Warning: Incest – if you don't like it, that's totally cool, just don't read, okay?

Tate & Violet, Rated – M

A/N – I want to make it very clear that the Michael in this story is NOT Tate's son. Though he is born in Murder House and they share some physical characteristics, his mother was pregnant with him before she moved into the house. And again, this chapter just got too long, so it has been broken into two parts.

Disclaimer – I do not own American Horror Story. Only the idea for this fic is mine.

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Present Day – Part 1

2014

The house had changed little since the time Vivien Harmon packed up her belongings and fled back across the country. The solid wood door remained closed, light filtered through the murky windows, dust motes danced through sunbeams. The power had been cut leaving the ghostly residents to inhabit rooms forever tainted by gloom. There was no warm water, no television, no music. Violet and Tate Langdon once more had free reign of their home but chose to largely remain in the attic, moving only when the fresh air out of doors pulled them to the patio, the carport, the lawn.

Time passed without their notice. Their existence stagnated, growing quiet. Eventually a new family, enchanted by the stately architecture and a very good price, moved in. They lasted a little over a year. Two more came and went before the current residents. The siblings noticed nothing, living in their fog, away from the rest of the world. Finally, a young couple, expecting their first baby, giddy with love and full of life, hope, happiness, the promise of a bright future, burst through the doors, awakening the house and all of its inhabitants.

It was their arrival that drew the pair out of that dormant state, rising from their nest and drifting downstairs, drawn by noise, existence, the smell of food. Their hibernation had seemed to them to be only days, wrapped up in one another's arms, naked bodies entwined, but it would later occur to Violet that it had been years, a decade or more.

By the time they appeared, blurry eyed, fuzzy tongued, they looked feral. Like wild children stumbling out of the forest in some old fairytale. Rubbing their faces, focusing their vision, they absorbed the differences to their home: furniture, the detritus that came along with inhabitation, light and sound.

With little time for thought or further exploration Violet nudged her brother back up to the second floor, stepping into the bathroom they had once shared, and ushered him into the pristine claw-footed tub. Neither wore clothes, shoes.

They let hot water pummeled their filthy bodies, tearing through dusty dirty hair, rinsing them clean, while simultaneously clearing their foggy heads. His sister scrubbed his hair, his body, turned Tate to stand under the spray, before lathering up herself.

Her brother grinned. "What?" Violet asked, showing him a quick flash of teeth, tongue, as her eyes darted lower. He was hard, heavy, wanting. She felt the corner of her mouth lift.

It was around that time, nearly twenty years after her stint with the pills, the vodka, ending her own life, that Violet began to change. Tate noticed it first.

Nora would sob, blubber, "Where's my baby?" and, for the first time, Violet would narrow her eyes, glare or scoff, instead of slashing the woman's throat, bashing her skull in, screaming at her to shut the fuck up.

"What's going on with you?" he asked one evening, dealing hands for a game of Gin.

"Nothing," his sister returned with a shrug. But it was something.

Constance died that year. A drunken accident, a slip and fall during a stupor. It was more than a week before anyone found the body, through her children knew exactly where it was. On the floor of her small upstairs bathroom, naked and wrinkled, sprawled across the floor, blood pooling around her bleached cotton-candy pouf of hair. They watched her first go stiff, then soften again, skin going from white to reddish purple, a blackened color settling in places. As she swelled, maggots appearing, Violet grew bored. Her brother continued to watch in fascination.

By the time she was wheeled from the house, the smell, noxious and overpowering, oozing from the open windows on the second floor, alerting a passerby and her dog, their mother's skin was loose, dripping, liquids pooling beneath her on the tiled floor.

Violet and Tate stared, unseen, from the front porch of the house as their mother was taken away. There would be no wake, no funeral, for the woman. Constance had no one left.

When her brother took her hand in his, squeezed, Violet turned, grinned, bounced a little on her heels, and returned the gesture. They were free of their mother, finally, utterly and completely.

"Ding dong," his sister chimed.

"The witch is dead," Tate completed.

The baby's arrival was imminent. The house thrown into chaos as Mrs. Bishop, a woman who appeared fifteen years older than Violet but who was actually a few years younger, screamed, panted, breathed. Her husband all but carried her out the front door to their Prius parked in the drive.

Only five months had passed since their arrival at the house, but already the structure was taking its toll, its pound of flesh. They argued more, Mr. Bishop pouring and downing tumbler after tumbler of whiskey. His wife glared, alternating between a state of stony silence and yelling. Their arguments were fueled by his drinking, her growing depression and isolation, the feelings of darkness and resentment that began to reside within each of them.

Things only got worse, grew more dire, after the infant came home. He was colicky, loud, but beautiful. Full chubby cheeks, a flash of blond hair on his head, lips like a cherub. All of the ghosts came to see, lurk, linger, tilt their heads and coo, plot.

The Bishops could feel their presence, the chill in the air. They saw shadows where none belonged, heard voices when no one else was there. And so the house wore on them, breaking them down, driving them slowly to the edge, the brink. Sybil had taken up consuming expensive gin as a hobby, a pastime. The baby, in turn, was weaned onto a bottle. Mark scowled at her as his son screamed from the floor above but his wife simply gazed back, eyes hard, empty, challenging.

Violet worried at first that Tate would be jealous, throw a tantrum, demand her full attention. And she was prepared to give it to him. But at the same time, a piece of her wasn't.

She liked the baby: it's wriggling body, tiny toes, and red scrunched up face. The cap of blond hair, like downy feathers on his head, and eyes so dark they were almost black in the dim light. Out in the sun they were the color of a storm swept out to sea, deep and blue and unfathomable.

His name was Michael and he reminded Violet so much of her brother it ached. She imagined their babies, the ones she once dreamed of, a silly little girl indulging in fantasies.

She had once had so many plans, ideas, pictures in her head of the future. One shared with Tate. With drinks in dim clubs as they discovered new bands, and college degrees from universities far away, a life in a city on the east coast or Europe. Maybe a cute little house up north in the woods or down south on the bayou, away from the world. She saw a white wedding dress, something vintage and lace and already worn to hell. Tate looking lethal in a black suit. Babies and birthdays and growing old together. The kind of shit that gets little girls through the long dark lonely nights of adolescence.

But none of that was ever going to be, and not only because they had died long before any of it was possible, but because when it came right down to it, the Langdon's we're never going to live out a fairy tale existence. None of them ever had, no matter how hard they tried.

"He's pretty cute," her brother told her, coming around the side of the bassinet, his palm a warm and welcome presence on Violet's lower back.

"Yeah," she smiled a little, still staring down. Turning to glance at him she added, "Kind of looks like the pictures of you when you were a baby."

"Yeah?" She shrugged her reply. "Well, I'm pretty cute too. So I guess he has something to look forward to." His sister rolled her eyes but smiled, tucked a strand of silken hair behind her ear.

"Do you ever, you know, wish that we had kept that baby? When we were kids?"

Tate thought about it, studied her face and bit his lip before lifting one shoulder helplessly. "Sometimes, I guess. I don't really think about it."

"Yeah," she agreed flatly.

"Because it makes me sad."

"It does?"

He nodded as they both gazed down at the squirming bundle. "Hey, Violet," her brother eventually began, nervous, teeth chewing his full lower lip, eyes darting sideways to observe her, "would you ever have, I don't know, wanted to have babies with me? I know what you said," he trailed off.

She turned immediately to face him, a hand cupping his cheek as he leaned greedily into her touch. "Of course. I always fucking wanted your babies, Tate," she told him so urgently, so honestly, his chest tightened. "I wanted to make something with you, a piece of me, a piece of you. I just, the way things were," it was Violet's turn to let the sentence hang.

"I know," he smiled, giddy, goofy again, as a thick lock of blond hair fell into his eyes. "I love you, Violet."

"I love you too," she returned, pressing her lips to his, a lazy exploration.

When they broke apart her brother turned back to the bassinet, "And if you really want a baby, I'll give you one."

"What?"

Tate snatched a pillow from the bed behind them and rushed back. "See? I can do this for you," he pleaded.

"No," his sister hissed, yanking the offending object from his grasp. "We're not going to steal their baby, Tate!" Her brother pouted, Violet sighed. "It's too young anyway. All it does is eat and shit and cry. Imagine that for eternity," Tate made a suitably disgruntled face. "But thank you for the offer," and when their mouths met again, her brother's hands moved to grasp her hips, tug her closer. Violet hummed her approval. "Let me show you how grateful I am," she added, tongue tracing from his jaw to his collarbone, before dropping to her knees, nimble fingers working the button on his loose jeans.

"Do you think he'll mind?" Tate nodded down at the baby.

"I think he'll have to get used to it in this house."

Violet sometimes wondered at their arrested development. How even after so many years they were little more than teenagers. The same as when they had died. She didn't feel like an adult, a woman, thirty-five and counting. Tate was forever the silly, moody, horny boy that she had grown up with. And, it began to occur to her, that that was it. They would not develop further. They were forever young. In all ways, not just their appearances. Like Nora was forever a frightened, broken-hearted mother, Charles always the doctor waiting on his next patient. The nurses, the gays, no one changed, not really. There was no growth, no depth, no understanding. And realizing it made Violet just a little bit more sad.

2015

In a scene straight out of The Shining, Mr. Bishop chased after his wife, a sharpened ax raised above his head as he hollered, teased, called her to come back to him, come play with him. He called her a whore, a slut, a cocktease. Tate laughed and run around after the man, delighted. His sister observed from a distance, head cocked, before returning to check on Michael, tickling his belly and swinging his little legs as he smiled, burbled in that unintelligible way of his.

The woman managed to survive, locking herself in the rear bedroom, screaming her lungs out, and climbing through a window onto the shingled ledge. A neighbor had already called for the police after hearing the argument, finally exhausted of the young couple and their near constant squabbles. He, however, had never expected the scene he found when he stepped out to wait for the officers. What was it about that house, he thought, shaking his head. It was cursed.

Her husband was shot, a bullet to the shoulder, injured, harmed, in pain, but alive. He was handcuffed to a gurney and rolled out the front door, loaded into a waiting ambulance. Mrs. Bishop and Michael, the baby she had forgotten all about, were placed in the second vehicle and sent to the hospital for observation. It was only a matter of days before they were back with a clean bill of health, nothing that time, valium, and therapy wouldn't be able to heal. But Sybil was different somehow: hollow, brittle. Her drink of choice, still gin, was a constant companion. Glass filled to the rim, contents sloshing over the side, running down her fingers, over her hand, to the floor.

The woman's entire outlook changed. She never smiled, never laughed, only stared, grimaced, glared at her small boy with flinty eyes. Her coolness, distance, reminded the two young ghosts more and more of their own mother every day. The house had a way of twisting people and it seemed to particularly liked drunk, angry, disappointed blonds.

The siblings watched from the shadows as Michael was pushed further and further from his mother's mind, drifting into obscurity. She fed him, changed him, clothed him, but that was the extent of her affections. Hugs, kisses, cuddles, did not exist.

Mrs. Bishop had enough money, of her own, savings, life insurance, that she was not required to work after her husband's incarceration. She divorced him as he waited in prison for his day in court. He would plea insanity, hope for institutionalization, though his lawyer, court appointed, felt it was a long shot. Likely the man would be found guilty of attempted murder, aggravated assault, simple assault, endangerment of a child, and would face most of his life behind bars.

Time moved quickly for Violet and Tate then, a sudden and remarkable change after their decade of sleep, solitude. And as the days flew by his sister found herself doing more than babbling at the boy in his crib. Soon she was lifting him, cradling him, cooing and playing with him as he sat on a blanket. She would roll him a large red ball, watch him catch it, encourage him to send it back.

And she wasn't the only one. Nora, Chad, crept from the woodwork, literally, bouncing Michael on knees, coddling him, caring for him. Even Tate eventually found himself involved, holding the boy's small hand as he walked on chubby wobbling legs over the grass behind the house.

"See that bird right there?" The baby pointed a wet finger at the sky, a far off tree. "That's a sparrow. And that," her brother turned him, paused, "that's a wren." Violet grinned, watching from the shade a few feet away. When the two blond heads moved in her direction, crashing to the lawn beside her, she patted Michael's cheek, let him waddle off. Tate hovered, his mouth by her ear, his fingers dancing across her bare thigh, warming the flesh yet further. "I like the way you look at me when I'm with him."

"You do?" she replied, smirking. He nodded. "And how do I look at you?" His digits moved upward, skimming cotton, disappearing beneath the worn tattered fabric of her floral dress, as his tongue darted out to lave her pulse point, feel it thumping, racing.

"Like you want me inside you," he breathed finally, pushing past the barrier of panties and plunging within her soaked folds.

Violet's eyes slipped closed as she sighed, head falling back slightly. "I do." She stuttered, "Fuck, I do."

"Michael!" A shrill voice rent the air and three heads whipped in the direction of the house. "Time to come inside," Mrs. Bishop called, face flushed with drink, with summer heat. The little boy turned and as happy as ever toddled toward the door, toward his mother. He stopped, dirt covered hand opening and closing in some approximation of a wave in the direction of the two seated on the grass. They didn't wave back. The pair had, sadly, lost all interest in anything outside of themselves.

Michael grew, changed. At the age of three he began pre-school. At five, kindergarten. The year after, he was in school full time. He was mad, wild, vicious and turbulent. More like Tate than anyone alive could have known, recognized. And Violet had gifted him with deviousness, an ability to think, to plan, to wait. It was a lethal combination in a young boy.

The more time the ghosts spent with him, the more like them he became. He was growing up in their image, emulating them, his only real friends, his role models. The only people he would ever believe truly loved him or cared for him.

The boy knew about the world. That it was a filthy god damn horror show. That people were monsters. They wore masks and hid their true selves, preyed on the weak. And Michael refused to be weak, the hunted. He was the hunter.

He had learned quickly it was better to play that role during one of his friend's games. Being the predator was fun: stalking, growling, killing. Being the prey was not: hiding, weeping, hurting and alone. When Violet was the hunter she would tackle Tate to the ground, use her teeth on him, tear him open with rocks until the grass was stained red and salt water tracks marred Michael's face. But the boy dare not refuse to play because his friends could disappear, just vanish into thin air. They could be gone for days, weeks, at a time. Leaving Michael alone with his mother, with the weeping lady in the basement who would clutch him too tight, smelling like perfume and mothballs. Like what he imagined a grandmother smelled like. And he hated that.

To begin with Tate had been wary. Afraid that the kid would distract his sister, that she would like playing with him more. But that hadn't been the case, not at all. In fact, Violet was more fun than she had been for years, possibly since they were kids themselves. Inventing new games, new ways to play, just like she once had. She was the best at coming up with ideas. And she always made it hurt in the best possible ways. She even suggested 'Daddy and the Maid' a couple of times. And Tate learned that that particular game had a much better ending than it had when he was ten, as Violet cooed and moaned in his ear, legs spread wide as he pounded her into the mattress, leaving her sticky and smirking, "Oh, Mr. Langdon..."

Something about Michael, having him around, filled a void in Violet's soul, made things right, easy, again. She was happier, livelier. His existence, presence in the house, refreshed and revived them. Her brother would watch her, grinning, nuzzling her neck as she made grilled cheese sandwiches, told bedtime stories, and dealt out cards for Go Fish, all while wondering when he could get her alone again, get inside of her again.

Because Violet was fucking him like it was a secret all over again, something fun and forbidden, something to hide and giggle over. Sharing cigarettes and tumblers of bourbon, kissing, tongues and mouths everywhere, gasping behind cupped palms in an empty bedroom, the pantry, a closet. Making Tate practically floated on air, lips pressed to her throat, his nose in her hair, heart bursting.