Patrick found Chad later in the downstairs bathroom, viciously digging out the grout that lined the back of the sink. He was going to ask about dinner as it was getting dark. Usually Chad had started something by then. Not that any of the ghosts needed to eat, but the evening meal was a routine the Warwicks and Tate had been practicing for years. Each had their personal reasons for wanting to keep doing it. If nothing else, it was a way to pass time and something to do.
The jock forestalled asking about dinner, though, when he took in how riled up the other man was. While Chad often got upset over the various things that kept breaking around the house, he wasn't typically quite so aggressive. Pat thought about asking him what was wrong but he opted for the shorter conversation.
"What did he do this time?"
Chad didn't like being so easy to read but he wanted to complain, so he didn't waste time pretending like Patrick was barking up the wrong tree. "Do you know what that little psycho told me? He said he killed us because he liked us!"
"Wait," Pat said. "He what?"
"He said he killed us because liked us," Chad repeated and gave the grout another vicious poke. Then he got a reflective look. "Well, he was also mad at you for cheating."
Patrick frowned at the editorial. "He said that?"
"Mm-hmm," responded Chad and went back to attacking the grout. "That's why you got the chimney sweep treatment and I just got a bullet to the heart. But he killed us because he didn't want us to leave—the house or each other."
The bigger man folded his arms. "He told me he didn't know we'd get stuck here."
"Me too!" Chad fumed and tossed the screwdriver aside that he'd been mutilating the grout with. The powdered white stuff was all over his shirt now and wouldn't brush off. He glowered up at Patrick. "At first. Then I overheard him today telling your Satanist boyfriend about how he killed us, and that little shit said he didn't want us to leave."
Pat's jaw set when Chad referenced Father Jeremiah in such a way. He had to bite back on the urge to argue about his relationship with the priest, which was virtually nil. It wasn't worth getting distracted over. "Tate says a lot of shit. I wouldn't put faith in anything he said."
Chad harumphed. "You weren't there when I gave him the third degree! I believe him." He dusted his hands off, expression sour. "That little maniac ruined our lives because we were going to cancel his favorite reruns of the Chad and Patrick Show. Do you know he used to watch us? All. The. Time."
The matter did bother Patrick but not the same way Chad was letting it get to him. He pulled a little shrug. "You spy on people all the time too. What else is there to do aside from fix things?" He nodded to the mess Chad had created on the counter. "What are you even doing?"
Chad looked down at the mess too. "The grout was cracked. It needs replacing."
"It definitely does now." Pat shifted his attention away from the bathroom's sore spot and looked at the shorter man. "Are you going to make dinner?"
"I suppose," Chad sighed. "I can finish this later. I'm not speaking to that little shit, though. You can tell him that."
Pat looked pained. "I am not going to play messenger for you. What are we, in high school?"
"Prom King and Queen," said Chad sarcastically. "With our own personal school shooter." He paused, suddenly struck by his own words. "Huh. He shot us, just like he did the kids at Westfield."
Patrick lost some of his agitation and looked at the other man quizzically.
Chad saw the look and shook his head. "I just... Well. You know, he's technically the same age as us. If life had been any different, we both could have been at Westfield that day." He got a funny look then. "We got to live a few years longer than those kids, but the end was the same. Just... hit me as weird." He gave his arms a rub to ward off a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"You saying it was our destiny to be shot by Tate?" Pat huffed a laugh that fell short on humor. There were strange forces at play in Murder House. Anything was possible.
"I don't believe in destiny," said Chad flatly. "If there was such thing as destiny, mine would not be found in a house I can never fix or clean properly."
...
2023
"I don't want to trick-or-treat this year," Michael insisted.
It wasn't what Tate, still posing as a child, wanted to hear. The other boy was taller than him now, being nearly eleven. It had occurred to Tate to age over time, but after outing himself to Michael's guardian, he realized he couldn't grow without eventually outing himself to Michael as well when he caught up to his teen years. It was a wrinkle he hadn't considered when he first started interacting with the other boy. But none of the other child ghosts in the house aged, so it seemed normal to Michael that Ethan wouldn't either.
At the moment they were in Ethan's bedroom, on the rug near the book shelf. Michael was trying to assemble an ancient car racing set. It was a strange thing that belonged to Hugo Langdon and only shared with his son a couple of times in life. Tate didn't remember how it worked but he remembered crashing the cars a few times. He'd brought it down to entice the other boy into playing with him while they discussed Halloween plans.
"Why not?" he pressed.
Michael shrugged. "I just don't feel like it. That's baby stuff. Besides, it's stupid to drive an hour just to find someplace to walk around and get candy. We can get candy from the store. Or from Amazon. They still ship here."
"It's not about the candy!" Tate objected. He picked up one of the cars and ran his finger over the wheels. "God. You're so stupid sometimes."
Michael was crouched down with his face close to the floor, eyeing the track to make sure it was connected flat. He sent the other boy a dirty look. "You're a real dick sometimes."
That made Tate's brows dance as he worked out how to react to that. He sort of thought it was funny, Michael swearing at him, but it also kind of made him mad. "You're the douche who doesn't want to go out on Halloween. It's Halloween!"
Michael knelt up and glared at him. He knew what a douche was. Mama Constance kept those under the sink and they had very vivid instructions with interesting pictures. "You're so gross," he accused. "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Oh. That's right. You can't. You don't have a mother."
Tate blinked at him, blindsided by the insult. Their spats in the past had been mostly physical or yelling nonsense. Being truly insulted by the other boy was new. He didn't like it at all. He did have a mother. Just not one Michael knew about.
"Fuck you," he said and kicked the track Michael had been working on. "Neither do you!"
The pieces broke apart and scattered. Michael suffered a moment of indignant outrage and thought about stabbing Ethan with the nearby controller. It would serve him right, but Michael knew he'd just heal the damage and tattle. He knew a better way to punish the other boy. He got up and, kicking a piece of the track out of the way, he headed for the door.
Tate watched him go, torn. He didn't want Michael to leave but he also didn't want to say sorry. Because he wasn't sorry.
"You're ruining Halloween!" he yelled after him, in tears.
Impulsively, he threw the toy car at Michael as he left. It missed and it clattered across the wood floor in the hall. A few moments later, Tate heard his footsteps pounding down the stairs, then the front door slammed.
—
"What happened?" Patrick asked from the doorway.
He had heard the yelling and came to investigate. After so many years, he could read the boy's moods like litmus paper—from across the house, if the vibe was strong enough. The current vibe was seismic.
"Michael's being a dick," Tate said miserably. He scrubbed the tears from his cheeks with the back of his arm. "He's not going to go trick-or-treating this year."
Pat folded his arms and had to check his initial reaction. The situation didn't seem that dramatic to him but he didn't want to set off the volcano he could sense, so he proceeded carefully. "Why?"
Tate shrugged and started picking up the race car track. "Because he's a dick."
After a bit, the jock came over and crouched down to help him clean up. "He didn't say why?"
There was a noticeable hesitation before the boy responded. "He said it's baby stuff."
Suddenly everything made sense. "Ahh. Yeah, I guess he is getting a bit old for that. He's going to be a teen soon." He smiled and wound up the cord of one of the controllers. "My friends and I got the message we were too old when folks started handing us toothbrushes and dirty looks."
"I was going to be Quicksilver," Tate said morosely.
"You can still dress up," Pat pointed out. "But I think you and bodysuits should stay far apart."
"Not the Avengers version," Tate said, wrinkling his nose. He put the stacked pieces of track in the old box. "Doesn't matter. There's no point getting dressed up if there's no trick-or-treat."
Patrick put the controller away and started winding the other one up. "If you really want to get dressed up for Halloween, I'll take you someplace."
"Where?"
"It'll be a surprise," said Pat. He put the controller in the box.
Tate looked a little dubious but he shrugged and closed the lid on the car set. "Okay." He was already pretty sure he'd rather be trick-or-treating.
—
Constance was in the garden, tending to the abundance of flowers she had planted back there. She loved flowers. It was hard to have a negative thought when she was surrounded by such beauty. Unfortunately, her little escape was intruded on by Michael and the bad mood he brought with him.
"Who's my mother?" he demanded, without preamble.
Constance knelt back on her heels and peered up at him past the brim of her wide sunhat. "Now what makes you ask that all of a sudden?"
"I want to know," Michael said simply. His expression was stormy. "Who is she? Where is she? Why have I never met her?"
The woman was torn between feeding him the same lie she'd told others about a family friend and a fatal car crash but Michael was too clever for such nonsense. He would need to know sooner or later what his roots were. She sighed and tugged off her gardening gloves, then tossed them aside. She primly dusted her fingers off where they'd touched the dirty things then she got to her feet.
"Let's go inside," she suggested. "I think we need some lemonade for this conversation."
—
Michael's lemonade had ice, a sprig of mint, and a straw. Constance's had three shots of rum. She settled at the breakfast nook with him, keenly aware of the way he was staring at her. Sometimes, she felt, he was too smart for anyone's good.
"Your mother," she sighed. She lit a cigarette. "Your mother's next door."
Michael gave her a puzzled frown but he quickly figured out what she meant. "Which one is she?"
He gripped his glass with both hands, suddenly excited and nervous at once. He had thought about his mother before but the idea that she might have been right beside him this whole time was a dwarfing concept. It opened the floor for so many more questions, not the least of which was why she hadn't revealed herself to him.
"Her name is Vivien," Constance said, watching him closely. When nothing seemed to register, she added: "Vivien Harmon."
"Harmon?" Michael asked, even more confused. He knew Tate's doctor, Ben, and he had met Violet a couple of times but he had never heard of Vivien. "Is Doctor Harmon my dad?"
Constance laughed. "Oh, no. You've nothin' to do with him. No. Your mother," she said, artfully steering the conversation. "Was his wife in life. I don't know what they are to each other now, if anything." She dusted her hands off like she had in the garden, trying to brush away the memory of that tortured marriage. "Your mother got pregnant with you while she was livin' in that house. You were... A divine blessing. You see, your mother was already with child when you... made your way into this world."
Michael made a funny face. "She was already pregnant?"
Constance tapped her cigarette in the ashtray. "She was. Your birth, unfortunately, did them both in, I'm afraid." She crushed the cigarette butt out and sighed again, bracing herself.
The boy stewed on that information for a while. "Is that why you didn't tell me? You didn't want me to be sad because I killed them?"
"Oh, sweetheart!" Constance exclaimed and reached for his hand. "You didn't do that on purpose. Nobody thinks that."
He hadn't thought that before but now he couldn't help wondering if anyone did. "Does she?"
Constance hesitated. "Well. I'm... I'm not sure."
Michael sank in his seat, eyes on his lemonade glass. Beads of moisture were starting to form on the outside. "I want to see her."
"I have a friend... A medium," Constance said. "She might be able to help you reach her." They both knew ghosts could only be seen by those that wanted to be seen.
"Can you ask her?" Michael said, daring to hope.
If he knew his mother, maybe his world would make more sense.
...
A month later
It had been years since Billie Dean was inside Murder House and yet everything was exactly the same. The way the furniture looked, the way the place smelled. It was frozen in time.
Constance accompanied her to the kitchen, alert for signs of her youngest. He wasn't fond of the medium and she didn't want him causing trouble. She lit a cigarette and exhaled a trail of smoke as she entered the prep area. Even at a glance she could tell Moira wasn't doing her job. The kitchen looked the way the gays favored it, which irritated the woman. She'd worked hard to restore the room when she'd lived there. Then they came along and crapped a contemporary veneer over everything. It was like looking at a masterpiece that was colored over by a child.
"Well," she said as she settled on a stool at the island. "Why don't you call her?"
Billie Dean leaned on the island corner near Constance and folded her hands. Her manicure matched the dark red dress she wore. "Mrs. Harmon?" she said, a tremble in her voice. Her emotions were running on high, fueled by the bizarre feeling of the neighborhood. It was like being in the spirit world. "Vivien?"
After a few moments the room brightened perceptibly, like the sun had magnified. Vivien appeared in the doorway to the dining room, dressed in a comfortable plush cream-colored track suit. Her hair was pulled back in a sporty ponytail.
"Can I help you?" she asked, looking from the medium to her neighbor and back again. It was on the tip of her tongue to say something about ringing the bell but Constance never bothered with such social norms when she was alive; she was even pushier dead.
Billie Dean smiled politely. "Hello. I don't know if you remember me but..."
"Yes. I remember you," Vivien nodded. "Is there something I can help you with?"
The woman cleared her throat and looked at her hands. She adjusted the sapphire ring she wore then she smiled at the ghost again. "Actually, yes. I, ah. I'm here because there's someone who would like to speak with you. Someone living."
Vivien's brows drew together and she came all the way into the kitchen. "Oh? Who?"
Billie Dean kept her fingers laced when her hands tried to fidget more. "Michael. Your son."
Vivien's lips thinned. "My son." She nodded but it was an idiosyncrasy that had nothing to do with her agreeing. She turned her attention to the woman with the blonde beehive hairdo. "You took him from this house while my husband's body was still warm and dangling from the rafters. Since then you've had him here several times and never once even bothered to introduce us. And now he's my son? Why? Because you can't lie to yourself about what he is anymore?"
Constance wet her cigarette under the faucet since there wasn't an ashtray available then she dropped the butt in the trash. "You could have introduced yourself to him at any time."
"He wants to talk to you," Billie Dean interjected, trying to forestall a fight.
Vivien folded her arms under her breasts. "I've learned a lot about him. That priest that lives with you. Father Jeremiah? He told me what Michael is. Why he is. Do you know what it's like, being told you're the mother of the devil?"
Constance held up a stiff hand and smiled a persecuted smile. "Sister, you are preachin' to the choir! At least yours came with a warning label at birth. I had to find out about mine the hard way!"
Vivien shifted her weight, not wanting to have something like that in common with Constance, but the root was the same. "Whatever Michael is... he's not my son. He killed my son. I don't want to have anything to do with him. I've lost too much already."
Billie Dean looked down at her hands. She didn't have it in her to beg the woman. She didn't even want to be there herself, pitching the unholy boy's case. It was Constance she was trying to appease and the favor was putting a strain on their friendship as it was.
When the medium said nothing, Constance frowned and got up from the stool. "Well, I can see we've wasted our time," she said tightly. "We'll see ourselves out. Poor Michael's going to be heartbroken when he finds out his mama doesn't want to see him."
Vivien's jaw tightened. "While you're telling him that," she said. "Why don't you tell him about how you stole him from his parents in the first place!"
Constance paused and sent a superior half-smile over her shoulder at her. "Oh, so now you're his parent. Huh. Sure wish you'd make up your mind."
She and Billie Dean stepped out the back door then, leaving Vivien alone with her jangled feelings.
...
Author's Note:
So I thought Chad was done bitching last chapter but apparently he had a little left in him so it got wedged there at the top of chapter I was planning to write. I swear, writing this fic is like holding a video camera. I can usually aim it at what I want to film, but every now and then, a pushy character just grabs the lens and camera bombs like mad.
So if you're a geek like me, you know Evan Peters plays Tate and also played Quicksilver in X-men: Apocalypse.
As a side note, Taissa Farmiga, who plays Violet in AHS, is sister to Vera Farmiga, who plays Mrs. Bates in Bates Motel. Tate was partially inspired by Norman Bates. What a weird tangle of coincidences.
Next chapter we'll finally get to Halloween.