Author: grayglube

Title: Rest for the Wicked

Summary: "Love doesn't last." She tells him like it's a fact she's absolutely sure of. 'I Love You.' She doesn't say it. But he hears it anyway. "For now it does." He's sure of that. 'Until you die.' He doesn't say it. But she doesn't need him too, she knows.

Rating: M

Warning(s)/Kinks: Language, Violence, Sexual situations

Spoilers: Spoilers for Piggy Piggy.

Disclaimer: I don't own American Horror Story.

A/N: Personally I think Tate's really a bad guy all on his own and when he died he got to the way he is in the show, I don't think the house made him do anything, I think he really is psychotic and without empathy for most people. I think the house just made him more self destructive than the alternative, that's how I write Tate. This may be unnecessary but I know a lot of people believe that he's really a good person who became bad but I don't and I don't want to write something that people end up confused over.

He likes the smell of her fingers, how secondhand smoke tastes but without the humidity, right there set in their loose curl towards her palm on the pillow, right in front of his face.

He likes the other five sandwiched between her chest and his shoulder and the way they move like breathing in her sleep.

He likes the pressure of her mouth and chin and nose against his spine and neck, the heat and dampness of breath from open lips onto his skin.

He likes her leg thrown over his, the inside of her thigh heavy and soft on his hip and the press of her hip into the curve of his scar poked waist.

He likes the languid bend of his thoughts, the way they stroll instead of sprint, the way everything is amalgamated totally, cleaved together instead of apart.

He likes the way that thing he should never dwell on and refuses to call out crawls out of its cave anyway and suddenly isn't so ill-intentioned and isn't so uncontrolled, it's just there, a remaining flavor on the back of his tongue, an echo of some quiet refrain in his ears, a memorized sensation across his skin, a distortion across the span of his stare, a faded fragrance of something in the air that makes him tingle.

It was him.

It was everything he'd ever wanted to become and everything he's already been.

He misses it.

Has missed it.

He feels like he used to but doesn't remember when 'used to' was, usually that's what bothers him but not now because it's not the only thing he recognizes and wants at the moment.

He wants her fingers between his teeth.

He wants his fingers between hers again.

He wants her to tongue cigarette smoke into his mouth when he smashes their mouths together.

He wants his tongue spelling out his name inside of her.

He wants her hands slapping and shoving and pulling and hurting him.

He wants his hands throwing and grabbing and tightening and suffocating her.

He wants her thighs to shake.

He wants his thighs to burn from the strain.

He wants to be able to settle for the first option and not need the rest following in rapid succession.

Her padded fingers drag across the line of his teeth because he's pressed them there and his tongue rolls over the ridge of her nails and he sucks on her nicotine soaked knuckles. They rasp across his lips as she pulls her hand away and sets her palm on the pillowcase, he watches it sink in heavy and firm, pushing.

"Why do you love me?"

There isn't any breath between her question and his answer.

"Because I like the way you make me feel."

She sighs sadly.

"How do I make you feel?"

He replies as himself and not just a part.

"Still."

There's a beat like a blip on a heart monitor and then she's sitting up and uncurling herself from the slope of his body and reaching for her cigarettes.

And she's lighting one up with a hiss of the first burn of paper and tobacco.

And her hand drifts up like it's pushing through water, the remote for her speakers in the circle of her loose fingers.

And a soft tinkling melody plays, unobtrusive, calm and slow.

And she's hiding behind the fall of her hair.

And she's stone statue still when he pushes it back and leans close.

And her eyes don't move from their fixed stare at the wall.

And he wonders if she's pretending she doesn't know he's there.

And she's blowing out a drag in one long fast stream.

And his fingers touch her lips.

And all too fast it's like she's been stabbed.

And her eyes widened comically.

And her smoking hand falls loose onto the bed.

And she's looking at him.

And his finger presses soft into her lower lip.

And her hand has his wrist.

And her teeth are sharp on his knuckles.

And the force of her bite is meant to hurt.

And it does.

And he lets it.

And he wonders if she's trying to bite the two fingers between her teeth off.

And her eyes are stagnant like a doll's.

Her stare is just a stare meant to look at him. Empty of anything more than that. And he won't wince but at some point the pressure of her jaw is going to make his arm twitch from not pulling his fingers from her mean little mouth. He can't stop the involuntary clench of his jaw at the sensation however and her eyes trek across his face to see the look he wears when he's trying to prove he can take it.

Then she's really trying to actually hurt him with her teeth, it isn't playful and it isn't a joke. Enamel on bone and he picks up his other hands and pinches her nose. Her eyes don't do anything but stare at his face and at some point she's going to have to breathe and she can't bite him and breathe at the same time.

He feels his skin stick on her teeth before they pull off the indentations and crenulations turning purple and red and he can feel her pull in air and he lets go of her nose and rapid quick his fingers shove in, past teeth, past tongue and he wonders if he can rip out her tonsils with his index and middle finger and make her puke blood on him when she starts gagging.

She sputters and chokes and pushes and his fingers are out before she has a chance to snap them off and he's pushing back because she just really tried to and she's falling half-way off the bed and banging the back of her head on the floor, spraying ash from her forgotten cigarette and burning a charred circle into the comforter with it.

Her eyes gleam dangerous and there's the shine in them children get after they've been smacked and are still puffed up and angry and indignant before they start bawling or screaming. But she's doesn't have it in her to start crying and she doesn't need to scream at him when she can curl her lips up and snarl up at him silently instead.

She bangs her head back on the floor and lifts her cigarette and taps it off over the wood floor before inhaling. And she's like a vacuum that's sucked out all her own agitation and his indifference, and he can't help but climb over her legs still laying on the bed and unfurl himself over her, place his hands hard next to her shoulders and press his shins into the edge of the mattress and hope the bed doesn't slide or she's not as passive as he thinks because in either case he taking a knee to places and things he definitely does not need a hard patella to meet.

But she turns her head, uninterested, and blows out smoke and there's something about it that is so dismissive it does nothing but interest him more and he shadows her face with his own as her lips circle around the filter of her cigarette and she turns her eyes first and then her head and she makes as if to poke him in the eye with it and he jerks his head back as she twitches. He realizes suddenly that she's fucking with him and it's not funny.

Not to him, but she's shaking with silent laughter and a sharp smile. He glares down and she shrugs while pulling smoke into her mouth. He plucks the almost dead cigarette out of her mouth and tosses it across the floor, she glances at where it lands and does nothing about it because it's not on her throw rug and it'll burn out on its own.

When she's looking at him again he presses his mouth over hers and when her lips pop open his tongue is pushing into her smoky, hot, wet mouth, and his lungs are sucking out her last drag and when her fingers trail up his chin and break the suction of his lips and touch his teeth and gums she's blowing her half of the haze out in his face.

His eyes narrow from the sting of it but the curls of smoke trailing along his teeth are drifting into her little exhale and he studies the way she watches it before waving the cloud of blue smoke away. But her face is turned away from his and she's dragging herself out from under him and taking her legs off the mattress and curling them under herself and he rearranges his body and sits across from her and waits.

There's no hint or clue or giveaway to her and he's trying to puzzle her out and just what she's doing because she's just sitting and not looking at him, glancing around the room and thinking, her forehead wrinkled and eyes squinty and brows knitted together like she's looking for something that isn't where she left it. And then he knows exactly what she's doing. She wants to know where. She's imagining where. When she looks at him again he knows she wants to know for real instead of just keeping it as some mystery, some fantasy.

He smiles and rolls his eyes, he shakes his head and stretches out his legs and she just waits, but now there's something to it, not bubbling excitement but impending assuagement of her grim curiosity. He gets up and walks to the foot of her bed and the outside of her rug, she skirts furtively around the side of her bed and leans around it like some small pet always underfoot and he crouches and flips the corner of the rug into his palm and throws the whole half of it back onto the rest of it, baring the floor.

There's something intensely cute about the way her gaze drifts and jumps across the floor boards and her teeth hang on the edge of her thumbnail and close on the tip and her little pink tongue peeks out around it. Innocent and nervous and he's never seen anything more erotic in his life, and she has no clue, she's not even looking at him, not even thinking about him, at least not in the sense that he's still in the room. She's thinking about him dying on the floor of her bedroom.

Once her mind shuffles through all the scenarios and elements and variations of the scene she looks up, wide-eyed and still so nervous and it's gone in a second when she remembers it's him she's looking at. She tears a half-stuck chapped bit of her bottom lip off and without much caution, it must hurt because she winces and runs her tongue over the spot that's already turning bright red and sucking a portion of her lip into her mouth and throwing up a cupped hand over her lips, her eyes closing like she's bitten her tongue. But just for a moment and then she's shuffling over the floorboards in little motions that are unsophisticated and wary like the ground is about to drop out from under her and she flattens her hands on the wood and drags them along and around and then turns them into little fists on her knees and turns her eyes to him.

He sits and looks at the floor. He lies down and waits. The brush of her hair against his face has the feel of a blind person's touch, eyelash precise and soft. And her eyes are open but looking at the floor above his head as she crowds his space with the scent of ashtray and fabric softener. And then she stops moving, breathing, staring and closes her eyes as if she's forgotten her keys behind a locked door she's just closed.

Her bodyweight settles on his thighs and then off as she goes up on her knees and tucks hair behind her ears and looks down at his tee-shirt. He knows what she's looking for but hoping she won't find. And he sees the exact moment when every moment flashes through her mind, every time he's taken her hands off him and held them away and offered her a smile that's patient and kind and everything a girl who wants to touch him doesn't want to see, dismissal and disinterest and a brush off that's a blow to her ego.

And she's waiting for it then. Him to take her hands off him as they fiddle with the hem of his shirt, maybe even hoping he will this time like all the others because then they can still pretend he's not fucking dead and she's never swallowed thirty pills and her basement is just a room at the bottom of the stairs and the whole house isn't alive and has no stake in anything.

He hasn't grabbed her hands yet and she can't risk seeming hesitant because she's made the decision to be brave and unafraid of everything. She slips her hands under his shirt and over his skin and feels for what she hopes isn't there, but is. Fourteen ugly craters, puckered and discolored and horrifying and then they're sliding out and she yanking him up with hands turned into his shirt and she's pulling him hard enough to have his collar rub the back of his neck raw and he stays where she wants him to stay, arms braced and elbows locked tight, chin up, head back, chest pressed so close to hers that if he starts breathing hard they'll touch.

And she's frantic suddenly, pushing his shirt up under his arms and staring down at what she doesn't want to see. She makes a sound that's all rage and disappointment that comes with knowing she's been so wrong and having it confirmed and she keens violently and looks at him. He can't say what she's looking for him to say instinctually, he won't say it.

I'm sorry.

It's slapping a band-aid on a bullet wound, on shredded liver, spleen, kidneys, and pancreas. Like asking him why when his lungs are collapsing and filling up with blood like a kiddie pool with water from a hose. Pointless. There's. No. Point. It doesn't matter what he feels about it, only what she feels about it. He's been trying to show her since he met her and he thinks she's seen it, but maybe not. All that matters is her when she makes a choice, not him, not her mother, not her father, not the fucking house, her, just her, always her.

Why should his own feelings or reasons dictate hers?

And he's not sorry. If he was alive he'd be alive, but not in the house, not with her, never even know about her, and more than that, because there is so much more than just her and the house, there's him, and what he wants. He's got it now. He's able to be just as bad as he wants to be, he's dead. The living have laws and expectations and obligations and the dead have freedom of choice wholly exempt from the push and pull of the rest, of everything. He can do anything he wants, however he wants, and the only question whose answer matters when he's dead is what can he live, exist, think, or be with having done.

Her body sags forward and her forehead is pressed to his brow and her weight is like lead in his bones.

The slap to his face and mouth is a crack of sound. The punch to his chest is a muffled thump. The sound escaping her is broken by her palm; it's all choked words and churned up worries. Her face is mottling red and the space under her eyes is puffing. There's a moment when he mistakes the rush of her mouth opening as her about to throw up but it's just air that comes out, she's forgotten to breathe and her chest lifts and falls in rapid shakes. Her fingers twist like snakes coiling inside his rucked up shirt on top of his ribs.

She wants it to stop soon after it starts, he can tell by the way her hands only clench and unclench slowly instead of white knuckle and shake against his chest and she's making herself breathe the way she's supposed too by breathing him in with her cheek against his neck and then her mouth open on his shoulder, teeth and mouth gnawing but in a repetitive cycle like waves rolling in. She trying to calm herself down from the fucking panic attack she's been waiting to hit her since finding out he's a dead murderer and also in love with her that's finally gotten around to kicking her in the stomach.

Her breathing feels how the music in the room sounds, drugging and dragging, measured and heavy and he just waits because that's what's called for at the moment, until she exhales as heavily as the music and pushes herself back and looks at him, pleading with her eyes and pressing herself impossibly close.

And just like before it's about comfort. She's already gave him what he's needed and he knows already what she wants from him. It seems so at odds with what they are, the things they need, what they're supposed to need based on everyone else looking at them, telling them. But he supposes it makes a certain sort of sense when looked at as giving instead of receiving. He needs comforting, she needs distraction, he needs reassurance, she needs affirmation; about what's happened and what they are, that he's not a good person and that she's scared, that he's so willing to be put on a leash for her to pull on and that she doesn't care about his capacity to do and like doing horrible things.

So he shoves her and she pulls him down with her close enough to hurt that much more when her back hits the floor and he hits her front. And she's tugging the cuffs of his sleeves and his pulling his arms out to let her throw his flannel somewhere over her head across the floor. Her hands are crawling down between her body and his and they flatten on his stomach and chest and her wrists arch to separate shirt from skin and it's him that throws it this time.

"Kiss me."

She says it like it's a dare, a taunt, some mean little quip. But it's just for him and she's so angry and he can't help but grin down in amusement at her scowling up at him. It soft and slow and wet and deep and so damn broken because she lets out a sob in his mouth and it's the best fucking kiss of his life, afterlife, existence, what the fuck ever, doesn't matter, it has him hard and numb tongued.

And she hiccups and bites his tongue unintentionally but he pulls his mouth from hers and watches the way her throat works around another sob she tries to muffle, and her face a mess of red and frustrated tears, blotchy and wet and so defiant with a bold little stare that's daring him to speak to move to breathe.

"Do I make you sad?"

"Yes."

But not enough to not let her fingers find the back of his neck and press him back to her mouth; somehow it mitigates her admission and his lack of guilt over it. Her hands find his and drag them down and then up under the fall of her skirt to press his fingers over the edge of her leggings, making him curl them under and drag them down, he's surprised and falters with the elastic snapping back under her hip bones.

Her lips curl up in the snarl she's already given him once and she takes in a harsh breath that makes her nostrils flare, she lets go of his hands and presses them to the floor and has already made the decision to slide back across the floor and away from him because she thinks he's rebuked her, again.

She's almost ready to stand and tell him to go fuck himself, he's sure of that much when he's grabbing her ankles and tugging her back and ripping down the stupid black tights over her socks and off her legs and tossing them without preference to where they land and asserting himself back between her legs where he should be, closer than they've had the chance to get because before it was about making sure her hands stayed where they should and not crawling over him and finding scars to ask questions about.

And she gets deliciously skittish because he knows she's never felt a guy's dick hard against the inside of her thigh and there's the violent thrill of being the only one who's ever gotten the opportunity to roll their hips into hers and have her turn her head and close her eyes and push and pull like she isn't sure if she wants them closer or as far as way as they can get from her. He must look manic when he does it again and she still won't open her eyes and she squirms against him, uncomfortable and unsure and not so tough girl as she was when she had one extra layer of clothing on.

The third time he does it her own thrust up and buck hard and her eyes snap open and narrow as if to say that she gets the point. He doesn't really have a point but she must think he does and that much makes him smile softly and trace her lips with his fingers conscious of her teeth when her mouth open, but all she does is nip and smile back. Her hips circle up, her legs extend over and around his.

He likes watching her face while they slowly dry hump each other on the floor. He gets to watch her neck flare red and her lips move it little ways like a fish trying to talk and how her eyelids slowly lower and then rise frantic as if it's a staring contest.

When she finally remembers she has hands he's thankful because he likes her hands on him, she'll touch softly but forget or tire of the effort and energy it takes to move them or keep them raised and let them rest on his wrist or forearm pressed against the floor next to her hip or limp across the rise of her chest.

He knows she's going to cum, he can tell from the way her hips are starting to jerk and pause and press firmer against his. His fingers smooth into the side of her thigh with one hot palm pressed tight against the firm top of where her thigh is all soft skin and musculature he holds it down hard and then grabs her opposite hip so he's the only one able to move like they want.

Her nails are little stings on his skin because she's so close that if she can't move she's going to tumble so far away from the crest of her high it will just take that much longer to get back up to where she's able to get off again, and she knows he fucking knows.

"Come on."

But he just tilts his head to the side and gives her a look that's all fake bewilderment and confusion as to what she means. Her tone is not nice and he wants to hear her beg, just a little, a please or a plea or maybe just a little sound that's desperate and needy.

She kicks her heels into his calves and tries to buck up and there's not even a little bit of begging, it's a little disappointing but probably not as disappointing as the feeling of losing the edge of her orgasm is. When she slumps and weakens against the floor he knows she wants to hurt him, badly. He just reverse blue-balled her and she's understandably pissed.

He can't fight the laugh he barks out after he asks, "What?" and her teeth clench and grind together and she scratches red furrows into his arms and slaps the floor, over and over.

"You didn't say please."

Her lips purse and she seems to weigh the pros and cons of head-butting him, she decides against it and he's not too disappointed by her decision.

"How close were you?"

He's pushing his luck.

"I was there."

And yeah, she's pissed.

"Poor baby."

But he'll make it up to her.

"Fuck you."

And then she'll beg.

For him to do it again.

He pulls at her skirt and she raises her hip petulantly and there's really just something that has him by the dick at seeing her under him in her long tee-shirt rucked up and her virginal and unassuming underwear and socks all bunched down and he knows now looking down at her that she's definitely not wearing a bra.

His hands remove another of her layers and she leaves her arms raised over her head on the floor and the fabric of her long sleeved cotton shirt stretches and ribs over her chest, small and almost flat as it is but there are sharp little points against the grey fabric and she's blushing and her chest is puffing harder and collapsing faster the longer he stares.

Shirt, panties, socks.

He decides he can be nice, the floors cold, she'll need her socks.

Her small hands push on his shoulders and he lets her sit up and push him back and clamber onto his lap and he wonders what it is she's reaching for behind him, the site of his shirt between them makes his stomach bottom out and he gets it, she plans on staying pissed.

He gets it and plucks the shirt from her grip and turns it right side out but her hands are plucking it from his fingers and he doesn't want to play a game with her when she's kicking him out. He's yanking it back and she's pouting and he's confused, until she's pulling the bottom of her's up and over and her tiny breasts are perfectly visible and pretty much perfect in every other sense too.

And then she's pulling on his shirt and sliding off his lap to sit in front of him and leaves him gaping at her.

And okay, she can keep the shirt on too, because it's his shirt.

And she looks like a fucking wet dream in it.

"The floor's hard."

He nods.

She stares expectantly for him to make a suggestion.

He slides forward and reaches for her, putting her back where she's supposed to be. On his lap. Her knees scrape the wood and she winces, he'll kiss it better later and he delights in the way her arms curl around his shoulders and her fingers press into his arms as he rises to his knees and rocks back in a crouch. She's dead weight for a second and his thighs burn from the awkward stance and added weight but then he's standing and she lets out a sound like a squeak or a meep and her legs form a knot around his back.

The wet crotch of her underwear is cold against his stomach and they realize that much at the same time because as he tightens his hold and presses a hand to her ass to get her closer she's writhing around trying to pull her groin away from the hot column of his torso.

When he puts her down on the bed she averts her eyes and pretends not to see him press a palm to the spot and circle it, wanting it as deep in his skin as it can get.

"You didn't have to carry me those whole five steps, Casanova," she frowns without looking at him but there's a nervous smile playing peek-a-boo in flashes on her lips that she throws up a hand and coughs to hide.

She loves it.

He loves how awkward she is about it.

But she's not so awkward when she decides to grab him by the belt loops and tug on his buckle, his own hands move to knock hers away and take it off. She slaps them and pulls him closer and his eyes lid themselves, heavy and like lead and it just hits him as insanely lewd to have her so concerned with his belt, undo it with such fervid interest like he's not above her head watching, like he's just a pair of pants and a belt buckle.

She rips it from the loops so fast he jumps a little and she's already got a saucy pride-filled look on her lips looking up at him from under her fringe but it falls flat when she lets the belt go and it flies across the room and knocks over the severed baby doll heads on her desk, and then her accomplished glee is gone and she's just mortified and covering her face comically and gasping.

"That works too."

She scoffs and moves back on the bed to sit and pick at the burn hole in her comforter. He's peeling off his socks with his feet and unzipping his jeans when she looks up again, at his open pants again first and then his face.

Her throat worked in a wave as she swallowed before speaking.

Her breath came out like shaky wind and she swallowed again.

She coughed and looked up at him.

"I wasn't seriously about the 'fuck you,' okay?"

"Okay," and his hands leave his pants.

"No."

He doesn't know what she's giving a negative response to.

"You can take them off."

And she nods to herself. "Yeah, off."

"What do you want me to do?"

He asks because his pants are off and she's staring at the shape of his dick behind black stretch material and probably wondering how it'd feel inside her. She gestures for him to sit with her on the bed and he does and she scoots back and ponders through possibilities, or fantasies, or scenarios. She's peeling off more of her chapped lips with her teeth.

"If you eat your mouth you won't be hungry for lunch."

Her eyes snap to his groin and then to his face and he knows exactly how his words got turned into pictures in her head even though it isn't what he meant by them she's still thinking about them as her with his cock deep in the back of her throat sucking down cum.

"I…" She starts after a long moment.

"You…" He presses instantly.

"Jerk off."

"What?" He laughs a little.

"Yeah." And she nods again.

"You wanna watch?"

"Yes, is that okay? You don't hav-…"

"Yeah it's okay."

"I've never…seen one…for real."

He knows.

"Wait."

"Yeah?"

"Hold on."

"What are you doing?"

"I wanna sit behind you."

So she does and her legs unfold and extend out the tiniest of bits around his hips and thighs and he can feel the warm press of her chest against his back and her can see one hand clawing the comforter and feel the other in his hair, fingers firm against his scalp as they press and tug his head to the side so she can rest her chin on her shoulder and see everything and he can hear every breath and feel them too.

There's a slither of fabric, the press of her torso, a rustle of paper, the hiss of butane and the wind sound of flaring fire. Smelling it before realizing what it is he's listening to and feeling her blow out smoke, the heat of it smothering and acrid against his face, enthralling.

"Comfy?" It comes out less even than he wants.

Her voice is a raspy tease from a parched throat, "Yeah." And smoke drifts over his shoulder. She gets little heaves started in her lungs when his hand smoothes up and down her calf, just puffs of heh heh heh somewhere deep in her lungs and there's the rattle of her trying to hold in a cough. She fails on the exhale and muffles her bronchial wheeze on his bare shoulder.

"Lick my hand."

"Why?"

"You ever try to go it dry?"

She glances at his upraised palm all anxious nerves and unease, "Oh."

And she licks in one long wet stripe, pauses and does it again with fervor and confidence, "There. Don't want you to get blister dick."

He grins and folds his underwear down enough for his dick to spring out and her to suck a breath in hard.

"Holy shit," and there's something in the breathless way she says it and pushes close enough for him to feel the wet patch of her panties against the small of his back that makes him chuckle.

"Thanks."

"Shut up."

It's strange to have someone watching him for once. Stranger still when nothing comes to mind, no drudged up fantasy full of half-remembered things, images, words and maybe it isn't so strange when she's pressed tight against his back, her legs along the outside of his, her skin under his free hand and the way she moves it under his touch, unconscious of how she's doing most of the maneuvering that has it sliding towards her body down her thigh and then back up to her knee.

The way her tiny breasts all dressed up in his shirt smush into his shoulders and spine and how her thumb is rubbing circles in the spot under his ear that makes him want to pant like a damn dog. There's the idle threading of her arm under his and how it's suddenly like iron pressing him back, that much closer, her hand flat on his chest and fingers circling scars, memorizing their feel on her fingertips.

He likes the press of her mouth on his neck and arm and the plushness of her thighs on his hips. When he turns his head and looks at her with half a groan escaping her gaze is a shade curious and a shade horny and covered with a haze of smoke she lets slip from her mouth without notice.

"I watch you sleep."

He doesn't know why he voices the admission while rubbing his freshly wet palm across the dripping head of his cock but he does.

"Do you…," she ventures with a tilt of her chin forward towards his hand.

"No, but from now on I might."

He wonders if she'd like waking up to find him sitting at the foot of her bed jerking off.

"You haven't watched me…"

She can't finish her own sentences he's realized, too wrapped up in the way his hand moves.

"Masturbate?"

"Oh my god."

She buries her face in his shoulder, embarrassed, coy, and absolutely mortified at the prospect. Interesting to think. He doesn't watch her sleep enough to have caught that little late night surprise.

"I haven't."

"Thank god."

Her rushed sigh of relief is hot and smoky on his cheek.

"Would you let me watch?" He times his question with a violent tug that makes her fingers press into his scars hard, mimicking unwarranted and unrealized.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't like being spied on."

"What if you knew I was there?"

He turns his face to see hers and there's a flush across her cheeks and a part of her lips with her tongue darting out quick to shine them wet and red.

"I don't know," she breathes her hand sliding low as his stomach, as close as she dares to where he's thrusting into the loose circle of his own fingers.

It's harder to pay particular attention to what she's doing when he's coming and smirking over his concern of what she'd do it he came on her hand and then there's the afterglow and he's dead weight against her and it takes him a moment to realize it's her legs he's cradled between and he's not exactly sure what to do about the mess on his hand.

"I didn't know it did that."

He opens his eyes to roll them at her, sincerely hoping she's not so sexually ignorant to not know guys make messes on themselves when they jerk off, "What? Move?"

He can feel her nod.

"Yeah, it twitches."

"It's supposed to."

"Yeah."

He feels another nod while he wipes his hand off on the fabric of his briefs and tucks himself back inside before swiping at the rest on his stomach. It hits him then that there's no way he didn't cum on her because her arm was across his front when he did.

And sure enough she's wiping her knuckles across her comforter as nonchalant as possible and sure enough the wet spot pressed into his back is slicker than before and she's forgotten that she's still holding her cigarette. He takes it and taps it over her ashtray.

"Your turn."

"What?"

"Can you cum now?"

"Yeah but I don't want to…"

She makes a vague gesture as she scoots back onto the pillows and he turns to settle down at the foot of the bed that he gets to mean she isn't about to give him a free show.

"I want to," he enunciates crawling up towards her legs that she's melded back together in his absence between them.

"…okay."

She slides tentatively towards him but those legs stay closed.

"Unless you don't want me to."

"…"

Her stare is blank.

"Violet?"

She nods.

"Okay, yeah. I want you to."

He frowns because it's sounds about as convincing as it looks.

"Don't look like I'm about to stab you."

"I'm nervous."

"I know."

And both her legs are to the side of one of his as he covers her and slides hands under the shirt that's now become his favorite, he lets his hands down her ribs, counting them and skipping his fingers over them like stones or steps.

His thumb pressing hard into the dip of her bellybutton and skimming each of her hips that stuck just a bit, like wings or fans or something else that he didn't think there was a word for.

"Tate?"

Her voice shakes like her knees when he pulls them to entrap his waist.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

It's something, or everything, not nothing, he's not stupid. And he's not blind to how tight she has her eyes closed and how fast and hard her chest is rising and falling.

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know, nervous. Gonna have a heart attack."

"Not yet."

"Okay."

He wonders what the hell she's agreeing to, if she even knows, her mouth just talking without her brain really working when his hands slide his shirt up to her waist and her belly shivers under his kisses. He sighs heavily and presses his forehead forward, shaking his head.

"Okay, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, just keep going. I'm nervous. You can't be. Come on. Ignore it. I'm fine."

"…"

Pfft, sure.

"I'm fine. I want to."

And she's really not at all convincing so he lifts up on his arms and stares down at her not staring back.

"No."

Her eyes snap open, angry.

"Don't tell me no."

It makes him smirk a little, all that fire in her just waiting to burn him.

"No."

"Shut up, come on."

She thrusts up against him.

"You're still nervous."

"Fucking touch me," she hisses, spitting fire.

"Fine." He bows his head and preens against her bare stomach, her breath hitching hard and with an unexpected jerk.

"What are you doing?"

She felt his cheek against her belly, the dampness of sweat a hot itch. His head turned, his chin hard and his jaw tight, pressed into her.

His palms following a trail slogged by tapping fingers under her ass and down the back of her thighs and around her kneecaps and below her ankles and taking her pastel butterfly print panties with them.

He didn't look up at her, just kept his cheek pressed tight against firm skin and taut muscle looking to the side and grinning at the wall. It was so much better not to look and just listen to the staccato of trembling veins and her heart rattling against her ribs.

"Tate!"

Oops, sneaky panty removal: Fail.

"Shhh…"

He kisses her stomach with firm sucking lips and murmurs into her skin, his shoulders between her pointed knees so she can't try to squeeze him out from between her legs.

Because he wants to hear the rasp of her trying to swallow with a dry throat when he slips his fingers along the small muscles of her upper thigh and groin, the hard inhale she takes through her nose when his nails scrape a line behind her knee, the quivering, throaty exhale when his knuckles press deep into her flesh.

And he can smell her, slick, open, throbbing.

"What are you doing?"

He thinks she'd never notice his other hand sliding up to pull her pillows down to where he can handle them better.

"I want to see what color pink you are. Come on, show me."

And then the two of them are piled under her hips and he placing her in the middle of the bulky pile.

"Scared?"

Her knees loosen from their welded press together and he's got hands pushing them apart with the barest tease of resistance that makes his cock throb. She's got her eyes closed again and her bottom lip between her teeth.

"No, this is just fucking embarrassing."

And then he's actually looking at what's always been under her cotton girly-print panties. She's all wet glisten and plump blushing flesh that he gets the insane urge to tell to stop pouting at him, she'd probably kick him in the head if he did so he refrains.

She's restless on the sheets, propped up on her elbows, suspicious and hesitant with her eyes burning holes in the wall because she won't look down at him.

"Come on, come here. Just touch me, stop looking."

Her knees and thighs are waving in an effort to give him a hint, he gets it, but he ain't taking it.

"You've got the cutest pink pussy."

"Shut uhhp," her words cutting themselves in half when he blows a breath on her hot skin that makes her legs try to snap closed with him still between them and her throat bunching and chest thrusting forward as her head falls back, limply and her arms decide to stop holding her up.

"I wanna kiss it."

And she's not so docile and lost anymore, head snapping up so fast he's worried she's given herself whiplash, "Tate, no."

But he's lips are pressed firm on the bare skin between her hips, "Yes."

And his tongue is tracing the seam of her sex.

"Ohmygod." It's a sob of absolute shame and her arm is across her eyes and she's crying without the blotchy face because that's only for sad and angry tears and these are different even as her hips jerk like he's pulling them on a string and she hates it because she's trying so hard to keep them pressed on the pillows where they should be, where a good girl would keep them. But she's choking on a whimper and it breaks out of her mouth when he's kissing her softly and slipping lips and tongue over how wet and swollen he's made her.

Her chest flutters and her lips are getting bitten raw and she's begging for things she can't articulate with her mouth but can with her writhing. And he doesn't care because he likes it when she cries and twists herself up for another flick of his tongue on parts of her no one else has seen since she was born, parts of her that she touches while thinking of him.

Just him.

Always him.

Him, him, him.

And she doesn't have the leverage to shove him off anyway.

And he likes that he can pretend all she can do it take it, and she's pretending the same thing, he knows that much. Half the fun is not wanting to do it, not wanting to let him, but she is and she does and she's crying and mewling and fucking lost. Losing something irretrievable and she likes it as much as he likes taking it.

He's taken away all her armor and melting it down in front of her and she's got grief so bad she doesn't care who sees her crying, and maybe it's because it's the only time she's ever going to get to really cry, scream, and shriek and not give a shit if it's held against her because it's what the situation called for. She just wants to be weak for a little while.

He circles her clit with tongue tip and rubs himself into her mattress while she presses her face to the pillows and sputters wetly with a cut off yell of wrecked bliss. Her legs dance in little shakes that mirror the jostle of her hips and the way her sex clenches violently for something, anything, to settle it down, to string together all the sharpness of sensation into something it can predict, something it can handle, something it's used to, like her own fingers.

"Tate."

He ignores her because there's the throb of her pulse around his tongue and a flaring ache forming in his jaw and he'd much rather repeat his name in letters, spell it out in excruciating detail until she can spell it out too with her mouth as he does it with his tongue. He punctuates with a stab of warm dancing flexing flesh inside of her before licking a stripe up the at odds visual of virginal and obscene between her splayed legs and worrying at the firm little nub peeking up at him with his lips and licking letters out in long strokes on that too.

T-A-T-E

"Tate."

And it's what begging sounds like so he looks at her looking at him with a swollen mouth and shiny eyes.

"Stop, please," and it's too breathy to be because he's just really fucked up and done a bad bad bad thing. "I can't."

"You can't what?"

"Cum."

"You can't cum?"

"Not like that."

"…"

And really he rolls his eyes because she's just being dumb about such a stupid thing and he wants her to cum on his tongue. But she seems to get that and rolls her back. "No really, I can't." Can't like won't, not can't like she just doesn't want too.

"Oh."

"Yeah, come here. I'll show you."

She rolls up and grabs his shoulder to straddles his hips and rocks forward on instinct to rub herself on his abdomen and then realize it belatedly while she's grabbing his hand and putting it between her thighs.

And she's slicking his fingers, pressing them, sliding them and looking at him with her eyes heavy and her mouth open and her tongue licking along the edges of her teeth and rolling up against her palate and lolling around like it's alive and looking for something.

"Like this?" He's slips them inside and she huffs out a breath like she's breaking.

"Stop talking," she gasps in his face.

"You twitch too."

She rocks down and he presses on her pubic bone with the heel of his hand and she grinds against it while pushing her sweaty forehead against his.

"Not twitch, clench. There's a difference."

"Wonder what you'd feel like clenching around my dick."

He moves his fingers and hers tighten on his wrist with a grip like hot steel.

"…"

"You're so wet."

"…"

"And hot."

"Burning up," she breathes, half whimper, half whine.

Her head is lolling back, the cords of her throat bunching and tightening as she swallows a half-formed choke. Her eyes stop watching him, closing him out in favor of the damp dark on the other side of her eyelids; she lurches forward, her teeth catching his clavicle in a rocking grip of hard enamel and moans that suctioned the skin.

And there's the pull of her body on his fingers, sucking them in with a wet slinking sound that makes his stomach shiver. She's worries his skin with her teeth and her mouth is sucking too, pulling blood from his circulatory system to discolor his body, mark him, fucking defile him with brands that look like the inside of her mouth and hurt so he remembers they're there, that she was there.

She's trying to figure out to move, not so used to up and down and riding his hand as she is pushing and pulling her own fingers inside herself in bed at night when he's not there. She gives up quick and just rocks her pelvis into his hand. He takes it upon himself to fuck her with his fingers. He ignores the cramp making the inside of his arm flare with an uncomfortable burn.

He kisses her but she's too unfocused to do more than mumble incoherently in shattered syllables against his lips and pant on his tongue, her lips slack and shifting, teeth clicking against his and nipping his lips. They start to chatter like she's cold and he knows she's about to cum because he can't feel the heat of her breath on his mouth anymore, because she's holding it.

Her body contracts around his fingers spastically, tightening and fluttering with a rush of fresh slickness over his knuckles and she shimmies into his hand, with excited little rapid and shallow stabs, she lets her thighs rest and weaken and his fingers go deeper and she circles her hips on his hand which is falling asleep under her weight, but he doesn't give a shit.

She rides it out for a long time, making it last long enough that he wants to blow in his pants.

She takes a breath and gives him room to take his hand out from the death grip of her thighs, after he does she slumps onto his chest so hard he almost falls back. He feels more than hears her suck in a breath, feels the rumble of something like a purr go through her but it could be just a laugh. She tilts her head back and dips forward for a chaste little kiss and pulls back,He looks at her lips, ripe and swollen and hungry and wonders how many boys have ever kissed those lips.

He wonders how many times he's going to get to.

And when he leans forward, hands planted on the curve of her waist he knows how many times he wants to kiss them.

He's got her parting her lips when his tongue becomes and wet brand against her sticky neck, under her ear and then he's got her jaw closing tight with a click at the touch of his teeth to the lobe.

He lets her body push his up, away, over. And he's on his back with her swinging astride, her sex a small wet flame in the space between his hips, his cock pressed tight and twitching against her ass under his briefs. She leans down close, her back a tight inward arch, stomach pressed firm against his, her hand planting itself above his head, her breasts pushing into his collarbone, her gaze hard and animal, her nails running down the line of his flank.

He wonders how she got him to the point of being willing to agree to anything, but he's there and he doesn't quite know why that's a bad thing. Maybe it isn't. He doesn't really care. He watches he push her hair behind her ears and his fingers trace circles on the backs of her thighs.

"Love doesn't last." She tells him like it's a fucking fact she's absolutely sure of.

I Love You.

She doesn't say it.

But he hears it anyway.

"For now it does." He's sure of that.

Until you die.

He doesn't say it.

But she doesn't need him too, she knows.

All it would take was time. She'd die.

Because of the house.

Because of herself.

Because of him.

And she'd get warped.

And she'd go away.

And she'd stay mad at him.

Any one of those reasons, situations, whys, or all of them, but not none.

But not right now and that's all he's got to give her and there are a lot worse things in the world than her laughing and him laughing back and her curling up next to him and him wrapping legs around hers and them falling asleep and leaving the more important shit for another time.

A/N: So I feel the need to direct everyone to a few spectacular authors in this fandom: bellegunness, EvangelineG, hidingELSEWHERE, ohyellowbird, and Seenbean. Quality fic all around from these five. Go check them out I think they're the top writers in this fandom, seriously.