Who: Violet, Tate What: Visiting Violet, talking about messed up dreams and thanksgiving plans. When: After this PM. Where: Vi's house/room Rating: PG13 for language Status: Complete!
After receiving Violet’s private message, Tate had snuck out of his house and made his way to Violet’s. The entire way over there, his thoughts were dark and heavy, with memories of his own dreams. What was weird as hell, was that he seemed to be dreaming the same stuff as Vi was, only his memories seemed to be like through some numb veil he was seeing through...where only Violet’s face seemed to shine through and matter the most. Especially when shit went down and some home invaders were trying to kill her and her mom.
Oh hells to the no. That shit was not happening on his watch, even in his sleep.
Sneaking into the yard after making sure the coast was clear, Tate went to her window and lightly tapped on it, so she knew to let him in.
Grinning, Violet went to the window and opened it, pulling him in and kissing him. Her dreams had mostly been boring until recently. Then she’d dreamed that Tate had been her dream-father’s patient, that he had saved her from weird people who came inside her dream-family’s haunted house and tried to kill her dream mother and herself.
She burrowed into his chest as soon as she could, cuddling close. “That dream sucked,” she murmured, clinging tightly.
Tipping his face down so he could hide it in her hair, Tate hugged onto her with a fierce protectiveness. In his own way, in those dreams, he was confident that he knew what to do and how to stop them before they hurt Violet. But the hows and whys still seemed cloudy, muddled, and murky. He hadn't felt scared for himself, either, only for her. It was like he knew full well that nothing could hurt him now, and his focus had been pinpointed on stopping them at all costs.
"Sucked, hardcore," he said, softly, before he began kissing the top of her head over and over again. Between kisses, he murmured, "I dunno what happened but you were there and there was this big, nice house, and...you were in trouble. You and your mom, and I knew how to make some fucked up shit happen. I tried to chop some bitch in half. Well, almost in half."
It still probably counted, because it probably felt like that on the receiving end. The axe went in, deep. He'd do it a million times over, no matter if he was asleep or awake, if it meant that Violet would be safe.
“Is that how you did it? You wouldn’t tell me, you just told me to run.” She ran her fingers up and under his shirt, wanting to feel his skin to reassure herself that he was there, that he was real. “You’re a hero, you know.”
She’d enjoyed dreaming of tender little moments with Dream Tate, showing each other their scars. “You saved me.” On tiptoe her mouth found his and she could feel herself tearing up from the memory. She’d been terrified, but she’d fought back. She’d been clever about luring them into the basement. Because oh god, what was in that basement?
"I told you, I wouldn't let anything hurt you," he was saying, touching her face with his hands, then her neck, as if to reassure himself that she was real. Whereas Violet was clever, he'd been deadly and all too willing - strangely enough and deep down, he had also been inwardly thrilled - to knock off a few well-deserving people. "But I don't know how I did any of it. I just knew how to get rid of them, so I did it. I guess this means that all of that bullshit on the social network wasn't really...bullshit."
She ran her fingers over his cheekbones, smiling a little to himself. “I’m glad you did. I’m really glad you did.” She’d be happy to help him again if it meant living. The weak willed victim shit her mother kept playing in her dreams was getting old.
But - somehow - “Do you know what’s in the basement? What hurt that stuck-up bitch?”
A part of him wanted to tell the truth. The other part of him thought it was better to play dumb, because it's not like the infantata was downstairs or anything. And how, exactly, does one explain a sewn together dead baby? Other than saying it was fucked up and the whole thing was kinda fucked up, which was the obvious choice.
"Paper mache, old baby clothes from the attic, and some sharp knives," was what he heard himself saying, but it was more a denial than an outright lie. Things like that shouldn't exist. It was something darker than a ghost, more like it was something demonic. And it freaked him out every which way he tried to look at it, that he seemed to be working with it. "I'll make another one. We can scare that bulimic bitch with it, if she bothers you ever again."
“I doubt she will. She tried the other day, and I threatened to beat the shit out of her.” Violet wasn’t extraordinarily creative with threats, but she was pretty good at following through on them.
Somehow she knew that he wasn’t telling the truth. That thing in her dreams hadn’t been a baby. That thing had been alive. But still, she got the feeling it was Tate protecting her again, and she dismissed the weird feeling it gave her, the strange goosebumps going up and down her spine.
“You’re going to stay here, right?”
He considered it a little white lie. To keep her safe. Maybe even to keep himself safe, from dreams he wished he hadn't witnessed. He hated himself in them, but if there was one saving grace, it was that Violet was there, too. Wherever there was.
"Yeah, I'll stay." He slept a little better when she was by his side. There was also the fact that Tate didn't want anyone busting into Violet's house when he wasn't there with her. He wasn't sure he could talk any ghosts into helping him kill some home invaders, but he knew how to hurt them. Bad. ...maim them, worse. ...or kill them, entirely.
Whatever. That wasn’t a big deal to him, enough that it didn’t even phase him. Violet mattered, first and foremost, above all else.
Violet’s eyes lit up and she moved to lock the door, smiling and sitting down to pull her knees to her chest. “I’m sorry you have to have these dreams at all. I don’t like mine either.” She looked at him. “But you’re there. At least there’s that, you know? And you don’t hate me there. Do you think maybe it’s like, an alternate reality or something?” She liked that they seemed meant to be together.
It was like it was meant to be, now, and that was one of those rare, few comforting things. Tate’s shoulders twitched upward and he made a face for a moment, like he wasn’t entirely sure what they were, other than they felt real. He believed they were real. And it seemed like, over there, he did every terrible thing that had ever popped into his mind, and he had never acted out on.
“I’m not going anywhere, not without you,” he promised, as he sat down, facing her. “I don’t know if what the dreams are, either...but maybe. They could be. You’re smart, Violet. What’re the other things it could be?”
She shook her head. “It’s not a mass hallucination or we’d all be having the same thing. It’s weird, it’s like certain people are connected. I’d say a past life if I believed in that shit. Maybe it’s a government thing? Subliminal messaging and we’re targeted specifically?” She truly thought they were just haunted.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re together. That’s what’s important.” She bit her lower lip leaning forward to kiss him, sighing contentedly.
Tate didn't think it was a subliminal message or the government. It was something freaky and supernatural. Or he thought so. But even if he was thinking that, Violet was right. They were together and that was the most important thing. It was also why he smiled at her, resting one hand against the side of her neck, and leaned forward until their lips met in a bruising kiss.
She returned the kiss as hard as he did, moving closer so she could sit on his lap. She wanted to be part of him, as close to him as possible. “I was so scared. I didn’t want to die, I’d miss you so much.” Violet’s eyes were rimmed with tears and she swallowed hard. “Are you as scared to go to sleep as I am?”
Tate rested his hands on her lower back, keeping her close against him and kissing her face, wherever it happened to land. If any tears fell, his tongue darted out over his lips to taste them, before he answered.
"We've got to sleep sometime. It's gonna happen if we nod off." He knew that, because he had already tried to stay awake, and had one of those dreams when he nodded off. No amount of FPS games could keep him awake constantly, because he reached that inevitable point where he nodded off after not being able to see straight, to shoot anything.
“It’s like the first Nightmare on Elm Street, what the fuck.” Violet was quiet, running her fingers through Tate’s hair. He was being sweet, and brave, and she appreciated that he was trying to hide his fear from her, but part of her was glad that he was. “So, what are your parents making you do for Thanksgiving?”
Inwardly, there was a lot of fear there. The fear of losing her. The fear that someone else would hurt her, and that he couldn't stop them. What if those three had succeeded? Sure, Violet would've been dead and they could be together forever, but he'd reached a point where he didn't want her to hurt anymore, or to hurt herself. He just wanted her to be happy.
So that made him afraid, too, that he might lose her. So he was going to have to do whatever it took, to make sure that didn't ever happen.
Tate's dark eyes were studying her face, like he was trying to etch the way she looked right now, into his memory. He blinked slowly, relaxed by her touch and the closeness, answering in a hushed voice, "I have to sit through some bullshit dinner, with relatives. Everyone has to look perfect and act perfect, which is also bullshit. And which I won't do, when I ask the old cocksucker to pass the fucking cranberry sauce. What about you?"
Tate liked her parents. Or he did in his dreams, at least. He liked Ben, who was going to help him sort through all the mess in his head, even if he didn't want him and Violet to see each other anymore. He was just protecting Violet too, and there were always ways to get around him, to see Violet anyway. And he liked Vivian, enough to...well, he thought Vivian was okay enough, but they were having so many problems with each other, that Violet kind of got left in the dust, behind them. He at least hoped she was going to have something less shitty than his Thanksgiving was going to be.
Her eyes went wide. “You should come over here. My parents are going to do the same thing, but they won’t be yours so it won’t be as bad. And honestly, we’re mostly just quiet.” His family seemed to suffer aloud, but hers mostly just avoided each other and preferred silence.
She could see the worry in his face, heavy like a stone, but she didn’t want to ask what it was about. She knew it was about the dreams, but what could she do to help? In true Harmon fashion, she decided to ignore the issue since there was nothing that could be done anyway.
"I'll come over after I piss on her parade," he said. Tate was pretty sure that he wasn't going to sit around and get slapped at or cussed out, after Constance had a few too many drinks while 'cooking' and since he was going to anarchy up the holiday. "I'm all for stuffing face in silence."
Because it's not like he got that at HIS house or anything. Even so, he nodded a little and then leaned in enough to rest their foreheads together, closing his eyes.
"It'll be okay. I'm not going anywhere. All you have to do is call if I'm not here, and I'll show up. Anytime. I promise."
Violet laid her head on her pillow, smiling at him. “Do you think you’re a bad person, Tate? Sometimes I think you do. Because you’re not.” She thought he was the best person she’d ever known. Maybe a little impetuous, but his heart was always in the right place. She loved that about him, among a billion other little things.
"I don't know what I am," he said, taking the other pillow to rest his head upon and face her, all while gently moving some of her hair back with the slow sweep of one hand. "Sometimes I don't know what I'm thinking, and sometimes I don't feel anything at all about stuff. I just don't care. But that's not when I think of you and not ever when I'm around you. You make everything better and I love you. So if I had to do a lotta bad things, like lie, cheat, or kill for you? I'd do them."
Without hesitation.
“Me too.” She didn’t know how many of the bad things she’d do, but she’d do some of them. She already lied for him, and she didn’t even think about that anymore. “I’m scared of what these dreams mean. I don’t want to die and leave you alone, Tate.” She moved into his arms, wiping at her eyes. “I hate this. I just want to be eighteen and live with you and be away from my stupid fucking parents.”
Sometimes she swore that Tate was the only thing she didn’t hate.
He already knew that he would go to the ends of the earth and murder everyone on his way there and back again, for Violet. That is how dead serious he was about he felt for her.
"You don't have to worry about dying. I won't let that happen, either." He put both arms around her, staring past her and keeping his voice softened, but reassuring, "We'll get out of here. You won't be ignored or anything. I'd never do that to you."
She could feel her body relaxing, feel everything slowly easing. It was like her whole body was a taut string that could only relax around Tate. “I know. I know you wouldn’t.” She trust him more than anyone in the whole world, and just the idea of one of them losing the other - it would be like losing a lung. Losing an eye.
Or having someone stab into his sternum until it split and then pulling his heart out. Or being gutted. Which, Tate had read, is a pretty shitty way to die, with guts spilling out all over the place. He wouldn't know, but he imagined it was terrible and probably a really weird feeling tripping over one's own intestines and slipping and sliding through all the blood.
That was what Tate was thinking, even though he was relaxed. It wasn't like he didn't think of stuff like that all the time, and it never freaked him out. What did, was that he might act out on it, and he didn't want to do that now. Because he'd lose Violet and that, to him, was a fate worse than death.
"You go to sleep and I'll watch you," he gently told her. "If you start looking like you're having a bad dream, then I'll wake you up."
“We can sleep in shifts,” Violet yawned. She stood up to strip, climbing nude into the bed to lay in Tate’s arms. “I’ll do the same thing for you, promise, just tell me when you want your turn.” She really was a fan of the Nightmare franchise, yet somehow living through it was weirder than she thought.
She wasn’t scared of some of the more boring dreams and hoped those would be the ones she had. The ones where her dream dad was an asshole and her dream mother was spineless. Those would be welcome. No more demon babies, no more Tate with bloody fingertips. No more of that would be nice.