"Pete," Patrick said, a determined look on his face, "we need to talk."

"I'm busy," Pete said. He was lying in his bunk, hands behind his head, staring at the top bunk. "Way too busy to talk."

"You're a dick."

"That's right, Pstump. Sweet talk me."

"You didn't need it last night," Patrick said, more than a little nastily.

Pete turned his head to look at Patrick. He wondered how obvious it was that he hadn't slept the night before.

"...that was mean," Patrick said. "But come on. We have to deal with it, Pete. An elephant that big in the room, sooner or later people are going to notice."

Pete went back to staring straight ahead. Patrick spluttered a few times, and stomped his feet, but eventually he left.

After way too long, Pete fell back asleep.

||

When he woke up, they were parked at a rest stop. They'd stay there for as long as they could without a state trooper booting them, Pete knew, so he decided to go for a walk.

He'd known Virginia had crappy rest stops. He hadn't known they were so bad that the second his feet touched pavement, he'd turn into an elephant.

||

Pete was categorizing his problems as he waited for someone to wake up and notice there was an elephant in the parking lot. They went like:

1) He'd slept with Patrick
2) The naked kind of sleeping with
3) They'd both enjoyed it
4) Which was why Pete was never going to do it again
5) He was an elephant
6) A boring grey one
7) It was really hard to draw a bartskull with elephant feet or his stubby little elephant tail
8) He kept hitting himself in the face with his ears

It was a pretty impressive list, Pete thought.

Also impressive was how long his stupid band could sleep. He ended up stomping around the rest stop three times (and narrowly avoiding having people call the police once; the only thing that stopped them was knowing they'd have to stick around to file a report) and drawing three more lopsided bartskulls before the door finally opened.

Their driver, Charlie, blinked at him. "Well, then."

Pete sat down to show he was a well-behaved elephant-Pete. He ended up sort of toppling over, though, and the impact shook the bus.

"What's going on?" Andy yelled. A few bangs issued from the bus, and then he stumbled down the stairs. "Charlie, is it – oh."

Pete flapped one of his ears.

"That's an elephant," Andy said. His eyes went from Pete to the bartskulls, and then back to Pete again. His eyes were huge, which was sort of funny, since from Pete's height they still looked tiny. "Um, Charlie? Can you go wake Patrick up?"

Charlie crossed his arms. "There is not enough money in the world, man."

Andy pulled a five from his boxers and handed it to Charlie, eyes still fixed on Pete.

"Yeah, okay," Charlie said, and disappeared back inside the bus.

Pete turned and looked at the sky. It was very blue. And his butt was very big. Ass? Could you call it an ass if it was an elephant's ass?

Pete thought about having a donkey attached to his elephant-butt. Patrick needed to come out. Any second now, actually, would be –

"You are the biggest douche I have ever blown."

Pete meant to yell, Patrick! He actually sort of trumpeted.

It worked, though, in the sense that Patrick just kind of waved his fists around and turned bright red, and didn't yell anything else about all the sex they'd had.

Pete hoped he wouldn't get an elephant hard on thinking about Patrick blowing him, because he was thinking about it anyway.

"And now you're an animal."

Pete felt like maybe he expected a response, so he nodded. His trunk flopped on the ground.

"Christ," Patrick said. "You're such a fucking moron."

This time Pete just flopped his trunk.

"And anyway, I've seen this before. Well. Not an elephant." Patrick glared at him like he'd planned it. "Why couldn't you have been a puppy, or something?"

Apparently elephants couldn't shrug.

"Fine," Patrick said. "Well, I also know how to fix it." He walked over to Pete's leg and hugged him. "You're a moron," he said again, but he sounded less furious this time. "You're a complete moron, I want to do it again, I want to do it every day."

"Whoa," Joe said.

Pete ignored him. If he moved his head exactly right –

He got his trunk around Patrick and lifted him. He was expecting Patrick to yell, but when he brought Patrick so close he had to kind of cross his elephant-eyes to look at him, he could see that Patrick mostly just looked exasperated. And kind of loving.

Score.

Patrick had one arm free, and he used it to hug Pete's trunk to him. "So fucking stupid," he said, and kissed Pete's trunk.

Pete blinked, and suddenly he was human again, and bare-assed naked. With Patrick in his lap.

His life was awesome.

Apparently his expression looked more constipated than smug, though, because Patrick bopped him on the head and said, "Freak out about magic later. When you have pants on."

"Pants are for losers," Pete said, and pulled Patrick close, kissing him.

And that was that.