Author: grayglube

Title: Magic Words

Summary: She tells him he's dead but he never bothers to remember.

Rating: M

Warning(s)/Kinks: Language, sexual situations

Spoilers: Everything in all episodes if you haven't been up to date with your viewing.

Disclaimer: I don't own American Horror Story. Or Byron's "Darkness"

A/N: The timeline for this is a floating one, anything with italicized speech is a flashback, and the rest takes place chronologically a bit before Vivien's meltdown and then after. If Violet turns out to be dead this will still work, the recent revelations with Tate don't have an impact on this, he knows he's Rubberman, Violet doesn't and that's a fic for another day. This is written as a one-shot but because I haven't posted Violate in awhile, even though it's only really like two weeks since my last fic, I wanted to put something up for you guys and because of how there's a touch of media res it might be a little too much for some readers to read as one long one-shot. So yeah two or three more parts to get posted after this, depending on how I decide to split it.

How apt.

How fucking funny.

Or tragic.

They have the same conversation over and over and he'll still go back to being wrecked over and over and she'll keep getting disappointed over and over.

It's groundhog's day and the twilight zone and the outer limits over and over.

But all she can hope is that it doesn't count as insanity if there really is the possibility of something else happening, eventually, after all the over and overs go around in too many loops and the string snaps or the gravity well of logic is overcome by the terminal velocity of wanting something badly enough that it's a fanatical farce instead of true-blue tragedy.

Open Sesame, Abracadabra, Esuoh Tcetorp Flesruoy, and all the rest in a litany of magic words and self-assured taglines that only have as much power as a person believes they do. And maybe she doesn't believe them.

Or maybe it's not her that's the problem.

Maybe he doesn't believe them.

And maybe that makes her the Byronic hero she's thought he would turn out to be because she's not even sure she really likes Byron herself or if she just likes reading it because he liked reading Byron and maybe found some solace or new world view or moral compass inside verses and similes and metaphorical turns of phrase.

She wonders if she can hold out and keep interest to outlast all the over and overs, she wonders how many times she's going to blurt out or whisper or choke or scream the words at him, she wonders if she's even supposed to keep telling him he's dead and having the same argument or the same disbelief or the same quiet acknowledgment from him.

It doesn't matter how she says it or why or when because for all the change in how it comes out the way things turn out is the same. He forgets and she doesn't and the house remembers her moves and counters and sends him back after he leaves all cracked and fractured and not remembering that for awhile he's known he's dead.

Maybe he lets the house do it, maybe he realizes how much reality and self-awareness sucks, maybe all it's going to take is him to not let the house do it, to say no, to not be so sure that being oblivious is really better than the truth, and it is but that isn't the point.

She makes the point in her mind clear and concise that it's like looking into the sun and burning it's afterimage on her corneas. She knows he thinks it's noble to kill off parts of himself for her, to die in fragments and chips and shards of thoughts, and dreams, and wants, and needs. One by one in a funeral procession of self-annihilation.

And that much isn't worth shit, because it makes him a coward and it's living for someone that's hard. Dying is the easiest thing to do, the stupidest thing. The living thing's hard, maybe in more ways than one since he is dead but it's the thought that counts and he's killing off his thoughts with bullets made from indecision and stinking fear.

And the house knows.

The house knows what he's scared of.

And maybe in its own twisted way it's not really trying to hurt people, maybe it wants to help but for all that help everything's colored with just enough moral ambiguity that it hurts all the same like whiskey on road rash.

Hurting him.

Hurting her.

Because they're both scared of the same thing.

And somehow, by the same token, that must mean they both want the same thing.

It means they're both cowards.

He always says he's sorry.

She usually tells him to go fuck himself.

They say a lot of things.

He says her name.

She tells him secrets.

I had a dream, which was not at all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling in eternal space rayless and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

The first time was mostly because between discovery of just what type of existence he occupied and the days without sleep and his written declaration of love and swallowing a bottle full of pills and everything that came after all she wanted was to be exceptionally spiteful and because she hadn't wanted to face another moment of inability to deal with suffering for shit that wasn't her own baggage to carry around. The first time the words got stuck and didn't come up until she'd admitted more than she'd wanted and they were dulled from too much time spent on the tip of her tongue.

They're curled up together in bed with a book of birds he can't remembering ever checking out but remembers seeing and her spilt ashtray and the heaviness of how broken they are and how the pieces of them don't make something new and complete like they do in poems and art films.

So they fall asleep and they wake up and it isn't the weekend so she has to leave.

"I'm sorry."

He only said it after she'd extricated herself from the snare of his shirt inside her fists and it's like he's been the one holding her instead of the other way around.

"I have to get dressed."

"You're leaving?"

He seemed confused and lost at the prospect that he wasn't her world.

"I have to go to school. You know that place with books and laws against smoking and bitches that don't wear real pants?"

The joke is blithe but somehow to her it still seems like it fails to cover the truth that he isn't her world, she's her world and she wants him in it but that doesn't mean she's going to let him have her, she wants to have him and there's a difference. She wishes he was different. Wishes he was strong enough to be her whole damn world. But he isn't, not then.

Not even now.

"You're already late."

And parts of her hate him for it.

"So?"

"..."

It bothered her to see him so boyish and unable to give her a reason to stay, she hated his quiet acceptance.

"If I stay and hang out, I'll look around and everything will start to bother me."

"You're pissed off."

"Ever wake up not knowing how you got somewhere and not remembering what you've been doing before?"

"Violet."

"Don't say my name."

She hated the way it had sounded, a plea instead of a demand to look at him, something she could ignore instead of automatically snap into action from.

"I'm sorry."

"That was a really shitty thing you did, Tate. Get out. I have to get dressed."

The way he'd done things was passive and she hated that too. And he made he think she was going insane, out of control, she doesn't like those feelings and he knows that but did it anyway because it was easy and complex. It's easy for him to be tortured and confusing and divergent, directness is hard for him she knows but there's simplicity in hard things and she wishes he'd try. She'd wondered when he'd gotten so tame.

"Violet?"

"Yeah?"

"Just...,"

"You're sorry."

"…"

"Yeah, okay."

And she'd pulled clothes out of drawers and he'd sat on her bed and watched her light a cigarette and he didn't leave but he didn't speak either.

"I'm just skeeved out."

"Over what."

"Stuff."

"Stuff like me?"

"…"

She had hung her thumb nail on the edge of her bottom teeth and kept her eyes lower than her forehead, looking back and forth between him and her lap and felt so suddenly distraught and lost and sad and emotionally constipated.

"Whatever."

And he'd seemed pissed for a moment and it calmed her, made her aware that maybe he hadn't lost all of the things in him that were dangerous and bad and mean and malicious.

"Not you, okay. Just…I'd…,"

She scrubbed at her face with her hands and pulled at her hairline before tearing her fingers through her gnarled slept-on hair.

"I'd rather not have what…I want,"

His eyes were cold and hard and watching her throat when she swallowed to pause before looking up at the ceiling to think of everything she'd wanted to say.

"If I can't have it the way I want it."

But the look left his eyes and he was confused again and she had wanted to stomp her foot like a child.

"What?"

She had settled for blowing out her drag and stabbing out her cigarette in an empty cereal bowl left on her dresser.

"It's just not worth it then…because it's not what you think it is, and afterwards you wonder why you bothered."

"I don't…get that. Are you alright?"

He paused to really look at her and she wondered if he'd know what bullshit really sounded like because she was going to tell him she was fine. She did. She couldn't tell him she didn't want him, not like he was, she wanted him different, less how he is and more how he was. She liked that, it was honest and real and simple and bad for her like too much caffeine and too many cigarettes.

"Fine, just. In a funk…I guess, I don't know. If I can't have things the way I want them then I'd rather not have them. And I don't want that to be you."

"What don't you want to be me?"

"I don't want you to not be worth it. I don't like being so disappointed."

He was quiet for long it felt like a punch to her gut and her diaphragm moved in ways she didn't want it to. It fluttered and clutched at her lungs and she'd been full of so much of that disappointment that saying the word had let it all out to yank on her ribs and cramp her sternum and try to smother her.

"…You're going to make yourself sick if you keep breathing like that."

She couldn't breathe right then, she couldn't grab any air and it had been awful and made worse to have him watch.

"I know."

It had come out hissed and helpless.

"Stop it."

He got up and she raised a hand to keep him steps away, she didn't want a hug or a touch or comforting, she wanted to suffocate.

"I know, I know. I can't."

Every word was sputtered and shaky and he lit up a cigarette and held it out to her like it was a cure for her sudden unease.

"Here."

The sudden sun burst of anger helped her, hit her like defibrillation of a bad heart rhythm.

"I don't want it. These past few days have been wrong. I didn't feel like me, I felt like a mannequin brain and like I was stupid and wasn't thinking right and my body just went along and did stupid stuff and I knew eventually my brain would be normal and the things I was doing would still be done and it'd be awful because mannequin brain wasn't doing things the way I normally want them done."

"Why are you crying?"

And she was, had been, and it didn't matter, she didn't care.

"I'm frustrated, I cry when I get frustrated bad enough."

His smile was small and she just sniffled and swallowed snot and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand.

"Gimme my cigarette."

He did.

"Are you going to school?"

"Uh-huh."

They sat on the floor and didn't talk, she smoked, he watched, dogs barked next door and the house creaked like it always did.

"You should stay home."

"I don't want to. I just need to not think until I'm not skeeved anymore."

"You don't like not being in control."

"…"

Her silence and her glare shut him up.

"I'm sorry."

"Go."

It was a command and some part of her hoped he wouldn't listen.

"Okay."

But he went to leave and she was angry again.

"What is wrong with you?"

"…"

"Don't just say Oh-fucking-kay!"

"What am I supposed to say?"

"That you know. That you get it."

"I don't, not really. I don't get it."

"You're dead. That's why nothing makes sense."

Silence and smoke and he sighed.

"…"

"You're dead. You died."

She waved her hand.

"Up in here, somewhere. They shot you because you shot up Westfield in ninety-four and you died and you're mom has this psychic she hired to tell me that you don't know you're dead and they want me to help you cross over. That's why those kids showed up on the beach and chased you and why you can't leave this house and that's why there's the information gap between us and that's why you're so confused all the time."

"…"

"It's bullshit and impossible but it's still fucking true."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. I know."

"…"

She believed him, believes him still.

"But it's easy to forget."

And it's just that simple.

"Are you going to forget this?"

"Probably."

He shrugged like it was just an afterthought.

"Fucking remember this."

"Not really up to me, Violet."

"…"

She knows what defeat feels like. It blows.

"I'm not leaving."

The way he said it made her stomach clench and she knew he was like before, dangerous, normal in the way she considered him normal, fucked up but not broken by it. Fucked up in her favorite ways.

"No. You're not."

Her voice didn't shake, didn't waver and it wasn't an affirmation or an agreement it was a law she was going to enforce. He wasn't leaving. Never.

"Will you?"

"No. I don't think I will."

She gave him a sad smile that felt nice.

"…"

He gaped like a robot with coffee spilled on its circuit board.

"I don't think I'll ever will."

Fuck think, she knew, she knows. She's not going to leave either.

"I wish I'd remember you saying that."

"Me too."

"…"

She laughed bitter and old around her filter and spilled ashes into her lap before she looked back up at him and told him what she was supposed to but didn't have the balls to before.

"I do love you, you know?"

"Yeah, I do."

His expression made her mind fizzle out with a static hum and the popping bubble boop sound televisions make when they turn off. He looked amused, self-assured, like he should be swaggering across the room and that's the version she likes of him best, it's the side that knows he's nuts and likes it too.

"…"

"How much, Violet?"

"I love you so much I'd let you kill me."

She meant it, she still means it.

"…"

He stared at her like she'd told him to spank her, all curious and wide-eyed and wound up and thinking it was his birthday come early.

"But only if you can remember I told you, later."

"You're cruel."

But he laughed like it was what he liked best about her.

"And selfish."

Because she was.

She plucked cigarette butts off her comforter and tossed the stupid bird book across the floor and pulled him back into her bed. She was still tired and he was still dead and she couldn't leave for something as trivial as school when she'd been the one to tell him the truth no one else would have ever and he wouldn't have asked her again to stay no matter how much he wanted too because he couldn't have dealt with another 'no.'

She knew, so she stayed and the blankets were warm underneath from their bodies lying on top of them for hours. For awhile she planned not to give a shit about anyone except the boy whose heartbeat was under her palm when it should have been nonexistent, and she succeeded in the not giving a shit about things then.

It's getting harder though.

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, and men forgot their passion in the dread of this their desolation; and all hearts were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:

It was early, too early to be up since she'd decided school was bullshit and if she didn't have school then there was no point in being up at five in the morning, but she was awake and lay in bed with the rain on the windows turning the streetlamp light molten orange like sunrise over the ocean.

She listened to the rain and thought, when she stopped thinking she realized she'd stopped listening to the rain and sometime between the two moments she couldn't divide it had stopped too. A car drove by and pushed a flash of illumination across her bedroom walls like a panoramic movie shove.

There was a stupid game she played with herself that she set into effect, when three more cars passed by she'd get out of bed, it was the fate game, silly inconsequential things and hapless action of nameless people made her decisions for her, happenstances of the next card being a nine or the second dish on the second row of the dishwasher being the mismatched one in the set, if three brunettes sit next to each other and on and on until she never had to make another choice on her own again.

It took seven minutes.

She got out of bed and looked out the blinds. Nothing. Rain. Streetlamps. Wet asphalt. Another car. Dying rose bushes. No boy throwing stones at her window.

Downstairs something broke, it sounded like glass. When she went down Moira was sweeping up shards with a dustpan.

"Decide to catch your bus this morning instead of sleeping in?"

"Not going."

"Would you like breakfast?"

"Not hungry."

She went out the backdoor and thumbed a cigarette out of her pack, flapping her feet on the wet concrete and flipping open her Zippo while looking at the sky all blotched gray and ready to hum with thunder.

It was cold and damp and miserable out, the wind was wet and when she sat down and leaned against the bricks the chill made her ass numb and her spine straighten with a vertebral click. She pulled her cardigan over her knees, slipped her arm inside the body of her t-shirt underneath and rested her palm against the bottom of her sternum.

His shoes slapped wetly through the puddles in the concaved patches of concrete. "You look sad."

He sat down next to her and lifted her empty sleeve into his lap to pick at the frayed hem, her hand turned into a fist between her breasts and she lifted her cigarette to her mouth without inhaling the next drag.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

She stared down at her dirty toes and wet ankles, putting her cheek on her knee she turned her face to look at him from behind her hair.

"You know those things you can only come up with when you haven't gone to bed yet that only make sense when you're tired?"

"Yeah."

He looked at her and put the end of the sleeve in his mouth the bite off a loose string.

"You always forget about them later."

Her palm pressed over one breast and the inside of her elbow over the other, it was comforting, warm, not particularly sexual since there was discomfort growing in her nipples from the chilly bite of weather.

"Write them down."

"It's not the same," It wasn't, "I guess maybe that makes me a little sad. Jeez," she turned and took in smoke, holding it for longer than she usually did.

"Tell me then."

She put her forehead on her knees and blew out blue smoke into the stretch of cotton covering her legs and lap.

"People," she paused not knowing if it was the right word to start with. It wasn't. She took a drag and tried to think of a new one. "Everyone…in the whole world has something that someone else says or does that makes them go back to how they were before, brings them back to how they used to be."

"Like a magic word."

To bring a dead boy back to life, or make a girl not scared anymore, or a ghost go away, or stay. The idea was not a new one, it felt like an old friend, someone she'd known forever, something she'd always done, like breathing, or dreaming.

She nodded, too tired to verbally agree.

"But the thing about resetting something is that it's always going to revert back to the way it was before you reset it."

She opened her mouth on her knee and breathed into her shirt and skin wetly for the heat of it.

"Why?"

Her mouth had left a wet circle on the cotton; she put her chin on it to preserve the warmth.

"People's habits don't change, ingrained behavior, even if someone gets reset they just eventually go back to how they were before."

"…"

She put her cigarette out and looked at him looking thoughtful and contemplative all early morning mood and disposition. Violet sighed, she felt like that all the time, any time, whatever time. For awhile now, anyway. It was strange that she couldn't find the moment in time when it happened she realized, but it just had; maybe it had been happening, she realized, and she'd just never noticed.

"And you never know what your own reset cue is. So you just have to wait for someone else to say it or do it so all the bullshit gets cleared away for a little while and things make sense again, so you're real again and not just made up of bullshit."

"Violet."

He never says her name the same way twice, this time it was soft awe and gentle confusion. It sounded nice, concerned, like she was some delicate thing he wanted to take care of.

"I'm fine. Tired."

It came out sounding a little like bullshit and at first she thought it was, intended it to be, autopilot bullshit she'd have called it, but it wasn't. It was honest. She was tired. She'd been sleeping all night and most of the last afternoon, she wondered how she was so tired.

Slowly she wondered if she'd been sleeping at all. No. She hadn't. She'd dozed but never really slept. She tried to remember the last time she'd slept and couldn't remember. She couldn't remember being tired before she voiced it out loud. There had been sleepless, anxious, nights after Halloween but the last time she could remember exhaustion was after his written declaration of 'three little words' and before his vocal declaration of the same.

"Sorry, I'm just in one of those moods. I guess."

It was the only way she could explain it.

He seemed to get it, raising his arm and reaching over her shoulders to tuck her against his chest, "Hey, come here." Her fingers flexed around her breast and she trailed fingers over her nipple and it was sexual, unconscious but brought on by proximity to him, reflexive but sexual all the same. She ignored it, "You know what the worst part is though?"

"What?" He mouthed after breathing in her hair and skin.

"That you have to watch someone fill themselves back up with bullshit even after you reset them, so what's the fucking point?" She pressed a kiss to the skin of his neck just because it was there and he smelt nice too and he was warm and hers and she could.

"So you don't have to suffer so much for a little while," she closed her eyes when he dipped to kiss her brow and then her eye lid, lashes fluttering over lips for a bare, spare moment.

"How selfish," she mouths with lips curving on his sharp jaw.

"Yeah, it is. We're all selfish," he raises his chin to let her kiss his throat.

He looks at her like he remembers, maybe he does, she doesn't know. It doesn't matter, she decides. Finally.

And maybe she'll suffer less by degrees if she lets him figure it out and tell her he's dead, maybe that's the way it should work. Maybe things need to be more reciprocal for them to work; she's told him too many of her own secrets without making him spill his own guts in return.

Maybe he needs to beg for her maybe he needs to crawl and grovel maybe he needs to decide if he needs her like he thinks he does. Maybe the house is sticking up for her, maybe it's just a fucking house as sentient as a refrigerator and nothing more than that.

Maybe it's up to him to decide if he'd rather certainties instead of maybes.

And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, the palaces of crowned kings—the huts, the habitations of all things which dwell, were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed and men were gathered round their blazing homes to look once more into each other's face;

Her and Leah had sat around and smoked cigarettes in a way that kept them separate from the other kids at the grind pool, they didn't do it to be hipsters or score from the college boys that liked underage highschool girls and handed out Ambiens and Oxys for blowjobs like candy for good behavior, they sat around and smoked cigarettes and told the boys that creeped too close to go fuck themselves because they needed an outlet for their rage that was only starting to simmer under the low heat of frustration and routine and there was nowhere else to go to get their fix of leashed cruelty.

Every so often some stupid kid on a skateboard would fall and pop out their knee or knock their teeth loose from their gum-line and spit them out like they were throwing dice or tear a testicle from their sac on a rail and Violet would snicker. Their visits became more frequent and for longer intervals, the conversation would lull and burn down like their Marlboros but they'd end up rekindling the half-aware fear of the dark and basements and things that weren't real until the last gruesome injury had gone by without another to follow for hours and they'd leave.

The pleasantries were the same and they greeted each other with 'bitch', 'hoe', douchebag', 'twat', 'asshole.' Leah wouldn't comment on the every present dark circles under her eyes or the long sleeve shirts and Violet avoided the scars on her face and the hickeys on her neck.

She was the closest thing she had to a friend.

They'd bounded over things that terrified them, a self-help group topic, a comparison of character faults, it was fucked-up-funny Violet knew, kind of sad, and a little humorous, but mostly just pathetic.

"That story you told me about the red dragon, it's the same one that carries the Whore of Babylon, right?"

"I don't know if it's the same Dragon."

"Seven heads, ten horns, red."

"I think that one's a story of Rome. Symbolic. The other Dragon is definitely the devil though and the woman is Eve or Mary or something and the baby is supposed to be Jesus or someone."

"That's all pretty convoluted if you ask me."

"Yeah, it is. What can you expect from a book written by more than one person?"

"I guess."

"What was the question you asked?"

"Is it the same beast as the one the Whore of Babylon rides?"

"Oh, no idea. Maybe. Sorry I already answered and then made you ask again."

"Full circle."

"Though I think in the end the Whore of Babylon is overthrown by the ten kings who give power to the beast who god tells to overthrow the woman and it's all very confusing."

"Tell me about it. We need to stop talking about this Sunday school shit."

"I know, I know."

"But you know about the baby that the woman has up in Heaven that the beast wants to eat?"

"Yeah."

"He shows up later on a white horse to kill everything and everyone left who's an enemy of god and then everything pretty much ends with fire."

"Brutal. You really went and read Revelations because I told you that story?"

"Internet."

"Oh, good. Thought I had lost you to a lifetime of rosary beads and the cloister."

Happy were those who dwelt within the eye of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch

She's changing her sheets methodically when he comes in later. It's weirdly domestic. The old ones are heaped on the floor and there's blood and the mess of sex on them and he feels a twisted sort of pride over being the first. He doesn't know if she sees him standing in her doorway until she speaks without raising her head to look at him.

"Why did the skeleton go to the movies alone?"

"I don't know, why?"

"He had nobody to go with."

He hears the roughness in her voice, like she's swallowed sandpaper and her esophagus is bleeding red raw. There's a wild shine to her eyes and an awfulness in her that displays itself with a grim twist of her lips, he can hear the fevered slur in her speech.

She's getting sick.

It's not all that surprising. She smokes outside in the gray morning on rainy days, doesn't sleep much anymore, and doesn't eat like she used to, she tells him it's because she wants to watch the sun rise or because she's not tired or because she's not hungry, he knows she's a liar but he lets it go because he isn't sure how to help or if she'd want him to.

"How do you feel?"

Her look is unamused, she's lied and feels guilt she hadn't counted on, her mother is being committed, her house is haunted, her dad's been shot, she's alone in the house and being asked dumb questions.

"I'm perfect," she deadpans and he looks at her sheets pointedly.

He can't dissect her tone into any meaning and it bothers him.

"I meant how do you feel, now. Does it hurt? Now?"

He knows it did, knew it when he first asked, but the thing about Violet is she's a liar.

"Yeah, a little. I'm fine. Just sore."

"I'm sorry." He's not. Not really. He can't be because she's a liar.

"Don't be sorry, it's supposed to hurt the first time," it's a mumble down at the fresh linens she's stretching to fit over her mattress.

"But it didn't only hurt, right. It was…good, too?"

He hopes there was something good about it for her, something she got out of it, something that's measurable as good amongst all the other things she'll always remember about her first time.

"Yeah, you're a sex god, Tate. I had like twenty orgasms, I blacked out it was so good."

"Shit."

And it's too much of a lie to be a lie; it's so much of a lie that it's a joke.

"Don't worry about it."

"So it sucked. 'Intense' was just a way to make me not feel like an asshole."

Because parts of him do. He knows the reason behind the way she'd kissed him and pulled at him and told him to show her how much he loved her, all her words and the way she took off her clothes the way she looked at him when he pushed inside, a stare like a statue, far away, somewhere in her own head, her thoughts and senses with a delay and a lag during the span of time it took for him to touch and thrust and die right there between her legs with her hands on his face like she had no idea what he looked like even with her eyes open and staring at him like that.

"It was."

And she's looking at him when she tells him.

"Intense. Just…," and she breathes in heavy and sighs like her lungs are collapsing, her tiny hands yanking on the fitted sheet so hard it comes off the corner of the bed and she fails to notice. "Can we talk about this later? I'm really tired."

There's finality in how she turns her head away and goes back to making the bed.

"Yeah, fine."

He doesn't want to go but he will because she knows just as much as he does how much of a liar she is and they both know just the same that whatever they did earlier, made love, did it, fucked, whatever it was it was so goddamn broken it mocks them both.

And he shouldn't have let her because the whole thing feels like goodbye even after the fact, and he knows that that is what it was. The way he'd looked at her the night before from the steps of the house and the way she looked back over the hood of the car. He realizes looks can say a lot and whatever his was screaming made her wait in her room for him all morning after the police left and her mother called her father.

There's still that twisted sort of pride that her flinging her virginity away at him like a trinket to remember her by when she's finally realized that she's not as all mighty as she's hoped leaving it's impression on him.

Her absolute bottomless grief over the notion that she really has no control over what happens or where she's going to go or how things are going to turn out is the most fascinating thing he's ever watched for too long. And she makes a choice that ends up with him and her leaving a mess on her sheets and it's lost all the grandness of a final choice and one last hurrah because she's not leaving.

And that must sting.

He almost winces himself.

She would have waited if she'd known she was staying.

And he can sympathize.

But it's still funny and he's still her first and she's still staying.

So he'll leave, for now.

"Fuck, Tate."

"What?"

Or maybe he'll stay, he knows that liars like choices, he'll let her decide what she wants.

"What did you think it was going to be like?"

"So good you'd black out."

"Yeah, well…sorry."

"I wanted it to be amazing."

"Amazing…right."

It wasn't. Nothing to write an epic poem about because in real life there is no quiet moment of endless night for the glorious war hero and his virgin prize to crack open the earth with their frantic plethora of sexual voraciousness and fleshed out fantasies just as perfect when made reality, in real life there's just cold feet on the back of someone's calf and background noise to ruin the mood and fumbling and nerves and the glare of afternoon sun off of metallic odds and ends to catch someone's eye at the wrong moment and make them ruin their rhythm.

"What?"

He asks because she sounds thoughtful.

"It's going to take some time to work up to amazing, that's what I mean," she shrugs and punches her pillows back into comfortable fluffed shapes.

"Wait…what?"

He wonders if that means they get to practice.

"How many girls have you been with besides me?"

"None."

"Yeah."

She says it like it's the proof to something.

"So?"

"So, you're kind of new at this. You didn't suck you just have no clue what you're doing. I don't either."

"Practice makes perfect."

"Go read a book or something instead for now, okay?"

It's a dismissive statement and he tries not to put anything in his eyes that'll shout disappointed at her.

"Okay."

Something must still get a squeak out because she scowls and rolls her eyes at him, "It's been seven hours, I need to rest."

He could smack himself, yeah, rest, recently deflowered. He gets it.

"Oh, yeah."

"…"

"What?"

He asks because there's a grin on her mouth that's full of nothing but sass.

"You thought I was being a bitch."

"Yeah, a little."

"…"

The grin fades but she smirks a little for show because she's a liar when she's not talking too.

"Can I hang out here? With you?"

"And watch me make a bed?"

"I could read."

"Wanna go read sex tips on the internet?"

"Yes."

She plays with her laptop and he sits down and she brings up pages for him to amuse himself with.

"Have fun."

He dives forehead and catches her lips for a moment, they don't move or part the way they have before, she pulls back and just stares for a moment before steeping back and rubbing her arms.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

She looks up without any curiosity.

"Did you even…," he waves, "you know."

"What are you talking about?"

"Did you get off?"

And he waits for an answer but all she does is turn back to her bed and toss her comforter open with a large wave from her elbows forward.

"You know what they say about asking."

"No."

"Of course not. If you have to ask then the answer is no."

"So you didn't?"

"No, I didn't."

"Fuck."

Maybe she isn't such a liar after all; he's got the answer to that now too. She's only mostly a liar; she'll tell the truth if it hurts worse than the lie would. The truth fucking kills.

"It's pretty uncommon the first time you know."

"During not before."

"Yeah, not so much before. I could have before we did it."

There's some sort of slant to her words he takes as remonstration.

"Shit."

"…"

"Next time you'll get two."

"…"

"Girls can come more than once, you know."

"Yeah, I know. They can get off a lot more than two, you know," her tone is sarcastic and mean and she's rolled her eyes more than once. The statement makes him grin.

"How many more?"

"A lot," she informs him with crossed arms and indignant posturing with one hip cocked and her eyes sharp like a bird with a beak made for breaking bone.

"How many can you?"

"In one go?"

"Yeah."

"If I was trying?"

"Yeaaaah…"

"Over a specific period of time?"

"Are you purposely asking a lot of questions?"

Violet sits down and eyes her bed and his dick twitches at the idea of her doing it herself and having him count out loud, she doesn't but when she looks back he knows she's read his mind or near enough for her mouth to smirk.

"By myself over like an hour probably five, maybe six. It's harder after the third one and if you don't stop for like a minute after each it takes longer for the next one."

He nods and turns away to her laptop and starts clicking things that go to other pages and reads, making lists in his head on things that seem like things she'd like that he could do to her, things that will feel good. He's a smart boy and he decides that six is a good number to start with. He can get six out of her. Maybe not in an hour but he can work on that.

A fearful hope was all the world contained; forest were set on fire—but hour by hour they fell and faded—and the crackling trunks extinguished with a crash—and all was black.

A/N: Okay a few things, the poem bits are Byron's 'Darkness.' A Byronic hero is the precursor of the what people know as the 'Antihero' and for awhile it seemed Tate was really just that type of character but now that's waning a bit in the show and Violet's gaining that potential, to me at least it seems that way. 'Esuoh Tcetorp Flesruoy' is a bit of a nerd reference, fans of Neil Gaiman and his Books of Magick may recognize this as what Zatanna, a DC comics superheroine/magician, says to her house and fans will know that she does magic by speaking backwards so the phrase means 'House Protect Yourself' and is her security system when she goes out, get it? Magic words? Title of fic? Reference? Foreshadow? Theme? Anything? The Whore of Babylon is a biblical figure who appears in Revelations.

Once again let me direct some attention to some authors who have popped up in this fandom whose fics are worth a read and a reread: chococrack21, the book of nightmares, and also in my last fic's ending author's note I mentioned Seenbean but they've changed their penname to whodreamedit so I'd thought I'd point that out. Go read whodreamedit and ohyellowbird's collab fic 'Monster' it's delicious.

And one last thing, I think it's safe to say that any author writing Violate knows that everyone has a different take on the whole relationship dynamic. As readers right now with AHS revealing things and keeping some things ambiguous please know that there are going to be fics where the Violate relationship is different from how you picture it, keep this in mind. There are plenty of fic in this fandom and not every one will be the definition of how you intrepret the realtionship between the characters, it's the author's interpretation and there's nothing wrong with any viewpoint of the relationship because it's not set in stone. And even if it was there's a differene between fanon and canon no matter what. I've got a lot of appreciation for how diverse the take on Violate is and that there's not one hundred of the same fic going on, that's rare for a lot of fandoms. Let's all praise that. Authors in this fandom keep doing what you're doing, you're all amazing!