Pete read it on a blog. Of course, he also read that the Virgin Mary lived in a piece of toast, so he was kind of taking the legend with a grain of salt. Still, a local Beauty and the Beast-type guy was interesting even if it was a total lie.

"That's stupid," Andy said one day.

"Because you totally have proof," Joe said, rolling his eyes.

"Matt -"

"Believes in way more shit than what actually exists," Pete said. "Invalid."

"Still, you really shouldn't walk your dog in the woods," Joe said. "Like, the Weather Channel says there's going to be a storm anyway."

"Fuck the Weather Channel," Pete said, and grabbed Hemmy's leash.

That was the first stupid thing he did. He'd follow it up with a lot of other things, but that one he'd remember with the kind of misty nostalgia that could only come from being on the other side of a series of incredibly unfortunate events.

||

He was kind of expecting the sidewalk to end where the woods began, because that was generally how sidewalks worked, but he kept walking and the sidewalk stayed in front of him, winding around the trees. Pete shrugged and followed it, tugging Hemmy's leash gently when he stopped and whined.

"You can't be listening to Andy too," he said. "Come on, boy."

Hemmy came - heh, came, Pete thought, and took a sharp turn farther into the woods.

He didn't notice the cloud cover until the first drop of rain fell. "Shit," he said. "I guess we can run, with the crazy fucking sidewalk."

Except that when he turned around, the sidewalk crumbled into plant-covered forest floor a few feet behind him.

His first instinct was to pull out his phone, but it was dead - of fucking course it was dead. "If Joe's right, I'm going to kill myself," Pete told Hemmy.

Hemmy sniffed his foot before walking away, tugging the leash. The last thing Pete wanted to do was keep following the fucking sidewalk, but it probably made more sense than going off into the woods.

So he followed the sidewalk.

"Motherfucker," he said a few minutes later when the sidewalk led them through a huge gate and to the front of the biggest house Pete had ever seen.

Hemmy sniffed at the mansion's front steps and whined a little. Not for the first time, Pete wished he was a dog; Hem seemed to have a way better idea of what was going on.

"What is it, boy?" he said quietly. Hemmy just barked, pulling on the leash until Pete went up the steps with him.

The door creaked open as they got closer; of course it did, Pete thought. That was how the legend went. He wondered if Joe or Andy was going to be Beauty. Joe, hopefully; Mixon would fuck him and the Beast up if it was Andy.

There was no table set for him, but he could hear the discordant plonks of a far-away piano. It took him a few tries, wandering into dead-end rooms filled with books and instruments, before he tracked the sound down a hallway and into a dimly-lit room.

"You can turn the lights on," he said, leaning against the doorframe. "Or, like, light a few candles. I know you're a fucking ugly monster, don't worry."

"Fuck you," the monster said.

Pete blinked. The guy's voice was weirdly smooth, nice-sounding - very definitely not the voice of a monster. "No thanks. I think."

"You think." He sounded nasty now, more like a monster was supposed to be; when he flicked the lights on, Pete recoiled in spite of himself.

"You're a fucking dinosaur."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"You can't play piano with those claws," Pete said.

The dinosaur snarled, leaping forward. Pete just barely dodged a blow from the claws. "Shit, hey," he said, "calm down. I can - fuck, I don't know." Dying wasn't in the story; but then, neither were dinosaurs. "I could play for you, I guess."

The dinosaur blinked at him. "You play?"

"Sure," Pete lied. "I'm not, like, Mozart. But I can play."

The dinosaur took a few steps back. "Let's hear it, then."

Shit, shit, shit. Pete took a deep breath and sat down at the bench, running his fingers over the keys. "Uh. What should I play?"

"Just pick something. And stop feeling the piano up."

Pete snatched his fingers away from the keys. "You should pick something."

The growl that emanated from the dinosaur was worse than the claws, almost. "Fucking play something."

And Pete, because he valued his life a little more than he'd admit to himself most days, plunked out the worst version of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' that he'd ever heard from himself or anyone else.

He half expected to get ripped to shreds before he even finished playing, but to his surprise, he finished the song and turned around to look at the dinosaur without so much as a bitten-off arm.

"Um," he said when the dinosaur just stared at him wordlessly. "So. What's your name?"

"That was the worst piano playing I've ever heard," the dinosaur said disbelievingly. "It was fucking epic, it was so bad."

"I'm going to call you lunchbox."

The dinosaur snorted. "Patrick."

"That's not much better," Pete said, then almost bit his own tongue off. "Um. I mean."

"You should just leave," Patrick said. "You were playing in C Major instead of D Minor and only hit two of every three notes. You're definitely not the kind of person I'm looking for."

Pete had wanted to leave before, but there was no way he was going to now. "Fuck off, I'm awesome."

He hadn't known velociraptors could cross their arms like that. "Oh, really? At what, exactly?"

He had to stop and think, which made him hate Patrick more than a little. "Fuck if I know. Something."

"Something," Patrick echoed. "Right, then."

Something about his voice - how smooth it was, maybe, the way it slid up when he sounded like he thought Pete was full of shit - took Pete by surprise. "Hey, sing for me."

"Did you miss the claws? The tail? I'm not going to sing for you, I'm going to fuck your shit up."

"Your arms are really short," Pete said after a few minutes of desperately trying not to laugh.

"Get out," Patrick said, turning away.

Pete thought about it. He thought about it really hard, because Patrick had short arms, but he also had a huge jaw, and could probably chew the shit out of Pete if he really wanted to.

But he also had a voice Pete wanted to hear more of. "Sing."

"I don't -"

Pete took his box of matches out of his pocket. They'd gone through the wash, but Patrick didn't need to know that. "Sing."

"You're going to, what, burn my piano?" Patrick snorted. "I can't play it anyway."

"If you say so," Pete said, and turned towards the piano.

"Wait," Patrick said.

Luckily, Pete's back was turned so that Patrick couldn't see his relief. "Yes?"

He really wasn't expecting to hear Thriller.

||

So he stayed. That wasn't how the legend was supposed to go, but Pete didn't think the legend had mentioned the Beast having a big-screen TV, either. Or being a dinosaur. And he didn't really want to leave right now, not when he knew exactly how good Patrick's voice was.

"I'm just saying," he said, almost running to keep up with Patrick as he walked down the hall, "a band with a dinosaur lead singer would be fucking awesome."

"It would also get me stuck in a lab." Patrick opened the biggest door Pete had seen yet, turning back to look at Pete. "The answer's no."

Pete took a step forward, angling his body to fit between Patrick and the doorframe. "But -"

"No," Patrick said again. His voice was harsh, but nothing compared to how hard he pushed Pete back. "You don't come in here."

"Why the fuck not? What's in there?"

"You. Don't. Come. In. Here." Patrick turned away. "Ever."

Pete didn't have time to respond before Patrick slammed the door in his face. With his tail, Jesus fucking Christ.

It would probably be smart to just go home. He was pretty sure he could find the way out, and the fucking disappearing sidewalk might not get him far, but it wasn't like they were in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. If he walked long enough, he'd find a place to stay that wasn't a crazy dinosaur's mansion.

But when he took a few steps towards the door, all he could think about was Patrick's voice, and how he'd been trying to play the piano even though he knew - he had to know by now - that he couldn't. Pete was a sucker for a sob story.

He did need a place to sleep, though. "Come on, magic. Do your thing."

A single light lit up. Pete turned towards it, and the one a few feet down the wall from it lit up. He followed them, walking through a labyrinth of halls and rooms before he came to a plain black door.

"You could've given me a plaque, at least," Pete said.

No one answered, of course. He sighed and went inside.

There was dog food on the desk and a pen and paper sitting on the bed, and - okay. Pete knew it was magic. The dude was a dinosaur, for god's sake. But it was still fucking freaky how perfect everything was. There wasn't even a dog bed; how the hell could he know that Hemmy usually ended up sleeping with him?

"Hopefully this isn't like, Hansel and Gretel, too." He unfastened Hemmy's leash, scratching him and kissing the top of his head. "Neither of us needs to be stuffed and eaten."

Hemmy barked and licked his face. He had his priorities straight.

He didn't think he could write, at first, but of course he couldn't sleep even though the bed was insanely soft. He finally gave in and turned on the light attached to the headboard, grabbing the notebook and pen.

The pen wrote well and Pete took advantage of that, covering page after page with shitty half-formed thoughts he'd normally just whisper into Joe or Andy's ear. He hoped whatever had fixed the room up wasn't going to read any of it, because some of the lines were crappy enough that he half wanted to kick himself just for writing them.

When he started to feel tired, he turned off the light and put the notebook on the nightstand. He'd probably have to deal with Patrick tomorrow - today. "Patrick," he whispered, petting Hemmy absently. "Patrick. Patrick."

It meant something – the name, the way Pete was almost obsessed with how it sounded coming out of his mouth. What it meant, he had no idea, but there was something there.

||

The next morning, Patrick was nowhere to be found. His house was huge, sure, but Pete had been a Boy Scout. His sense of direction was totally awesome.

Patrick was definitely nowhere in the parts of the house Pete was allowed to go.

He wanted to check the west wing, but he definitely knew better; instead, he went outside. Hemmy was so eager for a walk he was pissing himself - literally. By the time Pete had found paper towels to clean the mess up with, it had disappeared.

It was kind of nice to get outside, all things considered.

But storm clouds started cropping up again in the afternoon, so he let Hemmy lead them back inside the house. Hem went off to fuck around in the kitchen, and Pete went to the library.

It didn't take him long to find it; the room was off to one side of the house, but it was fucking huge. For a second Pete was surprised by all the dust covering the shelves, but -

He was an idiot. Of course there'd be dust; Patrick had claws. He couldn't turn a book's pages any more than he could play a musical instrument.

Pete's fingers tightened on the spine of Leaves of Grass. Fuck. Of course.

Since he didn't know when he'd run into Patrick he just carried the book with him - through the halls, to dinner, and then to one of the many living room type spaces after dinner.

He was watching TV when Patrick finally came in. "Did you know Dr. Phil hates lollipops? Dude's a robot or something, I swear," Pete said by way of greeting.

"You went to the library," Patrick said flatly.

He didn't sit down. Pete knew he could, of course, but it looked incredibly awkward - and for a monster who could eat Pete if he really wanted to, Patrick seemed weirdly hung up on not acting too weird.

It probably meant Pete shouldn't do things he knew would piss Patrick off, but common sense wasn't his strong suit anyway. "So you used to play music?"

Patrick's tail lashed so hard Pete heard wood crack. "Not past tense."

Shut up, shut up, shut up, Pete told himself. "But you can't."

"One of the things I can do, though," Patrick said loudly, "is rip your head off. You know?"

"We already covered that," Pete said. He felt stupidly reckless; he gambled, reaching out and stroking Patrick's scales. "I like this."

"You're a fucking creep," Patrick said in place of answering directly.

"Rip my head off, then."

The way Patrick look at him made him half want to laugh. The other half, of course, was clamoring to run far away. "You're not worth it."

"You mean I'm worth too much? That's sweet."

The look Patrick gave him was so priceless that Pete just kept stroking. The scales weren't soft or magical-feeling in any way; they were just scales. But something about the fact that they were Patrick's scales (and who, Pete wondered a little, was Patrick? he hadn't known him long enough to have a good handle on it, he just knew he wanted to) kept him touching them.

"Cocky," Patrick said coldly.

"I don't fuck dinosaurs," Pete said in response.

That got his hand shoved away. There was a joke there, a joke so fucking obvious and right there that Pete was dying to point it out. Instead he put his hands in his lap. "So."

"I kind of want to send you home."

And he knew he should want to be sent home. "Don't."

Patrick shook his head. "That's just fucking weird, you know."

"I'm going to get a saddle and ride you," Pete said. "It's like, my dream."

Patrick blinked at him.

"....that sounded better in my head," Pete admitted.

"Right." Patrick sighed. "Look, just stay out of the way, okay? You can't play an instrument for shit, so -"

"I can read."

" - really, there's no reason for you to - what?"

Pete held up the book, willing himself not to lose his nerve. "You know, reading. With words."

"What makes you think I want that?"

"Your library's fucking huge."

"I don't read a lot."

"Well, I do. So you should let me - "

"Read to me? That's so fucking cheesy."

"You're a monster in a mansion and you want to bitch about cheesy?" Pete flipped the book open. "Aboard, at the ship's helm..."

And then he hesitated, because pushy he might be, but he wanted to give Patrick a chance to protest at least a little. But Patrick didn't say a word.

Pete kept reading.

||

Patrick wasn't human currently, but when it came to getting rest, he was more human than Pete: an hour after Pete started reading, Patrick's head dipped and he started snuffle-wheezing, clearly asleep.

"...and they lived happily ever after," Pete said quietly, closing the book.

Patrick snuffled a little more, head falling back.

It was easy to sneak out; whatever else Patrick might be, he was a heavy sleeper. Pete wasn't tired when he got back to his room, but he lay in bed and closed his eyes anyway. There were no princesses - or princes, for that matter - with insomnia. Pete figured he sort of owed it to Patrick to at least try to live up to the legend.

He fell asleep late, of course, and when he woke up, it was to Patrick standing over him.

"Jesus Christ!" he yelled, and rolled away. The bed was big enough that he didn't fall off, but it was a near thing.

"You left."

"Yeah, jacka - yeah." Pete swallowed hard. "Because you were asleep. Is there something wrong with that now, or something?"

"I just." Patrick huffed a breath. "Just don't do that, okay? My house is...volatile. You could get hurt."

Pete snorted. "And the solution to that isn't just to fix your house."

"I can't," Patrick said tightly.

Pete had plenty of comebacks he could have used, but before he got a chance to even try, Patrick turned and left.

Fine, then. Pete rolled out of bed and went about getting ready for the day.

The day, unfortunately, turned out to mostly consist of wandering around, reading and writing and being bored. After dinner he spent an hour in the library trying (and failing) to write a decent description of the shock he'd felt hearing Patrick's voice come from the dinosaur body.

He didn't realize he'd left the notebook with the vague descriptions in the library until he walked back and saw Patrick flopped inelegantly on the floor, reading them. The pages were wrinkled, some town, from Patrick trying to turn them.

Shit. "Dude," Pete said, rushing forward. "No."

"Sorry," Patrick said, voice almost completely expressionless. "I figured you'd be okay with me reading about how grotesque you think I am."

"That's not -"

"I don't care what the point was," Patrick said, standing. "That's what it is."

There was other shit in the journal - by now, Pete thought frantically, almost a year's worth. "Give it back. You can rip out the pages about you, I don't care, just -"

"Let you have the part that's important to you back?" Patrick raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, I don't think so."

"Asshole," Pete said.

That got him a vase lobbed inexpertly at his head. "Get out."

"You can't make me."

"I fucking can," Patrick said, and rushed at him with all the power Pete had known he had, but hadn't expected to ever actually see demonstrated.

It was kind of terrifying, and without even thinking, he turned tail and ran.

He didn't see Patrick for the rest of the day, and woke up at noon the following day completely alone. He checked his phone for the first time since getting there, but he still didn't get service. It wasn't really surprising, but Pete was still disappointed.

Part of him laughed at that, because he wasn't even the one who was supposed to stay. He could go home - except for how, in some weird way, he couldn't. He'd told Patrick he was going to stay, and leaving would just get him a fucking smug "I told you so" kind of comment.

Plus, Patrick seemed kind of lonely.

He wasn't sure it counted as laying low if he wasn't actually trying to do it; either way, he went more than a week without seeing Patrick at all. Sometimes he'd hear strains of music - guitar, piano, even mandolin, but never singing - drifting down the hallways, but when he tried to follow the sound, the hallways never lead him any closer.

Fucking Patrick. Pete didn't even want to try to make him sing as much as he wanted to talk to someone who wasn't Hemmy.

On the sixth day of his isolation, he went out to sit in the garden. There were tons of benches, the kind you'd find in city parks, and they weren't very comfortable; still, it was better than sitting inside.

He didn't even see it until after he sat down. Considering the house, he figured it probably wasn't there until then. But there it was sitting beside him, the battered spiral notebook Patrick had stolen.

He opened it up, half expecting to see pages gone, mocking notes, something reminding him of what a douche Patrick really was. The pages he'd written in were untampered, though; he kept flipping forward, past his descriptions of Patrick. There was a blank page, and then -

Jesus fucking Christ.

They were songs. The guy - dinosaur - thing had taken his words and put them to tabs, rhythms, a fucking melody. Pete didn't check to see if there was a mandolin part, though he really thought there might be. "Asshole," he said, standing up and starting for the house.

He got all the way inside the house before he realized that he really didn't know how to confront Patrick. Fine. He turned around and went back to the bench, curling up this time, settling in for however long it would take to understand what Patrick had done to his words.

With his words. Whatever.

He didn't think he'd fall asleep. It didn't really make sense that he would, here on an uncomfortable bench in late afternoon. But somewhere between studying the bassline and wondering what the melody would sound like with Patrick's voice, he drifted off.

He woke up in the middle of the night with a pillow under his head and a blanket tucked up around his shoulders. Too tired to think about it, he fell back asleep.

The second time he woke up the sun was rising and there was coffee on the sidewalk right next to him. He groped for it groggily, downing it the second he realized it wasn't too hot to drink. "Fucking amazing," he told the air.

Except -

Except out of all the magic this place had, why had it just given him a pillow and a blanket? It made more sense to just transport him back to his bed. That, plus the fact that there were giant footprints in the grass leading directly to the house, led him to believe something was up.

This time, when he heard music he could follow it down two hallways and into a room he'd never seen before. Patrick was plucking out a tune on the piano, something that was really fucking complicated for all that he was playing it slowly.

"Nice," he said when Patrick paused.

The glare Patrick sent him was completely unsurprising. "Relax, man," he said, walking into the room as confidently as he could manage. "I just wanted to say thank you."

"Thank you," Patrick said flatly.

"Right. For doing the music for me."

Patrick blinked at him. "I didn't do it for you."

For a split second Pete actually considered playing along, but...nah. "Bullshit."

This time, Patrick showed teeth. "What?"

"Bullshit. You wrote songs from my words and then sent them to me. That was for me, and that was fucking nice of you, and that's why I'm fucking saying thank you. Asshole."

"You're not used to people not kissing your ass, are you?"

"Excuse me?"

Patrick was smirking when he said, "You're used to people kissing your ass."

"Fuck off."

"Would it help if I told you you're amazing? I don't have eyelashes to flutter anymore, but I can give it a good try." Patrick cleared his throat, his voice going up a few octaves. "Oh, Pete, you're such a good writer. I love your poetry, Pete. Sit next to me, Pete. Tell me how you learned all those amazing things, Pete."

Pete wasn't any good at being cornered, which was why his next move was to rush forward. "Then fucking sing, you hypocritical pile of scales."

That threw Patrick off. "What?"

"It took you days to write all this shit, and it's not like you have a life or anything. So why'd you do it if you're not going to sing?"

"Like you said, I don't have a life."

"Sing," Pete said. "Come on, do it."

"You can't actually force me, you know."

"It's like you think I don't plan ahead," Pete said. "Sing - or I will."

The look on Patrick's face, difficult to read through the scales though it was, told him Patrick had heard him sing. "That's cheating."

Pete shrugged. "Okay," he said, and started screaming the intro to an Arma song.

Patrick only lasted a few seconds before he threw his claws up in the air. "Okay! Okay, Jesus. Asshole."

"No," Pete said, "you. Come on, man."

Patrick huffed a sigh that sounded almost like a growl and opened his mouth.

Pete's first thought was fuck, he's got a lot of teeth. His second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts all blanked out, because Patrick was so wrong about his own skill it should have been illegal.

When he finished, all Pete could do for a few minutes was stare. Dinosaurs couldn't blush, of course, but Patrick jutted his head out in a way Pete would've bet any amount of money meant that he was embarrassed.

"Um," Pete said.

"Take the notebook," Patrick said. "I just did it because I didn't have anything better to do. It wasn't supposed to be -"

"A beginning?"

"Anything."

"It was a beginning, though." And Pete could do this, he was good at this. He could change Patrick's mind. "Come on, you wrote five songs with my words. You can't say that's nothing, Patrick. I'm not going to buy it."

Patrick's tail was lashing; Pete really hoped it wasn't, like, a surprise prehensile tail, or something. He didn't want more shit thrown at him. "You want a band with a dinosaur lead singer?"

His stomach dropped. Patrick had to know the legend - or maybe he did and he was just ignoring it. That hadn't even occurred to Pete as an option. But Patrick was looking at him expectantly, so all Pete could do was hope Patrick was bad at reading people and say, "Yeah, man, fucking marketing. We'll sell millions."

"You're full of it."

People had said that to him plenty of times. He grinned - easy, practiced. "Maybe."

So of course Patrick didn't buy into it. "How do you think this is going to work, exactly?" he said, moving his arms in a motion that might have been crossing them, if they hadn't been so short.

"We make a record, we put it out, the fans flock and sing the songs back to us. Come on, you can't not know -"

"I'm not a one-dinosaur band," Patrick said flatly.

"I play bass."

"Better than you sing, I hope."

"And I know guys who know guys. We can make this work."

Patrick shook his head. "For someone who's a literary whiz kid, you're fucking dense about some things."

"Resistance is futile," Pete said hopefully.

"I'm not resisting, I'm stating facts. Come on, Pete. I can't leave this place, and no one else can come while you're here. It's not going to work."

It was kind of stupid, considering that he was talking to a dinosaur, that he hadn't really realized how strong the magic around him was until right this second. There it was, though, staring him in the face: he was in a magic fucking mansion with a cursed guy and no chance of starting a rocking dino-fronted band.

Shit.

"What's your favorite color?" he said abruptly.

"Excuse me?"

"And don't give me some shit like 'oh, I'm a dinosaur, I'm not allowed'."

"Green," Patrick said after a long moment of staring at Pete.

"Thank you," Pete said, and waited.

And waited.

"Mine's red," Pete finally said, "since you were so eager to know."

"I knew you'd tell me eventually," Patrick said.

Pete had the uncomfortable realization that if dinosaurs could smirk, that was exactly what Patrick would be doing right now. Creepy, especially since he wanted to see the expression on human Patrick's face, and probably maybe hump him a little while he was doing it.

It could be worse, he guessed. He could want to do it when Patrick was a dinosaur.

"Yeah," he said after a silence that was just a few minutes too long.

"You can go now," Patrick said. "If you're, you know. Too freaked out."

"Fuck off," Pete said automatically, as much to combat the smug as fuck note in Patrick's voice as anything else.

But - "Okay," Patrick said, and turned to leave.

"Wait."

The way Patrick froze immediately was as revelatory as Pete's own discomfort. "Stay," Pete said. "Please."

Patrick turned around. "I do know the legend," he said slowly. "I just...it's not really applicable. I guess."

"Bullshit," Pete said as cheerfully as he could.

"So, what. This is just your way of softening me up? Getting me ready for -"

And Christ, the fucking magic or whatever it was had to be controlling things now, because the next words out of Pete's mouth were, "True love's first kiss? That depends on you."

"I should really go," Patrick said.

Fuck it. Pete leaned back, sprawling just a little, smiling like he would at a cute girl. "If you want to."

"....That's fucked up," Patrick said, but he went back, sitting down awkwardly.

"Your tail's not prehensile, is it?" Pete said when he seemed more or less settled.

"Oh, fuck you," Patrick said, throwing his huge head back and letting out a weird honking dino-laugh. Pete watched and tried to decide how much of a perv it made him that he really wanted to see Patrick do that when he was human.

||

It slowly got easier to talk to Patrick, partly because Patrick stopped avoiding him like it was an Olympic sport, and partly because Pete was determined to end the curse. Once he thought of starting a band the idea wouldn't leave him alone; it turned into an obsession, dogging his heels in a house where there really wasn't much to do anyway.

It helped, a little, that Patrick had an amazing voice and a freakish talent for turning his words into actual songs. It wasn't like he had a thing for him, aside from wanting to see him human and naked; the curse wasn't that strong. He just wanted to see this whole thing finished.

And then, maybe, hold on to Patrick and his insane talent for awhile longer. He didn't really have any right to it, he knew, but as it got easier and easier to hang out with Patrick, he started to hope Patrick might let him have it anyway.

It was the hope that did him in, really.

||

He woke up halfway through the third week and realized any kind of good mood was nowhere to be found. There was no real reason for it, but then there never really was; he'd been coasting on a high of maybemaybemaybe for week now and he'd known that sooner or later it would make him crash.

When he got up he turned the shower on and off three times before realizing he couldn't make himself get in. He went back to bed instead, pulling the stupid curtains around and trying not to wonder if he'd suffocate from breathing too hard.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed there. Time passed weirdly when he was like this, cycling between him giving in to his natural impatience and his despair getting the better of him and making him stay at the bottom of the metaphorical well. What he did know was that when the pounding on his door started, it was dark outside.

He ignored it, of course. It was either Patrick or some weird aspect of the magic controlling them both; regardless, he wasn't interested.

But the banging got louder, until finally he couldn't even hope to ignore it. "Fuck off!" he yelled, but the damage was done - it had jolted him out of his weird, semi-balanced ennui and straight back into a shitty mood.

"Why don't you!" Patrick yelled back. It sounded more like a roar; Pete tried and totally failed not to be creeped out.

"I'm not doing anything," he said. "I'm fucking lying here -"

"And killing half the garden, you total asshole."

That got his attention. "What?"

"I'd tell you to come see, but clearly you're too busy sulking."

That made him sit up, but even as he did he heard Patrick's receding footsteps. There was no reason for him to get up and follow; his mood was still shitty, even if the paranoia had backed off a little. But he rolled out of bed and left the room, gross breath and still in his pajamas, and went out to the garden.

The smell hit him first. It was pretty fucking awful, but then, it also told him where to go. The half of the garden that held the bench he'd slept on was full of dead plants now, slimy and rotting all over each other.

"...oops," he said to the plants.

They didn't say anything back, thankfully. He wouldn't put it past this place to make them do it.

Patrick was obviously pissed about it, and Pete wanted to at least try to fix things, but he honestly had no clue where to even start. Sitting down on the bench didn't do anything except make the stink so strong that he was tempted to just give in and throw up. Nothing happened when he reached out to touch a plant, either; he just felt decaying slime.

Fine, then. "I guess," he said, and stopped. "I guess - fuck. This is like that time Joe dared me to drink fucking yellow snow mixed with snot, so I did, and then I was puking and couldn't tell my mom why." Okay, actually, that was a lot more gross than this. But that was splitting hairs, Pete thought.

"I should just go inside," he said to no one in particular, and moved to stand up.

But when he did, he turned his head just enough that one of the plants caught his eye. It had two green leaves poking out from the muck.

"Is it just the talking?" he said slowly, because fuck the fucking magic, anyway.

But nothing happened.

"When I was six, I skinned my knee," he said, watching the plants. "And I cried and cried, but for some reason I didn't go home. Luckily, our next-door neighbor found me and peroxided that motherfucker. I still don't really know why I didn't go running for my mom the second it happened."

Another plant's blackish stem slowly faded to dark green.

"Once upon a time," he said, even more slowly, because he hadn't tried fiction yet, "there was a..."

What would Patrick look like? He had no way of knowing.

"There was a boy with a voice like the best sounds the world ever heard all mixed together, and a temper that was just as bad as his voice was good. And that boy's name was Patrick."

He kept talking until his throat was almost hoarse, until every single plant wasn't just green, but blooming. The smell slowly dissipated, and flowers bobbed in the wind, brushing his shoulders.

"...and he lived happily ever after," Pete said, feeling like the lamest person in the world.

There was no clapping. There wasn't even Hemmy to bark appreciatively. He was completely alone.

At least Patrick wouldn't be pissed anymore, he thought, and went back inside.

Later he'd ask himself over and over again if he knew, if he remembered, if in some way he'd known. There was no shadow to see and no reason to suspect Patrick was watching.

But he was, because by the time Pete found his way back to the room, there was a note on his bed that read, "Thank you."

||

It got easier and easier to live with Patrick. Pete would've liked to say it was because Patrick was making an effort, being better to hang out with, but really, that wasn't it at all; Pete was just starting to find everything Patrick did stupidly endearing. When Patrick came to dinner and bitched him out for eating like a slob, Pete laughed. When Patrick threw a book at him, Pete just took that as his cue to start reading. He couldn't even tell if it was mutual or if he was forcing it; Patrick, he reminded himself, hadn't had anyone to talk to for years on end. It made sense that he'd put up with Pete bugging him.

It maybe made a little less sense that Patrick would hover over him semi-obsessively for a week after the plant thing.

"I'm fine," he said loudly after two days of Patrick lurking around every corner.

"No one said you weren't."

Except that was pretty much what Patrick had been saying - what his actions had been saying, anyway. Pete knew that wouldn't make any sense coming out of his mouth instead of his brain. "Right."

"I'm just curious," Patrick said.

"About what? I'm not going to fall apart again, I promise. Your garden is safe."

"It's not about the garden, dipshit."

"Then what's it - you know what? Never mind." Pete put the book he'd been thumbing through down on the side table and stood up. "Get out of my way."

"I don't feel like it," Patrick said snidely.

Logically, Pete knew punching a fucking dinosaur was probably a really bad idea. Emotionally, he was dying to do it. "Get out of my way."

"That kind of hurt doesn't just disappear, Pete."

"Yeah, and you know what?" Pete jumped onto the couch, running past Patrick. He yelled the answer over his shoulder as he left: "Talking about it doesn't make it disappear either."

||

The problem was - the problem was, and he could admit this to himself because he wasn't scared of what the magic would push this into, thank you very much - he missed Patrick.

"I miss everybody," he told Hemmy the next day. "Joe, Andy..." But Patrick, way more acutely than he had any right to.

Hemmy whined and nudged his arm, licking the inside of his elbow.

"I know," Pete said, even though he really didn't. He scratched Hem's head, closing his eyes.

When he opened them, Patrick was standing there.

"I." Patrick huffed a breath. He looked frustrated. In retrospect, Pete thought, he'd looked frustrated a lot when Pete was around. "You can go."

It felt like someone had dropped a brick in his stomach. "What?"

"I'm - there's just no point," Patrick said. "It's fine. Go."

"What the fuck do you mean, there's no point?"

"You know the legend," Patrick said. He sounded tired. "My twenty-first birthday's in a month, Pete. It's just not worth it."

And then, because Pete honestly had no idea what the fuck else he could do, Pete marched up and kissed Patrick right on the lips. Scales.

Patrick didn't kiss back. Pete couldn't say he was surprised. He also wasn't really disappointed, because Patrick's teeth didn't look that comfortable, and his scales were hard and cool, and -

No, he was still fucking disappointed. It was pathetic.

"I should go," he said, leaning back.

Patrick's tail lashed so hard it knocked a chair over. "You really, really should."

And so Pete ran. He'd never really thought of himself as brave, anyway.

||

He spent half the night thinking about Patrick, about Patrick turning 21 and dying, about that voice and temper and...okay, Pete really didn't know him that well, but it didn't mean he was okay with the guy dying. He just couldn't fall in love with him. It was shitty of him to stay, and he could admit that to himself now, because there was no way Pete would fall in love with Patrick. Most days, he couldn't even give a shit about himself.

Which meant Patrick was probably going to die, because kissing the guy you wanted to be your lead singer really wasn't the same as kissing your one true love.

Halfway through the night, the inevitability got too much for Pete to deal with - the inevitability and the shame of being so scared, because it wasn't even his death. He was just more of a fucking baby than Patrick ever would be.

He wound up stumbling into the library, going to the very back and curling up in one of the overstuffed chairs. It didn't help, but the change meant he could obsess over a whole new set of cracks in the ceiling, lines on the floor. He was staring at a floorboard illuminated by light coming from the single lamp he'd turned on when he felt something digging into his side.

Sticking his hand in the chair cushion yielded a few M&Ms, a broken pencil, and a cassette tape. Pete moved to throw them away, but -

"Demos", the tape label said. The blocky handwriting was familiar: it was Joe's.

Hunting down a tape player was surprisingly easy: he walked out to the entrance of the library, and there was one sitting on a shelf that hadn't existed an hour ago in the hallway opposite the library door.

Hearing the guitar riff felt like a punch in the gut. When Patrick actually started singing, something about wanting to be tall with Joe wailing in the background, he actually had to sit down on the floor.

Fucking Joe. Why the fuck had he never even brought it up?

There were only a few songs on the tape, but every time it ran out he just hit play again. He was absorbed enough in listening to Patrick's voice, the way it tripped over a few of the notes, how it was a little deeper now than it had been whenever they made the demos, that he didn't notice Patrick until the claw came slamming down on top of the tape player.

"Where did you get this?" Patrick snapped.

Pete was too tired to even really be pissed. "From a chair. Calm down."

"Fucking house," Patrick muttered. Pete wasn't even sure if he was supposed to have heard it. "Just...don't just play shit like that, okay?"

"Tapes that you left lying around? Wow, sorry. How terrible of me."

"I didn't leave it -" Patrick stopped, taking a slow, deep breath. "Fine. Whatever. Why are you even up?"

Talk about awkward. "Couldn't sleep," Pete said, bracing himself against the wall and sliding back up.

Patrick stared at him for a second before answering. "So you, what, just decided to stalk my library?"

"Pretty much," Pete said, scratching his stomach.

"I'm too tired for this." Patrick turned away. "You can keep the tape, just...it was a long time ago. And things have changed. Okay?"

Pete didn't think that much had changed, really, but he wasn't nearly awake enough to argue it. "Okay."

Patrick didn't even answer, just started walking.

Pete took both the tape and the tape player back to his room.

||

Two days later, he gave up on trying to improve on the next few pages of poems (lyrics, really) in his notebook and slipped them under Patrick's door.

He didn't know what he was expecting; it was fucking entitled, he knew, to want Patrick to write more songs. But whatever he thought would happen, it was very definitely not Patrick knocking on his door and saying, "Can you work Rock Band?"

"I can push the buttons," he said. "But I can't, like...compose."

"That's what I'm here for," Patrick said.

Which was how Pete ended up spending a day in his pajamas, pushing every single button Patrick told him to - literally. Patrick kept bitching about how he wasn't used to writing anymore, how the music wasn't flowing like it was supposed to, but the shit he had Pete do was brilliant, to Pete's ears.

Around lunch he made the mistake of leaning back and saying, "Seriously, man, we've got to get you out of here."

Patrick went still and suddenly the single spot where Pete's arm was brushing Patrick's scales felt like a cattle prod. Shit. "Um," he said, pulling his arm away. "I just meant -"

"Bring up the guitar line again," Patrick said quietly.

Pete didn't have the balls to do anything but obey.

||

When he bought it up it was thoughtless, and a second after he said it he pretty much figured Patrick was going to kill him. Instead Patrick just said levelly, "I met Joe in Border's."

"I'm just saying," Pete said, grinning, "Joe had really terrible hair. I can't believe you even talked to him."

"His personality made up for it," Patrick said. "Which is more than anyone could say about you."

Pete snorted. "Whatever, man. You loved Arma."

"Did not."

"Joe was in Arma, and was like...a fucking evangelist. He wouldn't have been friends with you if you didn't."

Silence, then: "You don't know me."

Pete cackled. "Whatever you say."

"Hey, do you want to..." The tip of Patrick's tail twitched. "Um. The dining room is kind of gloomy."

Pete's stomach really shouldn't have done the flipping thing. "Yeah?"

Patrick bobbed his head. "I just kind of think, I don't know, maybe we should...if you want, that is, we can eat dinner on the balcony."

"There's a balcony?" Of course there was a balcony, this was a fairy tale, but - "Seriously?"

"In my wing. The west one."

Well, shit. "Thought you didn't want me back there."

"I'm going to be - I mean, yeah, no. It's fine."

Pete wasn't stupid enough not to know exactly what Patrick was going to say. Christ, the stupid kid still thought Pete was going to just let him die. Which, well, he still had no fucking clue how to break the curse. But he didn't exactly plan on watching Patrick die, either.

"As long as you're sure," Pete said.

"Move the bridge back a verse," Patrick said.

Pete could take a hint: he dropped it.

||

Thinking about the west wing would just make him act like an idiot when Patrick actually led him through it, Pete knew. That didn't stop him from thinking about it, though, or craning his neck to see down the hallway when Patrick unlocked the door.

"Watch it," Patrick said, but he sounded amused more than anything.

The hallway was small for Patrick, but plenty large enough not to make Pete feel claustrophobic. It was pretty plain, but Patrick hadn't bothered to close most of the doors; they were filled with jumbled furniture and musical instruments. Pete couldn't explain why this was the mysterious, forbidden part of the house - until they went out onto the window-filled sun deck that adjoined the balcony.

In the corner was what had to have been a piano, once upon a time. Now it was just a pile of broken wood and bent strings. Opposite it was a mound of torn-up sheets of paper. Most of them had chords or actual musical notes on them. And in the center of the room was a table with a metronome on it. It wasn't ticking, but even as Pete watched, the number went from "27" to "26".

"Creepy," Pete said.

"Believe it or not, I wasn't the interior decorator," Patrick said, and he pulled the door leading out to the balcony open.

"In a magic house? Yeah, it wasn't my first thought." Pete went onto the balcony, moving so Patrick could step onto it, too.

"I haven't been out here in...a while," Patrick said. He pulled a chair out and sat down, claw tapping the table that by all rights should have been dirty. "The food should show up soon."

"Will that kind of magic go away once the spell is broken?"

"I wouldn't know," Patrick said stiffly.

"You could tell me. About what you do know, I mean."

"What good would that do?"

"I'm curious. The website just said you lived here, not for how long or who did it."

"There's not much to tell." Patrick sighed. "I was a dick to this guy, an old band member. He was heavy into the Wicca stuff, and he came around one day and cursed the fuck out of me. I don't think he was expecting it to work."

"What was your band's name?"

"We never got one," Patrick said. "That's all I'm going to say."

"Well – thanks." Pete forced himself to sit down and look Patrick in the eye. "I'm not just going to let you die, you know."

"This isn't up for discussion," Patrick said, but he didn't look away.

"Yes, it is. It has to be." Pete crossed his arms. "Because dude, I'm not about to fucking - I don't know - drag you down the aisle or some shit like that. But you shouldn't have to die just because you were mean to some crabby magic-worker once upon a time."

"I shouldn't have to spend five years as a dinosaur, either," Patrick said. "And yet."

Pete was pretty sure that shouldn't be put in the same category as dying. "You're not going to die," he said firmly as food appeared on the table. "So maybe you should stop bringing it up."

"I - jackass," Patrick said, but he ducked his head and tore into the steak without arguing. Pete pretty much figured that meant he'd won.

The sun set while they ate; by the time Pete started shoving his face with dessert, it was a reddish line on the horizon. He was distracted by the chocolate enough that he didn't even notice Patrick was staring until he was licking his fingers clean and suddenly-lit candles were illuminating things more than the barely there sun.

"What?" he said, swallowing the last lump of cake.

"I'm just glad," Patrick said. "I mean, you're a pain in the ass, and you're kind of a jerk, and I never liked you when you fronted Arma -"

"Hey," Pete said mildly.

"As a person," Patrick finished. "But I'm still glad you were the one who showed up."

It was a nice sentiment. Too bad Pete couldn't get the squirming guilt out of the pit of his stomach. "I should've done what the legend said and gone back. Joe -"

"I knew Joe. That doesn't mean I was any more likely to fall in love with him," Patrick said.

Don't say it, Pete told himself, don't say it, don't fucking - "And you're not going to fall in love with me?"

Patrick didn't answer and didn't answer and didn't answer until finally Pete stood up and walked back to his room and hit his head against the wall enough times to feel a bruise.

||

"I'm sorry," Patrick said the second Pete opened his eyes the next morning.

Pete almost fell out of his bed. "Jesus Christ! Don't do that."

"You wouldn't have let me in."

"So knock and bust the door down. Don't just sneak in."

Patrick turned his head and bared his teeth a little. It didn't even come close to scaring Pete anymore. "I just wanted to answer your question."

"Okay."

"It's no."

Pete thought about letting it go. He thought about it hard, mostly because of Patrick's teeth, and his claws, and...Pete just wasn't into self-harm to that degree. But he also wasn't stupid enough to not notice what was happening with how he thought about Patrick. "It's not for me."

"Pete," Patrick said loudly.

"It's not." Pete shrugged. "Whatever, I can't force you to reciprocate. But it's easy to care about you. You should know."

"The guy who did this would disagree," Patrick said after a moment of silence, sounding choked.

"Yeah, well." Pete forced himself to smile, to grin like he didn't feel like his heart was falling out of his ass. "That guy was a jackass."

"You know I'm sorry, right?"

That actually got him to sit up. "What?"

"For doing this. Pulling you away from your friends and - ow, motherfucker!"

Pete just kicked him again. "Don't apologize."

"But I -"

He wanted to punch the guy, even though he knew exactly how much good it would do. "Don't."

"I'm going to hurt you. I cut you off from your friends, and I'm going to die and you'll be hurt."

It was true, but Pete wasn't too into logic right now. "Shut the fuck up."

"You can't just pretend everything you care about doesn't matter when it's hurting you!"

"Watch me," Pete said, and rolled over and closed his eyes. He was almost shaking with how badly he wanted to hit Patrick, but he forced himself to stay still, until finally Patrick huffed and left, slamming the door behind him.

The second he did, Pete rolled over onto his back. He wanted - he didn't even know what he wanted, really. He wanted Patrick's answer not to be no. He wanted Patrick to be Patrick, not Patrick the velociraptor.

Not that Patrick the velociraptor wasn't fucking awesome, because he was. But still.

He lay in bed and fumed for awhile, and then he turned the tape of the demos on and fumed some more, and then he...

Well, he was hard. And his crush was hopeless, because Patrick was a dinosaur, and even if he wasn't a dinosaur, he still wouldn't want to slide his hand down Pete's stomach, curl his fingers around Pete's dick, and jerk him off roughly.

So Pete did it instead, closing his eyes and falling into Patrick's voice as best as he could.

Coming didn't calm him down, but it felt good anyway. When he was done, he wiped his hands clean on some Kleenex and went to find some food.

||

Two days passed and he didn't see Patrick. On day three he decided he was fed up and went into the west wing.

It would've been a daring move full of foolishness and the guarantee of a dramatic payoff, except the door was cracked. At least Patrick knew trying to keep Pete away was an exercise in futility. That or he didn't care, but Pete didn't really want to think about that possibility.

He poked his head in all the sad crowded rooms, but Patrick wasn't in any of them. Pete winced when he finally found him passed out in front of the stupid countdown clock.

"I kind of want to find whoever did this and, like, draw and quarter them," Pete said quietly.

Patrick didn't answer, but his side shook a little. Pete bit his lip and splayed his hand on Patrick's scales. They were cold.

He couldn't think of a single fucking thing to say. Except more threats, and fucking announcements of love or some other shit he knew Patrick didn't really want to hear. "Romeo and Juliet," he blurted finally.

"What," Patrick said. His voice was low and flat, almost disbelieving.

"I hate that story," Pete said.

"You think happy endings are possible."

He sounded mean - probably, Pete thought, deliberately so. "Yeah, I guess. You don't?"

"I know they're not."

"Happyish endings are totally possible."

"Wrong."

"Am not," Pete said. He was tired of standing so he sat down with his back against Patrick and leaned into him. "We're going to have one."

"Pete..."

"Tell me," Pete said, quickly because his heart was in his throat, and he didn't really think this was going to work, not at all, "tell me you don't feel it. Tell me you don't think we could be fucking amazing."

Patrick didn't answer.

"Yeah," Pete said, dropping his head back until it, too, was pressed against Patrick's back, "that's what I thought."

"That doesn't mean I think we won't end," Patrick said.

Pete was used to being the kind of guy who defined fatalism. It freaked him out more than a little to be the one saying, "We might. But we might not."

Patrick didn't move; Pete wasn't expecting him to. It was convenient, actually, because it meant he could rest against Patrick's side, listen to him breathe and try to make himself nap.

||

When he woke up, Patrick's tail was curled around him in a way he really didn't know dinosaur tails could curl.

Somewhere, there was an archeologist who'd cream his pants for that kind of information. Pete kind of wished he could take pictures or something, except then they'd probably lock him up in a lab.

"Finally. You need to practice sleeping at night."

"It gave you an opportunity to feel me up," Pete said. "I don't know why you're complaining."

"I should just dump you on your ass," Patrick said. His tail tightened around Pete.

Pete couldn't help himself: he turned his face until his lips were against Patrick's tail and said, "There's other things you could do with my ass."

Patrick really did drop him then, but Pete was laughing too hard to care. "You're such a dick. Don't you dare turn that into an innuendo," Patrick said, sounding mortified.

"Were you a blusher when you were human?" Pete said instead of answering directly.

He realized his mistake when Patrick hunched up, scooting so he wasn't looking at Pete anymore. "Hey," Pete said, standing up and walking over to him. "It's okay, dude."

"It's really not," Patrick said, voice muffled. "I know you just want - I get it. But every time you say something like that, I just think of how fucking much I'd give to be human again. You know?"

And instead, Patrick was convinced he was going to die. Pete figured he knew a little too well, all things considered. "Yeah. That witch was an asshole."

"I deserved it," Patrick said. "As a human...all the stuff I can't do now, I was obsessed with then. Writing music. Playing it. That was what I lived for."

"There's nothing wrong with that. Your music's good."

Patrick snorted. "Right."

Pete couldn't stop himself from reaching out and kicking Patrick solidly. "Dick. You fucking are."

"No offense, but your judgment -"

"Yeah, I can't play. But I'm not stupid, Patrick. The stuff you write is good. It would sell, it's -"

"Pete." Patrick sounded choked.

"And you're going to get a chance to sell it," Pete said. He was speaking more quickly and knew he sounded desperate, but he couldn't help himself. "Swear to God, Patrick, we'll find a way to fix it. It's not going to end with me playing the shit you did at your funeral."

"No one would come," Patrick mumbled.

That just made Pete want to kick him again, but instead he splayed a hand on Patrick's side. The guy was freakishly warm for being a reptile. "Joe would."

Patrick's laugh was more of a snort, but hey, Pete would take it. "Come out to the garden with me."

"Why?"

"Fresh air. My completely awesome company."

"That's hilarious," Patrick said, but he rolled to his feet, and -

It wasn't like Pete ever forgot that Patrick was a fucking dinosaur; how could he? But he forgot all the fucking time that Patrick, for all that he had a huge tail and scales and the whole shebang, was a hell of a lot more agile than his size really hinted at.

"What?" Patrick said grumpily, and Pete realized he'd been staring.

"Nothing," he said - and then, because he couldn't really resist: "I want to hold your hand."

"Good thing I only have claws," Patrick said. Pete was expecting to get hit, but when Patrick reached out, it was to just barely brush Pete's hair. If he'd had a hand instead of a claw, it would have been just ruffling.

Pete turned bright red in spite of himself. "Dick."

"I still have one of those," Patrick said, and started fucking bounding down the hallway, like he thought Pete was going to let him forget about it.

He didn't run following Patrick, but he did walk quickly enough that when he got to the garden, Patrick was still waiting for him in the middle of the path. "Give me a ride," Pete said, moving to stand behind him.

Patrick craned his neck to look at Pete. "What?"

"Give me a ride," Pete said again, tapping his fingers on Patrick's scales.

"You're joking."

Pete didn't bother dignifying that with a response. After a second of hoping Patrick wouldn't dump him on his ass, he started climbing up onto Patrick's back. The scales were weirdly slippery from that angle, but eventually he managed to straddle Patrick's back without being too uncomfortable. "Okay, go."

Patrick snorted. "You're so stupid," he said, and jerked his whole body forward.

For a second Pete thought he was going to fall off, but instead he slid forward, his body settling closer to Patrick's neck. "Hunh."

"You would've fallen on your ass," Patrick said. "Dumbass."

"I've done worse," Pete said. He was trying for cheerful badassery, but even he could hear how much he failed. "Run already."

Patrick actually tensed under him - Pete got the feeling he'd be getting a lecture later, which was less than awesome - but he started walking anyway. Pete was fine with bouncing along until Patrick sped up; he leaned down automatically and wrapped his arms around Patrick's neck. He still felt a little like he was going to fall off, but Patrick started running and everything was blurry and - "Jesus fucking Christ," he yelled, unable to keep from laughing.

The garden was big, but it wasn't that big; Patrick came to the end sooner rather than later. "You're fucking incredible," Pete said, sliding down Patrick's side.

Patrick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah."

"No, seriously," Pete said. He scrunched his face up, trying to think of a way to articulate what was running through his mind. "You're just...you're fucking amazing, okay?"

Patrick was going to deny it, Pete knew, but as it turned out he didn't have a chance, because the second Pete's words left his mouth, the gate that marked the end of the garden creaked open.

"Oh, hey," Pete said, proud of himself for finally managing to fake a blasé attitude about magic, "sweet."

But Patrick took a stumbling step backwards. "That didn't just happen."

"It kind of did." Against his better judgment, Pete took a step forwards, all but bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Why? Are there monsters back there or something?"

"It's just never opened." Patrick's voice was quiet, almost scared-sounding. Pete couldn't help but feel like it was ridiculous; the dude was a dinosaur, for fuck's sake.

"Well, it is now," he said. "So let's go see what's out there."

"I can't leave," Patrick said.

"Then why did the gate open?"

Something was happening here, something Pete wasn't sure he could even identify, much less understand or deal with. The air felt thick and full, like someone had dumped pudding all over them, and he could almost feel the whatever-the-fuck-it-was that made up the house's magic watching them.

Slowly, so slowly it took Pete a minute to notice it was even happening, Patrick nodded. "Fine," he said.

Pete felt ridiculous holding out his hand. "Come with me."

"I already agreed to, idiot," Patrick said, but he took hold of Pete's hand anyway. His claw was smooth and cold. "I'm probably going to get zapped like a dog in one of those electric fences."

"I hate those things." Pete took a step forward. "Come on, man."

It was pretty simple in the end. Patrick pulled a face that really shouldn't have been possible with so many scales and lumbered out of the garden, claw digging into Pete's hand.

"Well," Pete said, taking a deep breath and waiting for something catastrophic to happen.

But nothing did. "Well," Patrick agreed, and then let go of Pete's hand to take another step forward.

Pete shouldn't have felt jealous. It was Patrick's first time outside in forever. Still, he moved enough to be able to rest his hand on Patrick's back. "It's a nice day."

"The fucking nicest," Patrick said, and laughed a little. "What does this mean?"

Pete was pretty sure he knew - almost as sure as he was that Patrick wouldn't really want to hear his answer. "I don't know."

"Right," Patrick said. There was just enough sarcasm in his voice for Pete to pick up on it. "I wonder how far I can walk."

"As far as you want, hopefully."

Patrick ambled over to a tree, claws brushing the bark. "Maybe. This magic's kind of a bitch."

"It let you out, though."

Patrick laughed a little. "That's your fault."

"It's not my fault I care about you."

Patrick stopped stroking the tree. "Pete."

"I know you don't want to hope, and I get that," Pete said as quickly as he could. "But I do care about you, and if the magic's my fault then that's why, okay?"

Patrick didn't answer.

"Patrick," Pete said, a little too loudly and sharply. "Okay?"

Patrick's head twitched to the side a little. "Fine. Yeah, fine."

In Patrick's place, Pete kind of thought he'd stay outside forever. That fucking house was as much part of the spell as Patrick's form, and who was to say it wouldn't keep him in again? But after only about a half hour of wandering around, Patrick turned back onto the path.

"We have to eat dinner," he said when Pete raised his eyebrows.

"We do not."

"Well, I do. Or else I might go crazy and eat you."

"Doubtful."

Patrick's face pulled in a way that, for a second, Pete thought meant he really was going to try to eat Pete. In the end he just said, "It's weird. Being outside. I'm a fucking baby for being scared of it, I know that, but -"

Pete started at a run and landed with a whump, pressing his face into Patrick's scales.

"Um," Patrick said.

"Shut up," Pete said, and hugged him tighter.

"...this is getting kind of weird, man," Patrick said after a few minutes.

"I'm going to do so many things when you're human." Pete started walking even as he said it, so that by the time Patrick thought to react, Pete was already inside the gate.

||

He'd thought of it before dinner; Patrick probably had too. But neither of them brought it up until dessert, when Patrick stabbed his pie with his claw and said, "You could have left."

Pete went completely still, the chocolate mousse in his mouth turning to lead. Well, no - it still tasted like chocolate. But the chocolate of bitter, unrequited love. "No, I couldn't."

Patrick rolled his eyes. "Come on, Pete."

"No, you come on. I can't fucking leave you like that, you fucking douchebag. What part of me caring about you is so hard for you to get through your thick scaly scull?"

"I'm going to die. I'm going to -"

Pete knew Patrick believed it, and Pete knew it was likely, and Pete knew Joe and Andy would tell him to back the fuck off, and Pete knew he probably really should back the fuck off.

He pushed the table until it overturned and ran away anyway.

||

"It was stupid," he told Hemmy, who'd found him in the library almost right away. "But he's so fucking dumb."

Hemmy whined what Pete was going to pretend was encouragement and licked his face.

"I just," Pete said. "Fuck, I don't know. I care about him. I pretty much love him. I know what the stupid legend says, but that's beside the point."

Hemmy yipped and wagged his tail. Pete scratched behind his ears. "I'd love him anyway," he said. It was a thought he'd only let himself consider once or twice since realizing it. "If I met him when he was human. There's no way I couldn't."

"You're wrong about that."

Pete blinked down at Hemmy. The house's magic wasn't that good, was it? And anyway, "Fuck you, I'm never wrong. About anything."

"Pete." Patrick stepped out of the shadow in the corner of the library. The shadow was way too huge, Pete thought. It was probably just as magic as the rest of the place. "You're wrong."

"I'm not." If Pete moved he was going to do something fantastically stupid like try to punch Patrick and fall out of the chair instead, so he clenched his hands into fists and stayed as still as he possibly could. "Patrick, you're - I couldn't not love you. Come on."

"I'm chubby," Patrick said dismissively. "And bad-tempered. And smelly. And I sleep a lot. And -"

"You'd still sing and talk with me and put my words to music and be a better fucking friend than I ever thought I'd have, you dick."

That made Patrick stop, his twitching tail the only sign of movement. "Um."

"Also," Pete said, because hey, why waste momentum, "I fucking like chubby guys, and showers exist for a reason. So even if I am the annoying Sleeping Beauty substitute you're stuck with, don't try to tell me that there can't be one-way affection, because there can and there is and - um."

Patrick closed his claws around Pete a little more tightly and lifted him into the air. "You're an asshole."

That made Pete thrash. "Fuck you! You -"

"Love you. I do, I mean, but I don't know how I'm supposed to know you like flabby people, you never gave me a fucking brochure on your type," Patrick said.

After that, everything went a little fuzzy.

||

Pete's first thought was about french fries.

His second thought was: Patrick wasn't wearing a hat when he had scales.

His third followed closely on the heels of his second, but unfortunately he said it out loud. "Please don't tell me you ever wore that outfit voluntarily. Are you sure that's not why you were cursed?"

"Fuck off," Patrick said, pulling his sweater - his argyle grandma sweater - down over his stomach. "I've seen your daily outfits."

"Anyway," Pete said, because whatever, like that was a valid comparison, "can we kiss now?"

Patrick turned to him slowly, and -

Well.

Pete had been expecting Patrick to be nervous. Patrick had been shy as a fucking dinosaur, he was totally going to be nervous instead of a love god. What he wasn't expecting was for his own lungs to start tripping over themselves, his face to turn bright red. He didn't even feel nervous; he felt almost scared.

"Pete," Patrick said, shaking his head. He was smiling a little like he knew what was going on, like he knew Pete - and he did, of course he did.

"I'm working up to it," Pete said when he could make his voice work again.

"Uh-huh." Patrick took a step forward, putting his hand on Pete's waist and holding him firmly. "Just let me know if I offend your delicate sensibilities."

Pete was totally going to mock him for that, he was, but then Patrick's mouth was on his and...

He really didn't feel like mocking anything anymore.

"Jesus," he said when Patrick pulled back and nuzzled his neck.

"Just let me know if you hate it," Patrick said, pulling him close again and kissing him hard.

Pete didn't hate it. Anything but, actually.

||

"We thought you were dead," Joe said. "So it's probably good that you're not."

"Probably? Fuck you."

"Well, it was one less mouth to feed," Andy said. He was wearing the frilly green apron, which meant he was going to attempt cooking. Pete opened a window for the smoke.

"You're both dicks," he said.

"Seriously, though." Joe shrugged. "We knew."

"You couldn't have known."

"Weirdass Sleeping Beauty legend, then you disappearing. It doesn't take a genius."

"Were you really a beast, though?" Andy poked Patrick's side with the spatula. "No offense, it's just -"

"I was a dinosaur," Patrick said, pulling his hat down over his suddenly bright red ears.

"That's cool," Andy said. "Very badass."

"He's awesome," Pete said, and gave into the temptation to put his arm around Patrick's waist. "Completely awesome. Also, it's Beauty and the Beast, dumbass."

"Aww," Joe said. "But you're not Beauty. When's the wedding?"

"Both of you can fuck off," Pete said.

But Patrick poked his side, wearing the smuggest smirk Pete had ever seen. "Two weeks from now."

"Being a dinosaur didn't change you that much," Joe said. He sounded, Pete thought, way too fucking happy about it.

Not that Pete was going to argue with the date, or anything. Not when Patrick had that devious look on his face. "Two weeks is good."

"I know," Patrick said, and moved up to kiss him.

Andy insisted on making them wait until the food was irrevocably burned before letting Joe drag Patrick away to catch up. Andy gave Pete the kind of look that Pete was pretty sure came from wanting to give Pete The Talk but not actually knowing how to approach it.

"It's cool," he said. "We're going to do okay."

"You'd better," Andy said. "We had to pay your share of the rent for a long fucking time."

"We might," Pete said, then stopped. Even thinking about it felt incredibly bizarre, like considering sky-diving lessons or something.

Andy just poked him with the now scorched spatula. "You might what?"

"Get our own place."

"Well, yeah."

"It just feels huge." Pete shrugged. "Not something I really had planned, you know?"

"I think the point is kind of that you don't plan that shit," Andy said.

Pete was good at metaphors. Pete was, actually, amazing at metaphors, to the point where he sometimes thought they ruled his life. This was a metaphor, but it was the best kind, lying in his mind like a pillow made of...something really awesome. Hemmies, maybe.

Whatever, it made him happy.

"I guess it is," he said, and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and breathing deep.

||

Two weeks later, Joe showed up at the house in a tux. "Come on," he yelled, "we have to go!"

Patrick opened the door in sweatpants. "You really shouldn't believe everything people tell you," he said. Pete grinned, wrapping his arms around Patrick's waist. He was kind of hiding, just in case Joe decided to throw a punch. Patrick was totally a badass, he could handle it.

But instead of punching anyone, Joe said, "Hey, Pete, has Patrick told you about the massive crush he had on you?"

Pete pushed Patrick aside. "What? No. Patrick! Tell me everything."

Joe drove away while Pete was still in a headlock. It was completely unfair, Pete thought.

He couldn't stop smiling.