No matter how lenient Vivien was with our relationship, Ben had to be punished for trying to break me and Violet up. I knew I had a session coming up, and seeing as he thought that was the only time I was in the house anymore, my point would have to be made within the walls of his study. He smiled, tightly at me, as I dropped my messenger bag beside the leather couch and settled comfortably on it.
"So Tate, how have things been going since our last session?" He asked. I stared at him blankly, toying a small, secret smirk at the corner of my lips. The smug, self-assured bullshit persona he usually carried so well began to fade as though he were figuring out my tactics. His phone buzzed against the table top and he spared it a glance, moving to pick it up but stopping when he saw the annoyance on my face. I suppose he was trying to play my game, but that simply wouldn't do. He waited, and I waited as the phone jolted loudly through the wood, over and over, before stopping, the screen lighting up. The display read '14 missed calls' and I wondered who he was avoiding. After a moments silence it began again, and I guess he realised he wasn't going to win now because he picked it up and moved it onto a softer surface, rejecting the call and smiling politely at me.
"Sorry," he said, his eyes crinkling in a reassuring, fatherly gesture that made my heart ache. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and continued in my plan to make his skin crawl.
"So, what do shrinks think about when a wildly brilliant patient doesn't talk to punish said psychiatrist?" I paused a moment as though this speech wasn't rehearsed. "I bet you think about sex." Though he tried to hide it, I caught the tightening in his eyes as I tried to drag him out of his comfort zone, but it was covered in a moment and the psychiatrist bullshit training was back.
"Do you think about sex a lot?" he asked, pressing his pen to his lips in a way that made me want to shove it down his throat. He didn't deserve Violet, and I needed him to know that.
"I think about one girl in particular. Your daughter. I jerk off thinking about her… a lot." I smiled, my most filthy smirk just for him. This time the tightening didn't go away, because I'd hit a nerve.
"I'm not comfortable with you talking about my daughter, Tate." And I wasn't sure whether it was because he loved his 'little girl' and didn't want her to be soiled that way, or that he was uncomfortable because he knew so little about her.
"Don't you wanna know what I'd do to her?" it was rhetorical of course, because I knew that he wouldn't ever want to know about my private fantasies, but this was his punishment and he needed to know that I wasn't going to leave Violet alone, even if it meant not seeing my perfect fucking therapist anymore. I leaned forward, licking my lips as I delved into one of my private thoughts. I considered telling him the truth… exactly what had happened on the floor of this office, but I couldn't risk getting Violet in trouble. So I settled for one of the thought's I'd had when alone in the basement, the way she'd moan as I kissed down her neck, and the way the blood between her thighs would taste. "I lay her down on the bed, and I caress her soft skin, make her purr like a little kitten. She's a virgin. They get wet so easily. I knew I was getting hard, shamelessly, my legs wide enough for Dr Harmon to notice. Good. There's no way he could brush this off as an act now.
Dr Harmon sucked in a breath and cocked his head to the side like he was examining me. I didn't like it. It didn't make me feel like I was in control when he did that, and I was the only one who could be in control of me… other than Violet, whether she meant to be or not.
"Do you turn to these thoughts to comfort yourself, in times of stress?" I grit my teeth, because I wasn't getting to him enough. He was still analysing me like any other patient… like I wasn't his daughter's soul-mate.
Figuring I'd give him the bullshit psychology he'd want, I replied. "Actually yes. I jerk off a lot to make the visions go away. The blood, and the carnage. I want the thoughts to go away, and you're not helping me." The accusation in my tone didn't go unnoticed, but it didn't bother him like I hoped. Obviously he didn't care whether I thought he was a good therapist or not, which meant he was probably only interest in where his next pay-check was coming from. I could live with that. In fact, it kind of made it easier to know I was going to make his life hell and fuck his daughter, because it would just be anybody, not a teenage boy he trusted, just another faceless manila file in his draw.
His tone was patient, as he made excuses. "Well we've only been working together a few weeks now." And I knew I was losing him, and he was about to give some stupid speech about progress and time and medication and talking things through. I caught him off guard with a topic change.
"You're sexual, right?" He leaned forward, surprised by my quick topic change. Maybe this tactic would work where his daughter and his profession hadn't. "Violet told me about the affair with the girl in Boston. Not much older than her, she said." I saw his jaw tighten and his body go stiff, and I knew I'd found his trigger. I don't know why I didn't pick up on it before, obviously he would be affected by that which affected him directly more than care for his own family. He had no idea how lucky he was to have Vivien and Violet, and the sickest part was that he'd never deserve them.
"Our time is up." No, no way was he getting away with it that easily. A part of me just knew, instinctively, he'd now do anything he could to refrain from seeing me again, so I had to fight for this.
"Bullshit," I drawled, "I don't accept that." I sat forward, my mouth a stiff, stern line, eyes black. He didn't flinch, and I knew I'd lost.
"Our time is up for today, Tate." I stared him down for a few more seconds before standing abruptly and picking up my bag, making for the door with the intention of breaking my hands against someone's bones and then maybe going to see if Violet wanted to hang out.
As it turned out, there was no one in the basement when I went down there, and no one in this house trusted me enough to let me lure them anyway, so I figured I'd see if watching Violet for a while calmed me down enough to expose myself to her safely. When I materialised, invisible in her room, she was curled up on her bed with a book, and the scent of her cigarettes lulled me like my mother's had when I was too young to know the truth about my family. Something soft was playing in the background and I wondered where it was coming from, because I couldn't figure out the little rectangular object or where you were supposed to put the disks. I stepped as close to her as I dared, and thought I would get away with being this close to her, before her head jerked up and to the side, so we were almost nose to nose. I held my breath, sure she'd feel it, before she sighed back against the pillows propped along the headboard and went back to her book.
Deciding now was as good a time as any, I knocked on her door from the outside and poked my head round the door. She smiled when she saw me, the aggravation at being disturbed dropping from her face and the book dropping from her hands as she got up to greet me. I folded her small frame into my chest, holding my jacket open and around her so she was enveloped in me. I knew it was irrational, but I wanted her to smell like me so maybe, if she decided to grace her parents with her presence for dinner tonight Dr Harmon would recognise the scent and know I'd been with her, but have nothing solid enough to prove it with.
"What're you doing here?" She asked, but her voice was angry, just surprised, so I smiled.
"I just had a session with your dad. Probably my last," I bit my lip, wondering how I would explain my being here all the time without the solid alibi I'd had before, and possible sabotaged. I didn't know what to tell Violet, either, because somehow I didn't think the truth about my conversation with her father would go down well.
"Okay." She said simply, threading her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck and tugging me gently down for a sweet kiss. "I downloaded some Nirvana for you," she said when we broke apart, and I didn't know how to ask her what that meant, so I hoped she'd just show me. She took my hand and tugged me over to the little rectangle piece of technology that I would never get to grips with, and plugged it into a thing with a speaker attached. She fired it up, and I lost concentration because her tongue was poking out of the side of her otherwise closed lips and I'm an eternally teenage boy. Suddenly Kurt Cobain's voice rang out, angsty and perfect, just like the moment. She turned, beaming, looking for my approval, which I was most certainly willing to give her. She'd done this all for me.
"Do you like?" She asked, deftly running her tongue over her bottom lip. I think my expression must have been pretty blank at the moment, because she looked a little worried.
"Thank you," I managed, because I hadn't listened to Nirvana in forever and she'd gone to the trouble of downloading or whatever to get this for me. She listened to me.
"I just figured, since you always talk about Kurt Cobain, it might be nice to have it over here, as well as at your place…" she trailed, and I realised suddenly and with a stab of fear that she might be fishing for an invite. I suppose she must find it weird that I never invite her over, but it's not like I can tell her the truth, and even if things weren't the way they were, there's no way I'd bring her light into a house with Constance. No way.
"Nah, my house is shit. You're room's much cooler," I replied, distracting her with a press of my lips to her neck and arms round her waist. She sighed, though I wasn't sure whether it was because I'd shot her down or because of the way I made her feel. I'm going to say it's the latter, either way.
"Okay. Want to watch some videos?" She asked me, and I nodded against her. She latched onto my sleeve and pulled me to the bed. I wriggled up against her, fitting my arm snuggly between her lower back and the headboard of the bed. She pulled her computer onto her lap and scrolled through a list of films.
"What do you want to watch?" I asked, hoping she'd just pick something because I hadn't heard of any of the films on the list.
"I haven't seen Kick Ass in a while, want to watch that?" She asked and I nodded, pretending like I had an opinion that was valid, at all. As the light left the sky and the room became gradually more and more dark, Violet watched the film and I watched Violet, content to look at her forever.