A/N: Hey guys! So this is a collab with whodreamedit that we had started on back in December. But then we both got busy and kind of forgot about it. Well, while whodreamedit was busy applying to masters programs (and getting accepted to University of New Orleans woo!) I have been finishing this up! I might smooth it out later but for now I'm done with it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

"Jesus Christ, is anyone gonna get that?" Tate wails from the top of the stairs, taking them two at a time to reach the front door before whoever's behind it wedges the bell into the brick.

He normally wouldn't bother with irate fuckers intent on breaking down the goddamn door, but with Violet shutting herself into the attic and Ben out visiting Vivien at the loony bin, there was apparently no one else willing to snarl and send this impatient fuck on their merry way.

The door's thrown open forcefully enough to bounce back against the wall and Tate stills it with a broad palm.

"Well, at least we know the doorbell works."

Leah, the bitch whose face he'd redecorated back in the basement, stands awkwardly on the front porch. She's staring at him behind dark sunglasses and there's a stack of books circled in her arms; the homework Violet's missed in the last few weeks. Tate notices she has a sizable band-aid covering the left side of her face - the kind usually termed 'flesh colored', as if it might magically blend into the wearer's skin. It doesn't. Leah looks rough. He smirks slightly. He'd fucked her up - and he'd do it again, too. He'd do anything for Violet.

Of course, he thinks, a darkness clouding his features, that doesn't matter now. Violet wants nothing to do with him; she told him so as he stood there in her bedroom, tears rolling down his cheeks; useless fucking tears that did nothing to sway her. Not this time. She'd told him to go away, and go away he had. He had no other choice. Rules were rules. He'd been devastated, had spent days alone in the basement, resting his head against the cold walls, punching the stone with closed fists until his knuckles were split and bleeding. It wasn't fair. He'd tired to save her - he really had. Why didn't she understand the sacrifice he'd made in trying to save her life, when he could so easily have left her there, face down on the bed, to drown in her own vomit? He'd tried to save her life, and it meant nothing to her. All she saw were the things he'd done; and they weren't ever meant to hurt her. He just didn't realise. He hadn't thought about it. He'd just been trying to help.

"Where's Violet?" Leah asks after a long stretch of silence. She's staring at him warily, obviously unnerved by his silence. Her voice is all consonants and bravado, her under-developed survival instincts somewhat deadened, but still there in the way she's visibly struggling to remain standing on the doormat, so close to someone she'd bet her trust fund was the devil.

That's when he smells it, the yak on her breath. His gaze drops to her mouth and his smirk sinks into a hungry pout. Gritty white has been rubbed into the quick of her gums and it's stuck between her teeth and suddenly Tate has a gnawing urge to crane his neck and slide his tongue along the inside of her lips.

"Well?" she huffs, indignant, growing uncomfortable under the weight of his stare.

"Out," he replies absentmindedly, wetting his lips and dragging his eyes up Leah's face to stare into the dark sunglasses perched atop her nose.

Her mouth's pressed into a firm line and she's glancing back towards the open iron gates at the front of the walkway. It's then that the wind slips under and steals her over-sized sun hat. It tumbles across the lawn, but instead of chasing after it she's just watching as it's swept against the fence and out into the street, like if she moves she'll startle Tate into aggression, like he's a fucking T-Rex or some shit.

"But she'll be back soon. Come wait inside." His mouth is watering and he's feeling withdrawals he hasn't been privy to for years. She's carrying, he knows it.

The way her head snaps back to gawk at him draws notice to the lock of silver hair that's been weaved into dark brown and braided back and Tate idly wonders if he's responsible.

Leah's contemplating his proposal, rocking up onto the balls of her feet and plucking at the inside of her cheek with her teeth.

She's got to be coked out of her mind because any chick who wanders into Murder House with her own personal Lucifer, well, you know the saying. Fool me once…

"I think I'll just leave these outside…"

"No!" Tate says, his too-soon answer chasing her refusal, the frantic lilt in his voice sending a shiver up the staircase of her spine. "I mean, what if someone jacks her shit? It'll just be a few minutes."

"I don't know..." Leah glances behind her at the deserted street. Nobody will see her go inside, she realises; nobody will ever know. Her parents think she's at the mall with her friends - not that she really had to lie about delivering homework assignments to a classmate, but lying is second nature to Leah now. Besides, Violet is weird; everyone knows that. Half the kids at school think she's probably been committed, or run away from home, or maybe she's fighting some secret drug addiction or eating disorder. Only Leah knows the truth - or suspects it: Violet's scared. And Leah would be too, if she were dating the fucking Antichrist.

Tate shrugs, twisting his features into a well-meaning, tight lipped smile; the kind usually accompanied by the words 'oh well'.

"Alright. But it's a shame, you know. The three of us could've hung out or something." He flashes her an innocent grin; the kind that has disarmed countless others time after time after time. He can be very innocent and sweet when he wants to be - and he knows how to use that. Suggesting to Leah that they hang out is risky, he knows - but he also knows she's tripping balls, and that coke makes girls horny. A+B =...

Leah shifts the books on her hip. She raises an eyebrow at him, behind her sunglasses, brushes the hair away from her face. And against all odds, because she's fucking high and maybe because he's pretty and because she doesn't have shit else to do for the rest of the day, she follows him inside, handing over Violet's three weeks worth of homework and shrugging out of her coat.

Tate hauls the books into the sitting room, heaving them onto the coffee table that's already buried in documents from wherever Vivian's been committed; the homework's impact scatters some of the yellowed court documents, but Tate's too distracted to take the time to excavate them from under the couch. Leah brushes by him, and he can smell the drugs on her, seeping out of her pores, residue on her fingertips from when she crushed it. He wants to take her fingers into his mouth, swirl his tongue around the soft pad of her thumb.

This might not be his best idea, but Violet's made it clear she wants nothing to do with him. Why shouldn't he?

"Come on, we can wait in Violet's room," he says with a deceptive smile, taking hold of her wrist and nodding towards the stairs.

Leah's hesitant, her eyes drifting to the door that leads down into the basement, but after a few tugs her feet are coaxed into movement and she follows Tate up the stairs, too busy watching the way his fingers are gently curled around hers to see where they're going. It's hypnotic, almost. His hands are warm, engulfing hers. She realises she is staring, and makes an effort to shift her attention elsewhere. God damn, this shit is good.

Tate, meanwhile, is staring warily after the closed attic door at the end of the hall. Violet's up there right now, crying probably, about being dead and about whether or not it's hisfault. And Tate would give anything to just pull open the fold-up stairs and draw her into his chest, but that's not what she wants, not right now anyway. She'd told him to leave her alone a few days back, screamed it actually, with hot tears burning tracks down her cheeks, her hair stuck to her face and her hands curled into fists, screamed it until Tate was crying too, 'I'm sorry's and 'I love you's bubbling past his lips- but it wasn't enough.

By the time he comes back to himself, he's lead Leah into Violet's room and still has hold of her wrist. When he realizes, he releases it like it's burned him and flops down onto Violet's freshly made bed, fitting back into the mask of nonchalance his cravings have already splintered.

They sit in silence for a few minutes Leah is trying not to stare at Tate (but it's hard, goddammit - the haze of coke is making her forget how dangerous he is, making her acutely aware of his stupid large eyes, his tousled bedhead, the curve of his lips). Tate, for his part, is staring straight back He likes making people uncomfortable, and Leah is just about as uncomfortable as a person can get without spontaneously combusting. She's jittery as fuck, though partly that could be the drugs.

The drugs.

Tate bites his bottom lip, wondering whether he ought to be subtle, or whether a direct approach is best. He needs it right now, he tells himself; needs it to erase the memories that have been plaguing him since Violet told him to get lost. He'd had her on this bed not a week before, their limbs tangled and sweat-slicked, her soft mouth pressed against his neck. Fuck it. Fuck everything.

"So, you got any coke?" Tate asks when he decides there's no way around it, propping himself up on one elbow and rolling onto his side.

Leah eyes him critically, tucking a stray piece of hair back into her braid and looking over the strange things covering Violet's table and shelves. She's still wearing those stupid fucking sunglasses. They're pressed up against her pink cheeks like he can't see how blown her pupils are or how terrified she truly is.

"No."

"Don't lie to me."

Needless to say, she's holding out on him and he manages to convince her to share the same way he manages to convince Violet to love him, with soft words and sweet smiles, one of the few teachings from his mother that really stuck.

Soon enough, Leah's caving with a sigh and reaching into her shirt to retrieve a small plastic baggy from the cup of her bra.

"If Violet finds out that I-"

"She won't."

And that's how Tate ends up snorting coke with Leah. It's almost too easy to get what he wants sometimes. He smiles disarmingly as she hands the baggy over, slipping off the bed and onto the floor, kneeling just in front of her. He reaches for the footstool Violet keeps at the end of her bed and pulls it between them, grabbing a book from the floor to balance on it, making the surface smooth. "Got any money?" he asks, as he tips a small mound of cocaine onto the surface.

"What!"

"To snort it with, idiot."

"Oh." She pulls out a twenty and her credit card, handing them both to him, his fingers brushing hers as he takes them from her. Tate uses the card to cut the lines, and Leah can't help but notice how delicate his fingers are - how long. She moistens her lips, scooting a little closer to the footstool.

He's good; the lines are even, straight - no powder clumped awkwardly, no lumps and bumps. It'll be easy to snort. And fuck, he looks hot as he rolls the note up, like it was all second nature, bending his head over the first line; it disappears in one sharp inhale.

His hands are shaking a little bit as he hands the note to her, the drugs unfurling inside him. It makes him nostalgic for life, feels just the same as when he'd prepped for lighting up Larry. Back when his veins and the thump of his heart weren't just for show.

And shit, it's good coke. Tate's mind is already reeling, a surge of something electric and powerful coursing through him, making him feel like a million fucking dollars, like he's invincible - which of course he is, in a manner of speaking. He leans back, arms outstretched on the bedposts as Leah does her line, watching her curiously. She's not unattractive, aside from the giant fucking band-aid. But he wishes she'd take those stupid glasses off.

"Can I see?" he asks when they're both rolling, when his nose burns, when he's let her scrub the inside of his mouth with her finger, when his eyes are bled black against black and he's feeling like he could scale the walls if he wanted.

He's talking about her face of course, the part that's hidden beneath the bandage, packed with gauze, giving the side of her face a lumpy, asymmetrical feel.

And she lets him. She holds up a finger, a gesture to wait just one fucking second and folds over to do a line off of Violet's yellowing copy of Lolita. Then, snapping upright again, she leans in close from where she's sitting in the computer chair to where Tate's sitting on the floor, and lets him peel back the postcard-sized band-aid.

The wound underneath still looks septic, though it's been months since that afternoon in the basement. The edges are pulled tight, red and angry, healing - but very, very slowly. The middle is a dark slit in her face, black and yellow and red, shining with clear, serous fluid. It's gross, sure - but it's also sort of fascinating, knowing he gifted it. He reaches a finger out, stroking gently along the puckered lip of the cut.

Leah winces, jerking away from him. Her hand flies up to grab his wrist.

"Don't!" she hisses, staring into his eyes with a mixture of shock and pain and something else...something swirling in her dark, enlarged pupils.

He's not sure who moves forward first - who closes the gap between them. But suddenly his lips are on Leah's, her mouth opening against his, ravenous, tongue flicking along the inside of his gums, searching hungrily for the last remnants of cocaine. Or at least that's what she'll tell herself later; that all this was innocent - nothing sexual about it, really. Just the desire to get high - to get higher. Only she's kissing him harder now, and his hands are sliding down from her shoulders, down the front of her shirt, boldly grazing her full, pert breasts.

Leah's mouth tastes like stale cigarettes and something artificially sweet. It's nothing like kissing Violet, whose mouth is soft and gentle and fresh. Leah is plastic, cherry bubblegum, cocaine and lucky strikes. Whatever shred of guilt Tate felt screwing Violet is completely absent with her. He's hard already, a combination of the drugs coursing through his bloodstream and the willingness with which Leah surrenders herself to him. She's half in his lap now, legs spread on either side of him, grinding down lazily as she kisses him hot and hard. He knows it's a bad idea to let this continue if he wants another shot with Violet - but part of him (very likely the same part that took a sick pleasure in watching his classmates beg for their lives) doesn't give a shit. Part of him knows that Violet rejected him - turned her back on him, the same as everyone else. She thinks he's a monster. Well, maybe she's right. Maybe he is.

Leah has moved her mouth away from his now, nipping him experimentally on the neck, causing him to arch, to squirm and moan gently under her affections. She's dropped a hand to the lip of his jeans and is fumbling with the button. He grips the muscle above her knees, bracing against her, bucking his hips against her touch, daring her. He should have known this would happen; Leah's a crack whore, and it's amazing he didn't see this coming. He should have known when she agreed to come into the house with him. After what had happened in the basement, any normal, decent girl would have run a mile after he'd opened the front door. Not Leah. She wanted this. From the beginning, he reasons. She probably likes the idea that she's taking something away from Violet, leaving her own deep, infected scar that can fester and rot away what's left of Tate and Violet's relationship.

But it feels so good. And her hands are all over him, slipping inside his open jeans, palming him expertly through the fabric of his boxers. He swallows heavily, wriggling out of her grasp long enough to shove his jeans down, coming to sit on the edge of Violet's bed.

The new position puts Leah eye-level with the tented front of Tate's boxers. She can see a sliver of flesh through the gap in his underwear and unconsciously wets her lips, rising up onto her knees and resting her palms against the tops of his thighs.

Head buzzing with a pleasant static, Tate grins down at the girl whose face he'd ruined six months prior and carefully pulls off her designer shades, taking the time to pointedly fold them closed before lobbing them over onto Violet's cushy chair in the corner.

Her eyes are a bland brown - nothing at all like Violet's warm caramel. The offhand observation startles him and it's almost enough to have him shoving her away altogether, but then, as though she'd sensed his hesitation, Leah's reaching into his boxers and pulling out his cock, watching it bob free, heavy and swollen and bent up toward his navel.

She meets his eyes, her mouth falling open already in a silent question, hungry. In answer, Tate just arches an eyebrow and curves his palm around the back of her head, pulling her face down toward his lap. Without so much as a teasing lick, Leah's lips wrap tight around the head of his cock. He hisses out a groan and bucks into the warmth of her mouth, his hand curling into a fist in her hair when she gently tongues his slit.

As if on cue, she begins bobbing up and down, her lips molded around him, vacuum-tight, her nails digging into the muscle of his thighs. And Tate can't help thrusting up each time she pulls back, his hips chasing her mouth; she just feels so good. Violet had only gone down on him once, and she was too shy to do much more than hold his cock in the loose circle of her fingers and lick at him for a few minutes, watching his every reaction, wanting to get it right. But Leah, she was a fucking pro. Her gag reflex was non-existent, and even when he was half-way down her throat and still goading that she could take more than that, she had, swallowing him down until her nose was nestled up against his pubic bone. This was why she was so popular. It all made sense now. She must hand out blow jobs for blow. Maybe that was her slogan.

"Fuck, I'm gonna-" Tate stammers just minutes later, head thrown back and eyes snapped shut, face crumpled in magnified pleasure. Leah's humming around his cock and twisting her face from side to side as she bounces, dragging her tongue up the underside, feeling out each vein, intent on pulling him over the edge.

He's so close, almost there, can feel the build-up, the ache and throb, it spurs him to jerk up into her throat, tearing at her scalp with his hands, white-hot release on the horizon...

"Gonna what, Tate?"

It's not Leah talking; her mouth is otherwise occupied.

Tate's eyes peel open into slits and his head lolls sideways towards the voice, barely coherent, right on the edge and still fucking rolling.

It's Violet.

She's standing in the open doorway, her small hand still wrapped around the knob, and she's smiling, but it looks all wrong.

"Are you gonna cum? How's she feel? Good? Great? Fan-fucking-tastic?"

Leah, to her credit, pulls back from Tate, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She rises to her feet slowly, turning to look at Violet with an unreadable expression on her face.

Violet, for her part, is still smiling, though as Leah rises the facade is begins to crumble. Tate's attention is so concentrated on the curl of her lips (twitching up into a forced grin, then wobbling, declining and parting as if she's about to say something, then rapidly closing again) that he almost forgets he's still half naked. He tucks himself back into his underwear and pulls up his pants, unable to look away from Violet, terror-frozen.

Violet's brows knit together in an expression of intense concentration that Tate knows is born from a desire not to cry. He's seen that expression before.

It feels as if his insides have turned to stone.

"I'm waiting for an answer, Tate." Violet folds her arms across her chest, trying to steady herself, to curb the shakes that have begun to take hold of her body. She wasn't ready for this; how the fuck could she have been? It had never occurred to her that Tate would...well, maybe cheat wasn't the right word. She'd broken up with him, after all. But he should have known. He should have realised that she hadn't meant it - not for real...not for good. Seeing the back of Leah's head bobbing up and down in front of Tate's groin - seeing Tate driven half crazy by it, his cheeks flushed, eyes practically rolling back in his head - Violet had finally realised how stupid she had been - how slow. She'd never told Tate she loved him. Perhaps she hadn't realised until this moment.

And now she's sick with it. Real, tangible nausea rises in her throat and she looks at the floor, swallowing heavily, reaching up a shaking hand to brush the hair from her damp forehead. Anxiety has kicked in - and with it adrenaline...rage... - she's not certain how she's going to react, but she knows that in a few minutes something is going to happen, and it's not going to be pretty, and she's not going to be able to control or moderate it.

"Vi..." Tate is standing there awkwardly, shoulders slumped, the drugs in his system making this feel unreal, like a movie. "C'mon, it wasn't like..."

"It was." Leah, coked out of her brain, is utterly incapable of sensing how precarious Violet's emotional stability is right now. Any kind of bond she and Violet may have shared has been shoved deeper inside her than Tate's cock, and she's all steely eyed superiority again, smirking, her own folded arms mirroring Violet's. "It was exactly what it looked like."

With that, Leah moves towards the door, evidently aiming to brush past Violet, out into the hallway, out into the mid-afternoon sun as if nothing has happened.

Violet is having none of it.

As Leah moves past her, Violet's hand darts out to grip the other girl's wrist. Leah snorts, trying to shake her off, but Violet holds fast.

"Let go of me." Leah says, her tone surprisingly even. "Give it up, Violet."

"Give what up?" Violet seems to have regained control of her emotions. An eerie calm has settled over her - the kind of outer resolve that Tate knows all too well. He hovers there, in the middle of the room, watching the scene play out in front of him.

Leah shakes her arm again, more vigorously this time. Still Violet doesn't budge. She's stronger than she looks.

"Jesus..." Leah glares at Violet, yanking her arm forward, causing Violet to stumble a few steps, her grip on Leah still unshakable. "I went down on your boyfriend - so what! The two of you attacked me in the goddamn basement, so I think we're square now, don't you?"

"No." Violet replies. The shaking has stopped now. Her head feels clearer than it has in months.

She's dead. And in death there are no consequences. It feels like a secret Tate kept from her. But now she feels enlightened. Now she's finally realizing that maybe her death wasn't such a bad thing, because now she's free and now she's invincible.

"I don't. I don't think we're square, Leah. Girls like you think you own the whole fucking world, don't you? You think because you're pretty and popular you can just take whatever the hell you want and never have to pay for it."

Leah is beginning to panic now, the drugs heightening her paranoia, edging her toward hysteria. She's trembling all over with the realization that this might be the end.

"Stop it." she demands, reaching out toward Violet with her free hand, only to have Violet grab at her other wrist, fingernails biting bloody crescents into her fake tan. "I mean it. Let me go. Stop it!"

Violet's eyes are blank in a way that makes Tate's blood run cold. He's seen that look before - staring back at him from the goddamn mirror. She's been presented the edge and looks content to dive over it, to join him.

"Vi," he starts.

She doesn't look at him. Instead she uses the full force of her weight to swing Leah towards the bedroom wall, catching the other girl off guard, enough that she loses her footing and trips. Her chin knocks against the hardwood with a jaw splintering crunch. Then, with an alarming amount of precision, Violet - still clinging to Leah's wrists - wrenches the other girl to her feet and into the dresser. Leah goes down hard, first her shoulder, then her temple colliding with the sharp corner of the dresser. When this is all over the gash on her face is going to be the least of her worries. She sinks into a heap on the floor, her hands, now freed, going up to hold her head, and rolls feebly away from Violet's feet toward Tate.

Tate, mouth hanging open and eyes hazy, steps back from the fight and looks down at where Leah is bleeding a halo out onto Violet's rug. Rubbing absently at his gums, he glances up to Violet, red-faced and with two claws for hands, and nods towards the heap of girl. "You know what happens if she dies in here..."

"I know," Violet scoffs, like he'd just called her stupid, casually smoothing back her hair and bending over to shackle one of Leah's ankles, hunching over to drag her toward the window. Tate just turns to watch, asking, "What're you doing," to which Violet just snaps for him to shut the fuck up and works open her window.

When she can feel the soft breeze from outside and Tate has shuffled over next to her, Violet grabs a fistful of Leah's hair and tows her up to her feet, keeps her from swaying too much with a hand around her bicep.

"See, I'd kill you but then you'd be stuck here, so here's what's gonna happen."

Leah's head lolls against her shoulders, her sanity blotted fuzzy by a concussion and severe blood loss, but she perks up at the cruel edge to the other girl's voice, steadying herself against the windowsill. "Please... don't..."

"Please, don't!" Violet parrots, mocking the poor girl.

Tate has sunk down onto the bed again to watch Violet dangle Leah's upper half out the window. He's awash with emotions right now: guilt, fear, lust, love, and affection to name a few - but they're all muted by the coke still pulsing away under his skin, making this whole experience surreal. Seeing Violet like this, bloodthirsty in a way she's hinted at but never acted upon, makes him hard all over again and when his ghost girl pipes up he's pulling at himself from under the waistband of his jeans.

Violet presses her hand against Leah's lower back to keep her from crawling back inside and leans out in the narrow space provided to murmur sweetly into her school friend's ear.

"We're only two stories up, so the worst that's gonna happen is maybe you break a leg or both ankles." At this Leah releases a shrill whimper and writhes frantically, desperate to get both feet back on solid ground, apologetic in a way she'd never been before. She shouldn't have come inside and she shouldn't have kissed Tate or sucked him off and she definitely shouldn't have mouthed off to Violet. She knows that now. But it's too late.

With one last suggestion that Leah should scramble across the lawn and out their front gates never to come back again, lest she find Violet in a less forgiving mood, Violet lets out a laugh that's telling of her new found madness and flips up Leah's flailing legs.

The windowsill grates against the coke whore's hips and belly as she slides out and, with a shriek, she topples from view. But Violet doesn't stay and revel in the splat of limbs or listen for the snap of bones. Before Leah connects even with the concrete she's wheeling around and putting her back to the window.

"You," she breathes, advancing on Tate before he thinks to react, forcing him to lay back against the mattress and ripping the sloppily unfastened jeans from his waist, pushing them down his calves and prizing his hand from his cock.

Tate can't think or even act, he just clenches his teeth and stares fearfully into Violet's face. "I know you're - I'm sorry - just. Listen," he stammers, grasping for a proper reaction or response but finding only the blind desire to fill and fuck the girl he'd just seen force someone out a window.

But Violet isn't interested in his 'I'm sorry's. They didn't mean shit anymore. Tate was fucked. Just all around fucked. He wasn't a good person and he wasn't going to be good to her. But maybe that wasn't what she wanted anymore. He was dead and now so was she. And if being dead meant there were no consequences, if being dead meant she could beat a girl half to death and feel nothing, then it also meant that she could fuck him now if she wanted. Even though she threw him away and because of it he hurt her.

She could stay mad and hold a grudge, could maybe cut off his dick later for letting Leah put it in her mouth, but for now she could shimmy out of her tights and climb over his thighs.

Tate just gapes up at Violet disbelievingly, waiting for her to lash out, as she steps out of her pooled dress and crawls into his lap. Her wrists are stamped with bloody handprints that aren't her own.

"You're not mad?" he asks distractedly, hands already busying themselves with guiding her hips closer to line up their bodies. He knows she should be but if she said that he wasn't he'd believe her right now. Leah's coke, that and the sticky spot of red on the rug the only indicator that she'd been here at all, was goddamn great and when he and Violet came he'd offer to share the rest with her. They could just get high and fuck for a week or two. It'd be nice. Maybe she'd stay out of the attic for a while and they could just be.

Violet ignores him, pressing a tiny palm against Tate's navel to lift herself up. He begs an answer from her with his eyes but she's busy staring down at where they'll soon be joined and after another moment's worrying, he shakes any hesitation and curls a hand around his cock to steady it for her.

She lets her hips circle against the nudge of Tate's blunt head and then sinks down with a little huff of breath, closing her eyes, grinding down until he's fully seated within her body.

"Fuck, Violet, you feel amazing," Tate groans openly, letting his head drop back against the mattress, kneading at her ass and rutting up into her when she tilts backwards. "i love you."

The words are there, heavy in her mouth now that she knows them to be true, but she withholds them still. She wants this but she's still angry. "Shut up, Tate," she pleads instead, letting her fingers, slick with blood, trail freely over the taut dips of her stomach, making a mess that she'll later press into Tate's happy trail when she gets close and folds down to writhe against his chest. She feels full with him inside of her in the same way she felt full holding Leah half-way out the window.

She knows he's a monster and deep down he knows she'll never forgive him for the things he's done, but maybe one day they'll meet in the middle and learn to be good together. Until then they can just fuck and fight.

"You're mine," Violet hisses between broken sobs, both hands rooted in Tate's hair as their hips roll hungrily together, sucking angry marks into the underside of his jaw as he presses bruises into her thighs.

"Yours," he pants in agreement, their skin slipping and sliding together, sweat and Leah's blood damp against their fronts. He watches her spine arch and bend over her shoulder through slitted eyes, playing back the moment Leah disappeared from view and wondering if he's not the only monster living in Murder House while somewhere outside the girl whose face he ruined is dragging herself down the sidewalk and calling out for 911.