A/N: So I lied when I said Own Me would not be more than three chapters. Sue me. And I broke my foot because I'm a hot mess. Who's a winner?
Own Me
She was watching a movie about a haunted house because she had a sick sense of humor and just couldn't ignore the irony. Plus she took pleasure in laughing at how the producers portrayed the ghosts because they had them all wrong, so wrong, just tiny wisps of things that couldn't do anything more than knock over a plate or two when real ghosts, ghosts like them, could kill and maim so easily.
"What are you watching?"
She turned to see Chad in the doorway swirling a glass of wine, looking over at her in a peculiar way, as if she was an interesting freak in a traveling circus show, intriguing yet disgusting in the same breath.
"Some dumb movie because I'm bored. What do you want?"
"Well, considering my boyfriend has decided to fuck everyone in this house except me, I want company, and apparently that need has grown badly enough that I will search out yours even knowing my little murderer is lurking nearby."
He plopped down next to her and a little bit of wine sloshed over the side onto his pants, but he didn't seem to care as his attention was immediately directed to the screen where some stupid, towhead frat boy in a muscle shirt was getting terrorized by the ghost of a girl he accidentally killed way back at the beginning of the movie.
"Oh, who is that hot piece of ass? He would certainly make my panties wet if I were a girl like you."
She sighed heavily, wishing that Tate was not around to listen to Chad's snarky commentary, but the slight ripple she saw in the air made it very clear that he was around and he had most definitely heard.
"He's not your type and he is certainly not mine."
He turned and smirked at her, and she knew this was going nowhere good.
"I forgot, you go for blond psychopath murderers." He pointed at the screen. "But this guy should be right up your alley. Blond, hot, and a murderer. Uh oh, looks like our own resident Norman Bates has some competition."
She could feel Tate literally vibrate with rage and jealousy, making the air by the fire place like a shimmering mirage, and she just knew he was this close to snapping and as much as she hated to admit it, the thought of him breaking Chad's neck and taking her next to his dead body while savagely hissing that he will be the only hot blond murderer who she will ever think about that way and how no one would ever fuck her like he will, made her clench her thighs together.
"Stop it, Chad. It's not funny."
He raised an eyebrow at her before glancing over at the fire place and jerking his head right at the spot she knew he was.
"What's not funny? The fact that he is literally ready to kill me yet again or the fact that you will be running back to him sooner rather than later? Face it, Violet. You are still in love with the little shithead. You always will be. Your young, tragic love makes me barf."
She sucked in a sharp breath, not daring to look at where Tate was, because she knew he would be both quivering in anger over Chad's insults to her and holding his breath in fear and hope over her answer. She could picture what his eyes would look like in that moment, swirling darkness tainted with murder and blood, shot through with slivers of agonizing hope and desire and longing, wanting, wanting, always wanting.
"You don't know anything about me."
He got up and sauntered towards the kitchen before turning back around to face at her.
"Oh, honey, I know everything about you. Because you're me and I'm you, in many more ways than you'd think or care to admit. I hate you for reminding me of that, and I hate you even more because you still have a chance but you're too stubborn to take it. I'd turn into a murderer if that meant I'd have another chance with Patrick. But you would rather suffer like an arrogant martyr, denying yourself happiness for some reason I can't fathom, than be selfish for one fucking time in your life and just take what you want."
"My family –"
"Oh, come off it, Violet, you didn't give a shit about them when you were alive. Please don't tell me that's the best you've got."
She just glared at him in silence before he chuckled lightly, holding the glass up so it caught the dying rays of the sunset and made rainbows on the walls.
"You're just afraid of being hurt again. We all get hurt, sunshine, comes with the territory. What makes people special is when you try and trust again even after being hurt. Do us all a favor, stop your pathetic moping and think about it."
Her throw pillow just missed him as he disappeared around the corner.
"What are you doing?"
"Just thinking."
He sat down next to her on the blanket she brought out. It was a warm day, so she wanted to take advantage of it and be lazy in the yard, watching the flowers sway in the breeze and the ants march in their little army lines so she could pretend that she was just a teenager, albeit an atypical one, in the grass, concerned only about the next hour at most, instead of a dead ghost trapped in a place where good memories were few and the future held nothing.
"What about?"
"How my life would be if I didn't die."
"Oh."
"I think I would have gone to college, majored in art history or something like that, and work in the city in a studio apartment overlooking the water, maybe making some art on the side. I probably would have gotten a ferret or something for a pet, name him an unusual name like Walter. I think I would have been happy if I had a life like that."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
She lay back down on the blanket, the fibers soft on her bare arms, and she could hear him lay down beside her and she was acutely aware of how close he was, how it only would take a split second for her to lean over and kiss him, how easy it would be to undress him – because he would let her, eagerly and excitedly, because even though he was a boy with raging hormones, he knew if he touched any other woman in the house she would never come back, so he had contented himself with just his hand for a commendable amount of time and the prospect of having her finally touching his naked body again would be unable to resist – so she could see what she had been increasingly and desperately missing for a long, long time.
A white butterfly bespeckled with black dots landed between her hand and his, and she couldn't help but think about how white paradoxically can mean both mourning and new beginnings, about how you cannot appreciate the purity of white without the presence of black, how good cannot exist without evil, how sometimes you cannot fully separate out the black and white, the good and evil, and how they make such a beautiful, soft shade of grey, and how all these musings somehow sum up her and him and them together.
When he reached out to try to hold her hand, she let him.
A/N: Short, I know, but I'm working on the next chapter and I have my fic exchange to work on too! Reviews make me happy!