Author: grayglube

Title: Limerence

Summary: He's never had the type of luck someone would consider the good kind.

Rating: M

Warning(s)/Kink(s): Language, sexual situations, violence, drug use, dub-con

Disclaimer: I don't own American Horror Story.

A/N: This is an AU. It starts off kind of sweet and nice in a teenager who talks shit kind of way and then it becomes a not so pleasant sort of thing. Been toying with this for awhile like since paceyourself started 'About a Girl' which was awhile ago (and she really needs to fucking update that shit before I shank someone). Takes place in moderen day except for when otherwise specified.

He's nursing the sure to bloom bruise right above his elbow, courtesy of a stair banister that like the rest of the house does nothing but become a fixture of his constant spite and distaste, when he sees her.

There's a general sort of curiosity, the type of curiosity beget by coming across a stranger in one's domicile, but by no means does that equate to even the barest amount of simmering and simpering attraction.

Even then he's not quite surprised by it, he's used to the budding starlet, or the twenty years later version, flopped, burned-out craggy space rumble versions of girls who start out thinking they shine like super novas and cosmic events on the pages of a sears catalog or tampon commercial, standing around going through pseudo improvisation or accent work with his mother in the den, which is really just a pompous middle-class with money way of saying it's much nicer and has more expensive furniture than a normal living room.

He'd heard someone else and their horrid version of an eastern European accent all the way from the upstairs bathroom, something he's especially surly about since it threw him out of a particularly raunchy mid-shower fantasy of Westfield's girls' swim team and into one of communist Russia where girls don't so much try to eat each other out through one piece bathing suits because they're frantic with post-championship win lust as eat dead dog next to a burning car because communist Russia isn't so big on FDA guidelines.

But whoever has come today for an acting session, lesson, exercise in futile and long since gone dreams and missed chances of being the next piece of twenty something riding a motorcycle through fire while giant robots destroy cityscapes or have fake fuck scenes with Hollywood's gay in real life A-list man of the week while having blown the producer and five to ten of his closest friends to get that far, has made him curious as to who the fuck she is.

Or thinks she is.

Because she's going through his forsaken messenger bag with flippant bored ease while his mother tries to seduce the mid-twenties hedge trimmer next door with saddlebag tits and the hair-do of an "I Love Lucy" set extra.

"Can I help you?"

"Sorry."

She doesn't sound very sorry.

"It's fine."

He grabs his bag anyway and flings it onto the sofa; it makes it over the top but flops loudly to the floor since he's overshot the distance.

With a thoughtful look out the open French doors he takes in his mother all but fondling the twenty-something gardener, "She's going to be awhile."

"So would I, he's pretty hot."

He raises a brow but the girl doesn't see it, she's busy giving the scene outside a cursory once over.

"Do you think she'd care if I smoke?" There's a cigarette twirling between her fingers already and he watches her turn it over her knuckles. She's mousy in her oversized cardigan and ashy blonde hair hanging loose and lackluster around her face.

"That's what the ashtray is for."

He waves a hand at the crystal dish sitting on the coffee table between the faux velvet covered armchairs nestled cozily in front of the fire place as if set there for a happily married aging duo, it's where his mother get blitzed at night and passes out until a flaming log pops and the embers singe her slippers.

"I thought it was a candy dish," her hands are small and delicate; they look like hands that wouldn't be able to handle the weight of heavy glass ashtrays.

"Is it?"

"I don't know it looks like one."

He picks an almost empty tea cup from the table, "Here."

"What am I supposed to do with this?" She looks at it like she's thoroughly perplexed.

"Ash in it."

She points at the candy dish she's set back down, "But that's an ashtray."

"What if it's a candy dish?"

She sighs happily and takes the tea cup and lights a match, "Oh, yeah. Thanks."

The first drag wafts out of her mouth, "I'm Violet."

"I heard." His mother has a loud mouth.

"I'm Tate."

"I know, I saw," her grin is wolfish as she casts a glance at his school bag. "Want one?"

He waves away her proffered pack of Marlboro reds, "I don't smoke."

It's a lie but he doesn't make it a point to smoke with noisy girls he's just met in the middle of his house.

Violet shrugs and flings herself into one of the chairs, smoking leisurely and ashing into the candy dish instead of the tea cup as if she's forgotten what they had just been talking about.

"Just you and your mom?" She asks while he picks his bag up off the floor on the other side of the room, he can only glimpse half of her face but it's turned towards the empty fireplace.

"Yeah. Why?"

"It's just a big house. You guys rich or something?" She looks at him and her gaze is like jagged glass.

"Why would we be rich?"

"Well what's a place like this go for?" She waves the hand holding her cigarette and smoke spirals up towards the ceiling in wafting curlicues. "I mean it's what? Four, five bedroom, two and a half or three bath, attic, basement, kitchen and dining room plus a study, pretty non-ethnic school district plus the private schools, iron front gate, back yard with an in-ground. That's at least seven hundred and fifty to one point five, ya know? And if it's just your mom…-"

He grinds his teeth at the thought of how they could afford the house in the first place, "Yeah, we're rich." His waspish tone is what makes her mouth click shut and cuts off what she was going to say and replaces it with, "…sorry, I didn't mean to come off like a cunt."

"…yeah, maybe you shouldn't be noisy."

"Maybe. Sorry."

Again, she looks anything but.

"Yeah." He stomps upstairs with his bag slung over his shoulder.

She goes back to practicing her accents, loudly, making it impossible to resume his masturbatory exploits, he sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of his nose to counter the just about to bloom migraine brought on by the swelling rage he's experiencing.

He's pushes the cart along one handed while his mother waits in line to order cold cuts or rather 'coal cuts' since she's kept her obnoxious accent developed from a life spent growing up in the nice part of the South that keeps it's racism and bigotry under the rug and in the closet under the stairs right next to the mongoloid babies and whores for daughters.

Meandering down the aisles he eyes a girl buying tampons half-heartedly, mostly for the cheerleading uniform, knowing that she's the type of girl who'll get fat after she gets married, knocked-up and goes Suzie homemaker after highschool or during, whenever.

He watches her spot him and try to covertly put back her Extra Super size and go for Regular but the damage is done and he wonders if there's that big of a difference, he could care less how big a girl's pussy is, it's pussy and he's a boy.

Another aisle and he tosses in bread, remembering that it goes in the spot where you put a toddler and not in the actual cart. His mother flips like a switch over the little things like that and he does not need her hissed bitchiness today.

School was shit.

Doesn't matter what state he's in it blows no matter what. It's a Wednesday and that mean two more days until he can sleep all fucking day if he wants, not that it means he'll be able to but he'll make damn sure to try.

There's the tell-tale click of heels coming closer and he pretends not to hear so he can push the cart faster to make his mother try to catch up.

She's back.

Smoking outside, like she's been there waiting. He doesn't know where the idea comes from but it's unsettling.

"Hey."

"Oh, hi," she smirks like she hadn't seen him come through the gate. There's silence in which she smokes and he wonders if he should reach into his bag for his house-keys and let her in or stand around by the back door with her instead while trying to make small talk.

"I was kind if a prick," he settles for when she keeps staring in his general direction.

"I noticed."

"So,..sorry." It sounds like a question. She shrugs and leans her elbows on the low brick wall.

"Yeah yeah. It's fine. Really."

She takes a drag, "Just figured you know? What does this acting class thing really bring in?" She shoots him a 'come on, that's bullshit' look. "And your mom's kind of old money southern charm and…"

"Prejudges."

"I was going to say delicacies."

He snorted.

"But yeah, your's might work better."

"Can I bum a smoke?"

"Thought you didn't."

And she grins like she knew all along he was lying.

"I didn't really feel like talking and smoking with someone the other day."

"Okay."

She thumbs one out and holds it out to him.

"You go to Westfield?" He mumbles around the filter while enclosing the flame she flicks up from her bic to light his cigarette."

"No. Marlborough."

"Is that where they send the bad kids or something?"

"Do I look like a bad kid?" Her eyes widen and her smile dances across her mouth.

He shrugs, "Why not?"

"Thanks. Prep school. Uniforms and everything."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Where is it?"

She's wearing another too big sweater and plum colored tight with camel saddle shoes.

"Like I'd wear my schoolgirl outfit out of school."

"Yeah, creepy dudes love that shit."

"It's nothing to get a woody over, trust me. It's not like totally errrraaaawwwtic and bodaaaaaycious dude."

"People talk like that here?"

"In the movies they do."

"Is that what you want to do?"

Her eyes roll and he knows the answer is no and what the truth is, is that her parents probably paid for classes and sent her over to his mother so she wouldn't get into trouble. She seems like trouble.

"Why'd you guys move here?"

"My sister died."

"Really?"

"Yeah, last Halloween. Hit and run."

"Shit."

"Yeah. So my mom settled out of court and we bought a fucking California dream house. It's blood money and she acts like it's the best thing that ever happened to us."

"Brutal."

"Yeah," he laughs a little laugh and drops his smoke, grinding it out before blowing out the last drag and running a hand through his hair roughly, "fuck."

"Condolences."

"Thanks."

"See ya later."

"Yeah," she says coolly while he walks inside and she waits for his mother to show up for lessons.

He makes the mistake of snickering a little too loudly.

The kid in the next row with the stupid answer turns to scowl at him.

He just shakes his head back jauntily and condescendingly right back at him.

"Okay so Kyle doesn't know. Who's Tate again?"

"Me."

"Can you give me an example of appeasement?"

"The start of world war two." It comes out a little snide but someone laughs quietly from behind him.

"Which was?" His constipated looking teacher waits with an expression of impatience and attitude. It makes him want to hit her with the fucking textbook.

"Chamberlain gave Austria to Hitler because socialism was becoming an issue and he didn't really have a choice."

"And then what happened."

"Germany invaded Poland and Britain replaced Chamberlain with Winston Churchill and the whole world went to war."

"Good. You read the book."

"Yup," he goes back to tapping his pencil rapidly against the pages of his chapter on 'global tensions rising' and set to erasing the dick someone's doodled on page 507.

Ignoring that there's a whole classroom staring at him like he's an asshole for knowing how to read and remember it for more than five minutes.

"Is she supposed to be here right now?"

The girl who has become an almost daily fixture in his life is spread out on the couch with her boots hanging over the edge and her stare fixed to the ceiling and her lips around the filter of one of her cigarettes.

Sh's ashing into what did indeed turn out to be a candy dish.

"Is it between four and six?"

He smirks a little with good humor, "She's probably out with the pool boy."

"Don't blame her, he's…-"

"Pretty hot, yeah. So I've heard."

She props herself up on her elbows and takes him in with her eyes, "Hot and dumb what else could a girl want?"

Her eyebrows rise and fall suggestively, that paired with the cigarette bobbing up and down between her lips makes his grin broaden.

"You met him?"

"No, but he's a pool boy."

She turns her face to blow out smoke.

"You gonna wait for her?"

"I guess. I don't have anything else to do," she flops back and goes back to staring at the ceiling.

He isn't sure what makes him say it but the words are out into the room just waiting for a response, "Wanna see the rest of the house?"

He guesses it's because he's starved for human contact and the upstairs sanctuary of his bedroom seems small and claustrophobic.

"Really?" Her eyes light up with genuine excitement, like she's been waiting for the offer for forever. He shrugs, "Sure."

"Murderhouse tour for real, cah-ul."

"Murderhouse tour?"

"Uh, yeah. Cause you're giving me a tour and this is the Murderhouse."

"What?"

"You know right?"

He doesn't and it looks like it amuses her immensely.

"Know what? Did somebody die here or something?"

"Uh…yeah." Her eyes move comically and he doesn't find the look she gives him irritating at all, surprisingly.

"How do you know?"

"I took the bus tour a few years ago. For a birthday thing."

"Bus tour?"

"Yeah, 'Eternal Darkness', it goes around L.A. and hits all the spots of big murders and stuff."

"Who died here?"

"Um…," she ticks off the death toll on her non-smoking hand, "the abortionist and his wife and all the little dead babies, the sorority nurses, the found a body of a maid who used to work her when they put in the pool and the mystery family."

"Who's the mystery family?"

She's bent up with her back arched forward and her knees pushed into her chest with her elbows crossed over them and her heels still banging into the side of the cough under the arm, "There was a family a few years ago where somebody went crazy and because the case is still open they can't publish the name in the paper because there's a whole civil suit thing going on or something because of whatever, I took the tour before that though so I don't really know the details."

"Maybe we should take it and find out."

It sounds like an offer. He realizes. He wants to smack himself in the mouth. Her eyebrows shoot up and relax just as quick, "Maybe you should show me the abortion basement tour guide."

"Okay."

She hops off the couch and follows close enough behind that he can feel her body heat through his t-shirt.

"Nice room. Very…clean."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

She eyes his posters before turning to grin at him over her shoulder, "Cobain and Gaiman huh? Not bad, not bad."

"You know Neil Gaiman?" He asks because girls don't really read comics. She scoffs.

"Yeah, I know Neil Gaiman." She says the name like she's imitating him but he knows he didn't say it like that. "I like his short stories better though, he's got that vibe to him. Though Thessaly in Sandman is probably the most kick-ass chick in comics since Catwoman."

"Catwoman never cut someone's face off."

She grins, "The first lesson is: you don't fuck with Thessaly, you don't get another lesson." She shakes her head menacingly and giggles. It sounds good.

The conversation spins into favorite characters (his: the eyeball stealing serial killer nightmare creation, pumpkin headed handyman, and an immortal bag lady and hers: a half skeleton faced she-demon from hell and a witch who nails the face she cuts off of someone to a wall and makes talk to her), H.P. Lovecraft's fictional towns inhabited by frog people waiting to bring forth the end of the world via underwater sea monster, and short stories about a never aging model in porn magazines, all the animals in the world disappearing which leads humanity to use babies as a source of outwear leather and burgers, a reimagining of Beowulf for the modern age based off Bay Watch and another off of Gaiman's 'American Gods,' a fireplace story circle with the months of the year personified, and the three fates motif.

They lay out on his bed puff puff passing a joint he's offered her half of until the rumble of his mother's station wagon over the gravel of the driveway floats in through the open window.

"I think that's her," he groans.

"You think I should go?" She's propped up on an elbow and licks her dry, cracked lips shiny with spit.

"Why?"

She waves a hand flippantly, "Well she's way too late for our class and she might think since I stayed and I'm upstairs that I was blowing you or something. I get that vibe from her."

"What vibe?" His eyes crinkle.

"Momma Bear vibe and the 'I think you're a harlot' vibe."

"What are you going to do then, sneak out the window so my mother who was probably sucking pool boy cock doesn't think I was busy defiling you for the last two hours?"

He leans in a little just to see if she'll lean away, cowed by his presence, thrown off by his altogether 'I'm a boy and have a penis and could defile you if I wanted to' vibe.

She leans in and he can smell the smoke on her breath, "If anyone would be getting defiled it'd be you golden boy and, yes, out the window it is. See ya."

"Hey," he reaches slowly like he can still grab her arm to corral her back to her forsaken post next to him. He doesn't want her to go yet.

"Too late, already on the roof."

"If she's too busy sucking pool boy cock on Thursday we'll talk angry angsty grunge bands, okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Cool."

But she's already gone and his mother is climbing up the stairs.

He wonders what it is about certain words that turns his skin hot and his jeans hug his crotch.

Blowing.

Harlot.

Defile.

Cock.

A few more and he could try to write a Setsuna.

Maybe it's because she's a girl.

Maybe it's because she's a girl who was in his room.

Maybe it's because she's a girl who was in his room that knows her cult graphic novels and appreciates Nirvana.

He doesn't know if he's been looking close enough to tell if she's attractive or not, he's been too annoyed with her questions once and too concerned with showing what he knows about his favorite author the other time, and he hopes the next time she shows up he can pass off what's going to be no less than a thorough cursory glance at all the areas girls hate boys staring at and what most likely, if caught, will come off more like he's eye fucking her, which he acknowledges will be altogether too aggravatingly annoying if he doesn't find her attractive at all.

A/N: Don't know when the next chapter will be up. Bear with me.