"Welcome back to The Tate Brothers! A lot can happen in a week. Alex and Brad have settled into what you might call a routine. They're polite. They're civil. They even have conversations that don't end in someone storming off. By Tate standards, this is basically a miracle. They're helping each other. Growing. Becoming better-"
"Brad!" Alex's voice echoed from the bathroom, sharp and irritated. "Get in here!"
Brad found Alex standing at the sink, toothbrush in one hand, pointing at the counter with the other.
"Look at this," Alex said through toothpaste foam. "Just look at it."
Brad looked. Beard trimmings scattered across the white porcelain like evidence of a crime he'd committed and forgotten about.
This was the fifth day in a row. Maybe sixth. Brad had gotten obsessive about his grooming routine-which was good, better than the unwashed disaster he'd been before-but apparently cleaning up after himself hadn't been part of the upgrade package. Alex had been fine letting things go, but his new relaxed attitude only went so far.
"You have GOT to stop leaving beard trimmings all over the bathroom sink every single day!"
"So clean them up if it bothers you!" Brad's voice came from his bedroom, muffled and unapologetic.
"It's YOUR mess!"
"It's not that bad. Want to know what is bad? The shower drain is clogged with your body hair again. Have you ever heard of manscaping?"
"What the hell is manscaping?"
"Exactly my point. You're like a Wookiee. A Wookiee who doesn't understand basic grooming."
They glared at each other. Alex spat toothpaste into the sink-right on top of the beard trimmings-and Brad retreated to finish getting ready for his second workout of the day. Both of them fuming over the other's failures.
The next morning, Brad went through his grooming routine-the routine that had become almost ritualistic in its precision. Shower, shampoo, condition, rinse, body wash, face wash, rinse, dry, moisturize, deodorant, cologne. He examined his face in the mirror and picked up his electric trimmer.
But as he looked at his reflection, he made a decision. He'd had the beard for so long. Why not shave it all off. Go smooth. Alex wouldn't complain about beard trimmings anymore.
He switched to a razor and carefully removed every trace of facial hair, working in neat strokes. When he finished and splashed cold water on his face, his skin felt smooth and perfect.
He ran his hand along his jaw, checking for spots he'd missed. Nothing. Perfectly smooth.
What Brad didn't notice-what he couldn't notice, because how could you notice something not happening-was that his facial hair had stopped growing. Completely. Permanently. The follicles had simply shut down, decided they were no longer needed, and gone dormant like some kind of biological retirement.
That evening, Alex stood in the shower thinking about his terrible day. The Anderson campaign was a disaster. The client wanted changes that made no sense. His boss was panicking. His coworker Derek had spent an hour trying to convince him that cryptocurrency mining using vintage computers was "the future" despite all evidence to the contrary.
He went through his routine-expensive shampoo, the kind Ramona had recommended. His new haircut was holding up. His new clothes fit properly. He'd even started getting compliments from coworkers again. It felt great.
After toweling off, Alex stood naked at the mirror and looked at himself.
"Manscaping?" he muttered. "Whatever Brad, I don't need manscaping."
And he was right. He looked at his chest, his arms, his legs-smooth. Completely hairless below his eyebrows. Nothing to manscape at all.
He didn't question it. Didn't wonder when it had happened or why. It just... was. He looked fine. Better than fine, actually. Clean. Streamlined.
Alex got dressed and went to bed, already thinking about tomorrow's client meeting, not giving his hairless body a second thought.
The doorbell rang at 6:47pm, right in the middle of Brad's latest blog post about whether Three's Company was secretly about the housing crisis.
Brad got up from the couch and opened the door. He was wearing fitted compression shorts in electric blue and a tank top that actually showed he'd been working out-the new athletic wear he'd been living in ever since Alex had complained that his baggy gym clothes were "threatening to fall off your skinny ass and nobody wants to see that wardrobe malfunction." Brad had found himself ordering them online later that day without really thinking about it, and now they were all he wanted to wear.
Alex's coworker Derek stood at the door with his laptop bag and an expression that suggested he'd either discovered the meaning of life or was about to pitch an investment opportunity that would definitely not end well.
"Hey, is Alex home?"
Brad grinned. "Ah, the Wacky Coworker arrives. Right on schedule. Let me guess-some kind of scheme. Technology-based. Questionable legality. Definitely involving something that had its moment in the nineties."
Derek tried to look offended but his face was too honest. "Well, actually, I've been looking into authentication systems for collectibles using distributed ledgers-specifically vintage Beanie Babies as a proof of concept-"
Brad rolled his eyes. "There it is."
"No, seriously, hear me out-" Derek started his pitch right on the doorstep, hands gesturing wildly.
Brad waved him off. "Alex just got out of the shower. Have fun with your Beanie Baby Blockchain."
"That's not-actually, that's genius branding."
Brad walked back toward his bedroom. As soon as his door closed, he turned up his music. Loud. The kind of aggressive death metal he'd been listening to since college-blast beats and guttural vocals and guitar riffs that sounded like murder.
In the living room, Derek winced at the sudden wall of sound. Alex emerged from the hallway in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around his head like a turban.
But what Derek noticed first was how Alex moved. He glided across the living room and settled onto the couch with fluidity, adjusting his towel-turban without a single awkward movement. It was strange. Derek couldn't quite put his finger on why, but Alex seemed different.
Alex was different. Three days ago, he had rushed through this same room, catastrophically late for a meeting with the Anderson account. Briefcase in one hand, coffee in the other, and mind already at the office, running through the presentation he'd stayed up until 2am perfecting. In his rush, he'd crashed shin-first into the coffee table. With a one-in-a-million shot that happened only on TV, Alex's coffee had arced through the air and doused Brad's laptop. Brad had screamed about Alex being clumsy, always knocking into things. Alex had fired back about Brad's baggy gym clothes threatening a wardrobe malfunction.
Now, Alex moved like a dancer. And Brad was dressed in compression wear that left nothing to the imagination.
"Derek," Alex said. "What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to pitch you on something." Derek set his laptop on the coffee table and started pulling up spreadsheets. "Okay, so authentication and provenance in the collectibles market-"
He stopped mid-sentence as the music from Brad's room suddenly increased in volume. The bass thrummed through the walls. The vocals sounded like someone torturing a demon who deserved it.
"How do you live with that?" Derek asked, raising his voice.
Alex settled deeper into the couch. "What? Can't hear you over Brad's music!"
"How do you LIVE with that? Seriously, how are you not insane?"
Derek had a point. The music was oppressive, a wall of sound that made concentration impossible. Alex had been tolerating it for weeks now, telling himself it was fine, Brad could listen to whatever he wanted, they were both adults who respected each other's space.
But suddenly-with Derek here, asking the obvious question, forcing Alex to actually acknowledge how completely insane this was-he couldn't take it anymore.
"Your awful death metal is the worst!" Alex yelled as he stormed toward Brad's room, loud enough to be heard over the auditory assault. "Turn it down!"
The music decreased by approximately half a decibel. Brad's voice came from behind his door: "I was about to take a shower anyway!"
A moment later, Brad's door opened and he headed for the bathroom, shooting Alex a look that clearly communicated you're ruining my creative process as he passed.
Brad turned on the shower and immediately swore loud enough for both Alex and Derek to hear down the hallway.
"Dammit, Alex!" Brad's voice echoed from the bathroom. "You used up all the hot water! Stop taking such long showers!"
In the living room, Derek pretended not to sense the tension and launched into his full Beanie Baby pitch. Something about why this was definitely going to work despite the fact that his last three schemes had ended with the phrase "well, at least I learned something."
Alex tried to listen. He really did. But he kept thinking about Brad's complaint. "Stop taking such long showers." Like it was Alex's fault the hot water heater in this house was from 1983 and had the capacity of a teacup.
Derek was still talking. Alex nodded along, not really listening, thinking about hot water and shower schedules and why everything in this house felt like a fight waiting to happen.
The next morning, Brad woke at 6am sharp, his body clock now more reliable than any alarm. He got up, put on his running shoes, and grabbed his phone to queue up his running playlist.
He scrolled to his usual options-the death metal, the hardcore, the aggressive stuff that made his legs want to move.
But his finger kept scrolling. Past his saved playlists. Past his recently played. Past everything he'd been listening to for twenty years.
His finger stopped on something called "Today's Top Pop Hits."
He didn't remember adding this. He didn't listen to pop music. Pop music was for shopping malls and teenagers and people who didn't understand that music was supposed to mean something.
But his thumb hovered over it. And then, without quite deciding to, he clicked it.
Upbeat, bubbly pop music started playing through his earbuds. A woman's voice sang about love and summer over synthesizers and programmed drums. The kind of music Hannah used to listen to while cooking, that he'd made fun of until she threw a dish towel at his head.
Brad froze.
He'd hated this music yesterday. He'd hated it his entire adult life. He'd actively avoided stores that played it.
But now it sounded... good?
He tried to change it back. Opened his death metal playlist-hundreds of songs, thousands of hours. Clicked play.
The blast beats and screaming sounded wrong. Harsh. Grating. Like someone scraping metal against his eardrums on purpose. He grimaced and switched back to the pop music.
The cheerful melody resumed. It sounded perfect.
Brad stared at his phone. "What the fuck."
He went for his run anyway. The pop music played the whole time. He felt like the beats were carrying him along on his run. By the time he got home, he'd given up trying to fight it.
Brad arrived home sweating and confused, heading straight for the bathroom to shower. The door was locked.
"Alex? You in there?"
"Just-give me a few minutes!"
Brad checked his watch. He needed to get cleaned up. He smelled. "How long have you been in there?"
"I don't know, like... half an hour?"
Brad pressed his ear to the door. He could hear water splashing. Not the shower. And was that music? Soft music? And did he smell lavender?
"Are you taking a bath?"
A pause. "So what if I am?"
Brad blinked. Alex didn't take baths. Like any self-respecting adult man, Alex took showers.
"Just... how much longer?"
"I don't know. A while."
Brad went to the half-bath near the kitchen, splashed some water on his face, and tried not to think about how his brother was apparently spending his mornings in bubble baths while Brad's brain was being hijacked by Taylor Swift.
An hour later, the bathroom door opened and Alex emerged in a cloud of lavender-scented steam that made the living room smell like a spa. He was wearing that nice bathrobe and had the dazed, peaceful expression of someone who'd just spent two hours doing absolutely nothing productive.
Alex looked confused but happy. Like he couldn't quite figure out why he'd spent so much time in a bubble bath with scented candles and essential oils, but also didn't regret it.
"I'm listening to pop music," Brad said without preamble.
Alex blinked at him. "Okay?"
"I hate pop music. I've always hated pop music. I've made fun of people who listen to pop music. I wrote a blog post about how pop music represents the death of meaningful art."
"So turn it off."
"I can't." Brad held up his phone like it was evidence in a trial. "Everything else sounds wrong. Literally painful to listen to. My brain won't let me change it back."
Alex gracefully sat down on the other end of the couch, still damp and smelling like a Bath & Body Works had exploded. "What are you talking about?"
"And since when do you take bubble baths? With lavender? For two hours?"
They looked at each other across the couch.
Brad felt something click in his mind-a pattern he'd been seeing but refusing to acknowledge. But the pop music had pushed him over some kind of edge. This wasn't normal. This wasn't two roommates gradually influencing each other. This wasn't them "getting along better."
This was something else.
"This is like... okay, in sitcoms, there's always an episode where weird things happen because of some magical object. A lamp, a painting, a mysterious ghost. And the characters don't realize it at first because the changes are gradual, but then-"
"Brad, real life doesn't work like sitcoms."
"But look at us! Every time we complain about each other, we change! Don't you see the pattern?"
"That's not how reality works. That's not how anything works."
"Then explain the pop music!" Brad stood up, started pacing, his journalist brain finally kicking in after weeks of dormancy. "Explain your bath! Explain why I'm going to the gym twice a day when three weeks ago I couldn't walk to the mailbox without getting winded! Explain why you're taking days off work when you used to answer emails at 2am!"
Alex opened his mouth, then closed it. He sat there in his expensive bathrobe he didn't remember buying, smelling like lavender, unable to explain why he'd just spent two hours in a bubble bath.
"Maybe we're just... listening to each other for once," Alex said, but his voice lacked conviction. "Maybe we're being good roommates. Good brothers."
"Since when are we good brothers? We bicker. We compete. We've been doing it since we were kids. And we don't suddenly both become completely different people because we're being nicer to each other. That's not how this works."
Brad kept pacing, his hands moving as he talked, falling into the pattern he used to use when he was working on a story. "Think about it. Really think. You said I sit around all day-I started going to the gym. I said you work too much-you took a personal day. You said my gym clothes were falling off-I bought fitted ones. I said your hair looked like shit-you got a professional haircut. Back and forth. Every single time. Every complaint leads to a change."
"That's coincidence. Correlation, not causation."
"You take bubble baths now, Alex. BUBBLE BATHS. You skip work. You're a completely different person than you were three weeks ago."
"Well-"
"And I'm an athlete now?" Brad continued, his voice rising. "I wear color-coordinated athleisure. I'm obsessed with protein powder and macros and whatever the hell a 'clean bulk' is. I'm not the same person either!"
They stared at each other across the living room. The pop music continued playing from Brad's phone. Something upbeat about summer and beaches and falling in love and everything being perfect forever.
The next morning, Brad sat at the kitchen table eating his precisely portioned breakfast: egg whites, turkey sausage, a protein shake mixed to exact specifications, a multivitamin.
He watched Alex make coffee, moving with that unconscious grace, navigating the kitchen like every movement was choreographed.
Alex raised his hand to his mouth and bit his thumbnail, gnawing at it absently while staring at the coffee maker. It was a habit he'd had since childhood. One their mother had tried unsuccessfully to break with rewards and punishments and gentle reminders that turned into yelling. His nails were always ragged, bitten down to the quick, sometimes bloody when he was stressed.
Brad had always hated it. Even as a kid, watching Alex destroy his nails had made his skin crawl.
But now, watching Alex chew his thumbnail while waiting for coffee that was taking too long to brew, Brad saw something else.
An opportunity. A test.
If his theory was right-if complaints actually caused changes in some impossible, inexplicable way-then he could prove it. Pick something specific, something measurable, something that couldn't be explained away as coincidence or self-improvement or personal growth.
"Biting your nails is disgusting," Brad said. His voice was calm. Deliberate. Each word carefully chosen like he was writing a headline. "You have to stop."
Alex pulled his hand away from his mouth. "Whatever." Alex grabbed his coffee, suddenly defensive, suddenly annoyed in a way that felt disproportionate. "Don't tell me what to do."
"I'm just saying it's disgusting. You're forty-two years old. Act like it."
Alex's jaw tightened. "Fuck off, Brad."
He took his coffee and headed to his room. The door closed with more force than necessary, rattling the macramé owl on the wall.
Brad sat at the table, his breakfast forgotten, waiting.
If he was right, something would happen.
If he was wrong, he was losing his mind.
Either way, he'd have an answer.
An hour later, Brad returned from his morning run-his new running shoes, his new route, his new life that still felt like someone else's. He was making his post-workout smoothie when Alex walked into the kitchen.
He was staring at his hands.
Brad turned around and felt his stomach drop.
Alex's fingernails were long. Not just long-perfectly shaped, professionally filed smooth, extending a quarter-inch past his fingertips. They looked manicured. They looked expensive. They looked like someone had spent an hour in a salon getting them exactly right.
And they were polished. Pink polish. Glossy and perfect, catching the kitchen light.
"Brad!" Alex's voice was high with panic. He held up his hands, fingers spread wide, like he was showing evidence at a crime scene. "What the fuck is this?"
Brad felt vindication and horror in equal measure. It had worked. The test had worked. His insane theory about magical complaints was correct.
"What did you do?" Alex demanded, his voice rising. "What the fuck did you do to me?"
"I complained about your nail-biting," Brad said quietly. "I did it on purpose. To test if-"
"You did this to me?!"
"Not me. The magic. Whatever the hell this is. Don't you see? Every complaint changes us."
Alex tried to bring his hand to his mouth-the old habit, the automatic response to stress, the thing he'd been doing since he was six years old. His hand moved halfway to his face, then stopped. Like it had hit an invisible wall. His muscles strained. His arm trembled with effort. But his hand wouldn't reach his mouth. His body simply wouldn't let him bite his nails anymore.
He tried again. Same result. The barrier held.
"This is insane," Alex whispered, staring at his pink-polished nails. "This is completely fucking insane. There's no such thing as magic. This doesn't happen. This can't happen."
"But it did." Brad gestured at Alex's hands. "Look at you. Look at us. This is real."
Alex sank into a chair, still staring at his hands. He flexed his fingers, watching the pink nails catch the light.
"What do we do?" Alex asked quietly, and for the first time since moving in-maybe for the first time since they were kids-he sounded genuinely scared.
Brad sank into a chair across from him, his journalist brain trying to work through the problem. "When did this start? The first change?"
"After Louise came over. I said something about you being a slob. You started exercising the next day."
They both looked at each other.
"Is Louise a witch?" Alex asked.
"What? No. She's just-" Brad stopped. "Wait. When did we sign that roommate agreement?"
"The day we moved in. Before all this happened."
Brad stood up. "We need to read it. Actually read it this time."
Alex got out his phone and opened the PDF. The same document they'd both signed without reading, scrolled through in thirty seconds, dismissed as boring legal garbage that didn't matter.
Now they read every word.
Page 1: Standard terms and conditions. Nothing unusual.
Page 5: Dispute resolution procedures. Mediation clauses. Arbitration options. All normal.
Page 12: Section 12-C. Buried in subsection D, paragraph 4, between clauses about noise complaints and trash disposal:
"Upon any remediation request between cohabitating parties, the parties agree to undergo sufficient corrective measures to optimize compatibility and interpersonal harmony through such modifications as necessary to achieve satisfactory cohabitation outcomes. Each party is allotted thirty (30) remediation requests. Upon completion of all allotted requests without achieving compatibility, the parties shall be considered in default and this Agreement shall terminate."
"Remediation request," Brad said. "That's a fancy way of saying complaints."
"Thirty complaints each."
"We've used eight already."
Silence. The macramé owl watched from the wall, judging them with its knotted eyes.
Sixteen complaints total. Sixteen changes. And they had twenty-two more each before-before what? The Agreement terminated? What did that mean? What happened when they hit thirty?
"At least it stops after thirty complaints," Alex said weakly, grasping at any positive interpretation.
"No." Brad's voice was firm. "We need to stop now. Before it gets worse."
"How much worse could it get? We're just... more polite versions of ourselves. Better groomed. Healthier. Is that really so bad?"
"You have pink nails, Alex. I listen to pop music I physically can't stop listening to. We're not 'better versions' of ourselves. We're being changed into something else."
Alex looked at his hands. At the pink polish that looked so natural he kept forgetting it was there. "We just don't complain anymore. That's it. That's the solution."
"You think we can live together for however long this takes and not complain about anything?"
"We have to try."
The truce was immediate, absolute, and doomed from the start.
No more complaining. No criticism, no fights, no comments about each other-nothing that could possibly be interpreted as a remediation request by whatever magical contract bullshit was running their lives now. They would avoid each other completely if necessary. They would communicate only when absolutely required, using the minimum number of words possible.
They would stop feeding the Agreement.
"We don't talk unless it's necessary," Brad said. "And even then, we keep it neutral. No observations about each other. No opinions. Nothing."
"Agreed."
They shook hands. Alex's grip was softer now, his long pink nails scratching slightly against Brad's palm.
Then they retreated to their separate rooms.
Brad lay on his bed, listening to pop music he didn't want to like but couldn't turn off. Alex sat at his desk trying to work, trying not to look at his manicured hands every thirty seconds, trying not to think about what would happen if they failed.
Hours passed. Neither complained. Neither spoke except to say "excuse me" when they passed in the hallway, or "your turn" when they needed the bathroom.
They made it through dinner without incident. Brad ate his meal-prepped chicken and rice in his room while watching Cheers with the volume low. Alex ordered Thai food and ate at his desk while working on the Anderson campaign that was somehow still not finished.
By 10pm, they'd made it fourteen hours without a single complaint.
It felt like victory. Like maybe they could actually do this. Like maybe they'd outsmarted whatever malevolent force was rewriting their lives one complaint at a time.
They were wrong, of course.
But for fourteen hours, they had hope.
At 11:47pm, Alex was on the phone with Derek, talking about Derek's latest idea-something about converting old arcade cabinets into premium coffee tables with working screens and selling them to nostalgic tech bros.
"I'm just saying," Derek was explaining, "if we source copies of the original ROMs from China-"
"I don't think that's legal, Derek."
"Everything's legal if you phrase it correctly in the terms of service."
"That's definitely not true."
Alex's voice carried through the walls the way it always had. Deep and resonant and impossible to escape in a house with thin walls and poor insulation. Every word vibrated through the structure like the house was amplifying it on purpose.
In the next room, Brad lay in bed trying to sleep. He'd been trying for over an hour. He had earplugs in, a pillow pressed over his head, but he could still hear every word. Every syllable traveled through the walls like they were made of paper and spite.
"I don't think that's a good investment, Derek."
Brad tried to focus on breathing. Tried counting backward from one hundred.
"But the legal hurdles-"
His jaw clenched. His hands balled into fists.
"Still no."
Brad pulled the pillow tighter over his head, his defenses worn down after fourteen hours of careful silence, his filter completely gone at midnight after a day of hypervigilance.
He muttered to himself, frustrated and half-asleep: "His voice is so deep it vibrates through the damn walls."
Quiet. Barely above a whisper. Said to himself, no one else.
It was a complaint. But surely it didn't count.
He could still hear Alex's voice from the next room. Suddenly, a pause.
Fifteen seconds of silence.
Then a scream pierced through the house: "BRAAAADDDD!!!!"
It was high-pitched and piercing, not a man's roar of anger but a girl's shriek of terror. The sound filled the house, echoed off the walls, made the macramé owl tremble on its hook.
Brad bolted upright in bed, his heart pounding. He ran to Alex's room and threw open the door without knocking.
Alex was standing in the middle of the room, phone on the floor where he'd dropped it, both hands clutching his throat like he was trying to strangle himself.
"What's wrong?"
Alex tried to speak, but what came out was a high, feminine voice: "What did you do? Did you complain about me?"
"I didn't mean to, I just thought-"
"You broke the truce!" Alex's new voice rose in pitch with his panic, making him sound like a terrified teenager, making every word come out breathy and wrong. "You broke it! You SAID we weren't going to complain anymore!"
"I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking, I was half-asleep, I-"
But Alex wasn't listening. He was furious. Panicking. And falling back into their lifelong pattern-the rivalry, the tit-for-tat, the one-upsmanship that had defined their relationship for forty years, that had survived two divorces and one death and moving into their dead parents' house.
If Brad was going to hurt him, even accidentally, then Alex was going to hurt him back.
It was automatic. Instinctive. Inevitable.
"Fine," Alex said, his feminine voice sharp with anger. "If that's how you want it, this means war!"
"No, wait, stop, think about what you're-"
"Your voice." Alex spoke each word deliberately, looking Brad straight in the eye, making absolutely sure he understood what was happening, what was about to happen, what couldn't be taken back. "Is. So. Annoying!"
Brad felt his throat tighten. The change was immediate and violent-his vocal cords shifting, rearranging, tightening like guitar strings being tuned up several octaves all at once. It felt like someone was pulling strings inside his throat, making everything higher and lighter and wrong.
He tried to speak: "Alex, nooo-"
[CUT TO BLACK]
Next time on Tits for Tates: In a very special episode, the Tate brothers learn the rules of their magical contract. But knowing the rules doesn't mean they'll follow them. Eight complaints down. Twenty-two to go. And sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Don't miss "Breast Intentions"-next week, same Tate time, same Tate channel!
[ROLL END CREDITS]