Author's Note: I wanted to do something more Tate-centric before we get to the brutal ending. The inspiration for this one came from this fantastic video I found on YouTube:

youtu(dot)be(slash)thxScxXUOU4

Do yourself a favor and watch it. Guh. I am going to miss the shit out of this kid next season. :/

Anyway. Not much else to say about this one. It's late, and I'm tired, and I love you guys. I hope you like it!

Cough into Your Sleeve

The card game has long since gone forgotten, and both of them sit now with their spines pressed against the iron frame of her bed, huddled side-by-side. And it is pleasant, he doesn't want for anything to disrupt this moment, especially given the chaos of the day - and not of the kind he typically enjoys. No, he just wants to concentrate on every little breath, the in and out of air in her lungs, so unnecessary (and they both know it now) but he just has to listen to it anyway.

Violet slowly stretches her foot out, her leg parallel to his own, and he looks down at the small round hill of her kneecap and he contemplates plucking up the piece of lint from her leggings. She turns her face toward him, distracting him, her eyes and mouth are still swollen from devastation and revelation, and he finds the weak curve of her lips at the corner such a curious gesture.

Tate tilts his head at her, and she rolls her shoulders, and goes back to staring right ahead at the portal of her room.

"What?" He wonders, interested in her second glance back.

Violet shakes her head. "Nothing."

"Violet."

She hesitates, chewing on flaking skin from her lower lip. "Just…" Her eyes go a bit glassy, and he tries to follow her thousand-yard stare, figure out what road she's wandering. But just like that, she turns to look upon him, her brown eyes bright with inquisitiveness that he so often finds endearing in her. "How did you tell your mom? When you died?"

It wasn't what he was expecting. Tate frowns at her. "What do you mean? She saw me—"

"No," Violet cuts him off and straightens up a little, her shoulder brushes his, and he doesn't miss it. "I mean, like, how did you tell her you were a ghost? How did she find out?" She pauses, her tongue brushing her lip, "How did you find out?"

"Man, it's been so long, I can't really remember what it was like," he admits with a shrug. And it's true; the memories have blurred and melted into some vague watercolor in the back of his mind, but Violet purses her lips in skepticism towards his uncertainty.

"Seriously? How do you not remember finding out you're dead?"

He doesn't know if she notices, but he sees her shiver a bit on the word and he feels bad for her all over again.

"It's not like I was surprised that I was dead," he tells her anyway. "I mean … I remembered being shot up by the cops. But, I don't know, I guess I was just still numb about it." And he still is, honestly. It still doesn't resound in him, he doesn't ever really feel it - he doesn't feel anything when he thinks upon it, now or ever.

"You weren't excited?"

"Are you?"

"No." Violet folds her arms. "But it's different, right?"

He scoffs. "How do you figure?"

"Well, you knew you were going to die," she points out. "A whole SWAT team mowed you down." When he ducks his head, she apologizes quietly, but she presses on nevertheless. "So it's really like you got this second chance."

"Yeah, and so did you."

"But I didn't know I was going to die. I didn't mean to."

"We all know we're going to die, Violet," it's a douchebag sort of statement, he knows, but he just wants to watch her process it. He likes catching her off-guard like that, even if it does mean he has to endure the tremor of her lip and the spring of fresh liquid at her lashline. And at any rate, she knows it's true.

"Whatever. It's still different," she resolves, turning her face away from him just as a tear slips down from the crease.

His thumb comes up, strokes the droplet across her cheek, leaving a long wet mark along her skin. "I woke up in my bed," Tate proceeds, and Violet looks back at him warily, unsure of where exactly he's starting. "After I died," he clarifies, "I guess they had taken my body, already, my room was all clean again. But it was like any other morning. It didn't … feel different, or look different, or smell different."

She nods along, because she knows. He continues, "So, I got up and got dressed, like usual. I started to head downstairs, but mom caught me in the hall and just started bawling," Tate rolls his eyes. "She kept saying she knew it, whatever. And then I just … kind of remembered. I don't know; I didn't really … have a problem with it, I guess. It was more like, 'oh, cool, I don't have to go to school anymore.'"

"...You didn't have a problem with dying?"

Tate shrugs. "I guess not."

"Really? There isn't anything you wanted? For yourself?"

"What is there, really?" He tips his head back, enjoys the cold, uncomfortable press of the bed frame against his skull. "I mean, is there anything really worth living for out there?" He looks over at her, but before she can open her mouth, he starts vehemently, "No, seriously, Vi – what is there? Fucking hoops our parents and society want us to jump through and they just tell us those are our dreams? That that's what we should want? And why? What's the point of any of that shit if we can't take it with us when we go?"

She stays mute, and he talks over her silence, unwavering. "There's nothing I need out there, not from the world, not from anyone, and definitely not from my future." Tate is sincere in this, he tries to make it clear, wants her to believe and know just like he does. She doesn't yet, but she will. "There's no regret in death and dying. If anything, I'm grateful."

"Grateful?" Her echo sounds disgusted.

And he cares, but only as much as he can for her behalf. Still, Tate nods, "Yeah."

Violet just stares into him, her features contorted into something torn between confusion and disbelief. Abruptly, she pushes up from the floor, and Tate feels his stomach drop out at her disappearance from his side. He leaps up to his feet and she twirls away from him, and her dismissal hurts in only the way she can make him hurt. "Violet?"

"I should go check on my dad—"

He catches her around the elbow and she almost starts to yank free, but she thinks better of it and petulantly turns to face him. "Hey, what did I do?"

"How can you say you're grateful?" Tate sees her neck flushing, and he knows she's still bitter over her untimely ending. He can't blame her. "Our lives were taken away from us. Our futures."

"C'mon, you know what I'm saying. What is it really worth, worrying over the could've beens?" Tate sighs. "We're happy now."

"Yeah, now," Violet emphasizes, and he doesn't like it. "But what's to say we couldn't have been happier sometime in the future?"

"I know I wouldn't."

"You can't know that."

"I do, though."

Violet groans and does move to pull away, but Tate doesn't let her budge. His fingers tighten and he feels her bones beneath her skin. "You're just saying that—"

"Violet, my whole life meant nothing," he wills her to see just that, and she stops being wounded for a moment to look into him and listen. "I'm not just saying it. I hated school, if I hadn't have died, I would've just dropped out, anyway. I hated my family. I hated the world. I hated being in it, I didn't belong there and I didn't want to belong."

He drops her arm with a heavy breath and leans back against the frame, his fingers working around the twisted iron in a firmer grip than he could use on her. "I couldn't be myself. I felt like I was just … trapped, and on display, y'know?" Tate looks up to see if she's still a captive audience, and she reluctantly is. His heart cinches at the sight of her attentive, and his throat is suddenly fuller. "But here, and now? I'm me. I don't have a society to answer to or any standards I need to fit into. And I have you. I don't want anything else. I never could."

Violet rocks back and forth in front of him, her arms wound about her middle as she vacillates in her stance on the subject, and of him. She dips her head, and he tries to catch her gaze. Her voice comes out softly behind her curtain of hair, "I'm sorry you felt that way. You should've been happier."

"Maybe," Tate rolls his lips together and makes a face, but it weakens when he sees that she is genuine and she is concerned for him, or at least for who he was. He quirks a smile down at her and lifts a shoulder vaguely. "Maybe if I had known you then, my future would've been something worth looking forward to."

The silence is dense between them, his confessions heavy and he sees her start to sink under the press of it all again, the weight of the day and its reveals too much for her to withstand, she's so fragile. Tate shifts forward from the bed frame and into her space, hoping to buoy her out of the depths of where she wallows. "Come on," he tips his head in the direction of their forgotten cards. "New game."

Her mouth begins to move into the shadow of a smile, but a staggering banging from below their feet startles both, and Tate remembers what he has done and is overwhelmed with fear as he meets her surprised gaze.

"Is that my dad?"

"You should go check on him." When she starts to frown, Tate shakes his head, a bit rushed in the movement. "He's fine, I promise. I swear didn't hurt him."

"I know you didn't." And while she doesn't appear overall convinced, her words soothe him, and she gestures toward the door. "I'll be back in a sec, okay?"

He nods, and she disappears through the door in more of a haste than he would've predicted or liked to have seen. As soon as her footfalls dissipate down the stairwell, Tate lowers himself to the floor, settles his cheek against the hardwood and listens through the floorboards. He strains to hear her below, and he does, her decible indicating such shock and concern that stir a guilty bubble in his stomach. But eventually she quiets, and he can't hear much else beyond the groggy rumble of her father's voice in the first floor hallway.

Frustrated, but unwilling to risk exiting the safety of their room, he instead sits up and reaches for the discarded piles of cards and commences shuffling, and he hopes to find easy distraction in preparing for their next round.