violet & tate | infinite drop into oblivion
t a t e & v i o l e t | a m e r i c a n ~ h o r r o r ~ s t o r y
spoilers for: a f t e r b i r t h ( 1 x 1 2 )
rating: PG-13
"You're all I want. You're all I have."
-
Murder House is far from content.
It has been fifteen years since it last acquired a victim, and the smarmy teenager and her parents have barely been effective additions to the collection. The girl is far too logical and she clings too tightly to her morals.
She has successfully turned the House's most functional puppet into nothing more than a lovesick boy with a mean streak, and the House is hungry now.
-
The ghosts of the house know two simple facts.
Tate was the House's favorite. And Violet stole him away.
Rumbling groans echo from the belly of the darkness, but the victims feel no sympathy for their captor. Regardless of how little they like the devil personified with blond hair and black eyes, they appreciate one of the newest resident's attempts to keep things from getting worse.
-
Tate takes it upon himself to put the teenaged son of the newest homeowners into a tight sleeper hold the day after he catches Violet running her hands wistfully over the walls of her old bedroom and asks her what her name is .
The boy struggles, but not well, and Tate is briefly blinded by the bright red rage that colors his vision.
"Tate." Her voice is sharp and blinding, like a white light. "Stop it. I need you to stop right now."
The boy drops to the floor, clutching his throat and gasping wildly, and Tate shuffles his feet.
"We had a deal," she says, and he ducks his head as the House creaks in protest. The boy struggles to his feet as his vision begins to clear and falls backwards onto his bed, his eyes wide as he watches the ghostly exchange in front of him.
"I know."
"Tate..."
"I wasn't going to kill him," he offers lamely. "I know how it works. I just didn't like how he was looking at you."
"I can take care of myself," she reminds him.
He shrugs his shoulders. "I like taking care of you."
If the son was expecting Violet to come to his further defense, all he witnesses is her slight smile as she holds her hand out and jerks her head out the door. "Come here."
The two walk out of the room, and the son doesn't see them again.
-
If there is one thing the House understands, it is how powerful the forces of love and desire are. And so it does not underestimate Violet's hold on its favorite toy.
It does, however, reach into the back of her mind and remind her of all the reasons why she should abandon him where he lays snuggled in her arms. Each time, she refuses and pulls him closer, shaking away the images of her mother and Chad and Patrick and everyone else and smirking to herself against the base of his neck.
The House rages with frustration.
-
Hayden appears in the other corner of the basement, her arms crossed and her teeth covered in blood for the first time in years. "You should be careful, sweetheart." Violet's eyes dart up to the older girl's face and she leans back in the wooden chair. "You aren't the first person to make the mistake of believing they could manipulate this place to their advantage."
"I'm not trying to manipulate it." Violet presses the bottom of her boot against the cement wall and shakes her head. "I'm not stupid. It's not possible."
Hayden cocks her head to the side. "He's a part of the House, you know. You might think you can control him right now, but he's a lot more powerful than any of us can even dream." Violet rolls her head back and imagines exhaling the smoke from a cigarette. "He lives on the edge of an infinite drop into oblivion. And when it comes to you, I can't imagine it would take much to push him over."
"I know what I'm doing," Violet says. "I'm giving him what he wants, and I'm only asking for a little bit in return."
"Asking him to muzzle himself isn't like asking him to make you a sandwich. One day, he's going to snap." Rapping a knuckle against the doorframe, Hayden smirks. "This place is like a druggie. After being denied for so long, I can only imagine the bloodshed of its relapse."
-
Since the day he moved in, the House knew the magic words. I need, it whispered in the ears of every ghost. I need, they repeated in his ear, and they watched his face change.
Violet knows the words too, but she tries to use them as sparingly as possible. Like another four letter word, she worries overuse will damage its effectiveness.
But Tate doesn't seem to mind doing what she asks anyway. He seems to like keeping her happy, and she would be lying if she said that after so much time she didn't like making him happy too.
-
He's standing in the bathroom holding the mask in his hands and Violet kind of wants to hurt him. "What are you doing?" she asks, and his eyes lift from the sink to meet hers in the mirror.
"Don't worry about it."
"I would be less inclined to worry if you weren't wearing a black rubber body suit. And if you didn't look like you want to kill someone."
"Go downstairs, Vi."
"No."
"Violet."
"No. If you're going to be a murderer, I want to see it with my own eyes."
She follows him downstairs and watches as he creeps up behind the man that the House is demanding. She watches him lower the chloroform soaked rag to the man's mouth. She feels her stomach beginning to twist. He glances over at her as the man loses consciousness, and she runs.
She hears footsteps upstairs later, the distinct rolling of a suitcase, and a car starting outside.
That night, he comes to her in the basement and holds her hands. "Please don't look at me like that again," he begs. "I don't want to be a monster. I don't want you to be scared."
-
The new girl in the House catches sight of Tate one afternoon and Violet feels her blood boil at the way she carefully tugs the neckline of her camisole down. Wrapping herself in the thickness of her sweater, Violet scowls.
"Get her out," she hisses, and Tate's black eyes flash over to her. "I need you to get her out. Now. Permanently."
Tate's smirk should scare her. But after so many years of having him all to herself, of having the monster firmly under her thumb, she relishes the blood lust on his face.
The girl and her aunt leave the house, and it takes three weeks for Tate to stop retelling the story when he curls up on the couch with Violet stroking her fingers through his hair. But Violet likes hearing it.
-
Tate lowers his lips to the dip between her breasts, and the House fizzles with rage.
"I love you," he whispers against her skin, and Violet smiles.
"Always?" she asks.
He nods, then he smiles widely and presses his forehead to her collar bone and slips a hand under her back and she just blurts it out.
"I love you."
Suddenly, his arms are around her and he's laughing into her hair, and Violet wonders when it started being less about caging the monster and more about loving the man.
-
The night of a city-wide blackout, she and Tate are laying on the roof and he's been smiling more than she's used to. The other ghosts are wreaking havoc inside, but he's holding her hand and leaning their cheeks together and the House is miserable.
For a brief moment, Violet can imagine spending her life like this and being happy. And then she remembers that she doesn't have any life left to spend, and if she loves Tate after everything that has happened maybe she doesn't deserve to be happy.
-
She knows that eventually she'll get tired of feeling guilty for loving him and letting him love her. It was supposed to be a way to control what happened to her, to prove that even if she can't undo anything she can make it worth something. But she should have known she was too weak, especially when it comes to him.
Loving him isn't a cover for anything other than loving him anymore. Her brain likes to toy with the idea of having fixed him, but she knows that he's just as twisted as he's always been and she's the one who's surrendering to the darkness.
She loves him and she can't fight it like she should, and she thinks maybe the House is winning after all.
-
Her room isn't her room anymore, and it's a shade of yellow that kind of makes her want to throw up, but she goes inside sometimes just to take a few deep breaths. She reminds herself that the people who live in the House have lives like she used to have, and she allows the panic of Hayden being right to overcome her.
Tate usually finds her sitting on the floor in the center of the room, and he sits in front of her so that their knees line up and he takes hold of her wrists. She hates that he remembers everything so well, but it usually only takes a stroke of his thumb over the scars on her forearm to remind her that Hayden has very rarely been right about anything.
-
She can't stop him the morning a construction crew drives a bulldozer onto the property. The bank-owned property had been signed away to a man who wanted to build something more modern, and the House roars and seems to set Tate's soul on fire at the sight of the wrecking ball.
She watches from the attic window and knows it won't be a war easily won, but she can't help the fact that she's cheering him on. Even the House has set aside its thirst for blood in its panic for self-preservation.
It takes a total of three days and three nights for the project to be abandoned, and Tate returns to her with dirt and blood smeared in his hair, but she supposes it's a good sign that no new ghosts join their brood. The smile he gives her is enough for her to pull him against her in their first kiss in a long time.
She pulls his clothes off in the attic and he pulls hers off in the bedroom and she loses herself in him, something that she realizes has been going on for quite some time already.
-
Hayden seems to have a permanent smirk on her face when Violet talks to her, but this time she knows she deserves it. "So," she says, "I hear you two are back to fucking now."
Violet snorts.
"What? He not as good as you remember?"
"You were right," the teenager says. "About him being on the edge."
Hayden crosses her arms and makes a face. "And this surprises you? I told you it was only a matter of time before the voices got to him." Violet picks mercilessly at the torn cuticle on her left thumb until it starts bleeding, and then she watches it slowly heal itself.
"It's not him going over." She shrugs. "It's me."
"Somehow, I highly doubt he's going to lend you the rubber suit to go on a little murderous rampage. The House doesn't want you, anyway. It wants him."
"No, not like that," Violet says, remembering something she was once told on the ledge of an empty swimming pool, and Hayden raises an eyebrow. "You know how they say the devil is dangerous because he's beautiful and everyone thinks that's a bunch of shit because if you know it's the devil that changes how you look at him? It's like that. I love him anyway."
She's mildly surprised when Hayden doesn't immediately begin to list all the reasons why that makes her fucked up beyond reason. She simply kicks the wall and turns to walk out.
"Lucky bitch."
-
The House is incredibly aware of the couple's movements.
At night, they claim the room that was once her father's study and Violet pulls Tate down onto the couch, and the boy kisses her until she can't remember what it's like to not kiss him. After she takes her shirt off, he stops to smile at her and she feels herself losing the breath she doesn't need.
He touches the side of her face. "You're perfect."
Later, as she wraps her legs around his waist, the House comes to the same realization that Violet does. Tate is her soulmate, dead or alive, psychotic or sane, and they will always belong to each other.
The House pauses and vibrates suddenly with contentment.
Two toys are better than one.
-
-
spoilers for: a f t e r b i r t h ( 1 x 1 2 )
rating: PG-13
"You're all I want. You're all I have."
-
Murder House is far from content.
It has been fifteen years since it last acquired a victim, and the smarmy teenager and her parents have barely been effective additions to the collection. The girl is far too logical and she clings too tightly to her morals.
She has successfully turned the House's most functional puppet into nothing more than a lovesick boy with a mean streak, and the House is hungry now.
-
The ghosts of the house know two simple facts.
Tate was the House's favorite. And Violet stole him away.
Rumbling groans echo from the belly of the darkness, but the victims feel no sympathy for their captor. Regardless of how little they like the devil personified with blond hair and black eyes, they appreciate one of the newest resident's attempts to keep things from getting worse.
-
Tate takes it upon himself to put the teenaged son of the newest homeowners into a tight sleeper hold the day after he catches Violet running her hands wistfully over the walls of her old bedroom and asks her what her name is .
The boy struggles, but not well, and Tate is briefly blinded by the bright red rage that colors his vision.
"Tate." Her voice is sharp and blinding, like a white light. "Stop it. I need you to stop right now."
The boy drops to the floor, clutching his throat and gasping wildly, and Tate shuffles his feet.
"We had a deal," she says, and he ducks his head as the House creaks in protest. The boy struggles to his feet as his vision begins to clear and falls backwards onto his bed, his eyes wide as he watches the ghostly exchange in front of him.
"I know."
"Tate..."
"I wasn't going to kill him," he offers lamely. "I know how it works. I just didn't like how he was looking at you."
"I can take care of myself," she reminds him.
He shrugs his shoulders. "I like taking care of you."
If the son was expecting Violet to come to his further defense, all he witnesses is her slight smile as she holds her hand out and jerks her head out the door. "Come here."
The two walk out of the room, and the son doesn't see them again.
-
If there is one thing the House understands, it is how powerful the forces of love and desire are. And so it does not underestimate Violet's hold on its favorite toy.
It does, however, reach into the back of her mind and remind her of all the reasons why she should abandon him where he lays snuggled in her arms. Each time, she refuses and pulls him closer, shaking away the images of her mother and Chad and Patrick and everyone else and smirking to herself against the base of his neck.
The House rages with frustration.
-
Hayden appears in the other corner of the basement, her arms crossed and her teeth covered in blood for the first time in years. "You should be careful, sweetheart." Violet's eyes dart up to the older girl's face and she leans back in the wooden chair. "You aren't the first person to make the mistake of believing they could manipulate this place to their advantage."
"I'm not trying to manipulate it." Violet presses the bottom of her boot against the cement wall and shakes her head. "I'm not stupid. It's not possible."
Hayden cocks her head to the side. "He's a part of the House, you know. You might think you can control him right now, but he's a lot more powerful than any of us can even dream." Violet rolls her head back and imagines exhaling the smoke from a cigarette. "He lives on the edge of an infinite drop into oblivion. And when it comes to you, I can't imagine it would take much to push him over."
"I know what I'm doing," Violet says. "I'm giving him what he wants, and I'm only asking for a little bit in return."
"Asking him to muzzle himself isn't like asking him to make you a sandwich. One day, he's going to snap." Rapping a knuckle against the doorframe, Hayden smirks. "This place is like a druggie. After being denied for so long, I can only imagine the bloodshed of its relapse."
-
Since the day he moved in, the House knew the magic words. I need, it whispered in the ears of every ghost. I need, they repeated in his ear, and they watched his face change.
Violet knows the words too, but she tries to use them as sparingly as possible. Like another four letter word, she worries overuse will damage its effectiveness.
But Tate doesn't seem to mind doing what she asks anyway. He seems to like keeping her happy, and she would be lying if she said that after so much time she didn't like making him happy too.
-
He's standing in the bathroom holding the mask in his hands and Violet kind of wants to hurt him. "What are you doing?" she asks, and his eyes lift from the sink to meet hers in the mirror.
"Don't worry about it."
"I would be less inclined to worry if you weren't wearing a black rubber body suit. And if you didn't look like you want to kill someone."
"Go downstairs, Vi."
"No."
"Violet."
"No. If you're going to be a murderer, I want to see it with my own eyes."
She follows him downstairs and watches as he creeps up behind the man that the House is demanding. She watches him lower the chloroform soaked rag to the man's mouth. She feels her stomach beginning to twist. He glances over at her as the man loses consciousness, and she runs.
She hears footsteps upstairs later, the distinct rolling of a suitcase, and a car starting outside.
That night, he comes to her in the basement and holds her hands. "Please don't look at me like that again," he begs. "I don't want to be a monster. I don't want you to be scared."
-
The new girl in the House catches sight of Tate one afternoon and Violet feels her blood boil at the way she carefully tugs the neckline of her camisole down. Wrapping herself in the thickness of her sweater, Violet scowls.
"Get her out," she hisses, and Tate's black eyes flash over to her. "I need you to get her out. Now. Permanently."
Tate's smirk should scare her. But after so many years of having him all to herself, of having the monster firmly under her thumb, she relishes the blood lust on his face.
The girl and her aunt leave the house, and it takes three weeks for Tate to stop retelling the story when he curls up on the couch with Violet stroking her fingers through his hair. But Violet likes hearing it.
-
Tate lowers his lips to the dip between her breasts, and the House fizzles with rage.
"I love you," he whispers against her skin, and Violet smiles.
"Always?" she asks.
He nods, then he smiles widely and presses his forehead to her collar bone and slips a hand under her back and she just blurts it out.
"I love you."
Suddenly, his arms are around her and he's laughing into her hair, and Violet wonders when it started being less about caging the monster and more about loving the man.
-
The night of a city-wide blackout, she and Tate are laying on the roof and he's been smiling more than she's used to. The other ghosts are wreaking havoc inside, but he's holding her hand and leaning their cheeks together and the House is miserable.
For a brief moment, Violet can imagine spending her life like this and being happy. And then she remembers that she doesn't have any life left to spend, and if she loves Tate after everything that has happened maybe she doesn't deserve to be happy.
-
She knows that eventually she'll get tired of feeling guilty for loving him and letting him love her. It was supposed to be a way to control what happened to her, to prove that even if she can't undo anything she can make it worth something. But she should have known she was too weak, especially when it comes to him.
Loving him isn't a cover for anything other than loving him anymore. Her brain likes to toy with the idea of having fixed him, but she knows that he's just as twisted as he's always been and she's the one who's surrendering to the darkness.
She loves him and she can't fight it like she should, and she thinks maybe the House is winning after all.
-
Her room isn't her room anymore, and it's a shade of yellow that kind of makes her want to throw up, but she goes inside sometimes just to take a few deep breaths. She reminds herself that the people who live in the House have lives like she used to have, and she allows the panic of Hayden being right to overcome her.
Tate usually finds her sitting on the floor in the center of the room, and he sits in front of her so that their knees line up and he takes hold of her wrists. She hates that he remembers everything so well, but it usually only takes a stroke of his thumb over the scars on her forearm to remind her that Hayden has very rarely been right about anything.
-
She can't stop him the morning a construction crew drives a bulldozer onto the property. The bank-owned property had been signed away to a man who wanted to build something more modern, and the House roars and seems to set Tate's soul on fire at the sight of the wrecking ball.
She watches from the attic window and knows it won't be a war easily won, but she can't help the fact that she's cheering him on. Even the House has set aside its thirst for blood in its panic for self-preservation.
It takes a total of three days and three nights for the project to be abandoned, and Tate returns to her with dirt and blood smeared in his hair, but she supposes it's a good sign that no new ghosts join their brood. The smile he gives her is enough for her to pull him against her in their first kiss in a long time.
She pulls his clothes off in the attic and he pulls hers off in the bedroom and she loses herself in him, something that she realizes has been going on for quite some time already.
-
Hayden seems to have a permanent smirk on her face when Violet talks to her, but this time she knows she deserves it. "So," she says, "I hear you two are back to fucking now."
Violet snorts.
"What? He not as good as you remember?"
"You were right," the teenager says. "About him being on the edge."
Hayden crosses her arms and makes a face. "And this surprises you? I told you it was only a matter of time before the voices got to him." Violet picks mercilessly at the torn cuticle on her left thumb until it starts bleeding, and then she watches it slowly heal itself.
"It's not him going over." She shrugs. "It's me."
"Somehow, I highly doubt he's going to lend you the rubber suit to go on a little murderous rampage. The House doesn't want you, anyway. It wants him."
"No, not like that," Violet says, remembering something she was once told on the ledge of an empty swimming pool, and Hayden raises an eyebrow. "You know how they say the devil is dangerous because he's beautiful and everyone thinks that's a bunch of shit because if you know it's the devil that changes how you look at him? It's like that. I love him anyway."
She's mildly surprised when Hayden doesn't immediately begin to list all the reasons why that makes her fucked up beyond reason. She simply kicks the wall and turns to walk out.
"Lucky bitch."
-
The House is incredibly aware of the couple's movements.
At night, they claim the room that was once her father's study and Violet pulls Tate down onto the couch, and the boy kisses her until she can't remember what it's like to not kiss him. After she takes her shirt off, he stops to smile at her and she feels herself losing the breath she doesn't need.
He touches the side of her face. "You're perfect."
Later, as she wraps her legs around his waist, the House comes to the same realization that Violet does. Tate is her soulmate, dead or alive, psychotic or sane, and they will always belong to each other.
The House pauses and vibrates suddenly with contentment.
Two toys are better than one.
-
-