Author: grayglube

Title: Private Jokes

Summary: She's a study in self destruction and self pleasure and keeping it to herself. He's willing to bet she's the type of child who's broken other kids' fingers over curiosity and retribution for ruining her toys.

Rating: M

Warning(s)/Kinks: Language, Sexual References

Spoilers: None, references to Episodes 4-5: Halloween Pt. 1 and 2

Disclaimer: I don't own American Horror Story.

A/N: Yeah, Tate perspective, go me. Fifth Violate fic. I'm on a roll here.

She's not the only one he watches. How could she be? At school, sleeping, being an exceptionally boring individual for at least a third of her free time like every other person alive in the world and even he isn't obsessed enough to watch her brush her hair or fold laundry.

It's amusing to note how much of a product of her parents she is, how much nurture is tied in with all that nature. She smokes cigarettes like her father, all bitten filter and salvageable butts that he throws away but she saves as clips in her little box of Marlboros. She rubs lotion on her legs like her mother, sliding whatever bath and body works 'sday gift set around on her palms and then holding her calf like it's a rifle or shotgun and smoothing the white paste of it into her skin like she's readying a shell to be shot off.

He thinks in the first few weeks of watching that she's one of those girls who doesn't eat because she skips breakfast, but the conclusion is dropped when he watches just how much she can eat if she's hungry. He thinks maybe she's hiding behind bathroom doors with her fingers down the back of her throat spewing all over white porcelain and splattering vomit on the tiles, that maybe she's borderline personality to his psychotic.

But she isn't she just hates breakfast foods, cereal and waffles and syrup and toaster treats don't appeal, she doesn't like sweet things. He wonders if her black coffee is some unspoken dig at her father who has his with milk and sugar and creamer, as if she can take it as bitter as she can get it and he can't and it makes him less of a man or some other teenage girl rationalization that makes absolutely no fucking sense and if said out loud will make someone else decide she's nuts.

She chokes down toast with more butter on it than can possibly be good for her and cracks pretzels loudly between her teeth. All salt and smoke and bitter things for her.

Though she's tried eggs, made a trifecta breakfast of them, Folger's, and Marlboros. An airforce breakfast, he has no idea why she calls it that but she does, like she's a fighter pilot who doesn't have time for anything that won't keep her up and fill her up with life sustaining protein that tastes bland and boring. Eating for the sake of survival instead of enjoyment like the plump stomached big titted size two yoga pant word stamped ass sixteen year old girls she has homeroom with.

She stands like her mother in front of the stove, one hand grasping the over door handle and the other with some utensil held the same way she holds a pen, whimsical almost, the toes of one foot pressed against the floor behind the heel of the other and her stare blank, faraway, thoughtful.

When a chicken baby fetus falls out of a cracked egg she just stares, no disgusted awe or scholarly disinterested or trip to the sink or garbage can.

She mashes it apart with the fork in her hand, bored, a child picking apart a road-kill carcass. Something anyone would do if they were alone, just like anyone would make an elaborate show of being disgusted if someone was around and saw it too.

And she sighs, a denotation that she's bored with the simple activity of destroying something with utensils and medium heat on the stove. She turns the pan around and spins it on the stove and he's watching until she turns and throws the whole unborn chicken mess in the garbage can.

She turns off the stove and shaves through the stick of egg and fetal protein with the side of her fork.

His tongue goes numb when she tosses a forkful in her mouth and swallows.

His dick twitches when she picks up the skillet and shovels the rest in her mouth like some damn life consuming goddess, she's wearing a smirk when she holds her mouth under the water spitting out of the sink facet. She wears the accomplished look of someone going through with something they've dared themselves to do.

It's then that he knows she's the sort of girl who'd suck a guy off and swallow just to be able to smirk up and be unexpected.

The same sort of look she gets from out power-sprinting her father or shining the underside of the stair banister just to be thorough and know she's the only one that does it. But those excursions only last as long as it takes for her stomach to wage a war and self explode in the driveway out of her mouth in a wash of blue sports drink and scrambled eggs or a can of pledge to spurt out empty only halfway up the stairs.

She's a study in self destruction and self pleasure and keeping it to herself.

He's willing to bet she's the type of child who's broken other kids' fingers over curiosity and retribution for ruining her toys.

When she does homework she sucks her teeth the way her father does when he's jotting things down in his patient files or cataloging session tapes. When she steps out of the shower it's onto a carefully laid towel the way her mother folds them under the draining board next to the kitchen sink. When she lovingly runs a fingertip over the stripe of fresh red over her wrist, too light to do anything but fade in a few months, he imagines the affectionate gesture and the tip of her tongue stuck between her teeth is the look she reserves for the feel of sharp, cutting, nerve yanking sensations. The same look she'll get in the dark when her hand slips into her panties and she drags a fingerpad across her lonely, little, pink clit swollen from perverse fantasies and thoughts of her perfect thought constructed dream lover.

And somehow she's always cleaning. Rinsing vomit and cupcake and stomach lining from the inside of her home furnishing store waste paper bucket, because it's just too girly and pretty with a fucking flower decal in brush stroke to be called a garbage can.

Or the rotting dead bitch bits that are under her bed and in her bathtub that smell fetid and foul and have her up at night wondering where it's coming from and he just barely makes it to hide in her closet before she's jumping out of bed without warning and flicking the lights on and searching for the source of the smell, pushing her bed and gaping down at the dirt and blood on the wood floor underneath.

Or menstrual waste in her panties, scrubbing at the crotch with her knuckles in the bathroom sink turning the Ivory soap brown from dirty water and proof that she really is a girl. Her mother is pretty dumb to be so accepting, especially since her daughter's already used the period excuse once earlier in the month to cover up washing out bloody pieces of fabric in the bathroom sink.

Sometimes he watching when she's being boring, she smoking or doing homework or staring at her face in the mirror. Though there are times when she's got one hand holding her cigarette and the other under her head, when she finishes she slides her hand low on her stomach, fingertips against her pubic bone, not because she's horny but because it's a convenient and comfortable place to lay her hand, elastic snug at the spot just below the start of delicate wrist and forearm and he thinks he's about to get really lucky and about to get to watch her get off, but usually she's just relaxing and not horny at all.

Every thought that ties her to sex is one that greets something in him that isn't usually there. Like there's a Bad Tate and a Good Tate, but not really because they aren't evenly clued in to things, it's not a half and half divide. All of him is bad because only Bad Tate knows everything in his head. Good Tate is just more in the dark about the things in his head.

Bad Tate, Good Tate.

Good Tate is like a parental television setting on channels the baby isn't supposed to watch. Bad Tate bypasses all that. Bad Tate is meant for sneaking up on her when she's left the bathroom door and is playing with individual wrapped razor blades from a little box. Good Tate is meant for beaches and bonfires and trying to outrun dead people Bad Tate has history with. Bad Tate is meant for watching and waiting for her to grab at his pants with fake confident teenage need again. Good Tate is meant for getting pissy over the little details like his mother being a cocksucker.

Good Tate is meant for crying about shit and comforting Ben Harmon about not knowing where his fierce little girl went. Bad Tate knows where that fierce little girl is going to be; on her back with her legs open muffling her mewling on her knuckles while his tongue is licking the crotch of her underwear transparent.

Good Tate is just a part of Bad Tate who's the real Tate. Good Tate is just the bit splintered off by the shock of being dead. Good Tate has no fucking clue what's going on. Bad Tate's already got the fucking memo. And Bad Tate is the one she wants to undress her and touch her and give her virginity to.

Bad Tate is the one she's started sleeping in just her panties for, the one she's got a playlist made out for with songs with drums like thrusts and lyrics she has to plug her headphones in to hide, the one who's the reason she's cutting her fingertips instead of her arms for so she can wear tight little tee-shirts without bras around the house on the weekends, hoping he'll show up and notice.

It strange to be courted in the weird way she's going about it, the way she knows he knows she's going about it. Like it's some big joke that shouldn't be as funny as it should be to him and her but it is because they're the only ones who get the punch-line.

Knock knock. Who's there? Teenage girl trying to get dead boy's hand under skirt. Teenage girl trying to get dead boy's hand under skirt, who? This house will make you fucking nuts.

What are they exactly?

Angst ridden and addle minded Kurt and Courtney?

High and horny Sid and Nancy?

Dangerous and deadly Bonnie and Clyde?

Star-crossed and sexually repressed Romeo and Juliet?

Tragic and terrible Cupid and Psyche?

Brooding and badass Batman and Catwoman?

Mad and mod Dracula and Elizabeth?

Grand and gratuitous Bogie and Mayo?

Eager and edgy Edie and Warhol?

Sad little live girl and lost little dead boy?

How goddamn pathetic. She can be egg girl and he can be bullet boy, what a cute little thing to carve into an oak tree and share kisses in the rain too.

She can be his living dead girl and he can be her afterlife boy.

He's been watching enough to know she always shaves her right leg first, standing at the back of the tub with her toes on the lip of it. He's watched her shower enough times to know she cracks the window open because she gets dizzy after she steps out from all the steam and heat. He's creep enough to go into the basement and press the reset button on the boiler to make her water icy.

The first time he does it mostly to watch her back arch like a Halloween decoration cat and try to shave over goosebumps with chatter teeth and little angry hisses, her mother banging on the door to tell her she's going to be late if she doesn't get out of the bathroom and get dressed right now.

The second time it's to watch her cross her hands wrist over wrist and hold her small tits and stand as far out of the spray as she can and tip toe, knock knee, tremble thigh her way back in after the boiler comes out of arctic water mode and into tepid while her conditioner drips out of her hair and runs down her shoulders and back slimy and thinned out and turning her skin slick and itchy.

Third time's the charm. With a shouted and irritated 'what the fuck,' she's ripping open the curtain with a snap of plastic and slapping water. He stays for that and she's one leg out of the tub and one leg in and falling over banging her shoulders black and blue on the edge when she sees him and tugs the curtain closed to preserve some semblance of modesty that's nonexistent to him but only because he's seen her naked and near naked and getting off and sleeping soundly and that's only now cracked wide open to her because she doesn't know she's been giving him peep shows for every day after the first week she's been in the house because that's how long it took for him to get to the point of lurking around like this.

"What the fuck? What the fuck!"

"Don't hurt yourself."

"Fuck! Get out! What are you doing in here?"

"Which one? Leave or answer the question?"

"Get the hell out, I'm naked!"

"I know."

"You twisted little freak, you gave me a fucking heart attack!"

"Should I do rescue CPR?"

"Oh my god! What is wrong with you?"

"Loads."

"Obviously. Did you fuck with my water?"

"Yes."

"Wha-…why?"

"Wanted to."

A shampoo bottle brains him in the forehead, splattering open into the sink basin as he slaps it into the sink and sending purple gel up onto the mirror obscenely. He picks it out and flings it back. The curtain parts and she's almost screeched but remembers her parents are home and she likes him enough to not see him beaten to death with a baseball bat wielded by her dad.

She brings up one leg to hide her lower body like a boy protecting his balls from a kicking horse and her hands grab at her tits.

"Give me my towel."

He tosses it over the top and she holds it to her front and forgets that the water's still running and then her head is passing through the gap in the curtain.

"Why would you want to?"

He shrugs.

"Why are you here?"

"Wanted to see you."

It's been awhile since Halloween and he's gone back to his old habits of haunting.

"Maybe I don't want to see you."

There's a knock on the door and her eyes are like a rabbit's.

"Violet?"

"I'm in the shower!"

"I need your hair dryer. Mine went out."

"Can you wa-…"

But the handle is twisting and he's already pulling the curtain open and waggling his eyebrows up at her from the cold wet bottom of the tub. The doors opening and he's yanking on the towel and she's searching for anything to hold in front of herself that is less conspicuous than wearing a towel in the shower.

The purple fish net sponge thing that he's sure has an official name but doesn't know is between her legs and an arm's thrown over a chest he's already seen enough times to do a charcoal rendering of in the dark and her mother is rifling through drawers and she's trying to pretend the water temperature isn't one only polar bears enjoy.

"Okay, I'm out. Can't see anything."

"Good," it barely sounds like she's saying it because he's lying down in her bathtub running fingers up her calf trying to make her squeak. The door shuts and she sits down, on him and is ripping her towel out of his loose grip and holding it over herself and the fact that she's sitting on him distracts from the bic she's threatening to open his throat with.

"Ooooh, scary."

He's really not expecting her to slash at his clavicle with the useless light blue quartro bladed piece of plastic and metal. But she just did and she's smothering him with the sponge thing and it's all too hilarious and when he pushes she hits her spine of the facet and snarls and kicks and tries to smack the shit out of him and he can't call it anything but cute.

"I fucking hate you."

"Good thing your aim sucks then."

"What's wrong with you?"

"I like you."

"Thanks, it shows."

"I'm sorry I haven't been around, I thought you'd be a bitch about it all."

"I'm sorry I never knew you were such a pussy."

"I'm not a pussy."

"Yeah, well you ran the fuck away and you think it's cool to pull this bullshit?"

"More like funny, amusing, whimsical, hysterical."

"Well great idea jumping in the bathtub, now you're all wet and in my bathroom and my parents are home. Are you retarded?"

"I'm in love."

"Ha! Okay."

"You don't believe me? Do you think you're unlovable?"

"Jeez, what's crawled up your ass? You're in love with fucking with me, great, wonderful, fuck you."

"It's easier to think that isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is, because I think I only love the parts of you that aren't the parts you use to be a complete asshole. Which, lately, is all of them."

"You loooove me."

"Is love wanting to slit someone's throat?"

"Can be."

"Guess I'm swooning."

A/N: Tate is fun to write.