A/N: Happy Valentine's Day!

"You know I wasn't a med student right? I was just taking a psych class when I met Ben," Hayden said as Tate pulled his shirt off and laid flat against the big steel table in Charles' 'office'.

"Can you do it or not?" Tate snapped before he slapped an ether soaked rag over his nose.

Hayden reached out, smashing the rag to his face, helping him along the way to unconsciousness. "Yeah, I can do it," she scoffed.

The flickering fluorescent light suspended above the table stabbed at Tate's eyes when he came to, a phantom ache in his chest reminding him what he was doing there in the first place.

He sat up slowly, holding his head still in his hands while the room spun around him for a second. His eyes fell on the table of surgical instruments still covered in blood and bits of bone and muscle as they crowded around an unassuming mason jar.

He smiled as he picked it up. He had been thinking for a while about a Grand Gesture, something to pave the way for things to change between him and Violet. But his talent had never trended towards writing poetry and painting pictures. Gore had always been his true medium, and his ghost girl had never liked normal things anyway.

Besides, it was Valentines Day, and his heart suspended in murky formaldehyde was a better present than flowers and chocolates and jewelry would ever be. He dripped red candle wax around the lid to help contain the stench of the preservative, and tied his carefully worded note around it with a length of red ribbon.

Violet rolled over, rubbing sleep from her eyes to come face to face with Tate's heart floating in a jar of goo on her nightstand.

If she was a normal girl she would have screamed, but she had never been normal even before she died. She reached up and flipped the scrap of paper tied to it open to read the simple words written on it, painstaking in their neatness.

This belongs to you. For always.

There had been a time when things between her and Tate had been absolute shit. Not that it was all sunshine and black roses now, but when she first took him back into her bed because she couldn't stomach taking anyone else into her heart it had been bad, awful even.

The first time there was still too much in her head, too many things other than that, real monsters occupying other quarters of her brain. And it nearly broke Tate, what he had to do to her to appease those monsters because he wasn't so much a psycho that he got off on really hurting the only girl he ever loved.

The pain was like a balm to the bitterness she felt that she was there, under him again, with him inside her again, different because of the tears leaking down the side of her face into her hair, and the knowledge of everything he'd done to her mother eating away at her.

He couldn't even look at her when she left, the sweet kiss to his cheek in sharp contrast to the bruises and blood staining her pale flesh. But when Violet had come back and demanded more he didn't say no. It was better than being ignored.

It took a year for her to stick around longer than the time it took pull her clothes on and stem the flow of a bloody nose. It took another year after that of watching her wear bruises shaped like his hands like they were her favourite tatty sweater before he refused her, or tried to anyway.

The fight that followed was brutal. Too many years of love and hate and silence and pain all exploding at once so violently that the room they had fought in still bore the scars on the wall. The fight lasted through hours of broken bones and ruptured organs, through blood and tears and rage, as they healed as quickly as they destroyed each other.

In the end Tate had pinned Violet to the floor, crushing her throat under his hands to stop the torrent of vitriol flowing out of her mouth, darkness burning in him with an intensity it hadn't since the day he'd painted the walls of Westfield red.

When she came to amid the wreckage of broken furniture he was watching her, waiting. His clothes were torn and bloody, but even in the dark she could see his cheeks glazed in tears, see them soaking the collar of his shirt. His voice though, had been surprisingly even when he asked her why.

Violet sat up slowly, peeling away her clothes where blood had melded them to her skin. "Because this way you have to see the scars that I have to live with."

There was something about her voice - the deadness of it, the indifference - that made the situation read as the break up they should have had when she said 'go away' and 'goodbye'.

Tate felt fear wash over him; desperate, sweaty palmed, heart-clenching fear, so absolute it froze him in place. If he could have moved he would have grovelled at her feet, clutched to her, wrapped her up in his arms and legs and bound her to him.

Instead he had watched with wide eyes and disbelief as she crawled towards him, knocking his legs apart and curled against his chest. And he sat dumbly, unmoving until he felt the first of her tears sliding down his neck, their release as necessary as the fight had been. He pulled her tight against him, murmuring little things until her hand covered his mouth, silencing him.

Things had changed after that. He didn't hurt her anymore, and she didn't ask him to. The only rule she had was that he not talk about them and that was all he ever seemed to want to talk about. As much as she wanted to believe his sweet nothings she could never tell what was bullshit and what was real with him. Sex was easier, black and white instead of gray.

And for a while it was enough, to play cards and Scrabble and chess in silence, to sit with her in the backyard to read and smoke without talking. But things were back in flux again.

Violet had seen enough episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl to know that what he wanted was the 'girlfriend experience' - fucking and talking - and even though she hated where that put her in relation to him, it was an apt description.

Violet reached out, fingers flitting between the soft crumbling paper of his note and cool slickness of the glass, turning things over in her mind. Maybe he deserved a gift in return, it was Valentine's Day after all.

"So who'd you have cut out my present?" Violet asked innocently as she dealt the cards between them.

Tate eyed her suspiciously. The last time he talked she stabbed him in the neck.

And left the knife there so he stayed dead.

For a week.

She looked up at him expectantly. "Did Charles cut it out for you? I can't imagine Ben would have helped."

Tate licked his lips nervously, debating whether she really wanted to know the answer, or if this was just a trick to get him to talk so she could kill him again. He already had his heart cut out once today, and he wasn't sure if he was up for another Benihana slice-and-dice in a single twenty-four hour period.

"Fine. Don't answer," Violet snapped, throwing down her cards petulantly.

She was halfway to standing when he finally croaked out, "Hayden did it."

Violet lowered herself slowly back to the floor, collecting her cards again. "Why her?" She tried to keep her voice light and unconcerned, but her loathing of Hayden and her suspicions about the cunt's ultimate motives made that impossible.

Tate shrugged. "No one else would do it. Charles, despite being pickled in ether, said the Hippocratic Oath prevented him from 'doing any harm'. Your dad said he'd feed my dick to Thaddeus."

"Well, that's just terribly unoriginal," she snarked.

"Do you like it?"

Violet twisted around, looking at the mason jar where it sat on her nightstand, and just for a second Tate saw a blush stain her cheeks before she hid it behind a curtain of hair. He liked that despite everything, despite how much he had hurt her, he could still make have that effect on her.

"Yeah, I do," she said quietly, laying a card in the space between them.

For a while the only sound between them were the sounds of the game; the hushed whisper of cards falling to the floor, the sharp snap of Tate shuffling them in his hands.

"I wanted to get you something for Valentine's Day too," Violet said eventually, smirking at the way Tate's fingers twitched nervously.

"Yeah?"

"Mmmhmm. I couldn't think of anything though." Actually, she had, but they were all cruel and sarcastic, and that really wasn't how she wanted the day to go, so she kept them to herself for once. "So I decided that - just for today - I can forget the things you've done."

Tate gaped at her, thunderstruck.

"You can talk," she smirked, enjoying the way she was discomfiting him.

Violet expected him to immediately launch into the usual I love you's and I'm sorry's and please forgive me's she usually had to endure every time he opened his mouth. In other words, a tidal wave of bullshit.

But he didn't. He smiled to himself, looking down at the cards in his hand so all she could see was his cheeks pillowing up instead of dimples and teeth. Tate wasn't an idiot, and he knew if he launched into that crap right off the bat he'd end the day with a knife in his neck again. He had to play his cards just right.

Tate's fingers followed the curve of Violet's calf, her bare skin silvered in the moonlight. She didn't usually let him touch her like this. There was always a clear divide between one activity and the next; Scrabble leading to sex with the only foreplay being her impatiently pushing him off so she could climb on top whenever he tried to draw things out.

"What are you thinking about?" Violet's voice floated down from the top of the bed, curling through space like the smoke from her cigarette. She had a pretty good idea, and though 'them' might not be her favourite subject in the world she had forgotten how much she liked the sound of his voice; missed the way he made her smile and laugh before she learned about his body count and rape baby.

"The things people think are sexy," he said, softly, musingly, and it surprised her.

"What do you think is sexy?"

"Your legs," he said, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee. "But if you really want to know... your back."

"Seriously?"

He smiled up at her. "Yeah, I don't know what it is, but seeing your back gets me by the dick every time."

Violet sat up, stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand and pulled her shirt off. She couldn't help smirking at him as she flipped over and laid on her stomach, half taunting, half disbelieving. It disappeared the second he kissed his way up her body, shifting her hair to the side and popping the clasp of her bra so he had full access to the canvas of skin he craved.

Violet closed her eyes, focusing on all the different sensations Tate could create; the light drag of nails, and cold press of fingers; the warmth of his palms and his lips. They were all things she had experienced before but never really felt. With his thumb on her spine, his fingertips grazed the side of her breast, the sensitive spot he usually left a bruise shaped like his mouth on.

Her breath hitched and she shivered, realizing for the first time just how wet his ministrations had gotten her.

"I like your back," he reiterated, voice smug, feeling the effect he was having on her. He laid on his side next to her, head propped up in one hand, the other resting on her, keeping them connected. "I miss this," he said softly, knowing there was good chance he had a spiteful barb coming his way, but betting she wouldn't leave either.

She sighed and turned her head away, but didn't say anything.

"Don't you?"

He felt her shoulders stiffen defensively, but only for a moment before they relaxed again. "Yes, I do." There was no point lying about it, not that it made anything easier between them.

Tate's fingers drifted down, skirting the elastic band of her panties, and he was pleased to feel her hips twitch up towards his palm as his hand sank beneath them. He liked her like this; laid out for him to worry at her skin with his lips and teeth, ass arching up into his touch.

Violet whined as his fingers grazed across her skin, slipping through the wetness leaking out of her, but not giving her what she needed. "You're such a tease," she huffed out against her arm.

She could have cried when he withdrew his hand, trailing sticky fingertips up to the small of her back.

"Roll over."

She felt his words condense on her shoulder, a damp chill chasing their humid warmth. She did, but not without a glare and dramatic flop.

He pulled her panties off, and crawled back up between her legs, nudging them apart, but stopping at her mid-thigh. "I like this spot too," he said, rubbing his thumb in small circles in a spot that wasn't anywhere near where she really wanted it. "You're always sensitive right here, did you know that? If I press too light you're ticklish," he said as he did just that, making her leg jerk. "But a little harder," he pressed again and she caught his smile before her eyes closed and her hips twitched. "Yeah," he breathed out.

It had been years since Violet let him go down on her - somehow it seemed much more intimate than sex -, but as his lips trailed up her thigh, closer and closer she could feel her walls tightening in anticipation, desperate for him, his touch, his tongue.

Tate didn't waste time with a timid preamble, just pressed his lips against her insistently, spreading her open with his tongue. Her hand knotted into his hair painfully, and the combination of that and the way she writhed under him and the fuck that came out of her mouth - more moan than anything else - had his cock straining against the confines of his boxers as desperate for her as her cunt was for him.

"I miss you," he said, kissing at the skin between her hips as he pressed a finger inside her, stimulating her just enough to keep her wet and wanting, but not enough to come. "I miss us. Do you miss us?" He knew it wasn't fair what he was doing, but it was the only way of disarming her, of getting an honest answer out of her, for both of them.

She rolled her lip between her teeth, torn between the sensations she was feeling and the confessions they made her want to make. His finger curled inside her and she whimpered.

"Tell me, Vi."

"Yes," she said around a bursting breath, and Tate slipped back down between her thighs, rewarding her honesty with his tongue.

He could feel her heart racing as he palmed her breast, before her breath going tellingly steccato and she pushed his face away. "Need you," she gasped, cupping the back of his neck and pulling him up.

Tate's boxers were still wrapped around his ankle when he pushed inside of her, slipped inside really because she was so slick, and he felt her spasm around him, warm and wet and ready. He hooked a hand under her knee and pushed her thigh up his side so he could reach further, deeper, the blunt head of his cock meeting something solid that made her shake and moan.

After a few long, slow thrusts so she could feel every inch of him he made her come quick, enjoying the way her back bowed and her hand fisted around the pillow over her head as much as the way her body clutched at him, rapid and tight.

When she came down he was rocking into her, kissing her neck in the way they both knew made her want more. "Am I still what you want?" He mumbled against her skin.

She pinched her lips such, suddenly annoyed with him and his bullshit game.

At least until he stopped moving.

"Yes," she bit out, feeling her orgasm slipping further away every second he stayed still.

"You're all I ever wanted," he said, rolling them over. It shifted the power a little, put Violet in control of their movements, which meant she could stop them, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

He kept his hands on her hips, steadying her and until they set a pace that would give them both what they needed, before he reached up. Her tongue wrapped around his thumb hooked into her mouth, her cheek cradled in his palm, and fingers slipped into her hair. She bit at it as he pulled away, not as hard as she would if she were angry, just enough to remind him she could probably bite it off if she really wanted to.

"Hey, look at me," he said softly as his thumb teased her.

It took Violet a long minute to look up at him, at first angrily that somehow she was giving up something - namely the anger masked as indifference - in doing so, but then wantonly, reflecting back the lust she saw in his eyes, and finally something less easily defined; softer, but not tender, needy, but not desperate.

He folded her over him, thrusting up into her hard like he knew she liked when her eyes glazed over and he felt her tightening around him. She came with a broken cry moments later, and as she came back to the reality of slick, shaking thighs and lungs begging for air he spilled inside her, her name tearing past his lips as he clutched at her.

Tate played with her hair with one hand, and traced shapes on her back with the other, waiting to speak until their breathing was something close to normal. "I'll wait, forever if I have to, Vi. But it's a long time to punish yourself, because this isn't making either of us happy."

She nuzzled her face against his neck, a weary sigh blowing out across his skin as one of her hands blindly found his cheek. "I know."

"I know you're going to hate me some days, that's okay - I deserve that -, but there will be other days, days when I can make you happy like I did today."

Violet slid off him, resting her face against his chest so she could feel his freshly formed heart thump against her cheek while she stared at it's predecessor on her nightstand.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness," he said, pulling her closer. "I'm just asking for a chance."

There was a part of her that was afraid of letting him back in only to experience the hurt he had inflicted on her again, but Violet was never one to give into fear, to let it cripple and control her. And even if she didn't cut her heart out she knew it would always belong to Tate the way his belonged to her, so why not let him make her happy?