After marathoning the first three seasons in one weekend, I wanted to write some OZ fanfiction. This came out instead. My muse is fickle and hard to follow. As always, I think my tenses bounce around a bunch, despite my attempt to keep them in order.
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“This house does ugly things to everyone,” Vivien says. “And for those who were ugly already …” She has a gracious smile, kind and unbeguiling. Chad studies her over his tea, his eyes dark and his expression somewhat guarded. Their daughter isn’t anywhere near – she’s probably taking baby steps back towards Young Bundy – but Chad can hear Ben in the other room, catering to a crying infant.
How many months has it been since the Harmons died? He spends so much time alone now that it’s almost impossible to keep count of the minutes that float by. He’ll sit down with a glass of Merlot in spring and finish it in November. None of this is fair, he thinks, as Moira refreshes his tea, her hands milk-pale and deeply wrinkled. Every gesture she makes seems somehow sad or self-righteous, but he supposes he would act the same if his body had been buried outside, on the property, owned forever by the house and a deluge of murderous memories.
Sitting like this, he can almost feel Hayden’s eyes on him, but then it's typical to feel at least one pair of malignant eyes on you if you're even moderately happy. All of it starting with poor, sad Nora who just wanted some ornamental offspring and couldn’t learn to turn her face away from her husband’s work. It’s befitting, however, the way despair and rage provide more nutrition for this place than his apathy does.
It makes him wonder. Had the house drawn them all here, or did they all suffer a certain malignant compulsion once they entered it? There was a large amount of unusually miserable inhabitants currently residing within the floorboards, but Patrick and him had loved each other, once, when they had first moved in.
“Unless we didn’t.” Patrick says, and Chad turns, finding himself suddenly in the master bedroom. It is fitting.
Patrick is on the floor, sunning himself like a predator turned housecat. He had done this in life as well, and it was one of the first things that made Chad realize he was painfully in love with this man. It didn’t hurt that he had (and still does) look like an American version of Alexander Skarsgard. “No, I did.” He says, correcting himself, after a moment. “I thought I did.”
“Oh, well, of course. We could get all esoteric and philosophical about it -- ”
“Why do you have to do that?” Patrick asks, pulling himself up, body lean and graceful. It makes Chad’s cock ache.
“So, it was the house?”
“Does it matter?” Patrick says with a huff, and Chad can feel that tug – the sense that this is about to end, and he will be sent back to the ether – and he shakes his head quickly.
After Tate Langdon had been gunned down inside, the house had bounced between owners for years. The price was ridiculously low, and Chad had been ecstatic over the real estate listing. Patrick had been happy enough to go and see the house, but less than sold on the idea when, standing in the kitchen at the end of the tour, Chad told him they should buy it. He was already imagining wallpaper colors, restored, original fixtures, the Tiffany glass, staining the floorboards.
“Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure the agent wasn’t letting us into the basement because there are dead animals down there. It smells like it, anyway. And those paintings are seriously nightmarish.”
“They’re a little Dante via Bosch, but there’s so much opportunity for … something. It’s a perfect flip, not only for restorations, but it’s the Murder House. It’s a proper noun!”
“It’s a huge project.”
Chad kissed him then smiled. “You’ll get to use your hammer, smash some things.”
Two years later, Chad was mostly drowned in an apple bobbing station, had his neck sort of snapped, then spent his last moments grasping towards Patrick before he was shot. By a ghost. In a black rubber suit. That was originally bought to help his and Patrick’s diminishing sex life.
Does it mean something? Probably not, but Chad has plenty of time to ruminate.
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