Author's note: The Byron letter has been edited, with a chunk of it taken out, so that it wouldn't divert too much from my own writing.
Also, if you love dark Tate, check out colourgirl22's youtube channel and watch her AMHS videos: youtube . com/user/colourgirl22#p/u/2/F1qHzD8NVSA. Her videos are incredible.
You have to pay for what you did.
Chad's face slammed down into the coffee table, once, twice, three times.
"Stop, stop," Chad moaned, blood pouring from his temple as Tate's grip on the back of his neck tightened and his face was forced down once again.
The distinct sound of snapped bone resounded throughout the room, blended with Chad's cries of pain, as his skull split.
Tate gave the man beneath him a cruel grin. "You aren't so tough now, are you?" he taunted with a sneer.
For a moment, Tate wondered what he was doing— how was he capable of such violence? But then he remembered the accusation in her eyes, the betrayal, and he remembered that this man beneath him was the one to plant that seed of pain; Chad had opened Violet's eyes to the very horrors Tate sought to protect her from.
Anger rolled through Tate's body like thunder, and he waited for the crack in Chad's skull to heal before he smashed his face into the bloodied wood once more.
The room looked like a horror scene— the blood splatter across the walls looked like it belonged there, and Tate thought that the nouveau-riche wallpaper looked better with it.
Tate lowered his head to the beaten pulp of the other man's face and dug two fingers into the burst of bone that revealed the man's scrambled gray mess of brain matter. Chad's mouth opened wider to let out another howl of pain, but his shredded vocals only allowed for a hoarse cry.
Tate lowered his lips to the other man's ear and took a moment to savor the heavy scent of iron. "You will never again fuck with what's mine; if you so much as look at her, talk to her, or even think about her, I will make our little session here look like child's play," he snarled, his voice low and malicious, and removed his fingers from the unnatural cavity he had created from Chad's head.
Chad slumped to the floor, unable to move as his wounds slowly reknit themselves. There was blood, brain, and piss everywhere.
Moira appeared in the doorway and gave Tate a distasteful look with that milky eye of hers. "You always do leave such a mess," the old woman tutted, and Tate gave a careless shrug, unconcerned.
"What do you think you're here for?" he shot back, annoyed, and went to go wash the blood off of his clothes and body.
He made his way to the bathroom but found it locked; he opened it anyways, muscles relaxing with the rush of steam that greeted him.
She stood in the shower, figure clouded by the distorted glass. The water must have been scalding her skin for all the steam it created, and Tate licked his lips at the thought of her breasts, stomach, and ass red from the heat.
You're all I have.
He leaned against the tiled wall, uncaring of the humidity, and watched the outline of her hand lather her body with soap and slide down her stomach towards the apex of her legs.
He imagined her fingers working in and out of her body, her lips parted, her head thrown back in ecstasy. He would teach her how to touch herself correctly, how to curl her fingers ever-so-slightly in that come-hither motion to reach that spongy piece of tissue that would make her cry out his name.
His eyes lidded, half-closed, and he brought a firm hand to the tightening bulge of his jeans, soaked with blood, and allowed the pressure of his own fingers to relieve some of his need.
But he wanted more. With Violet, he always wanted more.
He imagined her on the floor in front of him, resting on her knees, like a beloved pet, staring up at him with those watery brown eyes of hers. Her dainty fingers would work to free his manhood from the restrictions of his jeans, and she would, fumbling but oh-so eager to please, grasp his thickening cock in her hands and experimentally flick her tongue across the tip, tasting, curiously and virginally, the salty headiness of his precum.
He would thread his fingers in her beautiful blonde hair and guide his cock into her mouth and teach her how he liked to be sucked. Tate rubbed himself faster through his jeans, his breath harshening. She would try her best to swallow all of him, but she wouldn't be able to take him fully. She would try to withdraw and pull back and finish him with her hands, but he would thrust deeper into the warm cavern of her mouth. He would thrust deep and hard; she would gag and choke around his cock, and those sweet, tight, wet contractions of her throat gagging around him, trying to force him out, would make him cum. He would cum against the back of her throat, and her trusting eyes would be filled with tears, as she had no choice but to swallow.
Tate opened his eyes as his hips slowed their jerking motions, satiated for the moment. His jeans were past salvation, caked in his cum and Chad's blood. His gaze returned to the oblivious girl in the shower, and he felt a rush of affection for this girl who could make him cum in his pants like a virgin.
But before she could reach to turn off the showerhead, he slipped out of the room, unnoticed, to go take his own shower in a different bathroom.
I can't be with you.
Violet dried her hair as she wandered around the room that she had once called her own when her heart still beat. She went to reach for the hair tie that lay on her bedside table when her eyes fell on an old, worn copy of a collection of the letters of Lord Byron.
Her chest ached as she reached with trembling fingers to touch the yellowed pages, the battered cover.
She looked around the room, gazed hard at the shadows to discern if she had any unwanted visitors, then deemed it safe to pick the book up. Her fingers tingled, and she flipped to a page in the middle that had been dog-eared, smoothed out, and dog-eared again.
My dearest Teresa,
I have read this book in your garden; my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine.
You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them, which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love.
But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us— but they never will, unless you wish it.
Her eyes flickered across the underlined and highlighted words, and her heart raced at the thought of Tate standing here before her, holding this same text in his hand, mulling over the words with that roguish frown of his that appeared whenever he was concentrating.
"Violet?" Vivien knocked on the door, and Violet quickly set down the book, giving the door a second glance before calling back out to her mom.
"Come in," she said, and checked once again to make sure that everything was in order within the room and to shake off the unnerving feeling that she was being watched.
Vivien opened the door and stepped into the room, her eyes tender as she took in the haphazard sight of her firstborn wearing a towel turban and oversized shirt.
"I just wanted to check in and see how you're doing," she said, "You know, how you're holding up with everything. I know it's been hard for you."
Violet sighed and rolled her eyes, picking at a loose thread on her towel. "I'm fine, mom," she stressed, crossing her legs beneath her as she sat on the bed. "I've been fine. You can't baby me forever!"
They both winced at her poor choice of words, and Vivien reached out to tuck an escaped strand of wet hair behind Violet's ear.
"I know that, but you know that I'm only trying to look out for you," Vivien reassured her daughter, and Violet couldn't help but remember that the last person to "look out for her" ended up raping her mom and had a penchant for killing people.
Nevertheless, Violet dropped her glare and let her shoulders sag with the sigh that burst forth from her lips.
"I said goodbye, I let him go," Violet insisted, tugging at the strand her mother had placed behind her ear. "I'm not going to forgive him."
Vivien smiled good-naturedly at her stubborn daughter, knowingly: "Just because you said goodbye, just because you told him to go away, that doesn't mean that it doesn't still hurt you, Violet. If you ever want to talk about this…"
Violet cringed and waved off her mother's concern. "Nope, I don't have anything to talk about," she declared and shooed Vivien out of the room.
"Did she talk to you…?" Violet overheard her father's hushed whisper from outside the door, and she rolled her eyes.
Her parents gossiped like teenagers.
Tate slipped into her room, unnoticed, as she shuffled through her dresser drawer for a pair of pants.
He watched her bend over to her ankles to pull up a pair of jeans, appreciative of the curve of her body.
As if aware of his presence, she whipped around, eyes wild.
"Tate?" she demanded of the empty room, "Tate, stop spying on me."
He chuckled, the sound warm and familiar to her ears, but refused to show himself.
"I mean it, Tate," she warned. "Go away."
But the order held none of its past firmness, and he remained, albeit silently, to watch her take the towel off her head and brush her damp hair.
Her eyes flickered around the room suspiciously as she did so, as though she suspected that he might appear any second.
He walked over to where she was standing and stood directly in front of her. He reached a hand up to touch her wet locks and bent his head to ghost his lips over hers.
"I love you," he murmured into her soft lips. She closed her eyes as she heard the words and felt his touch. But when she opened them, her phantom lover was nowhere to be found.