Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

« I'd paint a picture of my life upon your wall
And use the colors that have made life seem small »
This Mortal Coil

 

The only positive outcome of everything that had gone down in the past year was that new house they were moving into. Not only was it massive and dark, but it had an ominous vibe, like bad things could happen there. Like Vincent Price might suddenly emerge from behind a drape to recite tales of blood and murder that had occurred in their very dining room.

The place was quite literally a goth chick fantasy, so much so that Violet was considering dying all her clothes black and covering half her face with eye liner just so she could fit better into her new decor. It wasn't her style and she had always considered that particular tribe as a bunch of niche me-toos, but she had been toying with the idea of embracing a new personality before starting at her new school. No one knew her here yet, and she could quite literally pick whichever new identity she fancied. It seemed like an interesting experiment. The fact that it would also annoy her parents to no end was an added benefit, obviously.

Thanks to her father's stupidity and boundless selfishness, she had been asked to relinquish her childhood home, her few lifelong friends and everything familiar to her in any shape or form to move all the way west. Violet wasn't anywhere near ready to forgive him yet, or her mother for condoning his behavior by granting him pardon so readily. Although they were adamant it had been both their idea, that new start bullshit had her mother's touch stamped all over it. Pretending otherwise was insulting to her intelligence.

At least Violet had her very own bathroom now, which would clearly make her life easier. She had already transferred her special toiletry bag to the back of the medicine cabinet, which felt like a safer spot than anywhere inside her bedroom. She wouldn't put it past her mother to go through her stuff while she was at school. She had suspected it before but couldn't gather enough evidence to confront her.

It was such a comfort to confirm that the sharp sting of the blade felt exactly the same as it sliced through the skin, wherever she was.

Tate had exhausted several psychiatrists over the past year, but he was determined to entertain this one a little longer. Dr. Harmon didn't look any more competent or engaged in their little chats than any of his predecessors, but Tate was enjoying going back to his old house. It could be nostalgia, although he had few happy memories attached to these walls, or just plain laziness. Since he now lived right next door, the trip to the headshrinker and back took him under five minutes now. That would come as a great time-saver for as long as he would be considered mental enough to mandate three appointments a week.

"Where would you like to start today, Tate?"

"I don't know," Tate shrugged, looking around, taking note of everything the Harmons had changed to the room. "How do you like the house? I used to live here, you know."

"Your mother told me so, yes."

"It's my fault we had to move out, did she tell you that, too? Of course she did. Once I flipped my lid, she couldn't afford keeping us here anymore. Turns out lawyers and rehab and therapists don't come cheap, you see."

"You needed help and your mother sought treatment for you. It's what parents do."

"Right." Tate couldn't help but smirk.

"Do you feel like your mother is resenting you for what happened?"

"Do I feel like it? She tells me as much every other day. Not always directly but I can read between lines. I may be crazy but I'm not a moron. I'm sorry Addie had to leave, though. She loved this place, always had. She felt connected to it somehow."

"Addie. She's your sister?"

"That's right," Tate nodded, wondering what therapists could gather from that kind of answers that always took so long to write down. 'Addie = sister'. Seemed simple enough to him.

"Are you two close?"

"We used to be, when we were young. Now, she avoids me as much as she possible can. "

"Why is that?"

"Well, rumour has it I wasn't very easy to live with when I was high on meth. It made me temperamental or something. I used to shout a lot, punch stuff. It scared the shit out of her."

It wasn't easy to concentrate on answering questions the right way with his old self staring at him from the far right corner, his head dripping with blood. Tate looked away and blinked. When he looked again, the vision was gone.

As long as there was no doubt in his mind that it was just his brain playing tricks on him, he would be okay. That kind of stuff could get you hooked on a whole different class of meds, and he happened to like his brain alive and responsive.

"Sorry," Tate turned back to the shrink, his best good boy smile turned on. "What were you saying?"

Violet hadn't expected her first day at school to go smoothly. She wasn't an idiot or an optimistic. She had taken one look at the crowd of sun bleached jocks and barely clothed valley girls and known she would not fit in, or ever want to. People had stared and whispered to each other as she walked by, unaccustomed as they were to seeing a girl with her knees covered, probably. But the worst had been that panther print-clad Hysteria Barbie throwing a fit over her smoking. Violet could handle being teased and laughed at, but she hadn't been mentally prepared for an actual attempted assault.

By the end of her first week, she'd become better at hiding in plain sight. She had always liked being alone, but nowadays she needed to make herself invisible. At least, she had found a few choice spots where to eat or read between classes without encountering the clique of meangirls that had unilaterally declared themselves her sworn enemies. The amount of thinking required for her to merely navigate school without being assailed was plainly ridiculous.

On most afternoons, the moment she stepped home after school, she went straight to the bathroom, without greeting her mom or taking off her shoes or anything. More than ever before, that bag of blades felt like a lifeguard, a way to remain sane. Her left forearm was already covered with thin stripes of red, but she kept adding more. Nothing else soothed her. Nothing else allowed her to feel like she was still in control of her own life.

Or so it was, until the day a stranger walked in on her and unpromptedly volunteered to educate her on the proper way to slashing one's wrist.

"You're doing it wrong," the intruder said, his voice subtly mocking. "If you're trying to kill yourself, cut vertically. They can't stitch that up."

"How did you get in here?"

Violet was indignant. As she'd gotten older, she'd grown to abhor invasions of her privacy. Walking in on what felt like an extremely private activity, and make like of it, was a serious violation. Besides, he looked to be about her age. With her luck, he might be going to Westfield as well. It would be bad enough to be caught cutting by a complete unknown she'd never see again in her life, but by someone she could potentially cross path with on any given day? She would never recover.

"If you're trying to kill yourself, you might also try locking the door," he continued. With a laughing look and a contained smirk, he shut the door and left her to chew on that little bit of wisdom.

She should tell her dad. If she told him right away, he'd probably ban that jerk from ever showing to their house again. Of course, she would also have to lie about what he had witnessed her doing, which could totally backfire on her.

What was her father thinking, anyway, letting patients who could easily be raving lunatics wander around their house without any supervision? Just another strike to the "Reasons why dad's an idiot" chart she kept updating in her head. With great annoyance, Violet resolved to keep her mouth shut about the incident and to find out who the trespasser might be, for her own peace of mind.

The doctor's daughter was listening in, Tate was certain of it. He could practically make out her silhouette through the wooden door. He had hoped she would manifest herself after their previous encounter. Her astonishment and outrage had been quite entertaining, and he was willing to throw her a little bone.

"Where would you like to start today, Tate?"

"Well, I think..." Tate paused for emphasis. "I would like to talk about the day I brought a gun to school."

"Really?" Dr Harmon asked skeptically. "No more considerations on home decor or thoughts on the lack of weather?"

"Yeah, I figure we might as well dive in, right?"

"I must say, I'm a little surprised. It seemed to me like you weren't taking these sessions very seriously."

"Just because this therapy is court ordered, doesn't mean it can't be efficient and beneficial."

"Those don't sound like your words."

"Why, do you think it's not going to be efficient?" Tate asked, his lopsided smirk fading. "Do you think I can't get better?"

"Everybody can get better, Tate," Dr Harmon replied confidently. "Everybody."

As expected, Dr Harmon's daughter was waiting for him outside, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest and her face set in distaste.

"Learned anything interesting?" Tate asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Are you done with my dad?"

"Yup. All healthy and sane, for the time being."

"Then come with me," she commanded, grabbing him by the sleeve.

It felt so odd, walking into his old bedroom as a guest. It didn't look much different now than it had a year ago. A little messier, maybe, with piles of books everywhere and clothes discarded on the headboard. But the floor creaked the same familiar way as he stepped inside and he relished the sound.

If Tate had ever given a damn, if he had allowed himself to feel like he belonged in this space enough to transform it, he would have painted the walls black and hung posters of Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis and Elliott Smith on the wall. Unsubtle, perhaps, but it would have driven the point across unmistakably.

Instead, he was always careful to keep the room as perfectly clean and impersonal as a high-end hotel room. He had liked to think of it as a place to rest for a while before moving on to a more interesting place. The bed was made every morning when he left for school, his clothes were carefully folded and put away. Nothing was ever out of place.

For the longest time, Tate had made a point to contain his chaos strictly on the inside.

"Just to be clear," Violet said, stepping closer and invading his space for effect, "If you ever tell my father or anyone what you saw the other day, I will beat you up so bad you'll need a whole different kind of therapist."

"Whoa, careful there, Sarah Connor," Tate exclaimed, brushing past her to go sit on the bed as if he owned the space. "I might actually enjoy it."

"I should have known you were that kind of creep," she said, but there wasn't much heat behind her words. She looked a little disappointed, but not surprised, by the poor effect of her tough girl act. Tate had to congratulate himself for having the sense not to laugh.

He gauged her for a moment before giving a theatrical sigh. Slowly, he raised his arm, letting his sweater's sleeve fall down to his elbow, revealing his own scars, long healed but still very visible.

"This one I did after my dad left, I was ten, I think," he said, pointing to a faded white line covering at his wrist. "These are from the night after my brother's funeral. And this one, well, you don't want to know."

She hesitated only a few seconds before rising to his bait. Her scars looked nothing like his, all red and fresh and fierce. It was very appealing to him, that blend of defiance, anger and rawness. He could tell she was smarter than the rest and was well aware of it. Maybe if he'd met someone like her years before, someone worthy of an effort, things would have turned out differently.

"So, Dr Harmon's daughter, how about we switch to first name basis?"

"That depends. Are you a raging psychotic or something?"

"Tell you what," Tate said, offering her his hand to shake. "You tell me your name, and I'll let you be the judge of my mental stability."

Chapter Text

« Everybody is in too many pieces »
Gang of Four

 

Back in Boston, Violet hadn't been the most popular girl in school, but she'd connected with a few similarly minded students. As cliques went, theirs probably fell on the smug side of the spectrum, but where was the harm in that? They never teased or bullied anyone. They merely reveled in their above-the-norm intellect and superior taste in everything.

At Westfield, she'd known very early on that she only had two options to choose from. She could either start dressing like a Jersey Shore extra, forsake all yearning for knowledge or substance and fade smoothly into the crowd, or she could stand her ground and brace for the fight that was ineluctably coming.

From what she had gathered, her designated mortal enemy was a serious contender. Leah was popular, well-connected, and possibly out of her mind. As soon as word of their dispute had travelled through the school, Violet had been deemed unfit to have her presence acknowledged by the general population. It was a good thing she enjoyed solitude.

A full week went by, then two, without any major incident, and Violet made the mistake of letting her guard down. When Leah finally cornered her in the open-air cafeteria, Violet came completely unprepared.

"What did I tell you about smoking in here?"

Violet's tray went crashing to the ground and before she had time to asses the situation, Leah and her friends were backing in her into a corner

"I'm not scared of you!" Violet shouted as she desperately tried to think of a way out.

"You should be!" Leah yelled back, grabbing Violet by the hair to slam her head forward.

Her forehead connected with the concrete wall just above the arcade. The sound was impressive as it resonated through her skull, but she only felt a dull ache. She was immediately reminded that head wounds tended to bleed profusely as blood started dripping down her face and into her eye.

She fought back like a wild animal until she managed to put some space between her face and the hard surface, but a few vicious kicks to her shin had her dropping to the ground in one fell swoop. Then the slapping and punching began. Her skin was burning, her cheekbone sore.

Violet was jerking her head from side to side, hoping to escape the next blow, when she caught sight of her still lit cigarette rolling away. Her finger skimmed the edge a few time before she finally reached it. Before she could think twice, she grabbed Leah's wrist and firmly crushed the butt on the back of her hand.

"She burned me!" Leah screamed, incredulous and outraged, as more and more students gathered around them to watch and cheer.

Before Violet could take advantage of the commotion to flee, Leah grabbed her arm to keep her in place. Violet gasped in pain as the barely-there scar tissue of her healing cuts ripped open. Desperate to free herself, she reached up with her other hand and clawed as hard and deep as she could into the soft skin she found there. She was instantly rewarded with the satisfying feel of blood and a high-pitched screech.

As she grabbed her bag and escaped, Violet barely had time to take in the three large stripes of red on Leah's perfectly made up face. She didn't wait around to find out what happened next.

Doctor Harmon was beginning to seriously try Tate's patience. If anyone would realize how much self-control it required to sit opposite that arrogant jerk for three hour-long sessions each week without resorting to violence, they wouldn't be so prompt to tag him an unstable lunatic.

At least there was no shadow hanging out with them lately, no ghost from way back when, even though Tate conscientiously flushed his meds.

"You need to help me understand, Tate. I've read your file. You used to be a good student. An athlete. Popular."

Ages ago, he had been all those things, as well as oddly secretive and private for a teenager, or so people said. He'd once jokingly told a friend he was part of a witness protection program and if anyone found out where he lived, if he ever let a stranger in, he and his family were as good as dead.

Tate had been aware of the fleeting nature of his enviable social status. When the charade ended, he wasn't too torn about leaving the cool kids table to join the pariah corner overnight. He accepted being the guy from the freak show family, in all likelihood a freak himself. That wasn't false, exactly, whereas he'd always felt like a fraud as a member of high school royalty.

"I sure was, Doctor. And look at me now. Just say no, right? I should have listened to all the cool ads. That Nancy sure knew her shit."

"Is that why you started using? The pressure was too much for you?"

"Well, they did take the edge off being the perfect son."

Even after his fall from grace, he'd felt better in Westfield than he ever could at home. He knew how to respond to bullies. His mother, on the other hand, had used the situation to strengthen her grip on him with her classic poisoned medicine approach. Cajole and undermine. Praise and demean. There was no right answer for that.

"Do you feel like your mother's expectations for you were too high?"

"Actually, I think she was disappointed that I came out normal. I wasn't born wrong like my brother and sister; she had to make me that way."

"What do you mean by that?"

"She's like a cancer. She takes advantage of all the bad shit you know you shouldn't be doing to take root and slowly kill you. I can't ever break away from her now. I'm so screwed up no high school in the state will take me in. I'll never go to college, never find a decent job. I'm stuck with her for good, just like Addie."

"You could home school, get your GED. Nothing's carved in stone, Tate. You're only eighteen. If you would only-"

Whatever inane piece of advice the good doctor had to offer was interrupted by a knock on the door. A woman stepped in, her face marked with alarm. She had to be the wife. He could see a little of Violet in her still pretty face.

"Ben? I'm sorry to interrupt, but it can't wait. It's about Violet."

"It's alright; our time is almost up for today." Doctor Harmon turned on his mercantile smile, the same one he always summoned at the end of a session. "I'll be seeing you on Wednesday, Tate."

"Sure. Don't worry," Tate replied, putting on an equally phony grin, "I'll see myself out."

Just as well. He'd been dying to explore the attic, where he and Beau had spent so much time hiding away from his mother when they were little.

"Violet! In the kitchen!"

Well, shit. Violet had hoped to slip in undetected and to get a chance to change into a shirt that wasn't stained with blood before facing her parents.

Both of them were waiting for her, her mother sitting rigidly while her father was propped against the fridge, his foot beating furiously to an imaginary rhythm. Everything about that scene had her insides screaming ‘Run'.

Violet had never been a troublemaker. A smartass, a pain in her parents and teachers' backside alike, sure. But nothing in her short life had ever warranted that kind of homecoming party. She'd tried her hand at shoplifting and hadn't been caught once. She looked too sweet, too innocent, no one ever suspected her. She smoked pot on occasion but if her parents ever suspected it, they'd never said a thing. Even the epic hangover she'd suffered after raiding the family bar, back when her parents couldn't exchange two sentences without pitching up in volume, had gone completely unnoticed.

Her parents were so distracted by their never-ending drama she sometimes thought she could drop dead without either of them noticing. She was sick of watching her mother pretend to have forgiven her dad when her resentment was still cropping to the surface, and of him feigning not to notice.

"Where have you been?"

Violet opted to keep her mouth shut. She'd missed both English Lit and Geography but the thought of sitting in class all afternoon with her bloodied forehead and her shattered dignity was inconceivable. Instead she'd sat idly in the least fancy coffee shop she could find, trying to bend her mind around her ridiculous situation. The more she wallowed, the more inextricable everything felt to her.

"We got a call from the principal's office this afternoon," Vivien continued. "You might as well tell us your version of what went down right now."

"My version's probably the same as theirs," Violet replied, crossing her arms against her chest. "Except I was only trying to defend myself. They've had it out for me from the start. Every chance they get, they start something. It's not my fault!"

"Then why didn't you tell us? We could easily move you to a different school. There are lots of really good private schools right here in this neighborhood."

"I'm not running away. I'm not scared of them."

"Isn't there another way to convey that sentiment than to scar a poor girl's face?"

"That ‘poor girl' was trying to put out a cigarette in my mouth!"

"This is not you, Violet. You don't get into fights. You don't act like an idiot without thinking about the consequences."

"I'm going to make this clear," Ben Harmon cut in, "you're going to have to swallow your pride and apologize to that girl, her parents, and whoever else would like to see you grovel, until that incident's behind us. You're looking at a suspension!"

"Or what? What are you going to do, make me move across country and lose all my friends? Oh, wait," Violet scoffed.

"This is not a joke, this is not something to be taken lightly," Vivien said levelly, her hand on Ben's arm instructing him to keep quiet. "The girl's parents are talking about pressing charges."

"Are you kidding me? She barely got a scratch. It was nothing. It'll probably be healed by next week."

"It doesn't matter," Vivien replied. "I was told to expect a call from their lawyer. We can't afford that kind of trouble right now. Not when your father's practice is barely off the ground."

"How is that my fault? His practice was doing just fine in Boston. A little too well, if you care to remember, which is exactly what got us here in the first place."

"Violet!" Ben interrupted, a clear warning in his voice.

"What? It's the truth! And instead of working things through, you just moved your problems somewhere else and everything's the same, except I hate it here!"

Vivien bended her head and closed her eyes for a good 5 seconds. When she sat up straight again, all benevolence and saint-like patience, Violet braced herself for the familiar I know how it feels bullshit. She could deal with admonishments just fine, but forced sympathy always gave her an urge to rip something to shreds.

"Believe it or not, I was fifteen once, too," Vivien said softly. "I understand how things look from your perspective. I know you feel lonely and you're having a hard time finding your niche here. But in a few months time, you'll be laughing about your rough start here with your new best friends. When you turn eighteen, you can-"

"I don't want to listen to you anymore," Violet exclaimed, louder than she had intended, startling both her parents.

Her legs felt heavy as she ran upstairs. In her room, she yanked off her blood-stained top, slammed her iPod in its dock and put on appropriately pissed off music, loud. Only then did she consent to wipe the tears of anger and helplessness that had been rolling down her face.
She'd barely had time to dry her tears and put on fresh clothes when she heard the expected knock on the door. Violet let out an impatient sigh. She didn't trust herself to resume the conversation yet, she felt too raw, too unnerved. Besides, she really needed a cigarette.

She turned down the volume a few notches until her voice had a chance to cover Kathleen Hanna's fury.

"Not now, mom. I want to be alone."

"It's me. Open the door."

"Tate?"

Her sour mood lost to curiosity and Violet cracked the door open. With a grin and a finger up to his mouth to shush her, Tate stepped inside without waiting for a formal invitation.

Tate took in her reddened eyes and the fresh cut on her forehead and his grin faded instantly. If Doctor Harmon or his stressed out Mrs. were responsible for that, there would be hell to pay. She looked so defeated that his fists instantly tightened with rage on her behalf.

"What happened to your face?" he asked, brushing her hair away from her temple to get a better look at the wound. "You should put a band-aid on that."

"It's nothing," she replied, batting his hand away. "I just kicked some high school skank's ass. Three of them, if you must know."

"I didn't peg you for the street fighting type."

"That's actually my best fighting asset. No one ever expects me to hold my own," she replied evenly, her face still morose. "What are you doing here?"

"Taking your mind off things. You look like you need it."

"It's just my parents being jerks."

"Come on. There's a place I want to show you."

"I don't think I'm supposed to go out."

"That's what backdoors are for," Tate replied, rolling his eyes.

It didn't seem to occur to her to ask where he was taking her or why she should follow. They walked in silence the whole way to the isolated beach where he used to come to retreat from the world, and they found the place as deserted as ever.

Violet sat next to him in silence and for a while, they settled for enjoying the soothing sound of the waves rolling one after the other.

"Well, that's one point for Los Angeles, I guess," she said, her face registering the tiniest hint of pleasure.

"Why did you move here?"

She turned to study him for a moment, as if to evaluate how much she should say. He understood the sentiment. They'd only saw each other twice before and neither encounter had been particularly friendly. But they were on the edge of something, there. They could either skip the superficial and talk about things that really mattered, or exchange pleasantries, go home and never see each other again. There was no other option; she was smart enough to understand that.

Her frown eased away suddenly and she turned back to face the ocean.

"My dad had an affair. My mom literally caught him in the act. One day she came home and she found him in their bed with a student half her age."

"That's horrible. If you love somebody you should never hurt them."

"I know, right?" Violet paused to light a cigarette. "The worst part is, the girl he'd been seeing turned out to be a complete psycho. She started calling days and nights, leaving creepy voicemails for my mom about how her and dad were made for each other and shit like that. She even broke into our house once."

"Did you kung-fu her skanky ass?"

"I wish," Violet chuckled. "But there was no need for that. My parents got a restraining order and things sort of died down. It was all very anti-climatic."

"My father had affairs, too," Tate said, slouching back on his elbows. "I don't know if my mother ever knew, but I saw him with the maid once."

As a child, he hadn't understood what was happening, but the scene was still carved in his memory. The young woman had seemed to be sobbing. To this day, he couldn't tell for sure if what he'd witnessed had been a moment of passion or an act of violence.

"Where is he now?"

"No idea. He bailed when I was six and I never heard from him again. He could be cheating on someone else right now, or drinking mojitos on a beach somewhere. Or, you know, rotting in the ground. I don't know. My mother went crazy looking for him for years. She wanted to make him pay, but she never found him. I guess she decided to make us pay instead."

"I'm sorry," Violet offered, looking contrite.

"I don't blame him for wanting to run away from the wicked witch," Tate amended, letting his head fall back. "I just wish he'd taken me with him."

Violet nodded gravely before turning back to stare at the ocean. The silence between them was comfortable enough that neither of them felt the need to fill it.

"I thought forgiving meant starting over with a clean slate," Violet finally said. "But everything's poisoned now. Everything's a test that my dad keeps failing at. The worst part is that they're always pretending that they're fine, I hate it. At least when they were throwing things at each other, they were being honest. I can't breathe when I'm near them. They make the air toxic."

I know a thing or two about that, Tate thought, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to spoil the moment by letting Constance pervade it.

"I just don't understand how my dad can ask people to talk about their true feelings all day long when he's the king of all hollow bullshit when he's with us."

"Well, if it makes you feel better, I don't think he's that good a psychiatrist."

When she laughed, Violet's face became almost childlike, with her round cheek and her dancing eyes. It was good to know he could make her look like this. All kinds of therapists had advised him to start by setting small goals for himself.

"Are you feeling better?"

"I guess I am."

"Cool," he said, getting to his feet and reaching for her hand. "Come on. We should head back before your parents notice you're gone."

They were silent again all the way back home, but the air felt lighter around them. Night was falling and he found he liked the look of their long shadows walking side by side under the streetlights. It had been a long time since he'd enjoyed being outside at all.

Tate didn't offer to walk her to the door, knowing his presence could only stir more trouble for her if her parents had noted her absence. But before he could walk away, Violet grabbed his sweater's sleeve.

"Hey, Tate? I'm glad you didn't pick up a better shrink."

With another infantine smile, she pushed the gate open and disappeared, while Tate summoned the will to walk back to the house next door where Constance was waiting for him.

Chapter Text

« Tell me lies later, come and see me
I'll be around for a while
I am lonely but you can free me
All in the way that you smile
Tell me why »
Neil Young

Tiptoeing through the back door, Violet braced herself for the inevitable head-first slam into a wall of parental fury, only to happen on an indifferent silence. Her parents were nowhere to be found. Either they'd rushed to the police station to declare the disappearance of their only daughter, or they hadn't even noticed she'd gone. When she found no distraught note taped to the dresser or the fridge, Violet refrained from breaking into a victory dance, right there on top of the kitchen isle.

Her wave of relief was rather short-lived. When she climbed the stairs and walked by the master bedroom, Violet caught the unmistakable creaking of a bed frame, accompanied with muffled grunts. Eww. Also, typical.

For years, her mother had turned a blind eye on her husband's affairs, until the last in a long string of alarmingly young mistresses had resolved not to be ignored. It had only taken a rocky year and a coastal move for things to get back to normal. When they weren't arguing about inconsequential nothings, Violet's parents were not-so-discretely jumping each other's bones. It was their default mode: anything to avoid engaging in actual communication.

So, less than two hours had passed since their biggest fight in over a year, and they'd already forgotten all about her. Violet debated how to best demonstrate how fed up she was with their particular brand of bullshit, before settling on doing nothing, as she so often did.

From the outside looking in, the Langdon’s estate seemed a model of normalcy and all-American wholesomeness. It was humbly-sized for the neighborhood, but the small lawn was impeccably clipped and the garden perpetually in bloom. The inside of the house was no different, perfectly neat and tastefully decorated, if a little old-fashioned. A wisp away from highly-functioning alcoholic status, Constance Langdon had long ago mastered the art of maintaining appearances.

On his way home from his beach escapade, Tate refrained from kicking one of the potted ruby red pelargoniums lined under the porch. The last thing he wanted was to attract his mother’s unsought attention. He pushed the door open and quietly kicked his sneakers off, hoping to make it to his room without being noticed.

"Tate, is that you?"

Constance emerged from the kitchen in a blue cloud of smoke, a cup of "tea" in her hand. Tate's spine straightened instantly in alarm but he didn't attempt to evade her all-seeing eyes.

"Where were you, dear? I've been worrying sick," she said, raising a hand to brush his cheek as he slipped past her in the narrow lobby, deflecting her touch. Evidently, the fortune wheel of Constance's mood had spun and set on 'sentimental', tonight.

"I just went for a walk," he said, annoyed. When her eyes turned dark, he amended, "I had a difficult session today. I just needed some time alone."

"Is the good doctor treating you well?" she asked sweetly, pacified. "Is he helping you?"

"He's alright. Therapy's exhausting when you're as fucked up as I am, is all."

His mother tutted with a weary shake of her head, not bothering to counter his hasty self-diagnosis.

"Dinner is served. We didn't wait up, but your plate's still on the table, if you're hungry."

"I'm not," Tate replied, already on his way to seek the blissful peace and quiet of his room. She didn't retort or tried to follow him upstairs. That was progress, he had to admit. There had been a time, not so long ago, when the smallest seed of discord was inevitably blown into a full-fledged shouting match. She might have paid a modicum of attention to what his numerous shrinks had advised, after all.

Tate’s bedroom wasn’t as neat as his old one had been, back in the days when he’d held on to control. With its grey patterned wallpaper and sparse furniture, it looked somewhat like a cell. A comfy cell with no lock, but a cell nonetheless.

"I saw you walking down the street with the new neighbor.” His sister, Adelaide, was standing in the doorway, giggling with barely refrained excitement. “The pretty girl,” she needlessly clarified.

Like their brother Beau, Adelaide hadn't been born quite right, but her Down syndrome hadn't prevented her from becoming opinionated and perceptive. As far as Tate was concerned, there was very little his older sister couldn't get away with. Not even spying on his whereabouts, as long as she didn't report back to the dragon.

"Yeah," Tate bit back a smile. "Nice, too. You'd like her."

“I knew it.” Adelaide started clapping happily before Tate could shush her.

"Don't tell mom, okay? She'd ruin it. You know how she always ruins everything."

Although he wasn't sure she fully understood the statement, she nodded gravely to oblige him and with one last high-spirited cackle, she disappeared.

Back in Boston, Violet's parents had already started pestering her about her supposed lack of a productive hobby and all that time she spent alone in her room doing God-knew-what. Much to their chagrin, their badgering had summed to moot results. She wasn't exactly sure what an acceptable occupation would entail. Should she join a marching band? Enroll in varsity basketball? Or, heaven forbid, the cheerleading squad? Had they even met her?

Thanks, but no thanks. There were life-altering books to be read, black and white cinematographic masterpiece to be seen see and important conversations to be shared with her narrow circle of friends on things that actually mattered. Not that she had any friend left. Well, just a prospective one. She wasn't entirely sure what to make of her new neighbor yet. At the very least, he was intriguing, and so few people were. He was also very easy on the eyes, which was proving difficult to ignore.

She didn't give one damn about popularity and she was most definitely not a miniature of either of her parents. As they liked to remind her not so subtly, her mother was already an accomplished musician at her age, as well as an enthusiastic pom pom waver. A precocious bullshitter, her dad had been head of the debate team when he wasn't enforcing his status as a straight-A student.

She was aware of failing to meet their unrealistic expectations of what a good teenage daughter was supposed to be but the way she saw it, the wrongs were entirely shared. What Violet had come to understand was that their entire relationship was tainted with an original misunderstanding. For far too long, she'd spoiled them by taking on the part of the defect-less child, smart, hard-working and well-behaved, when deep down, she'd been consumed with the fear that the first wrong step would lose her the love of those parents whose attention naturally strayed toward each other.

Shortly after she'd hit puberty, the perfection machine had clogged and she'd lost the compulsion to please them with little to no forewarning. Growing sickened with their absorption into their volatile marriage, she'd ground her teeth until her father's affair had exposed their family as a gathering of three insecure and self-absorbed people desperate to find validation in each other or elsewhere, if necessary.

Whatever it was she needed to find self-acceptance, Violet knew she wouldn't find it wherein her family.

Damn, but her last blade was dull. It scraped the skin annoyingly without giving the good clean cut she'd been hoping for to calm her edgy nerves, not that she didn't keep trying, wincing all the while. She was still trying relentlessly trying to achieve some result when an unidentifiable screech came from her bathroom's door frame where her mother stood frozen in her gaping silk robe, with her tangled bed hair and flawless flushed skin.

"What the hell are you doing!?"

Oh, shit.

Her first thought was that she should have paid more attention to the squeaking, after all.

Within seconds, Vivien was shakily grabbing her arm, pushing the sleeve higher to expose all the scrapes and faded lines. She didn't see the slap coming. It had been so many years since the last one she'd forgotten that burning sensation. Her hand went up automatically to feel the heat irradiating from her skin.

"You are my daughter," her mother said, her authoritative tone betrayed by the sound of tears choking down her throat. "You're not allowed to hurt yourself, do you hear me? I forbid you. God, Violet, I thought you were smarter than that."

Drawn by the commotion, her father appeared behind them, taking in the scene without saying a word. Whereas he didn't think much of it or it was too much of a stereotype for Ben Harmon, renowned psychiatrist, Violet couldn't be sure. Privileged white girl resorting to self-harm to signify her unwarranted despondency, even she could admit how cliché it had to sound from his perspective.

His eyes, though. His eyes were so cold, like she was a stranger, Violet couldn't help but burst into tears, her sobs echoing her mother's in the cramped bathroom.

It was dark outside, or as dark as it ever got in LA at night. Tate had a good view of Violet's house from his windowsill but her room was situated on the opposite side of the building. Too bad, he could have done with a little shadow-play peep show right about now. When his gut gave an enthusiastic twitch at the thought of her stripping off before bed time, he debated feeling guilty about it for half a second before opting not to. It was good to know he still had functioning hormones, after all.

On nights like these, when emptiness and isolation hit him hard, Tate yearned for his crazed drug days. He wasn't particularly fond of the person he'd become back then, but he sure missed the all-encompassing confidence that came with a good high. For a moment there, he'd thought he'd known his place in the world. Right on top of it.

Getting clean hadn't felt like much of an accomplishment, really, just a few baby steps down a road so long he had no idea where it led. He had never been able to fool himself into believing his addictions were more than a symptom, a surface layer in his mountain of issues. And to think Constance used to refer to him as 'the normal one'. He'd always suspected he was the only wrong one.

Everything was quiet but his head was a mess. It had been so long since he'd even considered connecting with someone, his conversation with Violet had shaken him. Trusting people was such a hazardous thing to do. One moment he wished he hadn't met her, the next he longed to hear her voice, to ask what she thought about all kinds of insignificant things. Perhaps he should get one of those disposable phones. They could talk at night sometimes, when neither of them found sleep, and nobody would ever find out.

He fell asleep holding on to the hope of one day sharing dirty phone conversations in the dark with the pretty girl next door

"Tate. Tate, wake up, honey."

Tate woke up with a start at the sound of her voice, dread slamming into him before he could even click the side lamp on.

She was standing by the bed, staring at him intently, her eyes pained and filled with tears. Towering over him in her early 1920's garments, an embroidered tissue clutched in her pale hands, she looked like Daisy Buchanan's dark twin. The very picture of fashionable anguish.

"No. No, no, no," Tate shook his head, panic taking a hold on him. "You can't be here. Not now. No way."

"Of course I can. I'll always be there for you. I promised, remember?"

"You can't promise me anything. You're not real. It's just my fucked up brain acting up."

"Really, Tate," she frowned. Nora didn't like him cursing. There was a lot of things she didn't like.

"This is about that girl, isn't it?" she asked reproaching. "Don't fool yourself. Do you think she'd give you the time of day if she knew you the way I do?"

"Okay. Okay, Nora." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I need you to do something for me, alright?"

"Anything, dear," she said, placated.

"Go away," he demanded, furious with himself and his deranged mind. "Just go away! Go. Away!"

Violet awoke to the sound of rain hitting against her window. Not rain, she realized as her mind slowly cleared, hail. Wait, hail? In LA, after weeks of cloudless skies? That couldn't be right.

When she opened the window, a piece of gravel narrowly missed the side of her head to land on her bed silently. A fair haired boy was waiting expectantly below, his face turned up.

"Tate? What are you doing here?" she mouthed, sleepy and confused. “Wait," she ordered with an open palm. She went to her the door and pressed her ear to the panel for a few seconds. Once she was positive her parents were still asleep, she slipped on a sweater over her flannel pyjamas and made her way downstairs, wincing with each creak of the hardwood floor under her feet.

The backdoor opened with a loud clank she was sure echoed all the way upstairs.

"What's going on?" she asked, puzzled. She knew they had shared a somewhat significant moment, earlier, but she hadn't realized they had reached the point in their relationship where appearing at the other's doorstep after midnight was to be expected.

“I just wanted to talk to you.”

"In the middle of the night?"

"Yeah," he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. "It's kind of difficult to explain."

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I-" Tate turned to his side, glaring in the empty space. He looked anxious, agitated.

"It's not nothing or you wouldn't be throwing rocks at people's windows in the middle of the night," she pointed. "Come on. Spill."

"Do you think you could come out for a walk? Just for a little while?"

“I’m on house arrest," she said with a grimace. "Something came up. It's not the best of times for me to sneak out.”

"Is everything okay?"

"It will be," she sighed, "but it could take a while."

Everything was far from okay. She'd spent one of the worst evenings or her life before crying herself to sleep, feeling raw, guilty and ashamed. Her mother had given her a teary lecture on betrayal of trust and thrown all kinds of empty threats, from lifelong grounding to boarding school. Violet had been warned to expect secret service-levels of privacy invasion and had every imaginable privilege revoked for a length of time to be determined. Her father had looked right through her as if she didn't deserve to be properly yelled at.

Actually, talking things through with someone who might actually understand sounded pretty damn good. But maybe not in the middle of the night, when her mind was hazy, her eyes puffy still and her head ached with the kind of pounding migraine that always followed a good crying fit. And now that she came to think of it, she had to look very alluring in her patterned jammy pants and big woolly socks. Not that she cared to impress him. Crap.

“I'm sorry," he said dejectedly. "I shouldn't have come here, it's just... Nevermind.”

“No, look, I get it. I think. I can't make tonight but maybe tomorrow? Like, in the daytime? I'm sure there's some class I can skip without jeopardizing my entire education,” she offered, going through her classes schedule in her head.

"You don't have to-"

"Yup, I can definitely miss English Lit and still ace the thing, no worries. I'll meet you somewhere, alright? The beach? Around 3:30?"

"Is it okay for you to skip class, with your house arrest and stuff? You won't get in trouble?"

There was something about him tonight, a genuinely vulnerable look that hadn't been there before. It gave her an urge to look after him, which was ridiculous, really. She was in no shape to take care of anyone, least of all herself, apparently.

"It's fine," she assured him. "Don't worry about it. Just show up, okay?"

"Yeah," he said with a tiny nod and the ghost of a smile. "3:30. I'll be there."

As she watched him walk away with his shoulder slouched and his feet dragging in the grass, Violet longed to run away with him someplace where neither of them would have to feel that wretched ever again.

Chapter Text

« And it's the damage that we do and never know
It's the words that we don't say that scare me so »
Elvis Costello

Tate didn't sleep that night, he held guard. There wasn't a cell in his body that wasn't alert and on edge. How long had it been since he'd last kept his meds down instead of retching them the first moment he was unwatched? Too long, evidently. He could deal with a shitload of anxiety, but Nora... Nora was bad news.

He could sense her now, looming in a corner of his consciousness, always on the ready to appear and advise him how to best derail his pathetic excuse for a life. They went way back, the two of them, much longer than he would care to admit to anyone. Sweet Nora, who'd been standing by his side through his darkest days, urging him on with sugar-coated sneers.

He would have to relent soon, he knew. But the thing with antipsychotics was, people inevitably stopped taking them for a reason. Coming from such a household, he was privy to what losing some mental capacities did to a person and those around them. Besides, there was only so long you could twitch and fidget around miserably with a useless limp dick. He preferred his limbs in check and his dick responsive, thank you very much. He was barely eighteen, after all, not yet ready for swift decline.

Admittedly, he'd never gone all the way with a girl but he'd been thinking about it often of late. Would Violet be pissed if she had an inkling he'd been thinking about her that way? Did she suspect it? His guts said she did, but he'd been wrong about these things before.

There wasn't much he expected from life. Until now, Tate's most ambitious and seemingly achievable long-term project had been to stick around long enough to make it to the 27 Club. He didn't entertain chimeras of recovery or normalcy. His issues were sufficiently hard-wired for him to consider fatalism as the wisest approach, and as much as people liked to drivel on about hope and change, he'd long held the assumption that vain dreams of betterment did more damage than accepting your rueful lot. Emily Dickinson could go to hell.

His feelings of despair following Nora's sudden reappearance were somewhat mitigated by Violet's response to his pathetic display of weakness. He'd remained enraged with himself long into the night for running to her in distress, knowing he had almost blown it.

She could have shot him down, run screaming to her folks or filed a restraining order; he wouldn't have blamed her. Instead she'd been all but forbearing, despite going through a crisis of her own. She hadn't even seemed to pity him, although he must have appeared pathetic enough in his frightened and disheveled state. Things weren't all bad, considering.

He'd have to be more careful not to alienate the one person whose company he cared for. Relating with others was difficult enough for normal people; finding someone who welcomed what most people found so repellent about him was downright miraculous. He was so impatient to see her again, to just sit by her side and revel in that wordless understanding they seemed to share.

What ate at his mind was an impossible choice. If he went back on his meds, if he reverted to that version of himself that felt both alien and incomplete, their fragile connection would break and he would most certainly lose her. But if he kept pushing back the moment until it was too late, he would invoke a shit-storm he wasn't anywhere near ready to deal with. Again.

That morning, when Constance presented him with the familiar plastic cup accompanied with a glass of juice, he took a long hard look at the tabs and resolved to postpone the inevitable for just a little longer.

***

 

Violet went through her day on autopilot, checking the time on her iPhone at any given chance. In the aftermath of her little strife with Leah, her social situation in Westfield High, or lack thereof, had reached a much welcomed status quo. People steered way clear from her, in return to which she refrained from scratching high strung bitches' cheeks off. A win-win situation if there had ever been one.

It was a good thing none of them tried antagonizing her because she had no mental space left for that today. She'd been too busy repressing the memory of the previous evening's scene and the subsequent silent breakfast reunion. Her mother had had time to cool down a bit, thankfully, but sparks of untold resentment kept flying in her direction, drenching everything in gloom. She'd left home feeling heavy with excess emotions, vowing, not for the first time, to never reproduce. If parenthood meant inflicting that kind of wretchedness on a defenceless person just because you could, she was having none of it.

And then there was the prospect of her afternoon rendezvous with Tate, gnawing at her brains. She was nervous, which was ridiculous really. It wasn't as if they were going on a romantic escapade or anything to that effect. Quite the opposite, really. They were meeting to talk, to dissect the overload of angst and helplessness that kept them up at night wrestling with their own thoughts,knowing they were in comprehensive company.

The haunted look in Tate's eyes had bothered her long after his departure. He'd landed on her doorstep in the middle of the night needing help she hadn't been able to provide. But truth be told, the fact that he'd chosen her doorstep, of all doorsteps, gave her a sense of pride. Weren't teenagers supposed to be hopelessly egotistical? She sure hoped she had that excuse to fall back on.

He was a complicated boy, abstruse and guarded. She didn't know all that much about him other than he was someone she wanted to be around. They'd never discussed the kind of depthless shit teenagers usually talked about when they met, all those superficial likes and references meant to insure you belonged to the same crowd and therefore, could legitimately hang out. It would have been so obviously superfluous. They were way past that, although she doubted either of them would be able to pinpoint why. She didn't know what she'd done right to earn his trust, but she was determined to do her best to keep it.

Tate was already there when she made it to the beach with a bare ten minutes late, butterflies fluttering stupidly in her belly. He was sitting in the sand with his knees close to his chest, eyes lost into the blue, a picture of pensiveness.

It was a beautiful early October afternoon, bright and sunny and just windy enough along the shore to allow her to breathe properly. Soon, it would be Halloween, her first holiday away from home. It used to be her favorite day of the year, far superior to Christmas, her birthday or the last day of school. Nowadays, she was dreading the date, for it made her hopelessly nostalgic of the simpler days when happiness was as easy as a fat bag of candy.

"Tate," she called as she edged closer at a clumsy pace, her sneakers burying in the sand with each step.

He turned to her with such childish joy in his face she wondered if he'd feared she'd stand him up. It had crossed her mind, only briefly and for fear of parental reckoning for yet another act of disobedience. But a girl had to have her priority straight and besides, they'd already maxed out in terms of disproportionate punishment.

Since Tate hadn't moved from his sitting spot, she slumped by his side, mimicking his posture.

"Hey," he said, bumping his knee against hers as way of greeting. She bumped his leg right back, the corner of her mouth stretching at the awkwardness.

"I was just wondering if you'd come," he informed her needlessly.

"Wouldn't have missed it for all the excruciatingly boring classes in the world."

He turned to look at her, his eyes skimming over her face. Other than the band-aid covering her eyebrow, there were no blemishes to be found.

"What, no fight today? You must be slipping."

"Couldn't find an adversary worthy of my wrath," she deadpanned.

"I'd be worried, if I was losing the ability to rage at those idiots so soon," he teased. "It's a slippery slope."

"Are you gonna tell me what was bothering you last night? Or would you rather inventory Westfield's cast of clowns?"

"What about you? Why were on lockdown to start with?"

"You first," she insisted.

"Mmh," he said, flashing a phony smirk before turning away and to the ocean ahead. "I don't think so."

"Why not?" she asked, her outrage only slightly feigned.

"You'd run away screaming," he answered with an unreadable grin.

***

He was taunting her, which was dumb, really, when all he wanted was to drive her attention away from his late night act of sheer stupidity. But her offended expression was just so cute. Not that he'd ever tell her that, for fear of bodily harm. There was something so raw about her, like she had yet to decide which end of the spectrum of normalcy she was willing to land on and the decision was all hers to make. And oh, how he envied her that freedom.

"Who do you take me for exactly?" she continued with an air of genuine affront.

"Okay, well, I don't know. I just... freaked out. Ghosts in the attic and all that. It was just a bad night. I'm over it now."

"Why?" she inquired. "Why did you freak out? Did something happen?"

"You're the daughter of my psychiatrist," he pointed. "I'm not sure it would be wise for me to spill my guts to you any more than I do to him."

"What," she huffed, "In case I snitched on you? Your psychiatrist can't handle the thought of his precious daughter not being sufficiently flawless and well adjusted, so I think you're safe. We're not even on speaking terms right now."

"Have you ever been on medication?" he asked, forcing levity in his voice. "Like, serious medication?"

"You mean antidepressants and all that?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"No. Can't say that I have. What, did you suffer from side effects?"

"It's more complicated than that," Tate shrugged.

"Then explain," she persisted. "I'm not stupid. I can catch on."

"The thing is," he sighed, searching for words that wouldn't turn her off completely, "When I'm on them, I'm not myself. I'm something close, but nothing touches me the way it should and everything is sort of dulled and edulcorated. When I'm not on them, things are okay for a while, until they blow up in my face with no forewarning and suddenly, everything is amped up 300 percents. Good things, bad things, it becomes really hard to tell the difference. And then there's a shit-ton of physical side effects you don't wanna know about. Basically, I'm screwed. Sometimes, I just get really fed up with having to deal with all that crap when the rest of the world doesn't have to."

"I'm sorry," she said, contrite. "It must really suck."

"Hey, don't pity me okay?" he said with a frown. "If there's one thing I can't fucking stand-"

"I don't pity you," she promised. "I'm just glad I know you."

***

Violet touched her knee to his, the same innocuous touch they'd shared earlier, because whatever it was the two of them were about, she was fairly certain it wasn't hand-holding and heartfelt hugs. Regardless, she felt compelled to establish some kind of physical connection between them, to ascertain that she felt closer to him after his admission rather than put off.

In her somber hours, she'd often wondered why depressed people were deemed abnormal instead of the other way around, when everything looked so bleak and hopeless the moment you gave up on forcing a cheerful spin on things. What if they were all delusional and he was the one to get it right?

She turned to face his questioning stare, his eyes dark and shining brightly, and made an instant decision to throw all caution to the wind, if only for today. She edged closer to him slowly, deliberately, unsure her impulse would be reciprocated until the moment Tate came to meet her in the middle, his lips brushing feather-light against hers. Her heart was pounding, she noted, surprise at her own immediate alertness.

"Is this okay?" he asked against her mouth. "You don't have to say 'yes'."

At a loss for a witty retort, she leaned further against him, her arm hooking tentatively around his shoulder, her hand resting at the nape of his neck. His tongue flicked over her lower lip until she opened to him, searching, teasing, finding a rhythm that made her ache and crave at the same time

She'd kissed boys before, three of them to be precise: one in the sixth grade, to find out what it was like, another two years later on a dare, and then there was the time her friend Matt had swooped down on her, a little desperately, shortly after she'd informed him she would be moving permanently to California at the end of the school year.

None of those kisses had been particularly wanted or successful, and Violet wasn't prepared for the experience of kissing someone she found genuinely appealing. She was caught unaware by the wave of pleasure and lust, the heat growing between her thighs, that irrepressible urge for more, more, more, the kind that made people act stupid and reckless.

Parting from him with one last airy kiss, she sat up straight, a little out of breath, and waited for the frantic hammering in her chest to subside.

"I probably should go home," she said gently, to which he nodded soberly.

The awkwardness burnt between them all the way back home. Violet debated reaching for his hand but finally decided against it, fearing to appear infatuated or needy. Their conversation was scarce and casual until they parted ways with nods and shy smiles, neither of them inclined to give too much away.

It wasn't until she was alone in her room that she allowed herself to grin like an idiot and bask in the afterglow of her first proper kiss. Just then, she caught the sound of an unidentified buzz coming from the outer pocket of her school bag. Reaching inside, she found a fanciless prepaid phone she'd never seen before, informing her she'd received a text message from a number she didn't recognize. It read: 'Had a nice time. We should do it again sometime.'