♥ Lolableu wrote Policy of Truth for scarletwoman710 1/2 ♥
Title: Policy of Truth
Author: LolaBleu
Summary: Trying to kill that kid for her had been a mistake. He was merely a gift, a grand gesture; something to show that Tate was serious about making sure that he always took care of her. Desperation and anger had made him sloppy and all she saw were his actions negating his words. That was not going to happen again.
Spoilers/Warnings/ Triggers: None
Author’s Note: None
Policy of Truth 1/2
It comes during a morning spent with Beau, submerging himself in the ease of a simple mind, and taking pleasure in simple things because it’s better than the alternative of staying in the basement and torturing himself with Charles’ tools. Again. To no one’s surprise, least of all Tate’s, Hayden turns up and and to commence their usual game. She tried to get a rise out of him, this time with tales of Violet being brutally abused by Hugo, consensually of course, though there’s the usual jibe about family traits.
For his part there’s the fleeting hope that she’s not bullshitting him this time. If Violet was fucking his dad she’d finally snapped out of her malaise. Finally started being herself again; letting the darkness in her tinge the light again. Even if she hid it, there was cruelty there inside her, and Hugo was the perfect target, one designed to hurt him like he’d hurt her. In the end it would be a good thing even if there’s a sickening jolt that starts in his groin like those parts of him are mourning her because she’s still his even if she’s not.
Not that it makes his way to his face or his voice or any other part of him that would give Hayden the satisfaction that she’s after. Short of hate fucking her she’d settle for a good beating; bruised and battered and hoping Ben would care enough to notice. Failing that, well nothing brightens your day quite like making someone cry.
She’s not above a desperate fondle when it becomes clear she’s not going to get any of those things because she has no subtlety, no skill. She’d been trying to get on his dick since she died all in the hopes of hurting Ben. The amused chuckle that rattles through Tate’s throat at her hand clawing at him is enough to knock her ego down a few pegs and send her off furious and baring her teeth like a caged animal.
Even if he was a psychopath he wasn’t an idiot. Fucking Hayden would be that final nail in the coffin that Violet put him in and said goodbye. There were no secrets in Murder House, and banging Ben’s whore, even if she wasn’t a screeching shrew who’d tell anyone with ears, was quite possibly the stupidest thing he could do. It might take Violet a century to forgive him, but if his dick went anywhere near Hayden a millenia wouldn’t be enough.
But Hayden wasn’t subtle. If she told him Violet was covered in bruises, she was. He knew, but had to see; not the bruises, but her. She’d retreated to her old room after that Christmas. She was hiding, running away from love lost and gone as best she could while confined to this house. When he dropped down to her room she was covered in lurid bruises barely concealed by her skirt and tank top as she laid on the floor smoking.
The sheets on the bed were rumpled, and as much as he hated himself for doing it, he still sniffed them, just to be sure, just to to put his heart and his dick at ease that he was still the only one who knew what she felt like inside. The tightness he hadn’t noticed residing in his chest breaking when he only smelled her. Her bruises healed as he watched from the desk chair; starting out purple, then blue, green, and finally a sickly jaundiced yellow.
What hurt the most though was her complete lack of reaction. It’s not her, it’s not Violet. She’s gone, hollow; clear and dead instead of light or dark. Violet wouldn’t have let Hayden beat her without fighting back even if she was at a disadvantage, and never, never wouldn’t have paid her back in kind. She might never have held as much darkness in her as Tate did, but she had enough to tinge her light a soft dove gray. She was never pure white like he was never pure black.
He wondered what color someone else might create inside her. Travis would probably produce a delicate pink, feminine; a color unsuited to her except as an accent, like those petal pink parts she kept hidden away. Hugo maybe a almost black brown, like coffee left too long and turned sour, bitter.
Locking herself away in this tomb, clear and dead, avoiding pain and temptation, it wasn’t Violet. He needed Violet. His Violet, diaphanous grey, not the ghost girl in front of him. The Violet who loved him; the one who could be blunt and brutal, but who blushed and needed him. He watched and planned, plotting ways to bring colors and shades back to her existence, to make her feel things again. He knew after the looks of longing she tried not to throw him as she decorated the tree that she would be back if she only let herself, if she stopped hiding from what she felt.
Trying to kill that kid for her had been a mistake. Not that Tate had ever intended him to end up between Violet’s legs or in her heart. He was merely a gift, a grand gesture; something to show that he was serious about making sure that he always took care of her. Desperation and anger had made him sloppy and all she saw were his actions negating his words; it pushed her further from him.
No. No, that wouldn’t happen again. He would make this house safe for her. No one would hurt her again. Then he was going to show her that he was always there, always taking care of her, and he wouldn’t need a body count to do it. It wouldn’t take forever for her to be back in his arms. She was his. His and no one elses. For always. She just needed to remember that.
All things considered it had actually been a nice day, well the afternoon spent in the basement with Hayden had been anyway. Tiring, definitely, but hearing her scream for Ben had been fun. When he hadn’t come to her rescue Tate let a smile cross his face for the first time in a long time.
He left her tied there; bruised, bloody, and crying because the one person she loved didn’t love her back. Killing her would have been a mercy, and after hurting Violet this morning she didn’t deserve it.
Vivien had been in the dining room when Hayden started crying out for Ben, and she paused over the crossword in the scavenged newspaper to see if he would abandon his couples therapy session with Chad and Patrick to go to her aid. He didn’t. When he came in later, in between sessions with his dead patients, he had merely shrugged and gone back to work.
Tate saw her there, sitting at the table, head bowed in concentration as he walked down the hall and into the kitchen to clean up, careful to keep himself out of her line of sight. He wanted her to hear him, and if she saw him one of them would be disappearing before that happened.
Moira made an irritated noise in her throat, one of disgust and impatience at the fact that Tate was sloshing bloody water around the sink and dotting the countertop with it. He smiled at her sheepishly, cleaning up after himself.
He finished, leaning up against the counter as she scrubbed at the cabinets, letting out a heavy sigh to pave the way. “I need to talk to you.” He said, looking downcast as his fingers, trying to pick Hayden’s crusted blood out from under his nails.
“About?”
“Violet.” He could almost feel Vivien’s attention shift to him, as if her eyes were burning holes in the wall between them.
“Why?” Moira bent a dead, suspicious eye on him momentarily before going back to the offending cabinet.
“She’s not happy.”
“She’s adjusting.” She said defensively.
“It’s not ‘adjusting’; she’s not happy.”
“Wonder why.” Moira said waspishly.
“I know. I never wanted this for her. I never wanted her to be stuck here.”
“I doubt that.”
“I didn’t want her to stay because she had to. If that’s what I wanted I would have just let those assholes who broke into the house kill her. You know how hard I tried to save her when she took those pills, how much it hurt that she’d died like that, how I tried to hide it from her for as long as I could. You remember that.” Tate’s pointed tone stirring memories in the aged maid’s head of her helping him to hide the body, to keep the secret.
She softened towards him slightly, and he knew, even without seeing her that Vivien would be burning with curiosity because Moira had been careful to conceal the role she played in that tragedy. Knew that as soon as he was out of the room Vivien would be in here needling Moira for every last detail she could give her about Violet’s death because really, there are no secrets in Murder House that stayed that way. “It was my job to make sure she’s taken care of and I can’t anymore, not like I used to anyway.”
“She has her parents for that now.”
“It’s not enough Moira. They don’t take care of her, and” he lowered his voice conspiratorially “did you hear what Hayden did this morning? They can’t protect her.”
He resumed his soft and sad tone, making Vivien strain her ears to hear. “It took them weeks to even notice she was dead, and they’re too wrapped up in their own happiness anyway. They can’t reach her; we both know that.” There was a gentle rebuke in his voice, not outright judgement or harshness. It was a delicate balance; he needed Vivien to feel guilty, just enough so that she wouldn’t completely disown her daughter when she came back to him as he hoped she would, but not so much that it would spur her and Ben to action. The last thing Tate wanted was meddlesome parents getting in his way.
“So what do you want me to do?” Moira said, throwing her sponge into the sink in irritation.
Tate shoved his hands into his pockets, keeping his head down, eyes trained on the toe of his shoe tracing along the line of the tile on the floor. “Just... I don’t know... talk to her. See if you can get her to come out of her room maybe.”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“Please Moira?” Just the hint of a plea.
“Fine. But I’m not going to tell you what we talk about.”
He nodded as if he understood completely, as if he expected no less, and pushed himself away from the counter and towards the door before she spoke again. “Why me?”
“You’re kind and discreet. She might not talk to you, but it might make her feel better to talk to someone who won’t silently judge her like everyone else does.” It was careful, understated flattery and it worked perfectly. It always did.
He left the room pleased with himself. Every word of it had been the truth and nothing fucked with people like the truth, and with Violet it was essential. He knew what he said would make its way back to her somehow, and if she caught him in another lie that would be it, she’d be done; it would put her permanently out of his reach because she wasn’t like the other Harmon’s.
Ben’s whole ‘charismatic, psychopath, pathological liar’ thing had sounded impressive rolling off his tongue but he’d still talk to Tate occasionally. Not Violet though. Tears and faux fervent denial didn’t really work with her. She needed to hear the truth, the undeniable truth in his actions; that he loved her, for always.
September is the hottest time of year in Los Angeles. The time of year that holds that one week of truly unpleasant weather, hot enough to cause the power grid to overload and fail and train tracks to cook to a nice al dente in the heat of the sun. The only relief from the heat is outside, at night, because Murder House doesn’t have tenants, live ones anyway, that payed the power bill.
Tate’s sprawled out on a bench in the gazebo, the neighborhood around him silent and still. It’s comfortable, sort of. Cooler at least than the house, though the frequent creep and crawl of a bug is annoying. He smirks to himself remembering the phantom bugs you feel when you’re high on meth. That and the paranoia of it, the fetid stench that would stick to your skin after sweating out all those poisons and being up far too long, make it a high he hasn’t missed.
It could be better though. It could always be better. If Violet was next to him it would be perfect. He’d been keeping his distance, letting Moira draw her out because it had to be her choice to bring him back, just like it had been her choice to send him away.
So it could be better because despite the heat lingering in the air he still misses the warm weight of her curled against his side, her breath washing across the skin of his neck while she sleeps. Inevitably it leads to where it always leads to, innocent and nostalgic as his musing starts out.
Thoughts of her breathing against him as she slept only reminds him that she’d always drift off after sex, at least for a little while. Even though there was the initial terror she’d find out she was dead, and then the realized fear of her finding out about Vivien - even through all that he’d felt like the man he’d never grow up to be.
The cliche, the stereotype of Being a Man and having it tied to sex. It was all bullshit to be scoffed at until the hazy time after he’d pleased her and then laid with her, protective, while she slept. Because it wasn’t sex that made you a man, and he’d finally understood what Lao Tzu had meant about love giving you strength and courage. It was the best high he’d ever had; better than drugs, better than killing people.
But thinking of how she’d breath against him in her blissful post-coital slumber makes him think of the breaths she’d huff across his neck when he was inside her. The way the air felt more solid than gas in the inch of space between them. She’d always liked him on top, said she felt safe, loved. He’d always liked it too; the way she held him close like he was her shield.
It’s the proximity that he remembers most and he closes his eyes trying to think how it’d look to someone watching, but he can’t make his mind move past his head bowed against her shoulder and hers tilted towards his neck; their faces sweaty, eyes closed, mouths lax and filling the space between and around them with silent thoughts that cocooned them away from everything else.
There’s a tightness in his pants that if it wasn’t four in the morning and he wasn’t perfectly alone he’d kill with thoughts of Constance. But it is and he is, so instead there’s a clink and a zip and he’s got his dick in his hand and Violet on his mind.
There’s a moment when his hand slips down and the tip of his cock is chilled by the night air that almost breaks him because the only thing he should be feeling is her warm, wet, tightness hugging him, and even the most arrogant part of him can’t ignore the crushing despair that maybe forever won’t be long enough no matter what he does.
He grits his teeth and focuses on his thoughts, memories better than the fantasies because fantasies just remind him that he has to fantasize. Soon enough there’s the gush of bodily fluids, first semen then blood as his wounds open up. There’s a shiver that runs through him as he bleeds out because he should be warm with her around him, and without her life and death are just cold.
Half-way through a session filled with disjointed questions about Tate’s family Ben drops the bullshit doctor demeanor and comes to the topic that’s been bothering him since Vivien relayed the conversation she overheard in the kitchen.
“Violet’s never going to forgive you.” He tries to keep his voice free and easy, just a pure statement of fact and fails miserably; anger clearly seething through his measured tones.
“You think so?” Tate barely lifts his head from where it’s resting against the arm of the small couch, his legs hanging off the other end as he relaxes. “You know we’re not that different.” His says lazily, the picture of arrogant confidence.
“I doubt that.”
“She loves me even if she’s not very happy with me. Sound familiar?” He sits up to see Ben trying to swallow down the angry words clawing up his throat in response. “You’re so convinced that all the bad things I’ve done will be enough, but they won’t be. She still loved me after she found out what I did at Westfield and she will again.”
“It’s different this time. This time you hurt her family.”
“How long is that going to be enough of a reason? Forever’s a long time; long enough that despite the fact that she killed you, you’ve still made your way back inside Hayden a few times. Even Vivien enjoys some private time with Travis once in a while.” He watches with satisfaction as Ben’s eyes go wide at the accusation. He didn’t know, and there’s a grim smile threatening to break across Tate’s face as the words slip out.
“If anything this house just proves that second and third, or in your case seventh or eighth, chances can happen. But I guess you’re more right than I am. Unlike you I won’t be needing more than a second chance, because unlike you I don’t go around sticking my dick in things just because I’m selfish.”
All sense of right and wrong, and the superiority it brings, leaves Ben and before he knows it the sound of the crunching snap of bone is filling the air. Behind the hand cupped over his broken nose Tate smiles up at him maliciously, knowing he’s hit a number of far more sensitive spots with his words than Ben has been able to hit with his hand.
“I’ve always been willing to do whatever it takes to protect Violet. I was the one who protected her when those idiots tried to kill her. I was the one who tried to save her when she overdosed. I was the one who tried to protect her from finding out what she did. Not you, never you, me. Considering all your failures how long do you think ‘she won’t forgive you’ will last?” He doesn’t wait for an answer because he doesn’t need one.
It’s a different kind of performance than the one he put on for Vivien, but it serves the same purpose. The fact that he could plant a few seeds of discord between Ben and Vivien, keeping their attentions firmly focused on each other despite his machinations, is just a bonus.
It’s purely happenstance that Tate overhears a conversation between Moira and Chad after he leaves Ben fuming in the office. He doesn’t hear all of it, just enough to gather that Violet hates Chad because every time she sees him he’s spitting out bitchy comments about her loving the monster who raped her mom.
Tate doesn’t say anything at the time, knows that trying to persuade Chad at the moment is a bad idea for a number of reasons, and really, it would be so much better if he could talk to both Chad and Patrick, so he bides his time.
She’s tried thinking about every boy at school she’d ever had a fleeting fancy in; about all the rock stars and movie gods and television bad boys that ever made her do a double take. Months of being a Violet-shaped shell had one upside, one huge, all justifying upside: she didn’t think about him. Being alive again just meant all the hollow spaces inside her filled up with thoughts of Tate because he was still all she wanted.
She missed the comfortable silences. Missed the feel of him against her and the smell of him when she’d bury her face in his chest and breathe him in. She missed his hands. Missed the way his fingers would trace over her scars like they were beauty marks and not ugly reminders of ugly things.
But mostly, right now, she missed the way they felt inside her while his tongue traced shapes around her clit. She’d always prefered his dick to his fingers once they’d gotten that far, but today it was the thought of his fingers curling inside her that was occupying her brain, or it would be except that every time she’d sink into the memory there was a shriek or crash coming from downstairs calling her out of it.
They’d been screaming at each other for the better part of an hour when Violet finally snaps and flings away the blankets, her efforts to get off derailed by her parents ripping each other to shreds in the foyer loud enough for the whole house to hear. All she wanted was to wallow in her memories, get herself off so many times her legs felt like jelly and then, hopefully, she could finally, finally, sleep and not think about Tate for more than a thirty second stretch.
She stomps down the hallway and out onto the landing looking murderous before leaning over the railing to add her voice to the din. “Shut the fuck up!” They looked up bewildered, but did just that. “Stop being such a hypocrite Ben, how many times have you fucked Hayden since you died?” Parents properly chastised she storms back to her room, slamming her door on the renewed screaming.
Tate can’t help the smile that stretches across his face in contrast to the scowl on hers as he watches. There’s a momentary flash of deep shadowy gray around her, and fleeting as it is, it still makes his heart flutter. She’s coming back to herself and him and her little petulant display made him smile because really, if she cared that much for her parents she wouldn’t have been adding fuel to their fire.
“I hear you got your nose busted the other day.” Chad calls out while sitting in the dining room with Patrick. Tate doubles back, leaning against the door frame and shrugging nonchalantly. “Guess that’s what happens when you rape your therapists wife. Not exactly conducive to a good working relationship.”
“Not really.” Tate fakes to leave, and turns back around. “Hey, the comments... I don’t care if you want to talk shit about me but lay off Violet. She’s never done anything to deserve it.”
“So you have a heart after all.” Chad purrs, flashing his teeth.
Tate cocks an eyebrow at him, but keeps his tone light and conversational. “She’s not that different from you, you know? She can’t help it if she loves someone who hurt her.” His eyes flick to Patrick’s for an instant.
And with that he walks out, message delivered. Patrick follows after enduring a few icy minutes with his better half that more or less ended with I can’t believe you’re listening to that little psychopath.
Tate’s not really asleep, more like dozing. He’s got his favorite chair tilted up on two legs, thinking about how Violet has a bed with sheets and blankets and that would be nice, but really the appeal would be her in it with him when he’s roused out of his reverie.
“So what did you have to bribe Moira with to get her to share a little girl talk with me?”
He turns to see Violet leaning against the wall, lit cigarette between her fingers. It’s not the first time she’s come out to wander the house at night lately, ever since Chad started keeping his comments to himself, but it’s the first time she’s come down to the basement to see him. He can’t help but feel hopeful because, other than Moira and screaming a few words at her parents, she hadn’t talked to anyone else.
“Nothing. I just thought it might make you feel better.”
She lets out a sigh and sits on the stairs. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” His movements are slow and deliberate as he crosses the room to crouch in front of her, hands loose between his knees. All actions meant to convey safety and sincerity. She refuses to meet his eye, knows she won’t be able to say what she wants if she has to look at him. “I don’t want you to take care of me Tate.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t.” It’s a childish answer, but it saves her the humiliation of saying out loud what’s reverberating in her head: because I still want you, only you, and I can’t ignore that when you take care of me. Instead, she redirects. “Do you know what hurts the most?”
He’s got a good idea, but he shakes his head anyway, just to keep her talking. “Did you see the show yesterday? My parents?” A perplexed look crosses his face because of all the things she could have said he hadn’t expected this, and his only response is to nod dumbly. “It’s kind of funny in a fucked up way. They say girls always go for the guys who remind them of their dad’s and you and Ben both seem to have a knack for tearful apologies that mean fuck all. I never wanted to be like them, but I am. I’m just... disappointed in myself that I believed you when you said you’d never let anyone or anything hurt me.”
He’d expected her anger; expected her to need to scream at him or hurt him, but not this. All her anger turning inward hurts more than her anger directed at him would have; hurts more than enough to open up his wounds because he does feel things, at least when it comes to Violet.
Of the dozens of answers and apologies and arguments he’d spent weeks perfecting none of them serve him now, and since he really doesn’t need to learn the lesson again that she can pretty much smell bullshit coming off him when he lies, decides to go with something simple and honest. “I’m sorry. I meant - mean - what I said. Hayden... even if you don’t care about what she did to you, I do. She won’t hurt you again, no one will. I’ll always take care of you, Vi.”
His hopeful little smile is wiped off his face by the look she’s giving him like she wants to cut his tongue out. “Going to beat yourself to death the next time you hurt me?”
“I’m sorry, Violet. I never wanted to hurt you.” His voice is wet sounding and miserable, wrapped in the tears that hadn’t slipped out his eyes yet.
“No kidding.” It comes out scathing and sarcastic. “You know why I don’t give a shit about what Hayden did to me? Because it didn’t hurt as much as being a stupid little girl and believing you.” She stands to leave, and even though she wants to rip her hand out of Tate’s when he pulls her back down to the stairs she doesn’t. Lets him keep her there in the hope that maybe he’ll say the right words even if she doesn’t know what they are.
“Violet, listen to me. I’m not like Ben.” Tate’s voice is as firm as the hand he has encircling hers. “When I look at our parents their love isn’t like ours; it’s ugly and crippling and selfish, and all it does is make people sick and weak. We’re not like them.”
He brings her hand up under his shirt to show her just how sincere he is. Her breathing becomes shallow and rapid, her eyes glazing over as she feels out the holes peppering his chest just like when he’s inside her because it’s just as intimate, and even though he doesn’t mean to his voice still comes out soft and just for her to hear. “Everything good about love - kindness, and selflessness, and respect - those are the things you make me feel, and when I’m with you I can’t not feel things, like now. I’m the one you should be disappointed with, not yourself.”
When she pulls her hand away red and wet there’s a hardness to her eyes that wasn’t there before. “I would have left, if I could have.” It’s her very own Weapon of Mass Destruction meant to obliterate his illusions of their idealized love as much as his actions did hers.
“I know. But you’ve done bad things to protect us too, Vi.” Simple words that bring forth the memory of her throwing her mother under the bus to protect the nebulous ‘them’. Simple words that negate her belief that what he feels and what she feels are separate and different. When she goes back upstairs, her lips pressed into a thin hard line at being reminded of that, he can’t help but feel like he’s made progress.
Despite the fact that it was mid-afternoon, Violet finds herself uncomfortably cramped on the little couch in her dad’s office desperate to escape the noise that has made the upper floors of the house uninhabitable. The latest front in her parents on-going war of infidelity involved them fucking loud enough for everyone to hear; Vivien and Travis in one room, Ben and Hayden in another.
There had been a spiteful part of her that was tempted to lure Tate into her room and punish her parents with the same sort of performance they had inflicted on her. The only thing that stopped her was knowing that if she did, she really wouldn’t be any better than them. It would just turn into an endless cycle of using people to hurt other people, and in the end she’d be part of the wreckage, so instead she took refuge downstairs.
When she found out what Tate had done in life that lead to his death she had at least been able to cling to the idea that however bad he was, he wasn’t anymore. He loved her, would never hurt her. So he was a murderer. So what? There’s nothing like knowing the person who’s got his arms wrapped around you had killed for you and would do it again if he needed to, to make a girl feel safe and loved. Raping Vivien relative to his other sins didn’t seem so bad, especially when Violet didn’t really mind them at all when they were done for her benefit.
The fact that that’s what he did to Vivien - raped her - probably should have ranked higher on her list of reasons to hate him. It probably should have made her disgusted that he was capable of doing it, but it had always been too tangled up in her ideas of love and fidelity to really register those emotions. Watching what infidelity did to her parents marriage for years had left a lot of wounds; his actions just ripped the scabs up and made them weep red again.
It made her wonder just how damaged she was because it wasn’t some abstract sense of loyalty that kept her away. Her parents were too wrapped up in second chances and band-aid babies to notice her pain, always had been, and she didn’t owe them shit. It was sharp self-loathing for loving someone who had hurt her, for misjudging Tate and believing his pretty words about never hurting someone you love, ever; the humiliation of being as weak and pathetic as her mother for still loving and wanting a boy who’d hurt her and would do it again.
And Violet was sure he would hurt her again. She only ever had fleeting glimpses of what he saw in her, and when she allowed herself to dwell on it, like now, she just didn’t see the appeal. She still looked more like a little girl than a woman. She didn’t have the kind of curves men dreamed of filling their hands with unless peadophiles counted. Her lips weren’t full and there was a bump in the line of her nose.
Every flaw just reminded her that psycho or not Tate was pretty enough to get whoever he wanted and one day she wouldn’t be enough. No matter how many times Moira, who was pretty much an expert when it came to the subject, told her that Tate loved her because of who she was and that was so much more important and meaningful than anything else, she always had her doubts.
“Where’s Ben? I’m supposed to have a session with him right now.” Tate’s voice pulled her from her internal fulminations, and she opened her eyes to find him standing in the doorway watching her.
“Upstairs, fucking Hayden until she bleeds. You seem to be much lower on his list of priorities today.” She said off-hand.
“So are you.” There’s the predictable amount of hurt and anger in her eyes at his blunt response, but there’s no use refuting it because he’s right, even if it was borderline cruel to point it out.
“Asshole.” She tries to will him away, but not enough to actually say the words to make him leave. “Why do you even bother with this anymore?” She snaps to vent the hurt at his words.
“I want you to know I’ve changed so even though it’s a huge waste of time I do it anyway.” There’s the ring of childlike innocence to his voice as he sits down, occupying the chair Ben usually does. “What are you doing in here?”
“Looking for some peace and quiet.” He gives her a confused, questioning look, silently asking for an explanation. “Go upstairs.”
He disappears for a minute and she waits, shifting around to fix her bunched skirt before he reappears, his face wrinkled in disgust. “Guess they’re really pissed at each other.”
“Guess so.” Her voice is non-committal, but he watches her quietly, expectantly, just like all his shrinks have done when they know there’s more to an answer and the best way to draw it out is by silence. “I wish they’d make up their minds, you know? Because this bullshit with them is getting old.” She adds after a moment.
Her eyes follow him closely as he gets up from the chair and makes his way to crouch down in front of her, face intense and serious just like he’d been that first day in her room, but she doesn’t blanche from his scrutiny this time, even when he reaches out to tuck a loose curtain of hair behind her ear. “We’re not like them.” It’s becoming his mantra when it comes to her.
“You’re so sure of that aren’t you?”
His hand trailed down, stopping at her wrist to caress her scars. “Why wouldn’t I be?” There’s a fog in her brain that makes it hard to be coherent. She drops her gaze, tries to untangle her thoughts into something intelligible, only to have her attempt foiled by his finger tilting her chin up so she has to look at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Even if the vulnerability makes her more uncomfortable than walking through her old high school naked would have she gives him an honest answer, unable to formulate a lie with his eyes boring into her. “What happens when the next family with a messed up teenaged daughter moves into the house? Or Nora wants another baby or something?”
He’s silent for a moment, choosing his words carefully before he opens his mouth because he needs to say just the right ones. “I’ve never wanted someone like I want you. People were always disposable to me, still are, everyone except you. It hurts when we’re close like this and I can’t kiss you and touch you like I used to, and it’s because of what I’ve done. I feel guilt and regret and those are things I’ve never felt before. There never was and never will be anyone but you, Violet.”
She’s clearly mulling over his words as she stands up to leave. “Why were you willing to do awful things for Nora?” He doesn’t say anything because they both know the answer. Because he loved her, even if he doesn’t anymore. A different kind of love definitely, but not different enough to really matter to her.
Tate takes in the messy hair and rumpled shirt. It might be the only time he’s seen Chad looking anything other than perfectly coiffed. He’s not surprised. All has not been well in Gayville and Patrick disappeared a few days before, sick of dealing with Chad’s shit.
He spews out typical venomous comments, untypically slurred, but even so it’s just one too many for Tate after the unfortunate end to his conversation with Violet in Ben’s office. “If I just wanted something warm, wet, and willing why would I be trying so hard with Violet?” He snaps back.
It takes Chad a moment in his drunken stupor to form a response and when he does it comes out slow and careful, like he’s putting all his effort into it, but it’s not terribly original. “You’re not capable of loving anything.”
“And you’re jealous.” The perceptiveness of The Little Psycho took Chad by surprise and he felt violated by him all over again. “Jealous that I would and have killed for Violet, that even though things are shit between us I’m doing everything I can to win her back.”
They’re the same words that had rolled off his tongue a lot lately, all in the hope that someone would drop them into Violet’s ear for him.
“It’s just... the thing is I chose her; she was my choice. I loved Nora like a mother, but when it came down to one or the other, Violet was the one who was more important to me, more important than anything.” Tate’s words came out as a miserable whine.
The Bro Code. When a Bro is in trouble it is your moral obligation as a fellow man to offer counsel, preferably over drinks, and if necessary condolences, also, preferably over drinks. Imaginary tea wasn’t Travis’ first choice of drink to share with Tate, but since the houses liquor supply had run dry he didn’t have a choice, and as a Bro he felt a duty to listen to the poor kids troubles regardless.
Not that he didn’t have another, self-serving reason, too. Tate had spent the last few days alternating between breaking crap in the basement, and hiding in the crawl space next to Violet’s bones where Travis suspected he went to cry in private. The house seemed to pick up on Tate’s mood and in the days he’d been in his funk there had been more fighting, more crying, and more killing than was usual or necessary.
Travis didn’t pride himself on his intellect, he knew he had nothing impressive there. But he did take pride in his big heart and generous nature, skills that made him a born peacemaker. It was a talent he had to employ often with the other ghosts in the house, but had been useless lately, so he went to the source. “Have you told her all this? Did you tell her you won’t even talk to Nora anymore?” He asked sympathetically.
Tate shook his head, staring into the depths of his empty cup as Margo and Angie sat uncomfortably on either side of him. “She’s convinced that because I don’t love Nora anymore, I’ll stop loving her someday too. She just doesn’t get it; that she’s the reason I won’t have anything to do with Nora. It doesn’t matter what I say to her, she doesn’t believe me.” He hid his face in his hands, wondering if he’d have to fake a few body wracking sobs for Travis to finally cotton on.
Thankfully, he didn’t. “I could talk to her.” Travis offered.
“Really?” Tate’s face and voice were so open and hopeful Travis couldn’t help but smile at him.
“Sure, Buddy.” And because Travis was such a nice guy with a big heart who always saw the best in everyone, he didn’t even realize he totally got played.
( Policy of Truth 2/2 )
Author: LolaBleu
Summary: Trying to kill that kid for her had been a mistake. He was merely a gift, a grand gesture; something to show that Tate was serious about making sure that he always took care of her. Desperation and anger had made him sloppy and all she saw were his actions negating his words. That was not going to happen again.
Spoilers/Warnings/ Triggers: None
Author’s Note: None
Policy of Truth 1/2
It comes during a morning spent with Beau, submerging himself in the ease of a simple mind, and taking pleasure in simple things because it’s better than the alternative of staying in the basement and torturing himself with Charles’ tools. Again. To no one’s surprise, least of all Tate’s, Hayden turns up and and to commence their usual game. She tried to get a rise out of him, this time with tales of Violet being brutally abused by Hugo, consensually of course, though there’s the usual jibe about family traits.
For his part there’s the fleeting hope that she’s not bullshitting him this time. If Violet was fucking his dad she’d finally snapped out of her malaise. Finally started being herself again; letting the darkness in her tinge the light again. Even if she hid it, there was cruelty there inside her, and Hugo was the perfect target, one designed to hurt him like he’d hurt her. In the end it would be a good thing even if there’s a sickening jolt that starts in his groin like those parts of him are mourning her because she’s still his even if she’s not.
Not that it makes his way to his face or his voice or any other part of him that would give Hayden the satisfaction that she’s after. Short of hate fucking her she’d settle for a good beating; bruised and battered and hoping Ben would care enough to notice. Failing that, well nothing brightens your day quite like making someone cry.
She’s not above a desperate fondle when it becomes clear she’s not going to get any of those things because she has no subtlety, no skill. She’d been trying to get on his dick since she died all in the hopes of hurting Ben. The amused chuckle that rattles through Tate’s throat at her hand clawing at him is enough to knock her ego down a few pegs and send her off furious and baring her teeth like a caged animal.
Even if he was a psychopath he wasn’t an idiot. Fucking Hayden would be that final nail in the coffin that Violet put him in and said goodbye. There were no secrets in Murder House, and banging Ben’s whore, even if she wasn’t a screeching shrew who’d tell anyone with ears, was quite possibly the stupidest thing he could do. It might take Violet a century to forgive him, but if his dick went anywhere near Hayden a millenia wouldn’t be enough.
But Hayden wasn’t subtle. If she told him Violet was covered in bruises, she was. He knew, but had to see; not the bruises, but her. She’d retreated to her old room after that Christmas. She was hiding, running away from love lost and gone as best she could while confined to this house. When he dropped down to her room she was covered in lurid bruises barely concealed by her skirt and tank top as she laid on the floor smoking.
The sheets on the bed were rumpled, and as much as he hated himself for doing it, he still sniffed them, just to be sure, just to to put his heart and his dick at ease that he was still the only one who knew what she felt like inside. The tightness he hadn’t noticed residing in his chest breaking when he only smelled her. Her bruises healed as he watched from the desk chair; starting out purple, then blue, green, and finally a sickly jaundiced yellow.
What hurt the most though was her complete lack of reaction. It’s not her, it’s not Violet. She’s gone, hollow; clear and dead instead of light or dark. Violet wouldn’t have let Hayden beat her without fighting back even if she was at a disadvantage, and never, never wouldn’t have paid her back in kind. She might never have held as much darkness in her as Tate did, but she had enough to tinge her light a soft dove gray. She was never pure white like he was never pure black.
He wondered what color someone else might create inside her. Travis would probably produce a delicate pink, feminine; a color unsuited to her except as an accent, like those petal pink parts she kept hidden away. Hugo maybe a almost black brown, like coffee left too long and turned sour, bitter.
Locking herself away in this tomb, clear and dead, avoiding pain and temptation, it wasn’t Violet. He needed Violet. His Violet, diaphanous grey, not the ghost girl in front of him. The Violet who loved him; the one who could be blunt and brutal, but who blushed and needed him. He watched and planned, plotting ways to bring colors and shades back to her existence, to make her feel things again. He knew after the looks of longing she tried not to throw him as she decorated the tree that she would be back if she only let herself, if she stopped hiding from what she felt.
Trying to kill that kid for her had been a mistake. Not that Tate had ever intended him to end up between Violet’s legs or in her heart. He was merely a gift, a grand gesture; something to show that he was serious about making sure that he always took care of her. Desperation and anger had made him sloppy and all she saw were his actions negating his words; it pushed her further from him.
No. No, that wouldn’t happen again. He would make this house safe for her. No one would hurt her again. Then he was going to show her that he was always there, always taking care of her, and he wouldn’t need a body count to do it. It wouldn’t take forever for her to be back in his arms. She was his. His and no one elses. For always. She just needed to remember that.
All things considered it had actually been a nice day, well the afternoon spent in the basement with Hayden had been anyway. Tiring, definitely, but hearing her scream for Ben had been fun. When he hadn’t come to her rescue Tate let a smile cross his face for the first time in a long time.
He left her tied there; bruised, bloody, and crying because the one person she loved didn’t love her back. Killing her would have been a mercy, and after hurting Violet this morning she didn’t deserve it.
Vivien had been in the dining room when Hayden started crying out for Ben, and she paused over the crossword in the scavenged newspaper to see if he would abandon his couples therapy session with Chad and Patrick to go to her aid. He didn’t. When he came in later, in between sessions with his dead patients, he had merely shrugged and gone back to work.
Tate saw her there, sitting at the table, head bowed in concentration as he walked down the hall and into the kitchen to clean up, careful to keep himself out of her line of sight. He wanted her to hear him, and if she saw him one of them would be disappearing before that happened.
Moira made an irritated noise in her throat, one of disgust and impatience at the fact that Tate was sloshing bloody water around the sink and dotting the countertop with it. He smiled at her sheepishly, cleaning up after himself.
He finished, leaning up against the counter as she scrubbed at the cabinets, letting out a heavy sigh to pave the way. “I need to talk to you.” He said, looking downcast as his fingers, trying to pick Hayden’s crusted blood out from under his nails.
“About?”
“Violet.” He could almost feel Vivien’s attention shift to him, as if her eyes were burning holes in the wall between them.
“Why?” Moira bent a dead, suspicious eye on him momentarily before going back to the offending cabinet.
“She’s not happy.”
“She’s adjusting.” She said defensively.
“It’s not ‘adjusting’; she’s not happy.”
“Wonder why.” Moira said waspishly.
“I know. I never wanted this for her. I never wanted her to be stuck here.”
“I doubt that.”
“I didn’t want her to stay because she had to. If that’s what I wanted I would have just let those assholes who broke into the house kill her. You know how hard I tried to save her when she took those pills, how much it hurt that she’d died like that, how I tried to hide it from her for as long as I could. You remember that.” Tate’s pointed tone stirring memories in the aged maid’s head of her helping him to hide the body, to keep the secret.
She softened towards him slightly, and he knew, even without seeing her that Vivien would be burning with curiosity because Moira had been careful to conceal the role she played in that tragedy. Knew that as soon as he was out of the room Vivien would be in here needling Moira for every last detail she could give her about Violet’s death because really, there are no secrets in Murder House that stayed that way. “It was my job to make sure she’s taken care of and I can’t anymore, not like I used to anyway.”
“She has her parents for that now.”
“It’s not enough Moira. They don’t take care of her, and” he lowered his voice conspiratorially “did you hear what Hayden did this morning? They can’t protect her.”
He resumed his soft and sad tone, making Vivien strain her ears to hear. “It took them weeks to even notice she was dead, and they’re too wrapped up in their own happiness anyway. They can’t reach her; we both know that.” There was a gentle rebuke in his voice, not outright judgement or harshness. It was a delicate balance; he needed Vivien to feel guilty, just enough so that she wouldn’t completely disown her daughter when she came back to him as he hoped she would, but not so much that it would spur her and Ben to action. The last thing Tate wanted was meddlesome parents getting in his way.
“So what do you want me to do?” Moira said, throwing her sponge into the sink in irritation.
Tate shoved his hands into his pockets, keeping his head down, eyes trained on the toe of his shoe tracing along the line of the tile on the floor. “Just... I don’t know... talk to her. See if you can get her to come out of her room maybe.”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“Please Moira?” Just the hint of a plea.
“Fine. But I’m not going to tell you what we talk about.”
He nodded as if he understood completely, as if he expected no less, and pushed himself away from the counter and towards the door before she spoke again. “Why me?”
“You’re kind and discreet. She might not talk to you, but it might make her feel better to talk to someone who won’t silently judge her like everyone else does.” It was careful, understated flattery and it worked perfectly. It always did.
He left the room pleased with himself. Every word of it had been the truth and nothing fucked with people like the truth, and with Violet it was essential. He knew what he said would make its way back to her somehow, and if she caught him in another lie that would be it, she’d be done; it would put her permanently out of his reach because she wasn’t like the other Harmon’s.
Ben’s whole ‘charismatic, psychopath, pathological liar’ thing had sounded impressive rolling off his tongue but he’d still talk to Tate occasionally. Not Violet though. Tears and faux fervent denial didn’t really work with her. She needed to hear the truth, the undeniable truth in his actions; that he loved her, for always.
September is the hottest time of year in Los Angeles. The time of year that holds that one week of truly unpleasant weather, hot enough to cause the power grid to overload and fail and train tracks to cook to a nice al dente in the heat of the sun. The only relief from the heat is outside, at night, because Murder House doesn’t have tenants, live ones anyway, that payed the power bill.
Tate’s sprawled out on a bench in the gazebo, the neighborhood around him silent and still. It’s comfortable, sort of. Cooler at least than the house, though the frequent creep and crawl of a bug is annoying. He smirks to himself remembering the phantom bugs you feel when you’re high on meth. That and the paranoia of it, the fetid stench that would stick to your skin after sweating out all those poisons and being up far too long, make it a high he hasn’t missed.
It could be better though. It could always be better. If Violet was next to him it would be perfect. He’d been keeping his distance, letting Moira draw her out because it had to be her choice to bring him back, just like it had been her choice to send him away.
So it could be better because despite the heat lingering in the air he still misses the warm weight of her curled against his side, her breath washing across the skin of his neck while she sleeps. Inevitably it leads to where it always leads to, innocent and nostalgic as his musing starts out.
Thoughts of her breathing against him as she slept only reminds him that she’d always drift off after sex, at least for a little while. Even though there was the initial terror she’d find out she was dead, and then the realized fear of her finding out about Vivien - even through all that he’d felt like the man he’d never grow up to be.
The cliche, the stereotype of Being a Man and having it tied to sex. It was all bullshit to be scoffed at until the hazy time after he’d pleased her and then laid with her, protective, while she slept. Because it wasn’t sex that made you a man, and he’d finally understood what Lao Tzu had meant about love giving you strength and courage. It was the best high he’d ever had; better than drugs, better than killing people.
But thinking of how she’d breath against him in her blissful post-coital slumber makes him think of the breaths she’d huff across his neck when he was inside her. The way the air felt more solid than gas in the inch of space between them. She’d always liked him on top, said she felt safe, loved. He’d always liked it too; the way she held him close like he was her shield.
It’s the proximity that he remembers most and he closes his eyes trying to think how it’d look to someone watching, but he can’t make his mind move past his head bowed against her shoulder and hers tilted towards his neck; their faces sweaty, eyes closed, mouths lax and filling the space between and around them with silent thoughts that cocooned them away from everything else.
There’s a tightness in his pants that if it wasn’t four in the morning and he wasn’t perfectly alone he’d kill with thoughts of Constance. But it is and he is, so instead there’s a clink and a zip and he’s got his dick in his hand and Violet on his mind.
There’s a moment when his hand slips down and the tip of his cock is chilled by the night air that almost breaks him because the only thing he should be feeling is her warm, wet, tightness hugging him, and even the most arrogant part of him can’t ignore the crushing despair that maybe forever won’t be long enough no matter what he does.
He grits his teeth and focuses on his thoughts, memories better than the fantasies because fantasies just remind him that he has to fantasize. Soon enough there’s the gush of bodily fluids, first semen then blood as his wounds open up. There’s a shiver that runs through him as he bleeds out because he should be warm with her around him, and without her life and death are just cold.
Half-way through a session filled with disjointed questions about Tate’s family Ben drops the bullshit doctor demeanor and comes to the topic that’s been bothering him since Vivien relayed the conversation she overheard in the kitchen.
“Violet’s never going to forgive you.” He tries to keep his voice free and easy, just a pure statement of fact and fails miserably; anger clearly seething through his measured tones.
“You think so?” Tate barely lifts his head from where it’s resting against the arm of the small couch, his legs hanging off the other end as he relaxes. “You know we’re not that different.” His says lazily, the picture of arrogant confidence.
“I doubt that.”
“She loves me even if she’s not very happy with me. Sound familiar?” He sits up to see Ben trying to swallow down the angry words clawing up his throat in response. “You’re so convinced that all the bad things I’ve done will be enough, but they won’t be. She still loved me after she found out what I did at Westfield and she will again.”
“It’s different this time. This time you hurt her family.”
“How long is that going to be enough of a reason? Forever’s a long time; long enough that despite the fact that she killed you, you’ve still made your way back inside Hayden a few times. Even Vivien enjoys some private time with Travis once in a while.” He watches with satisfaction as Ben’s eyes go wide at the accusation. He didn’t know, and there’s a grim smile threatening to break across Tate’s face as the words slip out.
“If anything this house just proves that second and third, or in your case seventh or eighth, chances can happen. But I guess you’re more right than I am. Unlike you I won’t be needing more than a second chance, because unlike you I don’t go around sticking my dick in things just because I’m selfish.”
All sense of right and wrong, and the superiority it brings, leaves Ben and before he knows it the sound of the crunching snap of bone is filling the air. Behind the hand cupped over his broken nose Tate smiles up at him maliciously, knowing he’s hit a number of far more sensitive spots with his words than Ben has been able to hit with his hand.
“I’ve always been willing to do whatever it takes to protect Violet. I was the one who protected her when those idiots tried to kill her. I was the one who tried to save her when she overdosed. I was the one who tried to protect her from finding out what she did. Not you, never you, me. Considering all your failures how long do you think ‘she won’t forgive you’ will last?” He doesn’t wait for an answer because he doesn’t need one.
It’s a different kind of performance than the one he put on for Vivien, but it serves the same purpose. The fact that he could plant a few seeds of discord between Ben and Vivien, keeping their attentions firmly focused on each other despite his machinations, is just a bonus.
It’s purely happenstance that Tate overhears a conversation between Moira and Chad after he leaves Ben fuming in the office. He doesn’t hear all of it, just enough to gather that Violet hates Chad because every time she sees him he’s spitting out bitchy comments about her loving the monster who raped her mom.
Tate doesn’t say anything at the time, knows that trying to persuade Chad at the moment is a bad idea for a number of reasons, and really, it would be so much better if he could talk to both Chad and Patrick, so he bides his time.
She’s tried thinking about every boy at school she’d ever had a fleeting fancy in; about all the rock stars and movie gods and television bad boys that ever made her do a double take. Months of being a Violet-shaped shell had one upside, one huge, all justifying upside: she didn’t think about him. Being alive again just meant all the hollow spaces inside her filled up with thoughts of Tate because he was still all she wanted.
She missed the comfortable silences. Missed the feel of him against her and the smell of him when she’d bury her face in his chest and breathe him in. She missed his hands. Missed the way his fingers would trace over her scars like they were beauty marks and not ugly reminders of ugly things.
But mostly, right now, she missed the way they felt inside her while his tongue traced shapes around her clit. She’d always prefered his dick to his fingers once they’d gotten that far, but today it was the thought of his fingers curling inside her that was occupying her brain, or it would be except that every time she’d sink into the memory there was a shriek or crash coming from downstairs calling her out of it.
They’d been screaming at each other for the better part of an hour when Violet finally snaps and flings away the blankets, her efforts to get off derailed by her parents ripping each other to shreds in the foyer loud enough for the whole house to hear. All she wanted was to wallow in her memories, get herself off so many times her legs felt like jelly and then, hopefully, she could finally, finally, sleep and not think about Tate for more than a thirty second stretch.
She stomps down the hallway and out onto the landing looking murderous before leaning over the railing to add her voice to the din. “Shut the fuck up!” They looked up bewildered, but did just that. “Stop being such a hypocrite Ben, how many times have you fucked Hayden since you died?” Parents properly chastised she storms back to her room, slamming her door on the renewed screaming.
Tate can’t help the smile that stretches across his face in contrast to the scowl on hers as he watches. There’s a momentary flash of deep shadowy gray around her, and fleeting as it is, it still makes his heart flutter. She’s coming back to herself and him and her little petulant display made him smile because really, if she cared that much for her parents she wouldn’t have been adding fuel to their fire.
“I hear you got your nose busted the other day.” Chad calls out while sitting in the dining room with Patrick. Tate doubles back, leaning against the door frame and shrugging nonchalantly. “Guess that’s what happens when you rape your therapists wife. Not exactly conducive to a good working relationship.”
“Not really.” Tate fakes to leave, and turns back around. “Hey, the comments... I don’t care if you want to talk shit about me but lay off Violet. She’s never done anything to deserve it.”
“So you have a heart after all.” Chad purrs, flashing his teeth.
Tate cocks an eyebrow at him, but keeps his tone light and conversational. “She’s not that different from you, you know? She can’t help it if she loves someone who hurt her.” His eyes flick to Patrick’s for an instant.
And with that he walks out, message delivered. Patrick follows after enduring a few icy minutes with his better half that more or less ended with I can’t believe you’re listening to that little psychopath.
Tate’s not really asleep, more like dozing. He’s got his favorite chair tilted up on two legs, thinking about how Violet has a bed with sheets and blankets and that would be nice, but really the appeal would be her in it with him when he’s roused out of his reverie.
“So what did you have to bribe Moira with to get her to share a little girl talk with me?”
He turns to see Violet leaning against the wall, lit cigarette between her fingers. It’s not the first time she’s come out to wander the house at night lately, ever since Chad started keeping his comments to himself, but it’s the first time she’s come down to the basement to see him. He can’t help but feel hopeful because, other than Moira and screaming a few words at her parents, she hadn’t talked to anyone else.
“Nothing. I just thought it might make you feel better.”
She lets out a sigh and sits on the stairs. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” His movements are slow and deliberate as he crosses the room to crouch in front of her, hands loose between his knees. All actions meant to convey safety and sincerity. She refuses to meet his eye, knows she won’t be able to say what she wants if she has to look at him. “I don’t want you to take care of me Tate.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t.” It’s a childish answer, but it saves her the humiliation of saying out loud what’s reverberating in her head: because I still want you, only you, and I can’t ignore that when you take care of me. Instead, she redirects. “Do you know what hurts the most?”
He’s got a good idea, but he shakes his head anyway, just to keep her talking. “Did you see the show yesterday? My parents?” A perplexed look crosses his face because of all the things she could have said he hadn’t expected this, and his only response is to nod dumbly. “It’s kind of funny in a fucked up way. They say girls always go for the guys who remind them of their dad’s and you and Ben both seem to have a knack for tearful apologies that mean fuck all. I never wanted to be like them, but I am. I’m just... disappointed in myself that I believed you when you said you’d never let anyone or anything hurt me.”
He’d expected her anger; expected her to need to scream at him or hurt him, but not this. All her anger turning inward hurts more than her anger directed at him would have; hurts more than enough to open up his wounds because he does feel things, at least when it comes to Violet.
Of the dozens of answers and apologies and arguments he’d spent weeks perfecting none of them serve him now, and since he really doesn’t need to learn the lesson again that she can pretty much smell bullshit coming off him when he lies, decides to go with something simple and honest. “I’m sorry. I meant - mean - what I said. Hayden... even if you don’t care about what she did to you, I do. She won’t hurt you again, no one will. I’ll always take care of you, Vi.”
His hopeful little smile is wiped off his face by the look she’s giving him like she wants to cut his tongue out. “Going to beat yourself to death the next time you hurt me?”
“I’m sorry, Violet. I never wanted to hurt you.” His voice is wet sounding and miserable, wrapped in the tears that hadn’t slipped out his eyes yet.
“No kidding.” It comes out scathing and sarcastic. “You know why I don’t give a shit about what Hayden did to me? Because it didn’t hurt as much as being a stupid little girl and believing you.” She stands to leave, and even though she wants to rip her hand out of Tate’s when he pulls her back down to the stairs she doesn’t. Lets him keep her there in the hope that maybe he’ll say the right words even if she doesn’t know what they are.
“Violet, listen to me. I’m not like Ben.” Tate’s voice is as firm as the hand he has encircling hers. “When I look at our parents their love isn’t like ours; it’s ugly and crippling and selfish, and all it does is make people sick and weak. We’re not like them.”
He brings her hand up under his shirt to show her just how sincere he is. Her breathing becomes shallow and rapid, her eyes glazing over as she feels out the holes peppering his chest just like when he’s inside her because it’s just as intimate, and even though he doesn’t mean to his voice still comes out soft and just for her to hear. “Everything good about love - kindness, and selflessness, and respect - those are the things you make me feel, and when I’m with you I can’t not feel things, like now. I’m the one you should be disappointed with, not yourself.”
When she pulls her hand away red and wet there’s a hardness to her eyes that wasn’t there before. “I would have left, if I could have.” It’s her very own Weapon of Mass Destruction meant to obliterate his illusions of their idealized love as much as his actions did hers.
“I know. But you’ve done bad things to protect us too, Vi.” Simple words that bring forth the memory of her throwing her mother under the bus to protect the nebulous ‘them’. Simple words that negate her belief that what he feels and what she feels are separate and different. When she goes back upstairs, her lips pressed into a thin hard line at being reminded of that, he can’t help but feel like he’s made progress.
Despite the fact that it was mid-afternoon, Violet finds herself uncomfortably cramped on the little couch in her dad’s office desperate to escape the noise that has made the upper floors of the house uninhabitable. The latest front in her parents on-going war of infidelity involved them fucking loud enough for everyone to hear; Vivien and Travis in one room, Ben and Hayden in another.
There had been a spiteful part of her that was tempted to lure Tate into her room and punish her parents with the same sort of performance they had inflicted on her. The only thing that stopped her was knowing that if she did, she really wouldn’t be any better than them. It would just turn into an endless cycle of using people to hurt other people, and in the end she’d be part of the wreckage, so instead she took refuge downstairs.
When she found out what Tate had done in life that lead to his death she had at least been able to cling to the idea that however bad he was, he wasn’t anymore. He loved her, would never hurt her. So he was a murderer. So what? There’s nothing like knowing the person who’s got his arms wrapped around you had killed for you and would do it again if he needed to, to make a girl feel safe and loved. Raping Vivien relative to his other sins didn’t seem so bad, especially when Violet didn’t really mind them at all when they were done for her benefit.
The fact that that’s what he did to Vivien - raped her - probably should have ranked higher on her list of reasons to hate him. It probably should have made her disgusted that he was capable of doing it, but it had always been too tangled up in her ideas of love and fidelity to really register those emotions. Watching what infidelity did to her parents marriage for years had left a lot of wounds; his actions just ripped the scabs up and made them weep red again.
It made her wonder just how damaged she was because it wasn’t some abstract sense of loyalty that kept her away. Her parents were too wrapped up in second chances and band-aid babies to notice her pain, always had been, and she didn’t owe them shit. It was sharp self-loathing for loving someone who had hurt her, for misjudging Tate and believing his pretty words about never hurting someone you love, ever; the humiliation of being as weak and pathetic as her mother for still loving and wanting a boy who’d hurt her and would do it again.
And Violet was sure he would hurt her again. She only ever had fleeting glimpses of what he saw in her, and when she allowed herself to dwell on it, like now, she just didn’t see the appeal. She still looked more like a little girl than a woman. She didn’t have the kind of curves men dreamed of filling their hands with unless peadophiles counted. Her lips weren’t full and there was a bump in the line of her nose.
Every flaw just reminded her that psycho or not Tate was pretty enough to get whoever he wanted and one day she wouldn’t be enough. No matter how many times Moira, who was pretty much an expert when it came to the subject, told her that Tate loved her because of who she was and that was so much more important and meaningful than anything else, she always had her doubts.
“Where’s Ben? I’m supposed to have a session with him right now.” Tate’s voice pulled her from her internal fulminations, and she opened her eyes to find him standing in the doorway watching her.
“Upstairs, fucking Hayden until she bleeds. You seem to be much lower on his list of priorities today.” She said off-hand.
“So are you.” There’s the predictable amount of hurt and anger in her eyes at his blunt response, but there’s no use refuting it because he’s right, even if it was borderline cruel to point it out.
“Asshole.” She tries to will him away, but not enough to actually say the words to make him leave. “Why do you even bother with this anymore?” She snaps to vent the hurt at his words.
“I want you to know I’ve changed so even though it’s a huge waste of time I do it anyway.” There’s the ring of childlike innocence to his voice as he sits down, occupying the chair Ben usually does. “What are you doing in here?”
“Looking for some peace and quiet.” He gives her a confused, questioning look, silently asking for an explanation. “Go upstairs.”
He disappears for a minute and she waits, shifting around to fix her bunched skirt before he reappears, his face wrinkled in disgust. “Guess they’re really pissed at each other.”
“Guess so.” Her voice is non-committal, but he watches her quietly, expectantly, just like all his shrinks have done when they know there’s more to an answer and the best way to draw it out is by silence. “I wish they’d make up their minds, you know? Because this bullshit with them is getting old.” She adds after a moment.
Her eyes follow him closely as he gets up from the chair and makes his way to crouch down in front of her, face intense and serious just like he’d been that first day in her room, but she doesn’t blanche from his scrutiny this time, even when he reaches out to tuck a loose curtain of hair behind her ear. “We’re not like them.” It’s becoming his mantra when it comes to her.
“You’re so sure of that aren’t you?”
His hand trailed down, stopping at her wrist to caress her scars. “Why wouldn’t I be?” There’s a fog in her brain that makes it hard to be coherent. She drops her gaze, tries to untangle her thoughts into something intelligible, only to have her attempt foiled by his finger tilting her chin up so she has to look at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Even if the vulnerability makes her more uncomfortable than walking through her old high school naked would have she gives him an honest answer, unable to formulate a lie with his eyes boring into her. “What happens when the next family with a messed up teenaged daughter moves into the house? Or Nora wants another baby or something?”
He’s silent for a moment, choosing his words carefully before he opens his mouth because he needs to say just the right ones. “I’ve never wanted someone like I want you. People were always disposable to me, still are, everyone except you. It hurts when we’re close like this and I can’t kiss you and touch you like I used to, and it’s because of what I’ve done. I feel guilt and regret and those are things I’ve never felt before. There never was and never will be anyone but you, Violet.”
She’s clearly mulling over his words as she stands up to leave. “Why were you willing to do awful things for Nora?” He doesn’t say anything because they both know the answer. Because he loved her, even if he doesn’t anymore. A different kind of love definitely, but not different enough to really matter to her.
Tate takes in the messy hair and rumpled shirt. It might be the only time he’s seen Chad looking anything other than perfectly coiffed. He’s not surprised. All has not been well in Gayville and Patrick disappeared a few days before, sick of dealing with Chad’s shit.
He spews out typical venomous comments, untypically slurred, but even so it’s just one too many for Tate after the unfortunate end to his conversation with Violet in Ben’s office. “If I just wanted something warm, wet, and willing why would I be trying so hard with Violet?” He snaps back.
It takes Chad a moment in his drunken stupor to form a response and when he does it comes out slow and careful, like he’s putting all his effort into it, but it’s not terribly original. “You’re not capable of loving anything.”
“And you’re jealous.” The perceptiveness of The Little Psycho took Chad by surprise and he felt violated by him all over again. “Jealous that I would and have killed for Violet, that even though things are shit between us I’m doing everything I can to win her back.”
They’re the same words that had rolled off his tongue a lot lately, all in the hope that someone would drop them into Violet’s ear for him.
“It’s just... the thing is I chose her; she was my choice. I loved Nora like a mother, but when it came down to one or the other, Violet was the one who was more important to me, more important than anything.” Tate’s words came out as a miserable whine.
The Bro Code. When a Bro is in trouble it is your moral obligation as a fellow man to offer counsel, preferably over drinks, and if necessary condolences, also, preferably over drinks. Imaginary tea wasn’t Travis’ first choice of drink to share with Tate, but since the houses liquor supply had run dry he didn’t have a choice, and as a Bro he felt a duty to listen to the poor kids troubles regardless.
Not that he didn’t have another, self-serving reason, too. Tate had spent the last few days alternating between breaking crap in the basement, and hiding in the crawl space next to Violet’s bones where Travis suspected he went to cry in private. The house seemed to pick up on Tate’s mood and in the days he’d been in his funk there had been more fighting, more crying, and more killing than was usual or necessary.
Travis didn’t pride himself on his intellect, he knew he had nothing impressive there. But he did take pride in his big heart and generous nature, skills that made him a born peacemaker. It was a talent he had to employ often with the other ghosts in the house, but had been useless lately, so he went to the source. “Have you told her all this? Did you tell her you won’t even talk to Nora anymore?” He asked sympathetically.
Tate shook his head, staring into the depths of his empty cup as Margo and Angie sat uncomfortably on either side of him. “She’s convinced that because I don’t love Nora anymore, I’ll stop loving her someday too. She just doesn’t get it; that she’s the reason I won’t have anything to do with Nora. It doesn’t matter what I say to her, she doesn’t believe me.” He hid his face in his hands, wondering if he’d have to fake a few body wracking sobs for Travis to finally cotton on.
Thankfully, he didn’t. “I could talk to her.” Travis offered.
“Really?” Tate’s face and voice were so open and hopeful Travis couldn’t help but smile at him.
“Sure, Buddy.” And because Travis was such a nice guy with a big heart who always saw the best in everyone, he didn’t even realize he totally got played.
( Policy of Truth 2/2 )