken mouth with sucked in cheeks, head tilted in a question all moms already have the answer to, because they were teenage girls once, too.

"Uhm … just, y'know. Hanging out."

"In the basement."

Violet clears her throat and resists the urge to glance backward. "Uh, yeah."

"It's after one, Violet. You needed to be in bed over two hours ago. What have you been doing?"

She rolls her eyes and slackens her stance to lean up against the banister, immediately put off, her delightful mood thoroughly spoiled at the promise of a lecture. "I wasn't sneaking back in, if that's what you're thinking. I swear I've been in the house the whole time. What's the issue?"

"We're not doing this again," Vivien rounds on her daughter with a brandished forefinger, and Violet rankles at the implied threat. "I'm not doing this waiting up for you at all hours thing. We did it in Boston," even though her mouth moves to open, her mother's swift and severe tones cut through any hope of defiance, "And that was fun for a little while, but after the things we've been through in this house? No. Absolutely not."

Violet wants to stamp her foot, but she registers the move as childish. She settles on curling her toes in and sucks in a breath between her teeth, closing her eyes, counting to five. "Mom. I'm telling you: I was just – in- the – basement."

"And what could you possibly be doing down there after midnight?" Vivien steps closer, and Violet shrinks defensively. "Please, tell me. I'm sure it's very exciting."

She roots around through her many acquired excuses and white lies, the typical teenage protocol, things she's used before, ideas she has in back stock, but nothing seems fitting or believable – certainly not in this place. Eventually, she has no option but to shrug, and she levels her mother with a cool glare. "Tate came to see me."

Her mother appears nonplussed, unsure of how to address or respond in kind, and it obviously was not the expected answer. It makes Violet feel a little bit like she won, and she rubs her shoulder blade hard into the banister edge when Vivien finally finds her voice. "Violet," she starts out soft, and Violet already knows where this is going. "Are you being serious with me? You know you can't be having him over here like that-"

"Why not? It's not like we were doing anything. Besides, I thought you were cool with him after what happened with those psychos." She leans in, reminding her with cheek, "Remember, when he saved our lives?"

"That's not the point. It's inappropriate," Violet rolls her eyes and her mother sighs. "And do you know what your father would do if he found out? What if he had been the one to find you out of bed like this?"

She's a little daring tonight, and Violet frowns, lifts a shoulder limply, as though affecting nonchalance. "And what if he found out about the way you were eye-fucking that Old Spice security guy today?" Vivien's fallen mouth and consequent glower indicates Violet has not only crossed but has leapt clean over a fine, fine line. But it gives her an out, and she hastily takes it with only the slightest pang of remorse. "Whatever. I'm going to bed now, so you don't have to 'worry' anymore."

"Violet," Vivien calls after her retreating form, but when Violet pauses halfway up the staircase, she can't really meet her mother's gaze. "It's just- I just want you to be careful, honey. You know how your father feels about this guy, and after everything that's happened lately here … yeah, I do worry."

Violet nods, but only half-listens, more preoccupied with a different set of consequences. "So, are you going to tell him?" She finally looks back down to her mother, whose frown softens just slightly.

"…No. No, I won't tell him. But you can't be doing this again, do you understand?"

There's a traded stare of mutual understanding, and Vivien turns away first, into the kitchen again, and Violet starts back for her bedroom, all too eager to be apart from this confrontation.

Her door clicks behind her, and the sound is immensely gratifying. It's like the world shuts down, and it's such a relief. She doesn't bother with her lights, chucking her flats by the door as she blindly strips out of her tights and she yanks her dress over her head. The articles are tossed away and in a quick motion, her hair is bundled up into a loose pony, and she's clambering into bed. Her sheets sigh as she sinks into them, and it's a soothing flood through her body at the sense of being enveloped into cool darkness.

She rocks her head back against her pillows; they sigh too, and draw a good one out of her chest that is accented with a wet cough. One of these days, she reflects dazedly, she should probably drop that nasty habit of hers, but then her mouth burns, and she kind of wants another quick smoke before bed. But she abstains, and lets her lashes flutter and her hand drift from habit over her belly and down her pelvis as her mind begins nighttime wanderings toward slumber.

Right down to her toes, her whole body feels heavy from the weight of the day, and in large part from just the sheer exhaustion of being around him. She thinks of him, blonde hair, dark roots, coal eyes, shiny teeth. She has to study him real close to find out where his pupils begin and irises end, they're so very dark. But he's so intense, his zeal is oftentimes a bit overwhelming, but she never notices until he's away and she's alone again and it all catches up with her.

There's something about the way he just kind of feeds off her energy, but she doesn't really mind – she likes the way it looks on his face, that rapture and his stare, like he's enthralled by everything she does. It takes a lot out of a girl, but she doesn't mind sharing that with him. She likes sharing things with him. There's a lot she wants to share.

A charming heat starts lacing its way through her slowly, and she groans in exasperation into the side of her pillow, not really having the energy, but she kind of wants to, anyway. Sluggishly, her fingers begin a familiar dance under her comforter, and she exhales upon flickering, intermittent thoughts of him, of them, of what could be tomorrow. She thinks idly of where they might go; she picks a movie theatre, or no, just someplace vague and dark. His hand slinks up her thigh and she lets him, even though they're in public and anyone can see.

Scenarios change because she doesn't really find that one plausible or all that appealing, as she parts her legs a little wider and arches her neck, wrist beginning to tense. Instead, she thinks of him on top of her in her bed, like before, huffing in her ear and asking if she's ever done this before, and that one works better. Violet rips at the flaking of her lower lip as her restless hips try to find a complimentary pattern to the rolling pads of her fingertips and the advent of her other hand, and she fidgets against the dark of her room and her itinerant mind.

Moonlight filters through her heavy curtains. She wants to be outside with him.

Her shoulders would scrape into the brick, she thinks of the smell of wet dirt and fresh pine and him, and her hips cant to the side when she hits a good spot and every sense collides appropriately. She only remembers what his breathless hums in her ear and sighs against her mouth sound like, so she thinks about those noises instead of trying to create something new that might ruin it. But she knows what she'd sound like and she gasps with a tremble and a reserved little moan, thinking of how his hands would pull and push her as her own begin to lose their steady pacing in the present. She presses hard with both, so maybe it'll bruise tomorrow, and she whines out loud because whatever, this fucking house is huge, no one could hear her, and even if they could, she's been feeling braver the longer she knows him.

She sucks in a tight breath and holds as the liquid heat begins to uncoil inside her and her brain burns out wildly into a whole different image she could never admit to, or even pretend to remember, of being under him, sleek latex, splintered wood prickling unknindly against her back, and his hot mouth and body pressing so deeply into her own that she shivers right down to her core.

"Finder's Keepers."

She finally, finally breaks over it with a short, sharp catch in her throat, expelling air promptly, chest heaving, and she sinks into the mattress with a whimper. Agitated puffing and stars behind her eyelids and ten-ton weights settling in her overwrought joints, she curls her legs up and flattens her thighs together as she rolls over on her side. Her hands slip up to tug a pillow down and into her chest, and she pants into the soft cotton as her body cools and pulses warmly, lovingly. Before too long, she's off and away, the only memory in her head one of him staring, hypnotizing, and she smiles, happy to think of tomorrow.

And of course she doesn't know it, because she never knows it, he's there in the shadows beyond the stretch of her bed's outline, absolutely engrossed in all that is her. He's proud of himself; he wouldn't let himself be privy to the whole show, just the part that really counted, when he heard her breath hitching in that divinely nuanced way he trembles at and recognizes now as her coming, that's when he slipped in under cover of night and watched, enraptured and amazed by her every little thing. He couldn't resist; after all, he's only human.

He wants to pet her hair back when she curls over, wants to slide in and hold her, feel between her limbs to see what she's done, wants to claim her bitten, swollen, stung mouth that parts now in even, shallow breathing.

But what he wants and what she wants are two entirely different things in this regard, and in many others, and he's just going to have to be patient like he has been being. He's proud of himself, yeah, he's been doing really good lately, because there's things that riot inside him and dare him forward, but he's better than that, than all of them, and it's only because of her.

Though, he does think Doctor Harmon would be proud too, and he smirks.

Tate takes his time finding his usual seat, the plush brown leather chair angled under a window in her room, moving through the edges of her room until he does settle, gaze steadfast on her resting figure. It makes him immeasurably glad, to be her audience of one, even if she doesn't always know it. For a second, he debates with himself which is better – Violet asleep, or Violet awake (this is a game he always plays by himself during these hours, different debates on which part of her is better, but his opinion always shifts, because he can't pin it down, there's too much of her to just choose.) He supposes it's the latter, because while she is everything beautiful and precious in the nighttime, something innocent and pure and something he wants to cradle, it is her fire and light that sustain him overall, and she doesn't burn when she sleeps.

He doesn't bother trying to flatter himself with ideas of what lies behind her closed eyes, whether dreaming or working herself over like before, but he's pretty sure it's him, and that bolts right through him with pleasure and pride. If he thought she'd tell him, he'd ask her what she sees, what makes her squirm, and he'd share in kind with her. Boldly, hand resting on the seam of his jeans, he thinks of maybe tomorrow night, and those creeping crawlers under his skin put in their two cents and he willfully ignores them with only the slightest fisting of his hand.

Because what they tell him he needs is not at all what she needs, and he's satisfied enough in simply contemplating upon them rather than acting out these days, so long as she stays near to make him remember why this way is better.

So, he just waits with her until dawn when she finally rises from woozy dreaming, her head throbbing, and her knees banging into things as she stumbles out of bed. Her string of belligerent curses down the hall makes him smile, and he lets his eyes close upon the sounds of her.