Author: grayglube
Title: Magic Words
Summary: She tells him he's dead but he never bothers to remember.
Rating: M
Warning(s)/Kinks: Language, sexual situations
Spoilers: Everything in all episodes if you haven't been up to date with your viewing.
Disclaimer: I don't own American Horror Story. Or Byron's "Darkness". Or Anne Rice's "The Witching Hour"
A/N: I kind of like writing Leah, she's fun. And the book discussion bits are just something that I love doing. Third part out of four.
"Thought you decided not to come near this place ever again."
She had never figured to see the other girl on her front steps, but she was there in her awful hat and tight designer jeans, an armful of textbooks and manila folders with post-it messages with page numbers and due dates.
"Yeah well I wasn't," Leah states firmly before tilting the books on her hip and sighing heavily. "But you haven't been to school and that fat ass bitch saw us talking in Chem and thinks we're like carpet munching each other best friends and gave me all this shit and it's been sitting in my car and even though you live in the Amityville Horror house times ten I figured maybe if I could make myself actually come near it maybe it'd be like progress."
Violet watches her chew the inside of her cheek and her teeth tear a piece of the inside of her mouth judging by the pained hiss she lets out before adding, "Or some shit like that."
"You wanna come in?"
"No." Leah raises her eyebrows and swivels her head to give her a look that should be patented as 'You're delusional'."
"Wanna go in the backyard," it's supposed to be a question but she's already shutting the front door behind her and moving forward down the front steps to go around the other girl.
Leah doesn't move and Violet stops to look over her shoulder at the girl still facing the front door for a moment more before turning halfway and pursing her lips in a pouty little mauve colored pucker before tilting her chin up in disgust, "I'm leaving before it gets dark."
"I don't blame you," she tells her already walking around the side of the house unconcerned by the return of the cokehead queen bee's haughtiness for everyone besides herself. They settle in the unstained wood circle of the gazebo. She perches herself on a railing and lights a cigarette while watching the other girl drop the pile of books in her arms unceremoniously at her feet.
It rattles the entire structure around them.
"I don't know how you can just not show up at school and hang out here all day," Leah comments stealing one of her cigarettes and leaning back against the railing watching sheets billow on the line next to a mish-mash of laundry that once again includes her father's.
"I stay in my room and sleep a lot."
The other girl gives her a thoughtful looks that Violet knows heralds an onslaught of unwanted, unhelpful advice.
"Not really my problem but…you're going to fail all your shit." Leah doesn't look at her while she tells her what she already knows, Violet just shrugs.
"Doesn't matter I'll probably have to repeat a year when my parents get their divorce and me and my mom have to go live with my aunt and then you know eventually move somewhere else when my dad cuts her a check for being a dickhead and by then it won't really matter that I failed trig and chem. Because I'll be taking them again one way or the other."
"Well then fuck school, why bother?"
"Yeah, I know. That was my point."
They smoked in silent camaraderie, like soldiers in a trench or doctors fifty feet away from a hospital entrance or highschool kids crouched between cars in the visitors' parking lot.
"You look like shit by the way," Leah told her with a sideways glance.
In some unexpected way it chafed irritatingly to be told what she already knew, like she didn't own a mirror or that the other girl's opinion fucking mattered and was the voice of god or something.
"I'm sick and I have weird freaky dreams and lately it's like they're trying to broadcast advice on how to deal with shit in cryptic ass ways and yeah I know I'm wearing a scarf and it's sixty out but dream advice told me to sweat a fever out."
"What did you dream about?"
The anger turned itself down to make way for exhaustion, and she slumped over and stared at the wood floor of the gazebo no one had the time to finish in the midst of parental bickering and psych patients.
"I didn't really know until after I woke up."
"It gave you the idea to sweat out your fever."
She didn't really want to talk about it because dreams never came out right when talked about with someone else and the other person never really got the whole thing but she just took a drag and started talking, "I realized something; if Hell is really hot then sweat must evaporate right? So if something from Hell came up on Earth then…"
Violet turned to look at the other girl for her to fill in the blanks, to see if she got where she was going with the explanation without having to outright explain it.
"They'd sweat a lot?"
"Yeah."
Leah's mouth twisted in the corner, an unattractive scowl of disgust, "Gross."
"It was a sex dream," Violet clarified.
"You were having sex in Hell?"
"I was finding out what Devil sweat tastes like."
Taking three more drags while Leah stared at her in absolute silence probably deciding whether to just start walking back to her car or actually stay and tell her she had finally cracked Violet waited for a reactionary response. All the other girl did was shake her head and tap ash off her cigarette and inhale before shaking her head with a small smile that Violet didn't buy for a second as real.
"Weird dreams are a side effect of those pills, maybe you should take half of one and start weaning off."
"Yeah, maybe."
Violet decided that maybe pretending like they were just highschool girls oblivious to shit that was impossible and how much the possibility of her house being a demon portal was closer to fact than fiction, or that there weren't any more pills to take half of, or that the puckered red scars forming on the other girl's face were from Chanel envy rather than the boy who she herself wasn't just kinda sorta friends with but was fucking and completely in love with wasn't that bad of an idea.
"Sooooo…what's the Devil's sweat taste like? Diesel fuel? Baby's blood?"
"Sweat. Just sweat."
Salt and heat, she remembered the taste. She remembered the feel of him too, slick and familiar, and how when she closed her eyes the difference between his sweat and her blood disappeared in that way of dream logic.
She leans her head back to study the underside of the gazebo roof, it's domed only slightly but it reminds her of chapels with painted ceilings, she wonders if she has the artistic ability for making fat little cherub children and angels and old men with beards in pen and paint.
"When can you take European History here?"
"It's an advanced placement class, so you don't really have to."
"I took it last year at my old school."
"Yeah?"
"Do you know about Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome?"
"No."
"Well it's a giant church, I guess, and the pope at the time wanted to build it but they didn't have enough money. So you know what they did?"
"What?"
"They sold indulgences."
"What's that?"
"It's something you buy to get your dead relatives out of purgatory; it's a piece of paper with words on it."
"That's crazy."
"It worked."
"What's your point?"
"It's kind of amazing what people believe, depending on who's telling them."
"I guess."
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two of the enormous city did survive, and they were enemies: they met beside the dying embers of an altar-place where had been heaped a mess of holy things for an unholy usage' they raked up, and shivering scarped with cold skeleton hands the feeble ashes, and their feeble breaths blew for a little life, and made a flame which was a mockery; then they lifted up their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld each other's aspect—saw, and shrieked, and died— even of their mutual hideousness they died, unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The third time it all happened was on accident, she hadn't known she'd been telling him, hadn't been trying to but she figured maybe she did, a little bit. She can't really remember if she was trying to tell him or if he just had a light bulb flicking on moment in his brain and illuminating things all on its own. She still isn't sure.
He'd been sitting in her chair reading, quietly, smirking, pleased with himself about something it seemed to her.
"What are you reading?"
"'The Witching Hour'."
"Gimme."
She held out a hand and waited for him to hand it over. When he didn't she'd made to swipe it out of his hands but he cradled it protectively against his chest and smiled.
"I'm reeeeading."
She looked down and pondered the amount of pages on either side of his index finger sandwiched in the novel.
"You read that much already?"
"Nope, reading your underlines. I can't believe you annotate."
"I can't believe you know that word."
"I can't believe you underline all the sex in this."
She decided that was what the smirk was for.
"Shut up."
He started reading, out loud, and it was worse because she knew she'd been the one to underline the passage. And what was worse still than any of the already messed up things about her boyfriend reading explicit excerpts she'd all but bookmarked was which one he'd read with a smirk and lidded eyes studying her for a reaction to mentions of cocks and kneadable bottoms and goading by way of pillow talk that included missives to ride someone hard and brutal furious fucking.
"Shut up!"
"Distracting?"
"Annoying."
"Do I not have a good voice for reading out loud?"
"Just shut up."
She dropped onto the bed and tried to will the hot blush of her face and the warm wetness between her legs away.
"You know I really like this Lasher guy."
"Of course you do."
She'd scowled when he sat cross legged on her floor and looked up at her cross legged on the bed.
"He's just looking for love."
She'd snorted and his eyebrows had ridden up his face almost to his hairline at how loud it was.
"No he's not."
"No?"
"He's looking for the perfect specimen to make him a new body."
"Like Frankenstein?"
"No like stealing Rowen's baby and making it his new body. He wants to be alive. He doesn't want to be like he is anymore."
"What is he?"
She had to pause and dig through her brain for the right words.
"He's an incorporeal force."
She waved a hand.
"He's an incubus."
On the floor looking up at her she couldn't help but feel like maybe he should put the same definition to himself at that moment.
"The sex is a ploy. He's just using his ghost penis as weaponry."
"They seem to like it."
He grinned.
"Superficially."
"How so?"
The question seemed silly.
"What is this? Oprah's book club?"
"Come on what's your theory?" He had risen up on his knees and put his hands on either side of hers and peered up at her. "What makes ghost penis so intoxicating."
She pressed her shoe to his chest and pushed him away, he let her and fell back supine on the floor dramatically before he propped himself up on his elbows and shook his hair out of his face.
"It's going to happen anyway, it's the only thing he's got to use so he's going to use it and only Marybeth and Carlotta get that. All the other Mayfair women think they can fight that or use it but Lasher's been playing the game for a lot longer than everyone else, Deborah may have understood but she didn't have the whole advantage of having Lasher around for generations before her to know how he worked."
"I don't know who all those characters are."
"Well okay Marybeth is really the first Mayfair woman to realize that Lasher is going to be Lasher and act like Lasher and the only way to get what she wants, power, wealth, status for her family, is to play along and be just as cunning as Lasher and it's a whole balance thing so she makes them equals and uses Lasher as a tool as much as he uses her as a tool and the whole dynamic works. Now Carlotta who's Marybeth's daughter is the oldest daughter and is set to inherit Lasher at some point but I think Marybeth knew that if Carlotta would one day overthrow her she purposely acted in ways that made Carlotta not want to have Lasher and to want to be the black sheep, to never say his name or want to use him so she could reign as Queen Witch or whatever for as long as she could, and she does."
"What happens to Carlotta?"
"She says fuck you, moves out, never gets married, never has children, makes her own way and in her own way she's like a Queen Witch bitch too, just one that is the only one in her kingdom. She's selfish in her own way and not about to let something else control her."
"So she gives everything up?"
"Yeah."
He made a sound like a click, his tongue against his teeth and she saw the pink of it in his mouth and it had made her skin feel tight and suffocatingly close.
"Stupid."
"You have to read the whole book to get the big picture."
"She sounds like an idiot."
"Why?"
"Because in the end she dies, old, alone and completely joyless."
She'd shrugged and fell back on her bed, stretched out her legs and put her arms under her head to talk to the ceiling.
"She's still my favorite."
"Why?"
"Because she's strong."
"How?"
It was easier to talk without having to look at him she'd decided, it was always easier to tell secrets in the dark too. If the lights were off she knew she'd tell him all sorts of things, but they hadn't been, so she'd closed her eyes and pretended.
"Because she's alone and no matter what anyone can offer her it's not going to be what she wants, she's not going to be charmed by easy titles or money or power because all that means nothing if it's just inherited and if she failed to live up to her mother's legacy it just makes her another one of Lasher's toys, another Mayfair witch, and she won't be like that."
"She's scared so she left."
"I don't think so. She's brave."
"She runs away from what's supposed to be hers and leaves her sister who's weak and ineffectual to take on something that isn't her job, she's cruel."
There was something in his voice that sounded like contempt. Old and bitter, maybe a little broken and betrayed too.
"So? She's still strong."
"I don't buy it; it doesn't say that in the book."
"She's offered the keys to the kingdom and she says fuck off. Lasher's going to make her a fucking Queen to a family clan of the richest most influential people in existence and she still says fuck off. You know why?"
"Why?"
"Because she's worth more to herself than anything else in the world and she's not going to take something that isn't up to par to her, Heaven may be great but she won't take it if it's got the wrong color scheme, despite the fact that she could fix it, she doesn't want to fix things she wants what she wants and if it isn't already what she wants, fuck off. She's ballsy and brave and smart."
The bed moved and she kept her eyes closed even when she felt his elbow against hers, even when she knew his posture on the bed mirrored hers.
"So she makes her own crown and her own kingdom, population uno."
"Yeah. She's a complete person; she needs nothing and wants nothing she can't get for herself."
"Would you rather be Marybeth or Carlotta?"
She'd opened her eyes and moved up onto an arm to study him, lying back on her bed, arms under his head, shirt stretched tight over his chest and riding up his stomach, she'd wanted to reach out and trace the lean musculature just barely peeking out. She hadn't. But she'd thought about it before answering, before his eyes had peeked open, almost catching her.
"…I don't know."
"Come ooooon."
"It's not something you could know ahead of time."
"Ahead of time of what?"
"Someone offering you the keys to the kingdom."
His eyes shifted to hers.
"What if someone was?"
She shifted hers away.
"That type of shit depends on a lot of other shit, Tate."
"Like what?"
"The weather that day, whether I've run out of cigarettes, when I'm being asked, before I go to bed, right when I wake up, after lunch, if I've got a science lab due or trigonometry homework if I have enough caffeine in me to kill a small horse."
"If Lasher is a good fuck."
She'd looked back to catch him giving her a shit eating grin.
"Carlotta never fucks Lasher."
"Why not?"
"Because he infuriates her and makes her feel like it'd be the best feeling ever to be weak for awhile but she hates being weak and it doesn't matter how much it feels good it's still weakness and Carlotta wants to be something more. She wants to be an example, an icon, an epitome of power on her own terms."
"Do you think she wishes she could be someone else, so she could have Lasher?"
"Yeah."
"…"
"If she were a real person, yeah. No one wants to be that person who can always be alone and okay with that. No one wants to be that."
"…"
"Maybe Carlotta considered having this great love affair partnership with Lasher but that's not in the book, it's just speculation."
"If she was a real person though it might have been like that."
She laid back and turned her head to look at him like he looked at her, she chewed her bottom lip.
"When do two people who are absolutely right for each other get tired of dancing around and finally get it together?"
"I don't know."
"Never."
She smirked.
"Really?"
He smiled.
"Never."
She shook her head.
"How sad."
"You think so? I don't."
She turned her face to the ceiling again.
"You probably think it's perfect and poetic."
"No, just simple. Nice."
"More like tragic."
"Yeah, exactly."
"You're weird."
"Guess so."
"You get off on the whole idea of tragic love."
"What's more romantic than that?"
"Romantic love."
"Romance is tragic."
"I guess it is."
"Don't just agree with me, it's annoying. Have an opinion."
"Oh well, sorry. I'll try."
"Nobody cares if you agonize over the choice, just make a decision."
"Yeah?"
"To be or not to be."
"Uh-huh."
"Do or don't there is no try."
"Is the result all that matters? Always?"
"To everyone besides yourself, yeah."
"So it doesn't matter why, ever?"
"No. Just what you did about it. That's all that matters. You can't prove something you feel with actions, just words."
"What if someone doesn't believe you?"
"Then they don't."
"Tragic."
"Yeah, isn't it?"
They lapsed into silence. She mimed for a cigarette and he'd grabbed her pack and put one in her open mouth before flicking flame up from her Zippo.
"…"
He stared at her.
"What?"
"Does this make me your Lasher?"
She laughed.
"I don't know, you got ghost mojo to fuck me with anytime, anywhere, anyhow?"
"Why would I need that? I'm a real boy."
"Then you can't be Lasher can you? He's incorporeal."
"I'm trying."
She'd been confused by the look he'd given her, the way his eyes had moved over the stretch of her body as he laid her coffee mug ashtray next to her on the bed.
"You're trying what?"
"To violate you in horribly profane ways is it working...can you feel it?"
His tone brought back the hot wetness she'd been trying to ignore between her thighs.
"Can I feel what?"
She was glad her own tone didn't betray her.
"My ghost mojo."
"Ahhhh, ohhh, yeah."
She cried out, with a wild thrash on the bed before she broke out in unrestrained laughter and ashed her cigarette in the coffee mug.
"You sound like someone hit you with a brick."
He deadpanned.
"Like I'd say 'yeah' to getting hit with a brick."
"Don't know, you into that shit?"
"Depends on who's throwing the brick."
"Yeah?"
She sat up and he looked curious, thoughtful.
"I guess. Haven't thought about it."
"Pfft, liar."
"Okay."
She'd rolled her eyes and taken a long drag.
"Come on, what's your freak limit?"
"My freak limit is a line that brick throwing doesn't quite cross, or crosses, whatever, no brick throwing."
"What doesn't cross the line?"
"Use your imagination."
"You got a pair of handcuffs?"
"Nope."
"Blindfold?"
"Nope."
"Then you're not even a little freaky, how tragic."
He flopped back onto her pillows and had thrown an arm across his face. She puffed on her cigarette thoughtfully.
"You did put on that suit."
"Did you like me in the suit?"
"It was very flattering."
"Would you have sex with someone in a latex suit?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I like skin."
"Of course you do."
"Sex with latex instead of sweat isn't really sex if you ask me."
"Like you'd know."
He still stayed with his arm over his face, talking up at the ceiling.
"I can imagine."
"Do you?"
His arm came off his face and his eyes panned down to stare at her sitting up on the bed. She put out her cigarette and put the mug on the floor.
"Do you?"
"Yeah, all the time."
"You're a boy so of course you do."
"That's sexist. Bet your mind's as dirty as mine."
"I wasn't denying it."
"Tell me."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want to."
"All girls have the same top three fantasies."
"No they don't."
"Yeah they do, I read it somewhere."
"Where?"
"Some magazine."
"Porn?"
"No, something my mom had lying around."
"Yeah, what are the top three?"
"You're a girl you should know."
"That's clever."
"What?"
"You're not so sneaky way of trying to pick my brain."
"Want to know mine?"
"That's alright."
She did. He'd tell her, she knew.
"You're no fun."
"Just because I won't tell you what turns me on doesn't mean I'm boring it just means you're too fucked up to be interested in shit that isn't about sex."
"Not true."
"Okay fine you're right but I'm still not telling you, why would you want to know anyway?"
"Maybe I'd like to know what turns you on."
"Why did you want to?"
"Yeah."
She'd wondered if he'd meant at that moment or for future reference, it hadn't mattered she already was.
"Well there's a difference between fantasy and reality."
"So? Let's act one out."
He'd swung up to sit, excited and smiling at the prospect.
"Right now?"
"Yeah, why not?"
He'd loomed closer, like an animal on her bed, prowling closer. She leaned back.
"I just told you."
"Yeah, fantasy, reality, got it. You don't know what you'd like and what you wouldn't."
"Yeah, exactly. Don't worry if I wanted something, I'd ask for it."
His face was close to hers.
"So you would not like me to kiss you right now?"
"You can kiss me if you want."
It came out without much air and much too hushed.
"What kind of indecisive answer is that?"
"Fine, yes. Kiss me."
He swooped in and dodged her lips, planted his on her throat. His mouth had been warm, soft, insistent against her pulse.
"What are you doing?"
"Kissing you."
His tongue licked a line under her ear behind the fall of her hair, sucking hot and wet, her chest felt tight and her hand fisted the comforter next to where his had lain flat.
"Yeah."
She'd breathed, a hand had gone up to cradle the back of his head while her pulse throbbed just as insistent and blunt in her sex.
"Ever have a fantasy about a guy's face between your legs, licking you?"
His voice had been like a devil on her shoulder whispering in her ear.
"…"
"Violet? Did you hear me?"
"Yes."
She'd taken a breath before trying to speak again.
"Yeah, fantasy implies slightly unlikely."
"So where's getting eaten out on the list?"
"Definite must."
He'd leaned back to consider her, she looked at the wall.
"I'll remember that."
"Yeah it's not really a fantasy fantasy."
"What's the difference?"
"Well like a fantasy would have to be something that is a little freaky, you know. Something you wouldn't do every day, like an orgy."
"So you want to be in an orgy?"
He'd laughed and she'd smacked herself in the head.
"No, I just mean like an orgy is a sometimes thing. Like how you can't have icecream and cookies for lunch every day, they're sometimes snacks."
"Okay what's you sex fantasy sometimes snack?"
"What's your's?"
She challenged not wanting to say anything else that he'd remember later and bring up.
"I don't know maybe like bondage or something."
Her ears may as well have twitched.
"…seriously?"
"Not like whip the shit out of me but you know being tied up or something."
He nodded and shrugged like it wasn't some big deal, it was but she refrained from feeling more uncomfortable about the impossible topic they couldn't possibly have been talking about.
"Kinky."
"Okay so I told you, now tell me one."
"When was that exchange discussed?"
"Come on, don't be a pussy."
Fair was fair.
"Fine…I guess, let me think."
She had a lot of thoughts to sift through; suddenly she'd wanted to top his admission with one of her own.
"You're blushing."
"I always kind of wondered what it would be like to get spanked."
"…"
He chuckled and then sputtered before letting out a howl.
"Okay, yeah. Laugh. God."
She put her face in her hands and shook her head.
"Really?"
"Yeah, I guess. Is that really weird?"
She peeked up at him under her hair; he'd been smiling and earnest.
"Like put over someone's knee and just spanked?"
"Yeah."
"Nah, that's kind of hot actually."
"Thanks."
"What about like fight sex?"
"Fight sex?"
"You know what I mean."
He nodded at the book on her chair; the movement had brought back his perverse version of story time to her mind.
"Fake rape, yeah I know what you mean."
"Is that what it's really called?"
"I don't know, that's what it is though. You know? I mean yeah, maybe."
He stared like he wasn't sure if he should move or breath or say anything, there had been absolute silence and her heart skipped a beat and then another, playing hopscotch and she wondered if he suddenly thought she was some sort of depraved person he wanted nothing to do with.
"…"
But then there had been the way his lips parted like he'd been surprised and glad for it. She knew the look, it was turned on. It was sick and she'd really liked the way it'd looked on him.
"Yeah, fight sex is good."
She nodded.
"You need a safeword for it though."
He told her. Offhand, not quite paying attention anymore, his mind on lagging behind trying to process.
"…"
She grinned and laughed.
"What?"
"I had this friend in Boston who moved before I did and she had a weird ass that no matter what jeans she wore she'd get plumber crack going all the time and I'd always yell 'tangerine' and she'd know to pull up her pants."
"That's weird."
"I can't even remember why we chose fruit as our secret language. Or if some slutty chick walked by we'd look at each other and go 'apricot' yeah, it was a little weird. I guess."
"Persimmon."
"What?"
"It's a good safeword."
"Why would there be a need for a safeword?"
"Just in case you want to try a sometimes snack."
He moved closer and loomed again.
"Oh I see, getting hopeful are you?"
"I've got a whole list of fantasies."
He admitted.
"Alright shoot. Tell me another."
"I wanna get blown."
He'd been so serious it was funny. Like he'd just told her there was a poisonous spider on her face.
"Duh."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He started like she'd tried to hit him, his head jerked back just a little but fast.
"You're a dude, Tate. Of course you wanna get blown."
"Sorry to be so obvious."
"But that's not a fantasy, that's normal stuff."
"Yeah?"
"Oral sex is kind of like a return the favor sort of deal, I think. It's only fair."
"So you'd…"
She rolled her eyes.
"Well, yeah. But I don't know, people are weird, like third base is oral sex and a homerun is regular sex and, I don't know, to me it's just like there should be regular sex before anything else that's sex."
He moved back and gave her space to breathe easier.
"Why?"
"I don't know, maybe it because I'm a girl, getting head is just like…more intimate, I guess than sex, sex."
There was something about the thought about being exposed that skeeved her and made her squirm at the same time.
"Hmm."
He'd lain back on her pillows and stretched out his legs next to hers, curled up and compacted close to her body. She hadn't exactly realized he was absently running a hand over his denim covered thigh until it rubbed at his groin.
"What are you doing?"
She'd squeaked.
"Adjusting myself."
"Wha…-why?"
"Because this conversation is kind of turning me on."
She floundered, unable to speak for a moment while he acted like it was okay to be doing what he was doing in her room on her bed with her there.
"Are you serious?"
"Deadly serious. I'm really fucking hard right now."
"Oh my god."
She turned her head away fast, her eyes not content to stare at the wall kept jumping back to his hand moving much too close to the inside of his legs.
"Are you embarrassed? Don't be."
"I'm not embarrassed."
"Sure you aren't."
"I'm not!"
"Then why aren't you looking at me?"
"Because you're feeling yourself up in my bedroom."
"Used to be mine."
Her head whipped towards him, down at his hand not even trying to pretend to be 'adjusting' anymore, up at his eyes, mischievous and tricky and knowing while he palmed himself through his jeans.
"What?"
"You heard me."
He widened his eyes in an expression that told her he knew that she knew and to come on and get over it and stop pretending like she hadn't known what he meant.
"…"
"Weren't you trying to remind me with that ghost mojo spiel?"
"No."
"Oh. Well yeah, oops. Or maybe not oops, does it matter?"
"No."
"Jeez."
He laughed.
"What?"
She looked back at him.
"We always end up doing this."
"Kind of our thing. Stop doing that."
She jerked her eyes back up when his hips canted forward lewdly.
"This?"
"Yeah , that."
"Why?"
He let out a groan.
"…"
"Is it turning you on?"
"No."
"…"
He thrusted up.
"Tate, seriously."
"…"
He twisted up and his sneakers bunched up her comforter.
"You're impossible."
"Me doth think the lady protests too much."
"Bullshit."
He'd swung up and crowded her space.
"You're horny."
"Shut up."
She stared at his throat.
"Really horny."
"I'm going to smother you."
"You make me really horny, all the time."
She glared up at him, her face hot and her panties soaked under her tights.
"Seriously, enough."
"No."
"…"
"I jerk off a lot, you know. More than usual, because of you."
"Why?"
"Don't be dumb, Violet."
"Do you think about me?"
"Yeah."
"Oh."
"Oh?"
"Good."
"You like that I think about you when I jerk off?"
"Yeah."
She breathed into his skin, swayed closer, put her hands on his forearms and arched up towards his mouth.
"Do you think about me?"
"…"
Her eyes had gone wide, scared.
"When you touch yourself."
"…"
She'd watched him wet his lips.
"You do."
"…"
Her throat felt closed and cinched shut, she couldn't have talked if she'd had anything to say, she didn't, she had no voice then.
"I know you do."
"…"
"You say my name."
That much wasn't true.
"Bullshit."
She whispered.
"I don't make any noise, barely any. That's a little stereotypical though to think girls scream when they cum."
He smirked and she'd known she'd missed something or been tricked or made a misstep, she just couldn't find where, her brain refused to backtrack, too keen to stay and process what had been happening at the moment, the way his stare was trained on her mouth, her eyes, her blush, the way her chest rose and fell too fast.
"I know. I meant in your sleep. You talk in your sleep."
It hit her and she scurried back on the bed before rolling off and standing, hands fisted at her sides, her eyes wild and face flushed and anger bubbling up under her skin.
"What do you mean you know?"
"What do you think?"
The implication of it made her want to cry and scream and hit him. Hard, again and again. Stab him or strangle him.
"Get out."
She hissed. The idea was too much for her to handle, that he'd watched her, seen her, spied on her while she thought she was alone.
"Oh, come on."
He pleaded.
"I watch you sleep, sometimes you're not asleep. I don't watch, if that's what you're worried about, I leave. It'd be weird to watch, like I'm a creepy pervert. And it's not like I don't know you get off, so it's not that big a deal."
"Yes. It is. It's a huge fucking deal."
She wanted to yell, but her voice would have cracked so she settled for the horrified hiss she was so fond of.
"Don't be embarrassed, please. Come on. I'm sorry. I won't do it anymore, promise."
There had been sincerity of such a degree that she let her hands uncurl and walked back towards the bed where he chewed his lips nervously, anxious, worried, scared she'd really tell him to leave.
"You really watch me sleep?"
"…yeah."
"What about when I wake up?"
"I disappear."
"Don't."
"Okay."
She sat down and sighed. She tried to let her anger go, it did for the most part. The embarrassment stayed.
"I like it when you stay. It's nice."
She admitted looking at the floor.
"Not creepy?"
"A little, but nice. Let's quit talking about this, okay?"
"Okay."
"Persimmon."
She smiled weakly and looked at him meek and still mortified.
"Persimmon."
He agreed smiling back.
It made her look back at the floor.
"Okay fine."
The words had left on their own, she waited for the realization to hit her like a brick she didn't want thrown at her.
"Okay fine, what?"
"Yes."
"Yes, what?"
She looked up at him and then at her bed.
"I think about you."
It was a whisper, weak and girly and scared.
"…"
He hadn't spoken and again she felt like a big weirdo.
"Tate?"
"…"
She looked up to see what look he was wearing. When she saw she took a harsh breath through her nose and shoved him.
"Stop smiling."
"Can't help it."
"You're being obnoxious."
"How often?"
"What?"
"Every time you get off you think of me or just sometimes."
"…it didn't use to be every time."
"But now it is?"
"I guess."
She mumbled wanting to die.
"Cool."
"You're a creep."
He shrugged and beamed at her all teeth and gums and appled cheeks.
"When did you start thinking about me like that?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Why does it matter?"
"Because I want to know."
"Before Halloween, I guess, after the break-in stuff."
"What do you think about me doing?"
"Playing a game a scrabble, honestly what do you think? Sex, dumbass. And no I'm not giving you specifics so seriously end of conversation."
"Okay."
He fell back and his mouth had kept twitching, unable to stop curling up, happy, pleased, completely content that she thought about him fucking her when she slipped her hands between her legs at night while he watched her not knowing he watched her and she'd really wanted to die because she knew he was a fucking liar and he'd watched her. She knew because she'd watch him if she was the dead one in the relationship.
"Stop smiling."
The populous and the powerful was a lump, seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—a lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
"Having fun?"
Her father is visiting her mother and she's laid out on the leather couch in his office, textbooks open on the table with ashes over the pages from her missing the ashtray, the cigarettes he knows are ones she's found in her father's desk and the way her stomach concaves under her ribs when she places her arm under her head to pillow it and sucks on the filter of her nicotine fix makes him stare and study her in a way that's too intense to be innocent or just curious.
"I'm surprised he has everything labeled so nicely."
"Who?"
"My dad. He's usually a slob."
"What'd ya find?" He grins at her even though her eyes don't open while she exhales a drag and sits up.
"His session tapes."
The revelation shocks him and he hopes she hasn't listened to them yet, hopes that by some chance she's been waiting for him to show up so they could snoop through things together but he highly doubts that hopeless hope.
"…"
"What?" She asks, her face a mask while taking another drag, her eyes mean little slits, like some cold blooded thing that wants to snap out and strike him, bite, maim, poison, kill. Deadly. Lethal. He doesn't know if she's pissed or just reptilian.
"You listened to them?"
"…"
She arches a delicate eyebrow and raises the hand that had been under her head that's laid in her lap, and there's the rectangular cassette player in her loose grip. Her thumb depresses a button and his voice talks back to him. Things he's said about her to her father that he's thought about, fantasized about and she's still smoking her cigarette watching the way his face changes from surprised to incredulous to fearful.
"I'm gonna go." He's already turning when his voice disappears and her's starts sounding off at his back.
"So you can say all those things to him but you won't do them to me?"
"You haven't asked." He's angry.
"You haven't tried." She looks bored.
"Should I?"
"You can't you're leaving, remember?"
And he's pissed off. He slams the door on his way out, angry at himself and her and everything between them and around them and the way he can hear the tape recorder rewind and his voice behind the door, again and again as she rewinds the tape over and over to hear him talk about her in ways that made her dad want to crack his skull open and just make her stare at him bored, listless, not even slightly amused.
The rivers, the lakes and ocean all stood still, and nothing stirred within their silent depths; ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea and their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped they slept on the abyss without a surge— the waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, the moon, their mistress, had expired before;
A/N: One last part to this. Glad to have this almost finished, it's been a long one and eventually as a writer while you love a story to bits you just kind of wish you could write it faster and not procrastinate and get on to the next thing. I don't know how I start out writing and then it's just so suddenly filled with smut, it just happens. A lot. It's very much like writing dialogue and my brain goes "You know what this needs?" "What does it need brain?" "Smut, loads of smut." "Oh my god you're so right, thanks brain." "No problem, anytime. Really anytime, seriously smut is good everywhere, anywhere, all the time. Smut. It. Up." And yeah there was more to this chapter but I went, it's already up to 7,000 words and if I keep these bits in it'll turn into about 12,000 and jeez move them to part four and make that just a bucket of smut.
Recs: "Sucker Love" by Tjoek, another amazing AU where there's no murder house or ghostiness but there's still a twisted Violate relationship that does just as well in the absence of a haunted house as it does with it. "Diabolical Minds" by Bravissimo, which is a first person Tate/OC, which while I'm not so fond of pairing wise is just worth the read because the writing is top notch and the depiction of first time sex is just absolutely true to life and while it may not be something I like from a fandom point of view I do like it from a writing point of view, the writing is glorious and wonderful and worth a read for that alone. "I Need No Heaven" by BryndisBeeSting I personally enjoyed the very beginning and the last paragraph the most, very poignant, touching.