Archive of Our Own

Tyler is a terrible witch.

This is not false humility. This is not one of those charming things people say because they want someone to pat their hand and tell them no, no, you are brilliant, you are gifted, you are a shining little star in the dark belly of the universe.

Tyler is a terrible witch in the same way a wet paper bag is a terrible parachute. The facts are just there, unfortunately damp and falling the fuck apart.

Every spell he uses seems to go wrong. If he wants a candle lit, he gets a candle lit, the curtains singed, and, one memorable Tuesday, a possessed smoke detector that screamed whenever anyone said the word cinnamon. If he wants to charm his keys into appearing in his hand, he usually gets the keys, yes, but once he also got every spoon in the apartment and his neighbor's mailbox flag. His dad says Tyler gets it from his mom. His mom is also a terrible witch, though at least she is terrible with dignity. Tyler's dad, meanwhile, can perform just about any spell he wants. He has the true gift.

Neither Tyler nor his mom have the true gift. What they have is enthusiasm, stubbornness, and enough magical kickback to keep an insurance adjuster awake at night.

The lack of the gift has never stopped Tyler from practicing. Over the years he became decent at a few things. Small charms. Little luck nudges. Finding spells, if he concentrated hard enough and did not sneeze in the middle. And transformations.

Animal transformations, mostly.

Once, a small couch.

Oops.

Transforming into something has always been the easy part. Getting back out of it is where Tyler's life likes to become a sitcom directed by a vengeful god. In the past, his experiments have spent him nearly a week as a golden retriever, more than a month as a raccoon, and several deeply regrettable stretches as a fox and a robin before the spell either faded or he stumbled into a fellow witch who recognized a botched veil when one was pecking angrily at their bird feeder.

Which is why Tyler is now a house cat to his very hot neighbor, Josh Dun, and has been for almost a week.

A witch with a crush is never fucking smart.

A shy witch with a crush is the kind of natural disaster that should come with sirens.

Tyler had noticed Josh the day he moved in, because Tyler had eyes and because Josh looked like someone had been built in a lab by a committee of people trying to ruin Tyler's ability to use full sentences. He was gorgeous. Compact and strong, with bright pink hair shaved close at the sides and a smile so kind Tyler felt like it should have its own porch light. Josh laughed with his whole face. He carried grocery bags with his forearms flexed, said hi to people in the hallway like he meant it, and once held the lobby door for an elderly woman, two teenagers, and a man hauling a fish tank with the earnest concentration of a saint performing public service.

Tyler had said hi to him twice.

The first time, his voice cracked so hard a hallway light exploded.

The second time, he said, "You too," when Josh asked if he was having a good night.

After that, Tyler decided he was better off admiring from a safe distance, like Josh was the sun, or a mountain lion, or a beautiful rare cheese behind glass.

Then Catsup went missing.

Catsup was Josh's cat. Tyler had seen him several times in the window, orange and smug and fat enough to look like he had swallowed a dinner roll. About a week before Tyler grew whiskers, he had been human. He could use a toilet and take baths without having to lick himself. And his pretty neighbor had been outside calling for Catsup with his voice going ragged and tears in his eyes.

That was what finally got Tyler brave enough to talk to him.

"Hey," Tyler had said, too softly at first, and then again, louder, when Josh turned with hope all over his face. "I can help look."

Josh looked like he wanted to hug him and cry and apologize for being a burden all at the same time. "You don't have to."

"I want to."

The words came out before Tyler could ruin them.

They split up around the apartment complex, Josh taking the front lawns and parking lot while Tyler walked toward the alley and the narrow strip of trees behind the building. As soon as Josh was out of sight, Tyler did what any sane, cowardly, magically mediocre person would do.

He cheated.

He performed a simple lost-and-found charm.

Unfortunately, it worked.

Tyler found Catsup at the edge of the road behind the complex, and the poor thing was unmistakably gone. Tyler froze, a lump forming in his throat so quickly it felt like grief had grown hands and wrapped them around him. Catsup had been loved. That was the worst part. Tyler knew it by the way Josh had called for him. By the broken shape of Josh's mouth. By the food bowl Tyler had seen through the kitchen window more than once, full and clean and waiting.

Tyler took off his jacket. With shaking hands, he wrapped Catsup as gently as he could and carried him away from the road to the sheltered strip of trees. Then he performed a hiding charm, shielding the little bundle from sight and keeping the weather and scavengers from disturbing it. Josh would not find his baby like that. Not today. Tyler told himself he would come back with the courage to explain.

It was cowardly.

It felt like mercy. That was what Tyler called it, because cowardice was a word that tasted too much like the truth.

At least, that was what Tyler told himself when he met Josh back by the mailboxes with nothing to offer but his own guilty face.

Josh cried anyway, because his "little baby" was lost. Tyler, half-panicked and very badly in love with someone he barely knew, invited him out for ice cream.

Josh did not accept. "Some other time," he said, then stepped forward and pulled Tyler into a tearful, sincere hug that nearly turned Tyler's skeleton into loose change.

"Thank you," Josh had whispered into his shoulder, warm and devastated. "For helping. For everything. I just want to be alone right now."

Being that close to Josh made Tyler yearn to get closer.

+++

The first two days passed, and Tyler did not see Josh. He could not make himself knock. He could not ask if Josh was okay without thinking of Catsup in the trees and the truth Tyler had folded away with him.

The third day, Tyler saw a grocery delivery sitting outside Josh's door long enough for the ice cream to melt. On the fourth, he heard footsteps in the hallway after midnight and the soft, defeated scrape of Josh dragging a trash bag toward the chute. Tyler opened his own door a crack, then closed it before Josh could turn around.

A woman came by twice. Tyler didn't know her name, but he recognized the brisk, purposeful rhythm of her footsteps and the way she knocked until Josh finally let her in. She was tall and almost delicate-looking, with wavy chestnut hair and a gentle sort of determination about her.

The second visit ended with the two of them sitting on the hall carpet for a while, talking quietly. Tyler couldn't make out the words. When they finally stood, the woman squeezed Josh's shoulder, and Josh leaned into her hand like someone had forgotten how to ask for help.

Nearly a week went by. Tyler caught one glimpse of Josh through the kitchen window, standing in the same sweatshirt in front of an open cabinet, staring at nothing in particular. Tyler wondered when Josh had last eaten properly. He thought about the clean food bowl Catsup would never use again. He thought about the knock he kept not making.

By the end of that week, guilt had stopped being an emotion and become a roommate. A very loud roommate who kept pointing at Josh's window.

Tyler had no right to solve Josh's grief with a trick. He knew that. Unfortunately, knowing something and making a sensible decision in its general vicinity were two of Tyler's least compatible skills.

So, obviously, Tyler turned himself into a cat.

Not permanently. That had not been the plan. The plan, if it deserved such a generous word, was to become a stray-looking cat for an afternoon, scratch adorably at Josh's window, accept a few pets, cheer Josh up, then change back. Perhaps one day Tyler could even speak to him like a normal man instead of haunting the edges of his life like a Victorian ghost child lurking in the background of a family photograph.

Tyler looked at his reflection in his bathroom mirror after the spell took hold. Brownish black fur. Black paws and throat. A sweet little face. Brown eyes that did not change the way they should have, but were passable enough as normal cat eyes if someone was not looking too closely.

Hell, Tyler wanted to pet himself.

He was darn cute.

He had left his back door partially open before the transformation. He squeezed through it, hopped up onto the fence, then onto Josh's kitchen window ledge. The window was closed, but Tyler could hear movement inside with his keen little furry ears. He scratched at the glass and mewed as sweetly as possible.

Josh came around the corner into the kitchen so fast he slid into the refrigerator.

Hope lit his face first.

Then confusion.

Tyler scratched more frantically at the glass and made the biggest eyes he could. Josh stared at him for a long, stunned moment before his mouth softened.

"Hi there, kitty," Josh said, voice tender enough to fold Tyler into quarters.

He approached slowly and opened the window. Tyler tilted his head into Josh's cautious hand and immediately understood why cats went insane about being petted.

+++

There were a lot of perks to being Josh Dun's house cat.

After Josh called around to the local humane society to see if anyone was missing a cat who fit Tyler's description, and after one deeply uncomfortable trip to a vet to scan Tyler for a microchip, Tyler got to call himself Josh's.

Josh's cat, technically.

Tyler took what he could get.

He learned early that he was stuck. The transformation had been stronger than he meant for it to be, which was becoming the thesis statement of his entire life. No matter how hard he tried to return to human form, nothing happened. The spell sat over him like a locked door. Again, Tyler realized he would be stuck as another animal for an unknown length of time.

The truly troubling part was that, for a while, he thought it might be worth it.

Because Josh was a cat person in a way that felt almost religious.

Tyler got an exclusive pass to stretch across Josh's lap for belly rubs that turned his entire kitty body into pudding. He slept on Josh's chest, tucked under Josh's arm, curled against Josh's stomach while Josh breathed slow and warm above him. There was always room for him. No matter what Josh was doing, Tyler could crawl onto him, beside him, under his sweatshirt, or across his neck like a dramatic scarf. Josh seemed to melt every time Tyler kneaded his paws into Josh's thighs or belly, even the times Tyler accidentally aimed for Josh's fantastic butt.

"You're so weird," Josh would say, laughing softly. "But I love you anyway."

Tyler heard that and felt his whole small body purr.

The shower thing was also a problem.

Not because Josh minded having a cat nearby. Josh let him sit on the edge of the tub, amused when Tyler watched the water and occasionally reached a paw toward it. But Tyler was not a cat, and Josh had never agreed to have a grown man in the bathroom. The first time Josh began to undress, Tyler made himself look away. The second time, he should have left altogether. Cat instincts were no excuse for having a human conscience.

Josh also had private moments he thought no one human was there to witness. Tyler knew he should leave the room. He knew it every time. Later, when guilt had more room to breathe, this would become one of the things that made him want to unzip his own skin and crawl into the walls.

But in the moment, trapped in a cat body, dependent on Josh's care, and ashamed of how much he wanted to stay near him, it became too easy to pretend that a pet was all Josh saw and therefore all Tyler had to be. It was a lie Tyler told himself while he watched and licked a paw with frantic dignity. He would have to answer for it when he had a human mouth again.

He was not proud of it.

He was in love and stupid and furry.

Of course, there were downfalls.

Cat litter was overrated and made him sneeze. At least he had the sense to use the toilet like a trained cat, though it was not easy, and he could not be mad at Josh for laughing when Tyler fell in the first time. It led to a warm bath, fluffy towels, and a lot of snuggling afterward.

Cat food was worse. His cat taste buds did not entirely hate it, which somehow made the betrayal deeper.

Tyler vomited on the carpet the first time purely from the thought of what he was eating. He learned quickly to hold it in when Josh began switching foods, fretting aloud, and using the phrase "back to the vet."

Tyler did not want to ever visit the vet again after being held down and scanned.

He was already terrified Josh was going to eventually have him neutered.

So he ate the damn food.

The things we do for love.

Then there were Josh's friends. They wanted to pick him up and cuddle him and feed him treats and pet him with their stranger hands.

Tyler was not having that.

He hid under furniture or inside whatever shirt or sweatshirt Josh was wearing, which should have annoyed Josh, but Josh only laughed and let him stay.

There was only one friend of Josh's who truly worried Tyler.

Her name was Shay.

Tyler recognized her as the woman who had sat with Josh on the hallway carpet during those miserable days after Catsup disappeared.

As a person, there was nothing imposing about her. Tall, but somehow delicate. Soft-spoken. Wavy chestnut hair. Large green eyes. She was kind to Josh in a way Tyler approved of with all four paws. She knew how to be gentle without making him feel fragile.

Unfortunately, Shay was also a witch.

Josh, as far as Tyler could tell, had no idea his oldest and most fiercely protective friend was magical.

To him, Shay was the person who remembered appointments, called when he went quiet, and showed up with dinner when life fell apart. Tyler, peering out from under the bed, had the horrible sense that this particular secret belonged to Shay and that she was not going to appreciate finding someone else's secret curled up on Josh's pillows.

Unlike Tyler, Shay had power. Real power. The kind that radiated from her like heat from pavement in summer. Tyler sensed it the first time she walked into Josh's apartment and immediately flattened himself under the bed like an envelope.

It was only a matter of time before she figured him out.

Around her fifth visit, shit hit the fan.

Josh had left to pick up the Chinese takeout they ordered. Shay waited in the living room. Everything went quiet. Then Tyler began levitating out from under Josh's bed against his will.

He scrambled desperately in midair, little legs bicycling at nothing, but he drifted through the open bedroom door and toward the living room like a very unwilling balloon.

Shay stood in front of the couch, looking terribly calm.

"Look here, you little witch turned furball," she said, catching him by the scruff and holding him against the wall. "I'll declaw you with my bare hands if you're here to hurt Josh."

With a snap of her fingers, Tyler appeared human again.

Naked.

Trembling.

Being held by his neck against the cold white wall of Josh's living room.

His soul tried to leave his body, found out his body was still naked, and came back to file a complaint.

Shay looked him up and down with one eyebrow raised. "You're that neighbor Josh talks about sometimes. The one who helped him look for Catsup."

Tyler could not speak.

"Looks like you've botched your own spell," she said, green eyes boring into his. "You can't even break it now, can you?"

Her eyes smoldered faintly, like coals. Tyler recognized the look of a searching charm. His head went fuzzy.

Shay's expression changed.

"Oh," she said softly. "It's not a spell. It's a curse. You've cursed yourself?"

The realization landed horribly because it made sense. Tyler had wanted so badly to get closer to Josh. He had poured want, grief, guilt, love, cowardice, and magic into the transformation all at once. Naturally, he was a bad witch, but that did not mean he was not powerful enough to curse himself by accident.

Shay let go of his neck. Tyler stayed against the wall out of self-preservation.

He really wished he was not so naked.

"First," Shay said, "you need to tell me why you did this. Be honest."

She snapped her fingers again. Tyler's mouth filled with a warm cotton-like sensation.

An Honesty charm.

The words came out fast enough to qualify as a medical event.

"Josh is really hot and I am a pussy and I've had a crush on him since he moved in and I can't talk to him because every time he smiles I forget how elbows work and then Catsup went missing and I found him dead but I hid him because Josh was crying and I couldn't tell him and then I thought if I turned into a cat I could make him feel better and also maybe get close to him and now I think I'm in love with him and I'm sorry and please don't tell him because he will hate me and I will simply pass away right here."

Shay held up one hand. Tyler's mouth went normal again.

She was quiet for several seconds.

"I can help you," she said at last. "It's going to take time."

Tyler sagged.

Then she leaned in, voice even. "Josh is a very good man. He is my best friend, and I love him very much. If you hurt him, I guarantee you will be licking your own ass clean with a barbed wire tongue for the rest of your life."

"He doesn't know you're a witch," Tyler managed.

"No," Shay said. The heat behind her eyes cooled, but her expression did not. "That's a conversation I should have had with him a long time ago. You don't get to make that choice for him, and apparently neither do I."

"So why help me?"

"Because he loves that cat, and if I can keep this from breaking his heart twice while I find a way to put things right, I will." She looked at him for a long second. "Don't mistake that for permission to keep lying."

Tyler swallowed. "I won't."

Shay's raised eyebrow expressed a deep lack of faith in the forecast.

Tyler did not question her sincerity.

"Why can't you just leave me like this?" he asked, voice rough. "With your snappy thing?"

"I would if I could," Shay said, pursing her lips. "This is only a pierce charm. It removes the veil temporarily."

Tyler sighed.

"Joshie's back."

Another snap, and Tyler was a cat again.

Before he could get his bearings, Shay bent down and scooped him into her arms. Tyler stiffened instinctively, but her hands were surprisingly gentle as she settled him against her chest. He looked up at her, deeply suspicious of this sudden change in hospitality.

Shay merely raised an eyebrow.

Josh came in carrying Chinese food and an extra container of sweet and sour sauce. "Whoa. How'd you manage that?" he asked, beaming at Shay. "That cat hates everyone but me."

Shay smiled and set Tyler down on the back of the couch. "Just worked my magic."

Tyler wanted to roll his eyes. Since he could not, he meowed loudly for Josh instead.

"Hey, baby boy," Josh greeted, warm as sunlight. "You like Shay, huh?"

He picked Tyler up, and Tyler curled into Josh's arms, purring uncontrollably.

"Yeah," Josh cooed. "Me too."

+++

Life after that became a strange loop of pining and snuggling. On one paw, it was amazing. Tyler spent every night with Josh. Josh talked to him about everything. His day, good and bad. His shoulders hurting. His mom's grilled cheeses.

One evening, Josh was scratching behind Tyler's ears when he sighed and said, "I hope my weird-hot neighbor is okay. I haven't seen him in forever. His car hasn't even moved."

Tyler stopped purring.

Wait.

Weird-hot?

The weird part was fair. Tyler couldn't argue with that. But hot?

Josh thought he was hot?

Tyler experienced a moment of such profound personal triumph that he nearly rolled off Josh's lap. He had absolutely no idea what to do with this information. He wanted to celebrate. He wanted to call somebody. Unfortunately, he was a cat, and his phone was in another apartment.

He settled for purring so enthusiastically that Josh laughed and asked if he was malfunctioning.

As if that weren't enough, Josh admitted he wished he'd asked that weird-hot neighbor out. Or at least asked him to hang out. He wondered aloud where they might have gone for ice cream if he hadn't been too distraught over Catsup to accept Tyler's invitation.

Tyler loved listening.

He also worried about Josh, who was lonely enough to tell his cat all the things he did not seem to tell anyone else.

The more Tyler learned, the heavier his guilt became. He knew Josh's shampoo, the soft smell of his fading pink hair when it was dirty, the way he snored only if he rolled onto his back, the shape of the birthmark on his left butt cheek, the ridiculous soft spot he had for old boy band songs, the exact crease between his eyebrows when he cried.

Josh knew almost nothing about Tyler.

He probably was not even sure of Tyler's first name.

Shay kept visiting. Whenever Josh was out of earshot, she updated Tyler on her search for someone named Jesse, a witch with very specific abilities and a talent for being impossible to reach. Tyler grew more hopeless as days passed, which meant he spent more time hiding inside Josh's shirts and sniffing Josh's warm chest like a desperate Victorian widower.

On the next visit, Shay arrived with a grocery bag and a look Tyler had come to recognize as professional disappointment. Josh was working late; she had come to leave soup in his fridge and to look in on the furry catastrophe currently hiding behind his curtains.

She found Tyler watching the kitchen table, where unopened mail was stacked beside a crumpled takeout menu.

"He ate today," she said before Tyler could ask. "I made sure. He's having a rough stretch, but he's coming out of it."

Tyler pressed his forehead against the window. It was the closest he could get to saying thank you.

Shay crouched and held out her hand. Tyler hesitated. Then he touched it with one paw.

"I'm going to find Jesse," she told him quietly. "And when you're out of this, you're going to tell Josh the truth. All of it. I will too."

Tyler nodded, which made his whiskers twitch.

"Also," she added, "for the record, I don't hate you. I'm furious with you. Different department."

He gave a tiny, miserable meow.

She sighed. "Oh, don't do that. You make a very upsetting face as a cat."

When she left, she scratched behind his ears for exactly one second. Tyler suspected she regretted it immediately. He didn't.

Then timing shifted.

Josh decided to visit his family for a few days. He called Shay to ask if she would feed the cat. Tyler hated the idea of Josh leaving so much he claimed the dirty "I want to believe" shirt Josh discarded while packing, shoved his head through an armhole, and kneaded sadly at the fabric.

Josh looked over while changing into a NASA shirt and frowned.

"Oh, please don't give me that look."

Tyler looked harder.

Josh approached and untangled him from the shirt, lifting him into his arms like a baby. "I'll be back. I promise."

Tyler knew. He understood.

He did not have to like it.

Josh kissed his forehead and left.

Tyler went to sleep tangled in Josh's shirt, feeling empty.

+++

He woke to Shay's gentle voice and the news that Jesse had come with her.

Tyler trotted beside Shay into the living room, excited for the possibility of no longer eating cat food. A stranger waited there.

"Tyler, this is Jesse," Shay said. "Jesse, Tyler."

Tyler had not known what to expect. His first impression was that he had never met a more tattooed person in his life. Josh had a bright, beautiful sleeve. Jesse had tattoos on both arms, both hands, and most of his neck. They disappeared under a black tank top with a simple white triangle in the center. His jeans looked one emotional crisis away from becoming leggings, cuffed above beat-up black Vans and tall white socks. His hair was dark at the roots and bleach blond through the ends, cut short around his temples and ears.

His face was attractive, Tyler noticed objectively, because he was cursed but not dead. Masculine and calm, with dark brown eyes that seemed like they could see directly into Tyler's mind.

Nowhere near as hot as Josh, of course. But still.

"Hey, um, Tyler," Jesse said. His voice was boyish and soft, like a summer breeze. "Nice to meet you. I hear you cursed yourself."

He looked at Tyler very seriously.

Then he cracked up.

"Shit. I'm talking to a cat. Pierce the veil, Shay. I'd rather be talking to a cursed dude than a cat."

Tyler liked him immediately.

Shay laughed and set Tyler on the arm of the couch. As she raised her hand to snap, Tyler realized he was about to be naked in front of two people this time.

Nope.

Mid-snap, he leapt toward the back of the couch and landed human with a loud thump on the floor behind it.

Tyler groaned.

Jesse doubled over laughing. Tyler popped his head over the back of the couch.

"Um. Can you look away, please?" His throat felt strange after so long without using it. "I need to get clothes."

Shay giggled, but she and Jesse both turned around.

Tyler darted into Josh's bedroom, pulled on the "I want to believe" shirt, and found a pair of black sweatpants with white stripes down the sides. They were too big on him. In Josh's full-length mirror, he was startled by how much weight he had lost. Cat food had not been a thriving diet. His facial hair had grown more than he had ever allowed, and his hair was its own tragic woodland creature.

In short, he looked like crap.

Unfortunately, his appearance was the least of his problems.

When Tyler returned to the living room, Jesse sat on the couch, reading from an old scroll while arranging crystals across the coffee table without even looking at them. Tyler recognized some of the stones from his father's attempts to teach him complicated spells. Selenite.Hematite. Pearl. And the largest piece of Clear Quartz he'd ever seen, jagged and glittering and beautiful. Clear Quartz was common among witches, prized for its ability to amplify nearly any spell or ritual. Tyler had seen plenty of it, but never a piece quite like that.

He sat down beside Jesse.

The crystals stopped being the most impressive thing in the room.

Up close, Jesse's power hit him like standing too close to an open furnace. More than Shay. More than Tyler's father. Somewhere off the charts.

Tyler's stomach churned. His hands shook.

Shay touched his forearm. He jerked, then met her concerned eyes.

Jesse cleared his throat. "Look, man," he said gently, "I know. I know what you're feeling. But I won't hurt you. I promise."

His sincerity settled something in Tyler. He nodded.

"All right." Jesse rubbed his hands together. "Let's get this going. It's been a while."

He handed Tyler hematite and a large pearl for his right hand, then rummaged through an overstuffed messenger bag and pulled out a red velvet box. Inside was a diamond the size of Tyler's fist.

Tyler gasped.

"Hope this is big enough," Jesse muttered.

"Dude." Tyler stared at it. "What the heck. You could get mugged for that. You could be killed."

"Millions of dollars," Jesse said cheerfully before Tyler could finish the thought. "Don't worry about me. Worry about someone who tries to touch my stuff if I don't want them to."

Jesse set the diamond in Tyler's left hand. It was cold and vibrating with energy.

"I'm assuming you know what these are used for?" Jesse asked.

"Hematite for grounding. Pearl for balancing mind and heart. Diamond for purification and amplification."

"Good. I'm going to detect the curse and see if I can take any of it out of you. This won't hurt, but it will feel really strange in your head. Brace yourself."

Tyler did not know what to expect.

Then Jesse grabbed his head with both hands and pulled him close enough that Tyler briefly wondered if he was about to be kissed by a witch with jeans painted onto his body.

He tried to pull away, but his energy vanished. His brain began to vibrate inside his skull. Jesse's eyes darkened until the irises turned black, the black swirling into the whites like ink dropped into milk.

"Don't be scared," Jesse said softly. Tyler could smell cigarettes on his warm breath. "You're safe. Keep your eyes on mine."

Tyler tried. It felt like there was warm liquid behind his eyes and a curious pulling sensation where Jesse's palms pressed to his temples.

Then Tyler was seeing Josh like pages flipping through a book.

Josh checking the mail.

Josh smiling as they passed in the hallway.

Josh taking a pizza from a delivery guy and making eye contact with Tyler like Tyler was someone worth noticing.

Josh crying in Tyler's arms.

Josh laughing while Tyler, as a cat, made biscuits on his stomach.

Josh sleeping with Tyler tucked under his arm.

Josh, Josh, Josh.

Jesse let go.

Tyler blinked hard and watched Jesse pant for breath. He had gone frighteningly pale. Black ink formed on one temple through blond strands of hair, darker and darker until it looked like half of a heart. Thin lines swirled from it into his hairline.

The diamond in Tyler's hand had turned completely black.

"Are you okay?" Tyler asked softly.

Jesse nodded, slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. "You really love that guy."

Tyler could not disagree.

Jesse needed food immediately. They ended up in Shay's car, Jesse stretched out sickly in the back seat while Tyler and Shay sat up front and waited in the closest McDonald's drive-through.

"Is he really going to be okay?" Tyler asked.

"Yeah," Shay said. "He just expended a lot of energy. He's eaten far stronger curses than yours."

The drive-through speaker crackled. "Hi, welcome to McDonald's. What can we get for you today?"

Realization hit Tyler with the force of a thrown brick.

"HE'S A CURSE EATER?"

Silence.

"Um," the speaker said. "Could you repeat that?"

Jesse howled with laughter in the back seat.

Shay covered her face with both hands before somehow ordering fries, a McChicken, two double cheeseburgers, a Coke, three apple pies, and a strawberry shake while sounding almost normal.

They sat in the parking lot and ate in stunned silence. Tyler was torn between the ecstasy of human food and the terror of being in the presence of a curse eater. From what he remembered, curse eaters were rare witches marked by incredible power, tattoos, and short lives. When they absorbed curses from others, the curses manifested as tattoos on their bodies. Once the tattoos covered them completely, the curses consumed them and they would die.

Some curse eaters refused to use their abilities.

Jesse, very clearly, did not.

As he ate, Tyler felt Jesse's energy rise. Color returned to his face. After a long slurp from his nearly empty shake, Jesse sighed.

"That's better. Mind if I smoke?"

Tyler did not mind.

Back in Josh's apartment, Jesse explained that he had taken out as much of the curse as possible, using the diamond to absorb what he could. Love curses were hard. Curses were like viruses. If they were not flushed out, they would consume Tyler again.

"In your case," Jesse said, "you'll be a cat again. I counter-cursed you to buy time. You'll stay human for about three months. To break the veil curse completely, Josh has to love the human you. Not the cat, not a version you've invented to be less frightening. And with this kind of curse, love has to survive the truth. You don't get to trick him into saving you. If it resolves before the counter-curse gives out, you stay human. If not, you're going to live out your life as a cat."

Jesse gave a nervous little laugh. "No pressure."

"How does the magic know whether I told him the truth?" Tyler asked.

Jesse looked at the black diamond in his hand. "It came from what you were hiding. It's not grading his feelings on a worksheet. It will know whether he's choosing you with his eyes open."

"So I have to explain everything and hope he still likes me?"

"Pretty much." Jesse winced. "I know. Terrible dating strategy for somebody who keeps turning into furniture."

Tyler processed this with the calm dignity of a man standing under a falling piano.

"So," he said slowly. "I'm human for like three months. I have to get Josh to actually love me in three months. That's..."

"Well, Josh loved me as a cat but…

Then realization punched him in the soul.

"Oh crap!" Tyler stood. "OH CRAP, GUYS. JOSH LOVED ME AS A CAT."

Things went still for a moment while Tyler looked between Jesse and Shay.

Jesse looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

Shay looked like she knew exactly what Tyler meant.

"Josh is going to freak out," Tyler breathed.

"Okay, don't you freak out too." Shay coaxed him back down. "Jesse and I can handle this."

"Handle what?" Jesse asked.

Shay turned to him. "You know how much you love cats?"

Jesse nodded.

"Times that by fifty. That man is basically a mama cat in human form."

"Oh," Jesse said.

"And he just lost Catsup," Shay added. "If he comes home and finds out he's lost another cat, I don't even want to think about what that'll do to him."

Jesse considered this for a moment. "So we get him another cat."

Tyler blinked. "What?"

"Another cat," Jesse repeated. "We find one that looks enough like you, Shay puts a veil on him, and Josh comes home to a cat who hasn't mysteriously vanished."

Tyler stared at him.

"You're suggesting we replace me?"

"Well, we can't exactly put you back," Jesse said. "Unless you want to be a cat again."

"Nope. Replacement sounds fantastic. Love replacements. Big fan."

Shay was looking thoughtful now, which Tyler had already learned was a dangerous expression on a powerful witch.

"It could work," she said. "At least long enough to give us some breathing room."

"But," she added, looking pointedly at Tyler, "whatever happens with this replacement cat, we do not get to erase Josh's right to know. This buys a little time to do it properly. That's all."

Tyler looked between them. "Good. Because there are already enough ethical crimes in this room, and I personally committed most of them."

Jesse shrugged. "We'll figure out the cat situation."

Tyler decided that was an excellent time to remove himself from the discussion. He had already spent more than enough time being Josh's pet, and the last thing he wanted was to sit around while two powerful witches brainstormed ways to put him back in a litter box.

He went home.

+++

His apartment was dark and smelled terrible. He needed to pay rent. His phone bill was due. The garbage had become its own democracy. There were calls to make. His mom. His best friend and boss, Mark. Fortunately, it was far from the first time Tyler had disappeared due to a magical incident. Those close to him knew he made mistakes with his craft.

For now, Tyler had other priorities.

Like showering as a human being. Standing under hot spray. Using a goddamn loofah. Taking a piss without worrying about falling into the toilet bowl.

He showered until the hot water ran out, shaved until his face was smooth, and lay in his bed long enough for his body to remember it was a body and not a loaf with whiskers. Then he paid his bills, ordered pizza, opened every window, and cleaned until the apartment no longer smelled like the ghost of regret.

His mom yelled with love for twenty minutes, then told him he was a good and handsome man and surely Josh would see that for himself.

Mark said, "Well, I'm glad you didn't become roadkill. I'll put you back on the schedule next week."

Tyler loved how simple Mark was.

With his life mostly back on track, Tyler crawled into his bed and pulled the blankets over himself. He was exhausted, but he could not shut down. He had gotten used to falling asleep with Josh, in Josh's bed, with Josh's hands on him.

Tyler got back up, found Josh's "I want to believe" shirt on the bathroom floor, and pressed it to his face. It still smelled mostly like Josh. Tyler shook out some of his own cat fur, pulled it over his black tank top, and crawled back into bed.

He fell asleep within minutes.

Shay and Jesse showed up the next day around noon.

It took a minute for Tyler to remember he was not a cat. He stretched slowly in bed, smiling because there was hope.

It was not banging his door down, but at least it existed.

He opened the door. Shay stood there with a Taco Bell bag and a smile. Jesse held a pet carrier that definitely had something inside, because apparently this was the kind of day where lunch came with a fucking sequel.

Tyler grimaced.

He still hated pet carriers.

There was an air of formality as they all sat in Tyler's living room.

"So," Tyler said, looking between the bag and the carrier. "Taco Bell and a new pet?"

"We had a pretty good idea to replace you as Josh's cat," Jesse said, "so we got one."

Tyler heard the cat mewling inside the carrier. It made his chest hurt. He knew what it felt like in one.

"Can we let him out?" he asked, ignoring the small mound of burritos Shay placed in front of him.

"Yeah, but he's probably going to hide." Jesse knelt by the carrier.

"It's okay," Tyler said softly. "Just let him out. He's scared."

Jesse undid the latch. The cat peeked his head out carefully. He looked a bit like Tyler had as a cat, but with lighter markings and a bigger build. The major difference was the eyes. Stark green. Nothing like Tyler's brown.

The cat crept out and sniffed Tyler's living room, jumping at every small noise. Tyler understood. Being a small animal was scary.

"We're going to fix him up," Jesse said around a soft taco. "The looks won't be as hard as his personality."

After the trash went back into the bag, the cat approached Tyler's feet and let him pet his head.

"So," Jesse began, "Shay is going to veil the cat, but we're going to have to make him act normal around Josh."

Shay snickered.

Tyler looked up. "What's funny?"

"Jesse has to put a love spell on him."

Tyler smeared a hand down his face. "Oh hell. Why would you do a thing like that?"

"You were all over Josh as a cat," Shay explained. "If this cat doesn't act like that, Josh will worry."

"But those spells never end well."

"This one should be fine," Jesse said. "It's a fader spell. It'll make the cat cling to Josh at first, then fade as he becomes comfortable around him. It won't change Josh's feelings, and I'm setting it so it can't make the cat hurt himself or anybody else. Cat minds are simpler than human minds, but still. Nobody wants a magical emergency in a litter box."

"I just don't want Josh to end up with a pet cheetah or something that rips his arm off."

Jesse chuckled. "Nah, man. Trust me."

Shay patted Tyler's knee. "You just need to focus on breaking your curse now."

Then her expression grew serious. "I want you to understand why I'm here. Josh is my best friend. I like you, Tyler. I do. Which is extremely inconvenient, because if this goes wrong, I'm still picking Josh."

"You should," Tyler said.

She studied him, perhaps expecting an argument. When none came, her shoulders loosened a fraction. It wasn't friendship. Not yet. It was the first piece of something that might become trust.

Tyler put his face in his hands. He had gotten himself into this by being too afraid to talk to Josh. Now he had to face his fear, face Josh, and somehow become someone Josh could love on a deadline.

The lights flickered all around his apartment.

Shay leaned her arm against his. "You know Josh is really sweet."

Tyler nodded.

"And you also know he's interested in that weird hot neighbor of his." She nudged him. "Which is you, Tyler."

The lights stopped flickering.

It was true. Josh had talked about Tyler to his cat. To Tyler himself, technically, in the worst possible way. Still, the weight on Tyler's chest lightened.

"Okay," he croaked. "What do I do? It's been years since I've dated."

Shay picked up the cat. He relaxed into her lap. Under her palms, his fur changed, darkening into the brownish black Tyler had worn, black paws and all.

"Josh loves food," Shay said. "He loves cooking. Invite him over. Cook something, or order something if you can't. Talk to him. Let him know you."

It sounded like a good plan.

Tyler could not cook much, but maybe he could fake it.

Jesse cleared his throat, looking up from a scroll. "I found a good fader."

"I'm almost done with the veil," Shay said. The cat had melted in her lap, purring loudly, unaware his fur was being magically edited. "But his eyes are going to be difficult. Josh loved your eyes. He'll notice if they're different."

"The veil won't cover them?"

"It can make them brown, but they don't look right. They don't look like yours."

Tyler frowned. "I couldn't change them well when I transformed, either."

Jesse looked up from the scroll. "You can't change the windows to your soul."

That made too much sense for Tyler's comfort.

Then Jesse sat up sharply. "Hold on. I have something."

He dragged his overstuffed messenger bag onto the couch and rummaged until he pulled out a thin wooden box, no bigger than his hands. Inside, fitted face down into navy velvet, was what looked like a brass hand mirror.

Shay gasped.

Tyler immediately hated the vibe.

"How did you get that?" Shay asked in a whisper.

Jesse shrugged in a way that answered absolutely nothing.

"What is it?" Tyler asked.

"A soul mirror," Shay said. "They're extremely rare. They can imprint a soul image onto someone or something else."

Tyler had read about them. He mostly remembered that they were typically used for dark spells, which was not the kind of memory that made him want to volunteer.

"So it can take your soul?"

"In the wrong hands, yes," Jesse said. "But what I'm going to do is magical copy-paste. I need it to reflect your windows onto the cat's eyes."

"That was somehow the worst way to say that."

"And yet you understood me."

Tyler stared flatly at Jesse.

"And before you ask," Jesse said, "the eye imprint is tethered to your veil. If we break the curse, his real eyes should return. He'll get to be himself again too."

Tyler looked toward the cat, who had found a loose thread on the rug and was pulling it with surgical determination. "I think he already has a fairly robust sense of self."

"A criminal one," Jesse agreed.

The process was disturbingly easy. Jesse held the mirror in place and told Tyler to look into it. Tyler did and saw only his own reflection, plus a smear of Taco Bell sauce on his cheek. He could not understand the words Jesse spoke before he told Shay to hold up the cat.

As soon as Jesse moved the mirror from Tyler to the cat, Tyler's eyes burned.

The cat mewled.

Then it was over.

Tyler blinked rapidly. His eyes watered, but his vision was normal. The cat hissed at Shay and bolted under Tyler's coffee table.

For a moment, all three witches stared at the underside of the table, where a pair of brown eyes glowed back with a suspicious amount of betrayal.

"Great," Tyler said. "He looks like me and hates us. That's healthy."

"He doesn't hate us," Jesse said.

The cat made a sound like a tiny demon clearing its throat.

Shay looked toward the table. "He might hate us a little."

+++

Getting the replacement cat into Josh's apartment required more planning than Tyler expected and less dignity than anyone deserved.

Josh was due back that evening. Shay still had Josh's spare key. The idea was simple: put the veiled, charmed cat in Josh's apartment before Josh came home, let him believe his beloved stray had been there the whole time under Shay's care, and give Tyler a chance to run into Josh as a human in the hallway.

The idea was simple in the way a mousetrap was simple.

Execution involved Jesse crawling halfway under Tyler's couch while whispering, "Hey, hey, sweet little felony, come here," and Shay lying flat on the carpet with a burrito wrapper tied to a shoelace.

"Sweet little felony?" Shay repeated from above him.

"He has committed three counts of evading capture and one aggravated assault on my thumb," Jesse said. "I'm describing his record."

The cat hissed faintly from the darkness.

"See? No remorse."

Tyler stood with his arms crossed, watching two powerful witches get outsmarted by a ten-pound animal with half of his eye color.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Is this the same man who ate a curse out of my skull yesterday?"

"He has claws," Jesse snapped from under the couch.

"You also have claws," Tyler said. "They are metaphorical but horrifying."

"Do you want to catch him?"

Tyler looked at the glowing eyes under the furniture.

The cat looked back.

Tyler, who had recently been a cat and knew exactly how personal a bad grab could feel, sighed and crouched. "Hey. I get it. This is weird. You're in a strange place with strange people, and one of them smells like curse smoke and strawberry milkshake."

"That's my cologne," Jesse said.

"You do not get to speak right now." Tyler lowered his voice again. "No one's going to hurt you. Josh is good. He's the best person in the whole building. Possibly the county. He'll love you. All you have to do is maybe not climb into his mouth."

The cat blinked.

Then he crept forward and bonked his head against Tyler's knuckles.

Tyler's heart twisted. "Thank you."

Jesse, still flat on the floor, whispered, "Did you just emotionally negotiate with a cat?"

"I've been on both sides of the table."

They transported the cat in the carrier, despite Tyler apologizing to him six times in the hallway. Once inside Josh's apartment, Shay set him loose. The cat disappeared under Josh's bed so quickly he seemed to liquefy.

"He'll come out when Josh gets here," Jesse said.

"Because of the love spell?"

"Because of the love spell."

"Say that in any other context and listen to how crime it sounds."

Jesse pointed at him. "You turned yourself into a cat to infiltrate your crush's apartment."

"That's fair," Tyler said. "Deeply rude, but fair as fuck."

Shay locked Josh's door behind them when they left. In the hallway, Tyler's stomach started doing parkour.

"Now it's up to you," she said gently.

Tyler looked down the hall toward his own apartment. He had spent months avoiding Josh in this exact stretch of stained carpet and temperamental fluorescent lights. Now he had to deliberately put himself in Josh's path and behave like a human person whose insides were not being sorted by a raccoon.

"I can do that," Tyler said.

The light above him flickered.

Jesse gave it a concerned glance.

Shay caught Jesse by the sleeve. "Come on. Let's give him some privacy."

"I can be discreet."Jesse said.

Shay looked at him.

"Okay. I can be elsewhere."

She steered him around the corner. Jesse gave Tyler two encouraging thumbs-up before disappearing.

"I can do that," Tyler repeated, and the light steadied.

For approximately nine seconds.

Josh came home carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder, hair hidden under a backward cap. He looked tired from traveling, pink fading softer at the ends, cheeks a little wind-chapped. When he rounded the corner and saw Tyler standing there, his entire face lit up.

Tyler's heart launched into his throat.

A power surge ran through the hallway. Every light brightened at once, humming loud enough to make Josh look up. Tyler tried to compose himself, which was like asking soup to stand at attention.

"Man," Josh said, looking back and forth at the lights, "the electricity in this building is nuts."

"Yeah," Tyler managed. "Old wiring."

Josh's smile came back, wide and relieved. "Hey. You're alive."

"Last I checked."

"I was worried about you." Josh shifted the duffel on his shoulder. "You disappeared for a while."

"Family stuff," Tyler said, which was not technically a lie if one considered curses to be family-adjacent because Tyler had definitely inherited his stupidity.

"Everything okay?"

No, Tyler thought. A curse eater removed a love-virus from my soul and now I have three months to make you love me back or I become a permanent cat, also there is a replacement version of me in your apartment who may or may not be romantically obsessed with you due to magic.

"Getting there," Tyler said.

Josh's expression softened. "Good. That's good."

Tyler swallowed. "I was actually going to knock later. Maybe. If that wasn't weird."

"You were?"

The hope in Josh's voice made the hallway light flicker again.

"Yeah. I owe you ice cream."

Josh stared for a second, then laughed, soft and pleased. "You remember that?"

"I have a strong relationship with dairy-based unfinished business."

Josh laughed harder.

Tyler's nervous system, encouraged by this, sent all available power to his mouth and none to his dignity.

"Or dinner," Tyler added. "Food that isn't ice cream. Unless you want ice cream for dinner, which I support politically."

"Dinner sounds good."

Something banged inside Josh's apartment.

Josh whipped his head toward the door.

Tyler went very still.

Another bang. Then a loud, theatrical meow that rose in pitch until it sounded less like a cat and more like a haunted kettle.

Josh's eyes widened. "Oh my God, baby?"

He fumbled his keys into the lock.

The second the door opened, the replacement cat shot out from the apartment like a fur-covered missile. He launched himself directly up Josh's body, claws catching fabric, paws scrambling with passionate commitment. Josh yelped, staggered backward, and dropped his duffel.

"Whoa, whoa, hi, hi, okay, ow, hi!"

The cat reached Josh's shoulder, shoved his face into Josh's cheek, and began purring so loudly Tyler could hear it over the hallway lights.

Inside the open doorway, Josh's living room looked as if a raccoon had attempted to start a small religion. One sneaker lay on the rug beside a spoon, a sweatshirt string, a TV remote, an old receipt, a lonely kibble pellet, and what appeared to be one of Josh's clean socks. The objects formed a crooked line pointing toward the door.

Tyler stared past Josh's shoulder. "What is that?"

Josh tried to look without dislodging the animal currently welding itself to his face. "My stuff?"

"In a formation?"

The cat let out a sound that was almost a name. "Mrrrraaaaooosh."

Tyler had been a cat. He knew what cat noises sounded like. That had been one vowel away from filing a marriage license.

Josh laughed. "Did you bring me presents, buddy?"

The cat performed what looked like a complete emotional inspection of him: one sniff behind the ear, one at the jaw, one at the hairline, followed by a frantic headbutt to confirm Josh's continued existence.

Tyler watched with horrified fascination. This wasn't affection. This was a one-cat welcome-home committee with absolutely no functioning bylaws.

Josh froze, then burst into helpless laughter. "Did you miss me?"

The cat headbutted Josh's mouth.

Tyler stared.

Jesse had said love spell. Tyler had imagined extra cuddly. Maybe clingy.

This cat looked like he had found religion and Josh was the fucking temple.

Josh tried to peel him off and failed. The cat wrapped all four paws around his neck and rubbed his entire face against Josh's jaw.

"Okay," Josh said, laughing breathlessly. "Okay. Wow. I missed you too, little dude."

The cat inserted one paw gently into Josh's mouth. Josh sputtered and shook his head.

"Nope. Nope, not that. We don't put feet in mouths in this house."

The cat withdrew his paw, inspected Josh's mouth with the stern concentration of a doctor checking a patient's pulse, and made another noise: "Mraaaaooosh."

Josh beamed at him. "You're very chatty today."

Tyler decided to have a private conversation with Jesse about the difference between a fader charm and worship.

Tyler made a strangled sound and covered it with a cough.

Josh glanced at him, embarrassed but amused. "Sorry. He's usually clingy, but this is... new."

"Maybe he missed you."

"Maybe he joined a cult while I was gone and I'm the cult leader."

Tyler laughed so suddenly the light above them popped.

Both men looked up.

The light swung gently from its fixture.

Josh's cat continued purring directly into his ear.

"Old fucking wiring," Tyler said weakly.

"Right," Josh said, smiling at him around a cat tail. "Old wiring."

+++

Their first dinner was set for the next night because Josh needed to unpack, shower, and surgically remove a cat from his shoulder.

Tyler spent the intervening twenty-four hours preparing in a way that, from the outside, might have looked like a breakdown with garnish.

He cleaned his apartment again. He bought groceries he did not know how to use. He called his mom twice, once for emotional support and once because he forgot what cumin was. He stood in the spice aisle of the grocery store for eleven minutes trying to decide if thyme was pronounced like time because witches loved making normal words irritating.

Mark texted him: do not cook anything alive for the hot neighbor.

Tyler texted back: not helpful.

Mark: historically very helpful.

By six, Tyler had a plan. Pasta. Salad. Garlic bread. A dessert from the bakery because he respected Josh too much to poison him romantically.

By six-thirty, Tyler had smoke in the kitchen, noodles glued together in a single pale fist, and one salad cucumber that had rolled off the counter and disappeared so completely Tyler suspected it had returned to its ancestors.

At six-forty-five, the pot of pasta water boiled purple.

Tyler stared into it.

"No," he whispered.

The water bubbled innocently.

"Do not be magic right now."

The purple deepened.

The noodles shifted.

Slowly, horribly, they formed a word on the surface.

HELP.

Tyler turned off the burner.

At six-fifty, Josh knocked.

Tyler opened the door wearing an apron his mom had given him that read I TURNED OUT FINE in cheerful red letters. Behind him, smoke drifted through the kitchen like a fog machine at a failing haunted house.

Josh's gaze moved from Tyler's face to the smoke to the apron.

"Do you need me to call someone?"

"The fire department, God, or Olive Garden?"

Josh grinned. "Which one gets here fastest?"

"Probably God. The bar is low."

Josh laughed and stepped inside with a canvas bag over one arm. "I brought ingredients in case you got nervous."

Tyler blinked. "You expected me to fail?"

"No. I expected you to be nervous." Josh's smile went soft. "There's a difference."

Tyler's chest did something deeply inconvenient.

Josh moved around Tyler's kitchen with easy confidence, rescuing what could be rescued and gently suggesting they surrender the rest. He found the purple pasta water and stared at it.

"Is this... beets?"

"Yes," Tyler said immediately.

"There are no beets on the counter."

"They dissolved out of shame."

Josh looked at him.

Tyler looked back.

Then Josh laughed so hard he had to brace one hand on the counter.

That laughter loosened something in Tyler. He leaned against the opposite counter and admitted, "I was trying to impress you."

Josh's laughter faded into a smile. "By fighting pasta?"

"I thought if I cooked, you'd think I was a functional adult."

"I already saw your hallway light explode yesterday."

"That was the building."

"Of course."

"A functional adult building."

Josh stepped closer to rinse a cutting board, shoulder brushing Tyler's. The kitchen light buzzed. Tyler held his breath. Nothing exploded.

Progress.

They made grilled cheese and tomato soup instead, because Josh said grilled cheese could fix most things and Tyler was in no position to argue with a beautiful man holding butter. Josh showed him how to get the bread golden without burning it into roofing material. Tyler listened, actually listened, because Josh's voice became animated when he talked about food. He explained things with his hands. He smiled when Tyler asked questions. He leaned into Tyler's jokes.

Josh did not fill silence like he was afraid of it. He made silence comfortable, then waited inside it until Tyler stepped forward on his own.

That was how Tyler found himself talking.

Really talking.

He told Josh about managing the music shop, about Mark, about the time he spent a month as a raccoon, though he edited the story into "I accidentally adopted a raccoon lifestyle" and let Josh assume the rest was metaphor.

"A raccoon lifestyle?" Josh repeated.

"Night eating. Hand washing. Dumpster-based self-discovery."

"Dumpster-based what?"

Tyler looked into his soup. CThe dumpster taught me things."

Josh"s smile twitched. "Like what?"

"That I am resourceful, morally flexible, and capable of opening a childproof lid with my teeth."

Josh stared at him.

Tyler added, "Emotionally, I should not have known that about myself."

"Were you okay?"

The sincerity in the question caught Tyler off guard.

"Yeah," he said. "Mostly. I've always been a little..."

"Feral?"

"I was going to say independent."

"You were describing dumpster self-discovery."

"Feral is fair."

Josh smiled at him over the edge of his soup bowl. "I like that."

"You like feral?"

"I like honest."

Tyler looked down at his grilled cheese because Josh's gaze felt like too much and exactly enough.

After dinner, they sat on Tyler's couch with bakery brownies between them and the TV playing some documentary neither of them watched. Josh told Tyler about visiting his family, about his nieces, about his mom sending him home with six containers of leftovers because she thought single men who lived alone were three missed meals away from dust.

Tyler told him about his mom yelling because she loved loudly.

Josh listened like every detail mattered.

By the time Josh stood to leave, Tyler had forgotten about the curse for almost an hour.

Then Josh paused at the door.

"I had fun," he said.

"Even with the pasta?"

"Especially with the pasta."

"It said help."

Josh blinked. "I'm sorry. The pasta did what?"

Tyler's brain caught up with his mouth.

"Not literally," he said quickly. "It was more of an... overall impression."

Josh glanced toward the kitchen. "Honestly, I got the same impression."

Tyler groaned. "I'm going to fling myself into traffic."

"Please don't. I want to do this again."

Tyler's mouth went dry. "You do?"

"Yeah." Josh looked suddenly shy himself, which was so gorgeous Tyler nearly blacked out. "If you want."

"I want."

The hallway lights flickered.

Josh glanced up.

Tyler stared straight at him and refused to look guilty.

"Old wiring," Josh said.

"Old wiring," Tyler agreed.

Josh left smiling.

Tyler closed the door and slid down it to the floor like a Victorian maiden receiving tragic correspondence.

He pressed both hands over his face.

From somewhere under the couch, the missing cucumber rolled out and bumped his foot.

"Not now," Tyler told it.

+++

Josh began seeking Tyler out in ways that felt impossible to misread and terrifying to accept.

He knocked on Tyler's door two days after dinner with a container of soup because he had "made too much," which Tyler learned meant Josh had deliberately made an amount suitable for feeding a youth soccer team and then portioned out one container with Tyler's name on it. He texted about little things. A song he heard. A weird dog in the parking lot. A photo of his cat sitting inside an empty cereal box with only his eyes visible, captioned: replacement is defective.

Tyler stared at the word replacement for so long his phone screen went dark.

Then another text came through.

Josh: I mean replacement for Catsup. Not like spiritually. I don't know why I said that.

Tyler laughed until he wheezed.

The cat remained nameless.

Josh tried. He tried "Buddy," and the cat shoved his face into Josh's armpit. He tried "Pepper," and the cat stole a sock from the laundry basket and slapped it into his soup. He tried "Agent," because the cat had a disturbing habit of watching him like he was under federal investigation. The cat responded by crawling into the bathroom sink, making direct eye contact, and turning on the faucet with one paw.

Josh sent Tyler a video of this.

"Why does he know plumbing?" Josh whispered in the recording.

The cat stared into the camera with Tyler's stolen brown eyes.

Tyler had to sit down.

"Pumpkin" went poorly. Josh said it sweetly three times because it was October, and the cat stared into his soul for seven full seconds before pushing Josh's phone off the table. "Mochi" ended with the animal halfway down Josh's hoodie sleeve, leaving Josh with one functioning arm and a visible spiritual crisis. "Scout" inspired him to drag the bathmat to the front door and sit on it like an airport worker awaiting the arrival of an aircraft.

"Oliver" brought a photograph of the cat standing in a mixing bowl inside an open cabinet. The caption read: he has become soup.

Tyler showed it to Shay, who stared at her screen for a very long moment.

Shay: the fader is stronger than jesse promised

Tyler: i can see that

Shay: jesse says this is within acceptable parameters

Tyler: his acceptable parameters are going to get a paw in the mouth

The fader spell made the cat's attachment comically intense but not dangerous. According to Josh, the cat followed him from room to room like a tiny, judgmental bodyguard. He sat on the bathmat while Josh showered and screamed if steam fogged the glass enough to obscure him. He dragged Josh's left shoe onto the couch every morning and slept with his face inside it. He headbutted Josh's phone anytime Josh tried to use it with both hands, which meant Tyler began receiving texts like:

Josh: he is inj

Josh: sorry

Josh: he is inside my sweatshirt

Josh: I think he has become my second skeleton

Another afternoon brought four messages in quick succession.

Josh: update

Josh: he is purring into my armpit

Josh: i do not know if this is medical

Josh: he closed himself in the drawer emotionally

A minute later came a picture of two enormous brown eyes staring out from among neatly folded T-shirts, followed by: i think he is the drawer now

Tyler laughed so hard he startled the plant on his windowsill into producing a second, much smaller flower.

Tyler loved every update.

He also loved the way Josh would appear in the hallway now, leaning against the wall by the mailboxes as if Tyler's schedule was suddenly important public knowledge.

"Fancy meeting you here," Josh said one afternoon.

Tyler looked at the mailboxes. "In the place where we both live."

"Crazy coincidence."

"Astronomical."

Josh grinned. "Want to grab coffee?"

Tyler did. Unfortunately, Josh was wearing a sleeveless hoodie, and Tyler's brain looked at his arms and immediately knocked a stack of mail out of a stranger's hands without Tyler touching it.

The envelopes fluttered everywhere.

Josh ducked to help pick them up. "This building is haunted."

"Absolutely."

"Like, specifically by office supplies."

"The worst kind."

At the coffee shop, Tyler managed to order without incident, mostly because Josh stood close enough to make him nervous but not close enough to make spoons fly. They took a small table by the window. Josh asked about the music shop, and Tyler relaxed because the shop was something he knew. He told Josh about picky guitar dads, teenagers who wanted drumsticks but not lessons, and Mark's theory that every customer who said "I played a little in college" was about to perform the opening chords of one of four songs.

Josh laughed with his whole body.

Tyler liked making him laugh.

He liked it too much.

Josh noticed. That was the dangerous thing about him. He noticed everything, but gently. He noticed when Tyler went quiet and did not shove him back into talking. He noticed when Tyler was funniest after he forgot to be afraid. He noticed, somehow, that direct eye contact made Tyler's nervous system turn into a kicked anthill, and he started looking away when asking questions that mattered.

"So," Josh said, stirring his coffee. "Can I ask why you disappeared for a couple weeks?"

He looked down into his cup when he asked it.

Tyler's answer still got stuck.

"You don't have to," Josh added. "I just worried."

That word did terrible things to Tyler.

"It was a health thing," he said carefully. "Sort of. And a family thing. Also sort of."

Josh nodded. "Are you okay now?"

"Mostly."

"Mostly is better than not."

"Yeah."

"If you need anything," Josh said, still looking at his coffee, "you can knock. Or text. Or yell through the wall. I don't know. Whatever your communication style is."

"Historically? Avoidant and strange."

"I'm flexible."

Tyler smiled down at his cup.

Outside, a parking meter lit up and began ejecting quarters onto the sidewalk.

No one noticed except Tyler.

He stared at it in horror.

Josh followed his gaze. "Is that meter... paying people?"

"Maybe it's generous."

"Old wiring?"

"Old wiring."

"In the parking meter?"

"Municipal wiring."

Josh narrowed his eyes, smiling. "You're weird."

Tyler's stomach fluttered. "Yeah."

"I like that too."

After coffee, Josh walked Tyler back even though they lived in the same building and had arrived together. At the front doors, Josh's hand brushed Tyler's. It was barely anything. A knuckle. A little warmth.

The vending machine in the lobby dispensed fourteen bags of barbecue chips.

They both froze.

Bag after bag thunked into the tray.

Josh slowly looked at Tyler.

Tyler stared straight ahead.

"Hungry?" Josh asked.

Tyler swallowed. "Peckish."

They stood there until the machine stopped.

Then Josh bent, grabbed two bags, handed one to Tyler, and said, "The ghost approves of our date."

Tyler nearly choked on air.

"Was that a date?" he asked.

Josh's smile softened. "I hoped it was."

The lobby light above them hummed.

Tyler held very still.

"It was," he said.

Josh's smile widened.

The light did not explode.

Tyler considered this personal growth.

+++

Dating Josh was not slow in the sense Tyler had always imagined romance had to be slow. The tension had existed before Tyler became human again. It had lived in hallway smiles and almost-conversations and Josh talking to his cat about the neighbor he wished he had been brave enough to ask out. What needed time was not wanting each other.

What needed time was trust.

So they built it in small pieces.

The first piece, strangely, was laundry.

Tyler hated laundry. He hated carrying it, sorting it, folding it, discovering mystery socks that had somehow become wet despite living in a dry hamper. Laundry felt like a chore invented by someone who wanted humans to confront every bad fabric decision they had ever made.

Josh, apparently, loved laundry.

"I don't love laundry," Josh said when Tyler accused him of this in the basement laundry room. "I love clean sheets."

"That's how they get you."

"Who?"

"Big Detergent."

Josh smiled and poured soap into the machine. "You think there's a detergent lobby?"

"I think people who smell like linen breeze have too much power."

It was the first time Josh invited Tyler into a truly boring part of his life, and Tyler found himself enchanted by it. Josh in a laundromat sweatshirt, sorting darks from lights. Josh reading care labels with a concentration Tyler would usually reserve for spellwork. Josh pulling a dryer sheet from the box and sticking it to Tyler's chest like a badge.

"Static protection," Josh said.

"Am I a garment?"

"Emotionally? Maybe."

Tyler looked down at the sheet clinging to his shirt. "If this works on my magic, I'm going to be furious."

"Your what?"

Tyler froze.

Josh was loading towels and did not seem to notice the slip. Or, if he noticed, he let it pass. That was becoming one of Josh's quiet graces. He did not pounce on every weird thing Tyler said. He made room around it, as if Tyler might eventually grow brave enough to step into the open on his own.

The washing machine accepted Josh's quarters, filled with water, and immediately began playing a garbled electronic version of a Christmas song.

It was October. Christmas had no business haunting a washing machine this early.

Tyler closed his eyes.

Josh slowly turned toward him.

"Haunted," Tyler said.

"Seasonally haunted," Josh agreed.

The machine churned to a tinny jingle-bell beat. Josh laughed first, then Tyler, then Mrs. Alvarez came in with a basket of towels, listened for three seconds, and said, "This place is possessed by stupid."

Josh bent at the waist laughing. Tyler had to hold onto the folding table. The dryer sheet floated off his shirt and stuck to Josh's forehead.

Tyler reached to pull it away.

Josh went still when Tyler's fingers brushed his skin.

The washing machine stopped singing.

The silence felt sudden and very aware of them.

Tyler peeled the sheet from Josh's forehead. "There."

Josh's eyes stayed on him. "Thanks."

It would have been easy for Tyler to ruin it by making a joke too fast. Normally he would have. He would have thrown words into the silence like a smoke bomb and escaped under cover of being ridiculous. But Josh's gaze was steady, patient, and warm enough that Tyler tried something else.

He stayed.

He let the quiet sit between them for one whole breath.

Then two.

Josh smiled, small and proud, like he knew exactly how hard that had been.

Tyler's heart performed a full gymnastics routine and stuck none of the landing.

They folded towels later at one of the long tables. Josh did his into neat, soft rectangles. Tyler created lumpy fabric events.

"How do you make them look like that?" Tyler asked.

"Practice."

"At towel origami?"

"At taking care of myself."

Tyler's hands slowed.

Josh kept folding, eyes on the towel. "After Catsup went missing, my apartment got bad for a while. Not gross, exactly. Just... stopped. Laundry piled up. Dishes. I ate cereal from a mug because all the bowls were dirty, and then the mug was dirty too, so I started eating crackers over the sink. Straight out of the sleeve. Like a man who'd been banned from his own kitchen."

"Was it a permanent ban?"

"Pending review."

"Sounds serious."

"Oh, extremely. There were crackers everywhere."

Josh smiled, but it softened quickly. "Clean sheets help me feel like I can start over. Even if everything else is weird."

Tyler looked down at the towel in his hands. He wanted to say something honest. Something that was not a joke wearing a hat.

"When I get bad," he said, "I stop opening mail."

Josh glanced at him.

Tyler folded the towel badly. "I let it pile up until it becomes a monster. Then I avoid the monster. Then the monster gets bigger because I avoid it. Then one day I need a piece of mail from the pile and I have to fight the whole dragon."

"What helps?"

"Usually Mark yelling at me. Or my mom. Sometimes I make a deal with myself that I only have to open three things. But then I open six because I'm already there and because apparently I can be tricked by myself like a dog with a pill in cheese."

Josh laughed softly. "That's a good trick."

"The cheese of shame."

"Still counts."

Tyler looked at him and realized Josh was not simply hearing the funny parts. He was listening to the structure underneath them. The fear. The avoidance. The way Tyler made a joke and left a door cracked open behind it.

Josh nudged Tyler's terrible towel rectangle with one finger. "You want help with your mail dragon sometime?"

Tyler swallowed.

No one had ever offered that like it was ordinary. Not fixing him. Not scolding him. Just sitting beside him while he opened envelopes.

"Maybe," Tyler said.

Josh smiled. "Okay."

The washing machine started the Christmas song again.

Mrs. Alvarez, across the room, shouted, "Absolutely not," and unplugged it from the wall.

A few nights later, Josh knocked with two paper grocery bags. One held sandwiches. The other was empty.

"For the dragon," Josh explained.

Tyler stared at him. "You remembered the mail dragon?"

"Of course. I brought provisions. No dragon-slaying on an empty stomach."

They sat cross-legged on Tyler's floor beside the envelopes Tyler had been avoiding. Josh didn't open anything for him or ask to see things that were private. He simply read the return addresses when Tyler handed them over, sorted the harmless junk into one pile, and made patient little victory noises every time Tyler opened a real letter.

They got through six. The seventh was an overdue reminder Tyler could actually deal with. The eighth was a coupon that had expired in May. The ninth contained a birthday card from his aunt and a five-dollar bill.

"Financial independence," Tyler announced, holding it up.

"Don't forget me when you're rich."

Josh packed the paper scraps into the empty bag. When he stood, the bag floated three inches off the floor, wobbled, and dropped with a soft thump. Tyler froze. Josh only glanced at it, then at the ceiling.

"The ghost loves administrative progress," he said.

Tyler looked at the cleared patch of carpet and the person standing beside it. He had invited someone into the mess, and nothing terrible had happened. Not counting gravity's brief protest.

The next piece of trust was ice cream.

Tyler had offered Josh ice cream the night Catsup went missing. Josh had been too heartbroken to accept, saying some other time before admitting he just needed to be alone. It hadn't been a promise, exactly, but Tyler had held on to that little possibility.

They walked to a shop four blocks away on a warm evening, Josh in a denim jacket, Tyler with both hands in his pockets so he would not accidentally brush Josh's and cause a municipal event.

The shop had chalkboard menus, bright stools, and too many flavors invented by people who needed supervision.

Josh chose Unicorn Sparkle Surprise.

Tyler stared at the tub through the glass. Pastel blue, pink, and yellow swirled together around a thick ribbon of purple gel that appeared to contain actual glitter.

"Is that ice cream or a hazardous material?"

"It's delicious."

"It looks radioactive."

"It's vanilla buttercream."

"Josh. It has glitter in it."

"Edible glitter."

"I feel like that's an important distinction only because somebody made a terrible decision."

Josh grinned and ordered two scoops.

Tyler chose Brown Cow. Vanilla bean ice cream with thick ribbons of Moose Tracks fudge. A respectable flavor. A flavor with integrity. A flavor that had never once needed to reassure the public that its glitter was safe for human consumption.

They carried their cups outside to a bench. The evening smelled like damp leaves and car exhaust, which somehow made Tyler nostalgic for something he could not name. Josh swung one foot back and forth, plastic spoon between his lips while he looked at the sky.

"You are judging my flavor," Josh said.

"I'm observing it."

"With judgment."

"Your ice cream looks like a unicorn threw up at a baby shower."

Josh laughed. "You haven't even tasted it."

"I've seen enough."

"It tastes like what birthday cake wishesit could taste like."

"That's a bold claim for something that looks like it requires a permit."

Josh scooped up a spoonful and held it toward him. "Try it."

Tyler eyed the purple glitter.

"Will I survive?"

"Probably."

"Comforting."

He leaned forward and accepted the bite.

Oh.

It was buttery, creamy, impossibly smooth, with the rich sweetness of some type of expensive birthday cake frosting. Not a hint of fruit. Not a single suspicious flavor hiding behind all those colors.

It was fucking delicious.

Tyler swallowed.

Josh watched him with a deeply irritating little smile.

"Well?"

Tyler looked down at his Brown Cow, suddenly feeling betrayed by the entire dairy industry.

"I resent this."

Josh burst out laughing.

"That's the surprise," he said.

Tyler pointed his spoon at him. "For the record, Moose Tracks fudge is still the superior chocolate experience."

"Nobody said it wasn't."

"Good."

Josh smiled and took another bite of his glittering monstrosity.

Tyler watched him for a moment, then reluctantly held out his spoon.

"One more bite. For scientific purposes."

"Of course," Josh said solemnly. "Science."

"I'm glad we did this," Josh said.

Tyler followed his gaze. "Me too."

"I felt bad that night. Saying no."

"You were grieving."

"Still. You looked so nervous when you asked. Like ice cream might attack."

"It was more you than the ice cream."

Josh turned his head.

Tyler stared very hard at his cup. "You make me nervous."

"Bad nervous?"

"No." Tyler dragged his spoon through melting chocolate. "Like... have you ever held a sparkler too close to your hand? It's pretty and exciting and technically fine, but your brain keeps yelling that you're holding fire."

Josh was quiet.

Tyler forced himself not to look away entirely.

"I'm fire?" Josh asked.

"You're prettier than fire."

There was no taking that back.

The streetlamp above them flickered to life even though the sun had not fully set.

Josh looked up. Then he looked at Tyler with a smile spreading slowly over his face.

"You think I'm pretty?"

Tyler put a spoonful of ice cream in his mouth because it was either that or swallow his whole fist.

Josh laughed, but it was gentle. "For what it's worth, you make me nervous too."

Tyler nearly choked. "I do?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Josh's ears went pink. "Because you're attractive and funny and smart, and you look at me like you're trying not to look at me, which weirdly makes me want you to look at me more."

Tyler's ice cream cup cracked softly down the side.

He stared at it.

Josh stared too.

"You gripped that pretty hard," Josh said.

"Gym."

"You don't go to the gym."

"Emotional gym."

Josh laughed, and Tyler thought maybe courage did not always feel like stepping off a cliff. Maybe sometimes it felt like sitting on a bench with someone who made you feel seen and still choosing not to vanish.

On the walk home, Josh's hand bumped his.

This time, Tyler did not move away.

A parking payment kiosk near the curb flickered awake, its screen flashing 88:88.

Josh glanced at it. "Oh, great. The parking meters are doing it again."

"Don't encourage them."

Josh's fingers slid between Tyler's.

The machine gave an enthusiastic little beep, whirred, and printed a receipt even though neither of them had paid for anything.

Josh picked it up.

It was blank except for one word in pale ink.

WOW.

Tyler snatched it and shoved it into his pocket.

"Receipt ghost," Josh said, delighted.

"Very invasive."

Josh squeezed his hand.

Tyler let him keep it the whole way home.

+++

Josh came by the music shop on Tyler's first day back. Tyler was behind the counter tuning a used bass when the bell above the door rang. He looked up, saw Josh, and forgot every note he had ever known.

Mark emerged from the back room carrying a box of guitar strings just in time to witness Tyler's complete neurological shutdown.

He looked at Tyler. Then at Josh.

His expression lit with horrible understanding.

"Oh, shit. You're the hot neighbor."

Josh's face did something beautiful.

"Hot neighbor?" he asked.

Tyler closed his eyes.

"Mark is being pursued by demons."

"And they're winning," Mark confirmed cheerfully.

Josh laughed and introduced himself. Mark set down the box and shook his hand with the solemnity of a man accepting a peace treaty.

"I'm glad you're real," Mark said. "For a while I thought Tyler invented you as a symptom."

"Mark."

"He came back from his disappearance talking about you like a Victorian ghost saw a thigh."

Josh pressed his lips together.

"Don't start with the Victorian thing," Tyler warned.

"Start? Tyler, I started calling you Victorian years ago. You've been providing supporting evidence ever since."

"That doesn't make it a personality trait."

"Buddy, you see a handsome man and immediately look like you're about to faint into a fainting couch that isn't even there. It's who you are. Own it."

"I am begging you to stop talking."

"See? Victorian. Nobody begs like that anymore."

Josh made a strangled sound.

Tyler pointed toward the back room. "Payroll. Now."

"I own the store."

"Then own it from the back."

Mark went, laughing.

Josh watched Tyler with a warmth that made the acoustic guitars on the wall hum faintly.

"You talk about me?"

"Against my will," Tyler said. "My mouth is haunted."

"By me?"

"Do not look pleased."

"Too late."

At work, Tyler became someone slightly different. Not less himself. More balanced. He knew the store. He knew the regulars. He could talk about instruments without overthinking the placement of his hands. Josh saw him help a teenager pick out a first guitar, saw him gently steer a dad away from buying something too expensive for a kid still deciding whether music was love or a phase.

After the customer left, Josh leaned on the counter.

"You're good at this."

Tyler shrugged, embarrassed. "It's easier when I know what I'm doing."

"You knew what you were doing at dinner too."

"I boiled pasta into a cry for help."

"You made me laugh."

Tyler looked down.

Josh reached across the counter, stopping short of touching. Waiting.

Tyler noticed. His throat tightened. He turned his hand palm up on the counter.

Josh slid his fingers into Tyler's.

Every guitar pick in the little bowl beside the register rose two inches into the air.

Tyler closed his eyes.

Josh whispered, delighted, "Haunted."

"So haunted."

The picks dropped.

Neither of them let go.

The shop became one of Josh's favorite places after that. He came in under the excuse of visiting Mark, who accepted this lie with the dignity of a man watching two raccoons pretend not to be in the garbage.

"Josh!" Mark would call whenever the bell rang. "Your emotionally haunted Victorian is in the back."

"I hate you," Tyler would shout.

"No you don't."

"I could learn."

Josh would appear in the doorway smiling like he had paid for front-row seats to Tyler's humiliation. "Emotionally haunted Victorian?"

"It's a working diagnosis," Mark said.

"You are making customer service worse," Tyler told him.

"There are no customers."

"Then you're making the air worse."

Josh loved it. Worse, he seemed to love Tyler inside it. Not the nervous Tyler who softened himself into a question mark around Josh. The quicker Tyler. The mouthy one. The one who knew how to tease Mark back, who could fix a pedal connection while talking, who could explain the difference between two microphones with his hands moving and his eyes bright.

One evening, after closing, Josh wandered to the small drum kit Mark kept for lessons and tapped the snare with two fingers.

"You play?" Tyler asked.

Josh shrugged. "A little."

Tyler raised both eyebrows. "That was suspiciously humble."

"Maybe I don't want to brag."

"I want you to brag. I support bragging in controlled environments."

Josh sat behind the kit. "Controlled?"

"There are fire exits."

Josh grinned and picked up the sticks.

Then he played.

Not a little.

He played like his body had been waiting all day to become rhythm. It was not loud at first, just a groove under his hands and feet, easy and clean. Then he built it, adding fills, shoulders loosening, face changing into something focused and joyful. Tyler leaned against the counter and watched Josh become bright in a new way.

Josh belonged in motion.

Tyler already knew Josh was comfortable being looked at. He had seen it in the way Josh talked to strangers, in the way he did not shrink from affection, in the way attention seemed to warm him instead of burn him. But this was different. This was Josh in a spotlight even with no spotlight there, and Tyler, who had spent so much time hiding, could not look away.

When Josh finished, the cymbal shimmered.

Then kept shimmering.

And kept.

Josh looked at it.

Tyler looked at it.

The cymbal vibrated with a faint golden glow like a tiny, excited sun.

Tyler stepped forward and pinched the edge between two fingers. It stopped.

"Static?" Josh asked, breathless and smiling.

"Drum static."

"Is that real?"

"You played too good. Physics got emotional."

Josh laughed, flushed and pleased. "Too good?"

Tyler realized his mistake too late.

Josh stood from the kit. "You think I'm good?"

"Do not make me perceive my own sentence."

"You said it."

"It escaped."

Josh came closer, sticks still in one hand. "You look different here."

Tyler swallowed. "Worse?"

"No. More like..." Josh searched his face. "Like you're plugged in."

The phrase hit Tyler somewhere tender. "I know what I'm doing here."

"I like watching that."

Tyler's pulse stumbled.

Mark's voice echoed from the office. "If you kiss in my store, I charge rent!"

Tyler startled so hard the register drawer shot open.

Josh burst out laughing.

Mark leaned out, saw the drawer, and pointed. "Haunted! Victorian!"

"Pay! Roll!" Tyler shouted.

"Still! Owner!"

Josh laughed until he had to sit back down at the drum kit. Tyler's face burned, but underneath the embarrassment was something bright and warm.

Josh had seen him confident.

Josh had liked it.

+++

Their second official date involved Josh cooking in Tyler's apartment and the replacement cat making his first formal attempt at sabotage.

Josh arrived with groceries and a story.

"He tried to come with me," Josh said, setting bags on Tyler's counter.

"The cat?"

"He got inside my jacket. Not under it. Inside. Like he had boneless intentions."

"How did you find him?"

"My sleeve meowed."

Tyler laughed so hard he had to sit down on the kitchen chair.

Josh, pleased with himself, started unpacking. "I think he's mad I'm here."

"Why?"

"When I left, he was sitting on my shoe glaring at the door like a war widow."

"Maybe he supports independence."

"He sleeps with his head in my sneaker."

"Love is complex."

Josh made pasta from scratch because he was apparently the kind of person who found emotional regulation in flour. Tyler watched, half fascinated and half in lust with the forearm strength involved. Josh put him in charge of the sauce after determining Tyler could stir without summoning help words from the pasta.

"This is a big responsibility," Tyler said.

"You can handle it."

"You don't know that."

"I believe in you."

"That's how tragedies start."

Josh laughed and dusted flour across Tyler's cheek with one finger.

Tyler stopped breathing.

Josh stopped smiling.

They were close in the warm kitchen, Josh's hand still near Tyler's face, Tyler's fingers wrapped around a wooden spoon. The sauce bubbled behind him. The air felt full and delicate.

The smoke detector chirped once.

Both of them looked up.

It chirped again.

"Is it detecting vibes?" Josh asked.

Tyler burst out laughing. The moment broke, but not badly. It broke open.

Later, while pasta dried on the counter and the sauce simmered, Tyler's phone buzzed.

Shay: how is human courtship going

Tyler: if I die delete my search history

Shay: that's not an answer

Tyler: he made pasta from scratch with his forearms and put flour on my face. I think I saw God.

Shay: dramatic but promising

Jesse: DO NOT TURN INTO ANYTHING

Tyler: why are you in this chat

Jesse: protecting my investment

Tyler put the phone face down. Shay had created the group chat strictly for curse updates, and Jesse had renamed it THE DEPARTMENT OF FURTHER FELONIES within six minutes. Tyler did not know whether he was becoming friends with these people or merely co-defendants.

Josh eyed him. "Everything okay?"

"My emergency advisory committee is full of idiots."

"That sounds official," Josh said. "Mine too. Shay asked me yesterday if my cat had settled into his identity, and then stared at him for five minutes while he licked the wall."

Tyler nearly dropped the spoon.

"He licked the wall?"

"There was sunlight on it."

"Ah."

"He tried to eat a sunbeam, Tyler."

Tyler had to brace himself on the counter. "Maybe he's ambitious."

"Maybe he's orange in spirit."

"He's not orange."

"Spiritually."

They ate on the couch because Tyler's small table had been overtaken by three books about curse theory, a notebook full of increasingly frantic spell notes, and several crystals. He'd thrown a towel over the evidence five minutes before Josh arrived. Josh pretended not to notice the suspicious towel. Tyler appreciated him deeply for that.

After dinner, they watched a movie. Halfway through, Josh shifted closer. Not pressing. Not assuming. Just offering.

Tyler took the offer.

He leaned until their shoulders touched.

Nothing exploded.

The ceiling fan did begin turning slowly despite being off.

Tyler stared at it.

Josh followed his gaze, then smiled. "Ghost encourages cuddling."

"The ghost is opinionated."

"The ghost has taste."

Tyler wanted to tell him then. About the magic. Not all of it, maybe, but enough. The truth pressed behind his teeth. Josh was sitting beside him, warm and kind and unguarded, and Tyler knew secrets were stacking up between them like furniture in a dark room.

But Josh rested his head lightly against Tyler's shoulder.

Tyler lost his nerve.

For a while, he let himself be happy.

+++

The next afternoon, Shay came to Tyler's apartment with a spell ledger and a bag of oranges. Jesse was supposed to come too, but sent a message saying an old friend had called in a favor. He added that he wasn’t sure if the friend was still human.

There were no further details, and neither of them asked.

"I thought you only came over to threaten me," Tyler said as Shay spread her notes across the table.

"I can multitask. Eat an orange. You look pale."

"That's my complexion."

"Your complexion is on probation."

They spent an hour reviewing the counter-curse. For the first twenty minutes, Shay was brisk and professional. Then her gaze drifted to the neat stack of opened envelopes on the counter.

"Been catching up on things?" she asked casually.

Tyler followed her gaze. For some reason, he found himself telling her about the mail dragon. About Josh showing up with sandwiches and an empty grocery bag, then sitting patiently beside him while he worked through a pile of mail he'd been avoiding for weeks.

He expected teasing.

Instead, she smiled.

"He does that," she said. "Makes space for people without turning it into a performance."

"I know."

"You don't know how long it took him to ask for help after Catsup." Her smile thinned. "I was scared for him. That's why I was so angry when I found you. He trusted that cat when he could barely trust himself to leave the house."

Tyler put down his orange. "You were right to be angry."

"I know." She sighed. "You're making it increasingly difficult to be furious with you around the clock."

"I can do something stupid if you'd like to restore balance."

"Please don't. I have plans tonight."

He laughed, and this time she laughed too. For a moment they were just two people at a kitchen table, sharing a joke instead of a crisis.

Then she tapped the ledger. "It doesn't change who I put first."

"Josh," Tyler said.

"Every time."

Tyler nodded. Somehow, he liked her more for it. And when she left, Shay took the empty orange peels to the trash without being asked, which was such an ordinary, friendly gesture that it stayed with him for the rest of the day.

+++

The first kiss happened because Tyler was trying very hard not to panic.

It had been three weeks since Josh came home. Three weeks of coffee, dinners, texts, hallway stops, and Josh finding reasons to touch Tyler's sleeve, wrist, shoulder, hand. Three weeks of the replacement cat behaving like a tiny enchanted lunatic.

Josh had started referring to him only as "the baby" because every attempted name caused some kind of incident. "Milo" made the cat crawl into the kitchen cabinet and knock down every mug. "Salem" made him bite a throw pillow with religious conviction. "Mr. Whiskers" made him stare at Josh with such betrayal that Josh apologized for twenty full seconds.

"I think he hates names," Josh said one night from Tyler's couch, socked feet tucked under him.

"Maybe he's waiting for the right one."

"I asked if he wanted to be called Prince Meatball and he sneezed in my eye."

Tyler laughed into his hand.

Josh had come over after work with takeout and a dessert because he said Tyler needed to experience lemon bars that did not taste like "cleaning product sadness." They ate on the floor around the coffee table because Tyler had started liking how informal things felt with Josh. Less like performance. More like life.

Now they were on the couch, knees close, lemon sugar on Josh's thumb.

Tyler could not stop looking at it.

Josh noticed, because of course he did.

He lifted his thumb, sucked off the sugar, and watched Tyler's face with a softness that did not match the violence it did to Tyler's bloodstream.

The lamp flickered.

"Tyler," Josh said, amused. "Are you okay?"

"No."

Josh's smile faltered. "No?"

"I mean yes. I mean no, but in a positive direction."

"That is not a sentence most doctors recommend."

"I want to kiss you," Tyler blurted.

The lamp went out.

Silence.

Tyler stared into the sudden darkness.

"Oh my God," he said. "Even the lamp is embarrassed for me."

Josh laughed softly. "I'm not."

The light came back on with a warm pop.

Josh was closer than before.

"You can," he said.

Tyler forgot every instruction manual his body had ever received.

"I can?"

"Please," Josh said.

Tyler moved like he was approaching a wild animal or maybe defusing a bomb, one hand lifting to Josh's cheek. Josh leaned into it immediately. His skin was warm. His eyes were half-lidded, mouth parted just enough that Tyler's magic made a faint, helpless buzzing sound in the walls.

"Old wiring," Josh whispered.

Tyler laughed, nervous and fond, and kissed him.

It was soft at first. Careful. Josh's lips were warm and slightly sweet from lemon bars. He made a small sound that Tyler felt everywhere, and then Josh kissed him back, hand curling in the front of Tyler's shirt.

Tyler could feel Josh's kiss all the way down to his knees.

All the loose change in the apartment lifted from the coffee table, from the counter, from the little dish by the door. Coins rose into the air around them like a tiny metallic solar system.

Josh pulled back just enough to look.

Tyler looked too.

Nickels and pennies and one very confused guitar pick floated around them.

"Huh," Josh said.

Tyler's lungs stopped.

Josh watched a quarter drift lazily past his shoulder, then turned to look at Tyler.

"Okay," he said slowly. "I think we're past old wiring."

Tyler opened his mouth.

"Josh, I…"

Then the coins dropped at once.

Most landed harmlessly on the rug. One bounced off Tyler's forehead.

"Ow."

Josh pressed his lips together.

"Do not laugh," Tyler said.

Josh's face crumpled.

"Josh."

Josh laughed.

He laughed so hard he fell sideways into Tyler's shoulder, and Tyler had no choice but to laugh too, because if he did not laugh, he would scream and maybe become a lampshade.

Josh held onto him, shaking with it, sat back up and kissed the spot on Tyler's forehead where the penny had attacked.

"Are you always like this?" Josh asked, smiling against his skin.

"Humiliated?"

"Funny."

Tyler went still.

Josh pulled back. "You are, you know."

"Only when I'm panicking."

"Then I like panic Tyler."

"Panic Tyler is underfunded."

"I'll start a charity."

Tyler looked at him, really looked. Josh's face was open and warm, his eyes bright with affection. Not pity. Not confusion. Affection. Clear enough that Tyler would have had to be actively committed to self-sabotage to miss it.

His curse pulsed quietly under his skin.

For once, Tyler ignored it.

He kissed Josh again.

The second kiss was less careful. Josh's fingers slid into Tyler's hair. The TV turned on behind them, blasting the weather channel at an ungodly volume.

"TONIGHT'S LOWS--"

They broke apart laughing.

Josh grabbed the remote, cheeks flushed. "Haunted and concerned about frost."

"The ghost wants you to bring a jacket."

"Sweet ghost."

Josh switched off the television, but his gaze wandered to the coins still scattered across the rug.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "I'm starting to think your ghost has a very specific interest in your love life."

Tyler's stomach dropped.

"Maybe he's lonely."

"Maybe." Josh looked back at him, amusement lingering in his eyes. "Or maybe there's something you're not telling me."

Tyler opened his mouth, then closed it.

Josh's expression softened.

"Hey." He brushed his thumb over Tyler's cheek. "You don't have to explain it right now."

Tyler swallowed. "Okay."

"But I hope you will sometime."

There was no accusation in his voice. Just that ridiculous, impossible kindness that made Tyler want to tell him everything and terrified him of doing exactly that.

"Yeah," Tyler said quietly. "Me too."

Josh smiled and leaned forward to kiss him again, apparently deciding that whatever supernatural nonsense was happening in Tyler's apartment could wait another five minutes.

Tyler looked at Josh and thought, not for the first time, that if there were a Nobel Prize for being a sweetheart, Josh would win it and then apologize to the other nominees for making them feel bad.

+++

The first kiss changed the shape of everything without making it simple.

Josh did not become pushy. If anything, he became more careful, which somehow made Tyler want him more. Josh asked before he kissed him the next time. And the time after that. And then, once he understood that Tyler liked being asked but also liked not having to answer with anything more articulate than leaning in, he learned the rhythm of Tyler's yes.

Tyler learned Josh had a dimple that only appeared when he was trying not to smile too obviously. Josh learned Tyler made a soft, offended noise whenever kisses ended too soon. Tyler learned Josh could be shockingly competitive about board games. Josh learned Tyler lied with his whole face if he was losing and thought no one noticed.

Everyone noticed.

Game night was Shay's idea. October had filled the building lobby with plastic pumpkins, paper bats, and a plastic skeleton holding the out-of-order sign for the vending machine. Considering the three actual witches gathering for game night, Tyler thought management had inadvertently committed to a theme. He should have known the evening would become a small, glittering disaster.

"It'll be good," she said, carrying a stack of games into Tyler's apartment while Jesse followed with two bags of chips and the exhausted expression of a man who had been invited to socialize under duress. "Josh gets to see you around people who know you when you aren't busy forgetting your own elbows. You get to be normal around Josh in front of witnesses."

"People?" Tyler repeated. "Mark is my friend. You're Josh's friend. Jesse was summoned by a curse and won't leave."

"Accurate," Jesse said.

"I'm Josh's best friend," Shay corrected. "I'm your increasingly reluctant ally, and if you stop being an idiot for twelve consecutive hours I might eventually admit you're also my friend. Is that clear enough?"

Tyler pointed at her. "See? That. That's exactly the level of emotionally unstable friendship I signed up for."

"I did not sign anything," Jesse said, dropping a bag of chips on the coffee table, "Please stop implying paperwork. Also, I am extremely normal."

Tyler looked at him. Jesse was wearing a sleeveless shirt despite the cold, tattoos visible to both wrists, and a necklace that looked suspiciously like a vial of black smoke.

"Is that cursed?"

Jesse tucked the vial under his shirt. "No."

Shay pointed at him. "It is not cursed enough to mention tonight."

"Wonderful," Tyler said. "Love that threshold."

Mark arrived ten minutes later with a twelve-pack of soda, a cheese tray, and the expression of a man who had known Tyler since childhood and intended to weaponize that knowledge.

"Where's the boyfriend?" he asked.

"Do not call him that when he walks in."

"Why? Is he not?"

Tyler's mouth opened.

Closed.

Shay's face lit up.

Jesse whispered, "Oh, he glitched."

"I'm not glitched."

"You blue-screened."

Mark patted Tyler's shoulder. "It's okay. Labels are hard when you're a haunted Victorian."

"I can't believe that stuck."

The knock came before anyone could answer. Tyler went to the door with what he hoped was dignity and what was probably a visible aura of panic. Josh stood there holding “the baby”, who was wearing a tiny red bow tie.

Tyler stared.

"He wouldn't let me leave without him," Josh said. "And then he stepped on the bow tie like he wanted it on."

The cat looked Tyler dead in the eyes.

"He's dressed for court," Tyler said.

"He does look like he's about to object."

Tyler stepped aside. Josh walked in, and the room did that thing rooms did around him, becoming warmer, more alive. Shay hugged him. Mark grinned when he saw Josh. "Oh, good. The man who made my employee worse at inventory is here."

Josh laughed immediately. "I don't know whether to apologize."

"Don't. It's funnier this way."

Jesse gave Josh a little wave from the couch. "I'm Jesse. Nice to meet you as a person."

Tyler's soul left his body.

Shay smacked Jesse with a throw pillow so hard the cat puffed up.

Josh blinked. "As opposed to?"

"A concept," Jesse said smoothly. "You know when friends talk about someone before you meet them and they stop sounding real?"

Josh smiled. "Oh. Yeah. Tyler was like that for me."

Tyler looked at him.

Josh's smile softened. "Until he wasn't."

The lamp flickered once.

Mark looked at the lamp, then Tyler, then grinned very slowly.

"Haunted," Tyler warned.

"Sure," Mark said. "Horrifyingly haunted."

They played a cooperative game first because Shay claimed it would reduce aggression. This was incorrect. Josh became the team's emotional leader within six minutes. Mark became a spreadsheet with hands. Jesse kept suggesting illegal moves and claiming the rulebook had "bad energy." Tyler panicked whenever Josh leaned over his shoulder to look at his cards because Josh smelled good and breathed too close to Tyler's ear.

"Tyler," Josh said gently, "you have the card we need."

"Do I?"

"It's in your hand."

"Right."

"The hand you are holding."

"Great point."

Tyler played the wrong card.

Everyone stared.

Jesse whispered, "Love makes people stupid."

The cat, sitting in Josh's lap like a tiny judge, meowed once.

"Thank you," Josh told him. "That's not supportive."

The game fell apart spectacularly. Their fictional city burned because Tyler could not read cards while Josh's knee touched his. Mark blamed Tyler for the deaths of imaginary civilians. Shay blamed Jesse for suggesting they "trust the vibes." Jesse blamed capitalism.

Josh laughed until he had tears in his eyes.

During the second game, a word game, Tyler recovered. Words he could do. Words were safer than strategy and Josh's knee. He relaxed enough to become quick, then ruthless, then funny in the way he usually only was with Mark, and lately with Shay when they forgot to argue about the curse. He made connections no one expected. He argued passionately that "cryptid adjacent" should count as a valid clue. He accused Mark of having the vocabulary of a haunted tax form.

Josh watched him from the other side of the coffee table with the softest look on his face.

Tyler noticed halfway through making Jesse laugh so hard soda came out of his nose.

He faltered.

Josh did not tease him.

He only mouthed, You're funny.

The word tiles on the table rearranged themselves into HI.

Tyler slapped both hands over them.

Mark leaned closer. "Did the haunted game say hi?"

"No."

"I saw vowels."

"You saw nothing."

The cat stood, placed one paw delicately on Tyler's wrist, and revealed the tiles.

They now read WOW.

Josh dissolved.

Shay put her face in her hands.

Jesse whispered, "The magic ships it."

"What?" Josh asked, still laughing.

"The static," Jesse corrected. "In the room. Emotionally."

Tyler was going to kill him.

By the end of the night, Josh had helped destroy a fictional city, laughed his way through a word game, and become deeply invested in Mark's ongoing campaign to embarrass Tyler with childhood stories.

Tyler had survived a word game that developed opinions about his love life, Jesse's alarming inability to keep his mouth shut, and the cat stealing a game piece and hiding it inside Josh's hood.

When the others left, Josh stayed behind to help clean.

"That was quite a collection of people," Josh said, stacking cups.

"Mark is my friend," Tyler said. "Shay's yours. Jesse may be an unsupervised weather event. I don't know what we all are."

"Well, whatever you are, they care about you," Josh said.

Tyler picked chip crumbs from the couch. "I'm beginning to suspect that. Against everybody's better judgment."

Josh smiled. "And I like seeing you with them." Josh leaned against the counter. "You're different, but not in a fake way. Like there are rooms in you I haven't been in yet."

Tyler's hands stilled.

"That sounded creepier than I meant," Josh added.

"No." Tyler shook his head. "I know what you mean."

"Can I keep finding them?"

There it was again. Josh, asking. Not taking.

Tyler crossed the room and stopped in front of him. "Yeah."

Josh smiled.

Tyler kissed him first this time.

The soda cans on the counter opened in a rapid sequence of tiny cracks.

Josh pulled back just enough to look at them. Then he looked at Tyler.

"You know," he said, "when we kiss, the laws of nature seem to file a complaint."

Tyler's heart stumbled.

"They've always been difficult."

"Uh-huh."

Josh was smiling, but his gaze lingered on Tyler's face a moment longer than the joke required. There was a question there, one Tyler knew he had already been given the chance to answer.

But Josh didn't ask it again.

Instead, he slipped an arm around Tyler's waist and drew him closer.

"Come here," he murmured.

Tyler kissed him again, smiling, because for one night the secrets felt lighter than joy.

+++

Three months sounded terrifying when Jesse said it, but time around Josh moved strangely.

Some days it crawled because Tyler wanted the next text, the next knock, the next date. Some days it vanished because Josh would sit on Tyler's couch and talk for hours, and suddenly midnight had happened without permission.

Tyler forgot the deadline more often than he expected.

He forgot it when Josh came by the shop and brought lunch. He forgot it when Josh helped him reorganize his vinyl collection by mood instead of alphabet because "sometimes you need an album for feeling like soup." He forgot it when they went grocery shopping and Josh made Tyler smell peaches to understand ripeness while Tyler pretended not to consider proposing in produce.

He forgot it when Josh started kissing him hello.

That one was dangerous.

Josh kissed like he had nowhere else to be. Soft, focused, occasionally smiling into Tyler's mouth like Tyler had said something funny even when Tyler had done nothing but breathe badly.

Tyler had been kissed before. Years ago. Awkwardly. Quickly. Kisses that felt like punctuation. Josh kissed like a fucking thesis statement.

Magic reacted accordingly.

A streetlamp flickered whenever Josh touched the inside of Tyler's wrist. A grocery store automatic door opened and closed six times because Josh leaned close to read Tyler's shopping list. The entire row of mailboxes in the apartment lobby sprang open one after another after Josh kissed Tyler against the wall beside them, each little metal door giving an indignant clang.

Mrs. Alvarez came up from the basement laundry room carrying a basket of towels, took one look at the open mailboxes and their red faces, and said, "Good for you," before heading down the hall.

Josh laughed about it all.

He developed theories, although he seemed to believe them a little less each time.

"Static electricity."

"Humidity."

"The building settling."

"A ghost with strong feelings about romance."

Josh played along, and Tyler was beginning to suspect that was exactly what he was doing. Tyler encouraged the ghost theory because it required the least lying.

Shay did not.

"You have to tell him," she said one afternoon in Tyler's kitchen while Josh was at work and Jesse sat cross-legged on the counter eating cereal directly from the box.

Tyler leaned against the fridge. "I know."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Because love curses are obnoxiously literal," Jesse said. "He has to love the real you. Not hallway Tyler. Not edited Tyler. Not Tyler with the supernatural nonsense cropped out like a bad ex in a family photo. He has to get to choose after he knows what happened. I told you that before."

"Thank you for making that worse."

"I'm a helper."

Shay's expression softened. "He deserves to know before the curse decides whether it counts."

Tyler rubbed both hands over his face. "He'll hate me."

"Maybe," she said, which Tyler hated because it was honest. "Or maybe he'll be hurt and angry and still love you. But if you keep hiding, you're deciding for him."

Jesse nodded. "Also, the cat's fader is working. He's getting less magically obsessed and more normally attached. If Josh comes home one day and his cat no longer acts like an abandoned koala welded to his ankle, he might ask questions."

"How less obsessed?"

Shay checked her phone, then turned it around. Josh had sent her a video.

In it, the cat sat on the bathroom sink while Josh brushed his teeth. He was not touching Josh. He simply stared.

Josh, mouth full of toothpaste foam, said, "This is improvement, right?"

The cat reached out one paw and gently pressed it to Josh's cheek.

Josh melted. "Aw, buddy."

The cat slapped him.

The video ended with Josh choking on laughter and toothpaste.

Jesse said, "Healthy boundaries."

Tyler laughed despite himself.

The guilt remained.

It grew sharper as Josh got closer. Josh told Tyler things now on purpose, as a human to another human. He told him about being lonely after Catsup, about how the new cat helped but also made him worry that he had rushed into loving another animal because grief had nowhere to go. He told Tyler he had wanted to ask him out for months but thought Tyler seemed like someone who might bolt if approached too directly.

"I do bolt," Tyler admitted.

"I noticed."

"That's embarrassing."

"It's okay." Josh nudged his knee under the cafe table. "I like learning how to catch up."

Tyler looked at him then, at the patience in his face, and felt the truth pressing so hard it hurt.

"Josh--"

Josh's phone rang.

He glanced at it. "Sorry. It's my mom. If I don't answer, she'll assume I was murdered by bachelorhood."

"Take it."

Josh stepped outside, smiling apologetically.

Tyler sat alone with his coffee and his almost-confession until the moment passed.

+++

The curse did not stay polite forever.

At first, the symptoms were small. Tyler's hearing sharpened when Josh touched him. He could hear the hum of lights, the scratching of pipes, Josh's heartbeat if they were close enough. His nails grew too fast. He started noticing sun patches on the floor with an embarrassing level of interest.

One night, Josh ran fingers through Tyler's hair while they watched a movie, and Tyler began purring.

Not metaphorically.

Actually.

Josh paused.

Tyler's entire body became concrete.

"Was that you?" Josh asked.

"My stomach."

"Your stomach purred?"

"I'm hungry in cursive."

Josh stared.

Tyler stared back.

Then Josh's face cracked into laughter. "You're the strangest man alive."

"Top five, maybe."

Josh kissed his cheek, and Tyler's chest made the sound again.

Josh's laughter softened into something unbearably fond. "Cute."

"No."

"Extremely cute."

"Legally, no."

Josh kissed him until Tyler stopped arguing.

The next morning, Tyler woke with his pupils blown wide and two dark smudges across his cheeks where whiskers wanted to be. They faded by noon, but he stood in front of his bathroom mirror for too long, gripping the sink.

Three months.

He was six weeks in.

He needed to tell Josh.

Instead, Tyler became very busy pretending six weeks was not close enough to three months to start sweating through his shirts.

The curse, unfortunately, was not polite enough to pretend with him.

It started choosing moments.

Not random moments. That would have been merciful. It chose tender ones, because apparently Tyler's magic had learned comedy from a bully.

One Saturday morning, Josh showed up at the shop with coffee for Tyler and a paper bag full of pastries for everyone. Mark immediately declared him employee of the month despite Josh not working there. Tyler called this nepotism. Josh said he would use his new power responsibly, then fed Tyler half a croissant over the counter because Tyler had a screwdriver in one hand and a guitar pickup in the other.

Tyler accepted the bite without thinking.

Josh's thumb brushed the corner of his mouth to catch a flake of pastry.

Tyler's vision sharpened.

He heard the neon sign in the front window buzzing. He heard Mark opening a drawer in the office. He heard a customer outside step around a puddle. He heard Josh's heart, close and steady and pleased.

Then he heard himself make a tiny, helpless trill.

Josh blinked.

Mark's head slowly appeared around the office doorway.

Tyler swallowed. "Hiccup."

"That was not a hiccup," Mark said.

"You're not a doctor."

"I have known you since you ate chapstick in third grade. That was a cat noise."

Josh looked delighted. "You ate chapstick?"

"Focus less on my medical history."

Mark leaned farther out. "It was cherry."

"Payroll," Tyler said.

"Still owner," Mark said, but he disappeared, cackling.

Josh stayed by the counter, smiling, but his eyes searched Tyler's face. "You sure you're okay?"

Tyler lied with the confidence of a man actively standing in a hole. "Yeah."

Josh's smile faded a little, not gone, but tucked away. "Okay."

That hurt worse than suspicion would have.

Another time, Tyler and Josh went to a little flea market outside the city because Josh wanted to look for old mugs and Tyler liked watching Josh hold ugly ceramics with moral seriousness. They found a booth selling vintage postcards, a table of old records, and one man with a collection of taxidermy frogs in tiny outfits that made Tyler uncomfortable on a spiritual level.

"That frog is a judge," Josh said.

"He knows what I did."

"What did you do?"

Tyler laughed too quickly. "General crimes."

Josh bought a mug shaped like a mushroom. Tyler bought an old book about local ghost stories because one chapter mentioned witches and he wanted to see how wrong it was. They shared a paper basket of fries and sat on a curb while Josh tried to balance ketchup on his knee.

It should have been easy.

It was easy, until a kid ran past with a balloon and the cat, who had not come with them, was suddenly all Tyler could think about. Not the cat exactly. Fur. Paws. Sun on carpet. Josh's hand between his ears.

Tyler's fingers curled.

His nails had lengthened into points.

He shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket.

Josh noticed immediately. "Cold?"

"Yeah."

"It's seventy degrees."

"Emotionally cold."

Josh set the fries aside. "Tyler."

There was something in his voice that made Tyler look at him despite himself.

Concern. Patience. A little hurt from all the places Tyler kept stepping away.

Tyler opened his mouth.

A dog barked somewhere across the flea market.

Tyler startled so hard every postcard at the nearby booth lifted into the air and fluttered around them like startled birds.

The booth owner screamed.

Josh jumped up.

Tyler grabbed the postcards with a desperate burst of magic and shoved them down onto the table in one messy slap.

Silence spread.

The booth owner stared at him.

Josh stared at the postcards.

Tyler stared at the taxidermy frog judge, who looked bitterly unsurprised.

"Wind," Tyler said.

The booth owner looked at the motionless afternoon air.

Josh paid for three postcards they had not intended to buy, apologized to the woman, and walked Tyler to the car.

He did not speak until they were inside.

"That was not wind," Josh said quietly.

Tyler gripped his knees with both hands, hiding the claws. They were already shrinking back into blunt nails, which somehow made everything feel more insane.

"I know."

Josh waited.

Tyler could have told him then. Maybe should have. The truth sat right there, tired of being swallowed.

But panic was old. Panic knew the rooms inside Tyler better than courage did. Panic knew which doors stuck.

"I get weird when I'm anxious," Tyler said.

Josh turned his face toward the windshield. For a second, Tyler thought he would push.

He did not.

"I know," Josh said. "I just wish you'd let me know what kind of weird."

Tyler had no answer.

The drive back was quiet.

That quiet followed Tyler into the week. Josh still texted. Still kissed him. Still smiled when Tyler showed up. But there was a carefulness now that Tyler recognized as someone trying not to step on broken glass they could not see.

Tyler had put it there.

He knew he had.

The curse kept leaking.

He woke one night from a dream of running on four legs and found himself crouched on top of his dresser.

He had no memory of climbing there.

His phone buzzed on the bed.

Josh: can't sleep. you awake?

Tyler looked down from the dresser at the glowing phone.

"No," he whispered to the universe. "Absolutely not."

He climbed down, ankles wobbling, and texted back.

Tyler: yeah

Josh: can I call?

Tyler stared at the phone. His reflection in the dark window had eyeshine.

Tyler: give me five

He splashed water on his face until the shine faded. When Josh called, Tyler lay in bed and listened to his voice in the dark.

Josh talked about work. About the cat knocking over his water glass, then looking offended by the water. About missing Tyler even though that was cheesy and he was sorry for being cheesy.

"Don't apologize," Tyler said softly.

"No?"

"I like cheese."

Josh's laugh came through the phone, quiet and tired. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

There was a pause.

"I miss you too," Tyler said.

The confession under the confession pulsed between them.

Tyler closed his eyes and hated himself for not saying the rest.

He had told himself a hundred times that the love Josh offered wasn't real until Josh knew what he was loving. That wasn't quite true, and somehow the distinction made it worse. Josh's feelings were real. Tyler's, too. The false thing was the floor beneath them. Every day Tyler refused to tell him was another day Josh couldn't decide whether he wanted to stand there.

He made it as far as inviting Josh over for Friday night with the intention of confessing after dinner. Then Josh arrived carrying a covered pan, kissed Tyler on the mouth, and said, "I made lasagna because you said your mom makes it when people need to feel like they're not failing at life."

Tyler forgot how to destroy everything.

They ate. Josh talked. Tyler listened and fell in love in a way that felt less like falling now and more like being gently built.

After dinner, Josh washed dishes even though Tyler told him not to. Tyler dried. Their shoulders bumped. Josh sang under his breath, not actual lyrics, just nonsense syllables in an exaggerated boy band voice until Tyler laughed so hard he dropped a fork.

Josh looked proud.

Tyler could not remember ever feeling so genuinely happy around another person.

That was what scared him most.

Not the curse.

Not even the possibility of Josh hating him.

The happiness.

It made everything harder to risk.

+++

By the start of the third month, the replacement cat had chosen violence against the concept of romance.

The fader spell had faded enough that he was no longer trying to merge with Josh at a molecular level. He still loved Josh, but in a cat way now. Meaning he loved Josh deeply, selectively, and with the constant implication that Josh was an idiot.

Unfortunately, he had developed a new interest in Tyler.

Josh found this adorable.

Tyler found it suspicious.

The cat began appearing at Tyler's door whenever Josh came over, slipping out of Josh's apartment with impossible timing and planting himself on Tyler's welcome mat like a furry subpoena. He watched Tyler with those copied brown eyes, then looked at Josh, then back at Tyler, as if waiting for one of them to confess something.

"I think he ships us," Josh said.

Tyler nearly swallowed his own tongue.

"Cats don't understand shipping."

"He understands something. Yesterday he dragged one of your hoodies out of my laundry pile and put it in his food bowl."

"That's not shipping. That's textile crime."

"He has a vision."

The cat's vision included sitting between them on the couch and pushing Tyler's hand toward Josh with his head. It included lying on Josh's chest and staring at Tyler like a smug chaperone. It included biting Tyler's sock whenever Tyler tried to leave.

The worst incident happened during movie night.

Josh had brought the cat because, as he said, "He screamed at the door like a widow in a lighthouse." Tyler had allowed it because he was weak. They watched a horror movie with the lights off, Josh tucked against Tyler's side, the cat asleep on the back of the couch.

During a tense scene, Josh grabbed Tyler's hand.

Tyler's magic surged.

The TV froze on the monster's face.

The cat woke, saw the frozen monster, puffed to twice his size, and launched himself at the screen.

Josh screamed.

Tyler screamed because Josh screamed.

The cat bounced off the TV, landed in the popcorn bowl, and sprinted across the living room trailing kernels like a festive comet.

The TV unfroze.

The monster screamed.

Josh screamed again, then started laughing so hard he slid off the couch and onto the floor.

Tyler ended up laughing too, bent double, one hand on the couch, the other trying uselessly to catch popcorn off his shirt. The cat sat under the coffee table with popcorn stuck to his whiskers, looking offended by the entire film industry.

"He saved us," Josh wheezed.

"From a pause screen."

"Bravest boy."

"He headbutted a television."

"For love."

Tyler looked at Josh on the floor, face bright with laughter, hair mussed, eyes wet. Love hit him so hard his magic turned the lamp on and off three times like applause.

Josh stopped laughing slowly.

His eyes lifted to the lamp.

Then to Tyler.

For one heartbeat, Tyler thought Josh knew.

Josh's smile softened instead. "Come here."

Tyler did.

They ended up on the floor together, Josh's head on Tyler's shoulder, the cat wedged possessively between their hips, popcorn everywhere. Tyler lay there and let himself have it. The warmth. The ridiculousness. The ache.

He would tell him tomorrow.

+++

Tomorrow became after the weekend.

After the weekend became after Josh's busy work stretch.

After that became a Tuesday afternoon when Tyler found himself in the shop bathroom staring at two triangular shadows in his hair that looked far too much like ears.

He called Jesse.

"How bad?" Jesse asked, skipping hello.

"I might be growing accessories."

"Sexy or alarming?"

"Jesse."

"Right. Sorry. Is Josh in love with you?"

Tyler pressed his forehead to the cool mirror. "I think so."

"Have you told him the truth?"

Silence.

"Tyler."

"I'm going to."

"The curse is going to keep leaking. It wants the old shape back. If the return happens before the counter-curse resolves, we may not get you out again."

Tyler closed his eyes.

Jesse's voice gentled. "He might surprise you."

"He might not."

"Yeah."

"Thank you for the emotional pep talk. Very varsity coach."

"Chug water and stop being a coward."

"There it is."

Tyler hung up and immediately called Shay.

"Tell him," she said.

"You didn't even let me speak."

"Was I wrong?"

Tyler looked at his reflection. The shadows in his hair had faded, but his pupils were still too wide.

"No."

That night, Josh asked Tyler to come over.

Tyler almost said no. Cowardice opened its familiar little door inside him and gestured toward the couch, the blankets, the safe dark room where nothing changed because nothing was risked.

Then Josh texted again.

Josh: no pressure, I just miss you

Tyler stared at those words until his eyes burned.

It took about two seconds for Tyler to decide a few things.

He had spent enough of his life not wanting to be close to people and hiding.

He was done letting fear make his decisions and then calling the consequences fate.

He went across the hall.

Josh answered the door barefoot, in sweatpants and an old sweatshirt, hair soft and messy. The cat sat behind him, tail curled around his paws. His eyes, Tyler noticed with a jolt, were not quite as brown as they used to be. Green threaded through them now.

The fader was beginning to slip.

"Hey," Josh said, smiling. Then he paused. "Are you okay?"

Tyler's throat tightened.

"No," he said.

Josh stepped aside immediately. "Come in."

The apartment smelled like laundry soap and something warm from the oven. Tyler had spent so much time here as a cat that walking in on two human feet still felt strange. He knew the couch. The blanket. The corner of the rug where Josh once spilled salsa. The bedroom door. The kitchen window where Tyler had scratched his way into Josh's life.

The cat watched him from the floor.

Josh closed the door. "Talk to me."

Tyler looked at him.

This was the moment. Not dramatic. No thunder. No orchestral swell. Just Josh in his living room, kind and worried, and Tyler with a whole cathedral of secrets in his mouth.

"Before I say anything," Tyler began, voice thin, "I need you to know I'm not going to defend it. I'm going to explain, but I'm not going to make excuses. If you're mad, you should be."

Josh's face changed slowly.

"Tyler?"

The curse trembled under Tyler's skin.

He told him.

He didn't reach for Josh. He didn't ask him to sit closer. He wanted to, which was how Tyler knew he needed to keep his hands to himself. This was not a confession designed to make Josh comfort him. It was a truth Josh should have been allowed to have months ago.

Not all at once. He could not. He started with being a witch, because somehow that was the easiest part. Josh blinked, looked at the lamp beside them, then back at Tyler.

"The wiring," Josh said.

"Mostly me."

"The vending machine?"

"Me."

"The coins?"

"Me."

"The pasta?"

"Honestly, that might have been fifty percent me and fifty percent pasta."

Josh sank onto the arm of the couch. "Okay."

Tyler told him about Catsup.

That was the first thing that truly hurt Josh's face.

"You found him?" Josh whispered.

Tyler nodded. "I'm so sorry."

Josh looked away. His jaw worked like he was trying to hold something in. Tears gathered fast, and Tyler hated himself with such clean precision that it almost felt useful.

"I should have told you," Tyler said. "I thought I was sparing you, but I was also sparing myself. I didn't want to be the person who hurt you with the truth."

"I kept looking," Josh said, almost too quietly to hear. "I put his picture up. I called places. Every time my phone rang I thought somebody had found him."

Tyler had no answer that wouldn't insult the weight of that waiting.

"You let me keep hoping," Josh said.

"Yes."

Josh's eyes filled again. "I needed to know. Even if it hurt. Especially if it hurt. He was mine."

"I know," Tyler whispered. "I took that choice away from you."

Josh wiped his cheek with the heel of his hand. "Where?"

Tyler told him.

Josh nodded once, sharply.

Then Tyler told him about the transformation. About scratching at the window. About getting stuck. About Shay. About Jesse. About the curse and the deadline. About the replacement cat and the fader spell and the soul mirror.

Josh did not speak for a long time.

The cat jumped onto the couch, sat beside Josh, and pressed his head into Josh's thigh.

Josh's hand lowered automatically to pet him.

"So," Josh said eventually, voice strained. "My cat was you."

"Yes."

"And this cat is..."

"A real cat. Veiled to look like I did."

Josh laughed once, but it was not happy. "Of course. Of course that's a sentence in my life now."

"I'm sorry."

"I talked to you." Josh looked at him then, eyes wet and hurt. "About everything."

"I know."

"I thought I was alone."

"I know."

"You saw me--"

He stopped.

Tyler looked down. Shame moved through him like fever. "Yes. Some things. I should have left. I didn't. I don't have a defense. The cat instincts made everything feel... blurred, but I was still me under it. I'm sorry."

"I don't know what you saw," Josh said, each word measured. "And I hate that I have to ask."

"You can ask me anything," Tyler said. "I'll answer. I won't make you guess."

Josh rubbed his face. "Not right now."

"Okay."

There was nothing Tyler could say to make that part harmless. He had been trusted with a place in Josh's home that a human stranger would never have been offered, and he had treated the difference like an escape hatch. He wanted to blame the fur. He could not.

"I need a second," he said.

"Okay."

"Don't leave."

Tyler's chest cracked. "Okay."

Josh stood and walked into the kitchen.

Tyler stayed where he was. The cat watched Josh go, then looked at Tyler with one green-brown eye and one almost-green eye, as if Tyler had failed a test the cat had warned him about through sock theft.

The second became several minutes. Tyler stayed in the living room, every nerve pulled tight. He did not cry, because crying felt like asking Josh to comfort him and Tyler did not deserve comfort from the person he had hurt.

Finally, Josh returned.

"I am really mad at you."

Tyler nodded. "I know."

"And hurt."

"I know."

"And embarrassed. And sad about Catsup all over again. And confused because part of me wants to ask if you were the one who knocked my plant off the windowsill, because I blamed myself for watering it wrong."

"That was me," Tyler said quietly. "I got spooked by a blender sound from the TV. "

Josh closed his eyes.

A startled laugh escaped him.

It turned into a sob so quickly Tyler almost stepped forward, then stopped himself.

Josh wiped his face again. "I hate that that's funny."

"I hate that it happened."

"You should."

"I do."

"Did you pursue me because of the curse? Because you needed something from me?"

"At first, a small part of me was just desperate not to be trapped forever," Tyler said. He forced himself not to duck the ugly part. "But I wanted you long before that. I pursued you because I love you. The deadline made me brave enough to knock. It also gave me another excuse not to tell you everything. I'm sorry."

"You needed me to love you back."

"Yes."

Josh flinched slightly.

Tyler made himself keep going. "The curse started because I love you and I was too frightened to be known. Then I got to know you as a person while you got to know me as a person, and I kept forgetting the deadline because being with you felt real. I don't want you to love me to save me. I want you to have the truth and choose whatever you need to choose. Even if that means I lose."

The lights flickered.

Tyler looked up, exhausted. "Sorry."

Josh looked too.

Then he laughed again, softer this time, disbelieving. "For awhile I thought our building was one inspection away from collapse."

"It might still be. I can't take responsibility for everything."

Josh's mouth twitched.

Silence settled.

"I fell for you," Josh said slowly, "before I knew any of this. Not the cat version. I loved the cat, yes, in a very normal way until apparently magic turned him into a clingy foot criminal."

The cat meowed once.

"You stay out of this," Josh told him, then looked back at Tyler. "I fell for you at dinner when you admitted you were trying to impress me. I fell for you at the shop when you helped that kid and got embarrassed because I saw you being good at something. I fell for you every time you made a joke because you were nervous, and every time you got quiet but stayed anyway."

Tyler's vision blurred.

"Josh."

"I'm mad," Josh said, voice shaking. "I don't know how not to be mad yet. But I love you. That is also true, and I don't know what to do with the fact that both things are true at the same time."

"I know loving you doesn't make what you did okay," Josh added. "And I don't know if I can forgive it all right now. Maybe not for a long time."

"You don't have to," Tyler said. "Not to keep me human. Not for anything."

Josh breathed in shakily. "Good. Because I need you to understand that."

The curse moved.

Tyler gasped.

It was not pain exactly. It was heat and pressure, like something wrapped around his ribs had finally understood it could let go. The room brightened. Not the lights. The air itself. The cat arched on the couch, sneezed once, and shook his head.

Josh stepped forward. "Tyler?"

Tyler pressed a hand to his chest. "I think--"

Magic rushed through him, warm and golden and terrifyingly gentle. For one split second, Tyler felt paws and hands, fur and skin, window glass under claws, Josh's heartbeat under his ear, the weight of every secret, every laugh, every kiss.

Then it broke.

The pressure vanished.

Tyler stumbled.

Josh caught him.

The contact did not make anything flicker. No lights. No coins. No appliances expressing opinions. Only Josh's arms around him, solid and warm.

Tyler straightened as soon as he could stand. Josh kept one hand on his arm, looking frightened now instead of merely devastated.

"Was that the curse?" he asked.

"I think so."

"So it worked."

Tyler nodded, and the relief that came was enormous and horribly complicated. He was free. Josh was still hurt. There was no way to put those two truths on the same scale, and he wasn't going to try.

The cat meowed.

They both looked.

His eyes were green again.

Very green.

He stared at Josh, yawned, turned in a circle, and presented his butt toward the room before lying down.

Josh blinked at him.

"Did my cat just break up with me?"

Tyler laughed through the tears that had finally spilled over.

Josh looked at him, and for a moment his face did something complicated. Hurt remained there. So did love. So did a tenderness so stubborn it made Tyler ache.

"I need time," Josh said. "Not because you turned out to be a witch. Because you lied to me, and because some of those lies lived in my home."

Tyler nodded quickly. "Of course. Anything."

"But I don't want you to go away."

"Okay."

"And I don't want you to become a cat."

"Me neither."

"And I definitely don't want you hiding things from me because you're scared."

Tyler swallowed. "I won't."

Josh studied him.

"I mean, I will probably still be scared," Tyler said. "A lot. But I won't hide like that again."

Josh nodded, accepting the correction. "Good."

Tyler took a shaky breath. "Are you sure the love counts if you're mad?"

Josh's eyes softened. "Tyler, love isn't a customer service survey."

Tyler let out a wet laugh.

"I can love you and want to shake you by the shoulders until your teeth play percussion."

"That seems fair."

"I can love you and set rules."

"Please do."

Josh lifted a finger. "No more turning into an animal to get close to someone."

"Extremely reasonable."

"No more secret magic in my apartment without telling me."

"Yes."

"No more watching private things if you are a person in a cat suit."

"Never again," Tyler said, mortified.

"And if you find out something horrible, you tell me. You don't decide I can't handle it."

Tyler's throat tightened. "I promise."

Josh looked at him for a long moment, then nodded once.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay," Josh said. "Not fixed. But okay enough for tonight."

Tyler nodded.

Then Josh stepped forward and wrapped his arms around him again.

Tyler held on like he had been waiting his whole life to learn how.

+++

Healing was not instant, because life was not one of Tyler's spells and therefore occasionally followed logic.

Josh had questions. A lot of them. Some made Tyler want to crawl under furniture again. Some were practical. Some were so Josh that Tyler had to pause before answering because his heart kept getting in the way.

"So when you slept on my face, was that you or cat instincts?"

"Both."

"Horrifying. Informative."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm adding it to the list."

"There's a list?"

"There is absolutely a list."

The list lived on Josh's fridge for two weeks under a magnet shaped like a pumpkin. It began as boundaries and became, slowly, a running joke.

NO SECRET CATFISHING, Josh wrote.

"That's not what catfishing means," Tyler said.

"It is now."

NO MAGICAL CRIMES WITHOUT DISCUSSION.

"No crimes."

NO HIDING DEAD PET NEWS, EVEN FOR TRAUMA REASONS.

That one stayed serious.

Tyler went with Josh to the sheltered strip of trees near the place where Catsup had died and removed the hiding charm, releasing the small, carefully wrapped bundle left there. The protection had done its job; time had passed without taking everything. Josh knelt beside it for a long while. He cried. Tyler stayed a little way back until Josh reached for his hand. There was nothing here he could mend with a joke or a spell, and he finally knew better than to try.

"You should have brought him home," Josh said, voice rough.

"I should have," Tyler answered.

"I think I would have hated hearing it."

"I know."

"But he deserved for me to know."

"He did. You did too."

Josh looked at the bundle again. "He had the dumbest meow. Did I tell you that? He sounded like a car that wouldn't start."

"You told me," Tyler said softly, then stopped. He'd heard it while wearing fur, while Josh thought he could tell his cat anything. "I'm sorry. I remember."

Josh studied him with fresh pain in his face. Then he nodded. "I'm allowed to tell you again. As me. To you."

"As many times as you want."

Josh let him hold his hand anyway.

They buried what they could beneath a tree near Josh's parents' house, where Josh said Catsup would have liked the birds and judged them all.

Afterward, Josh leaned into Tyler in the car.

"I'm still mad," he said.

"I know."

"Less, though."

Tyler closed his eyes. "Okay."

"Thank you for coming."

"Always."

Josh believed him. Tyler could feel it in the way he settled against him, tired and sad and trusting enough for the moment.

That trust became something they rebuilt piece by piece.

Tyler told Josh about magic properly. About his family. About his father being brilliant, his mom being disastrous, and Tyler inheriting both confidence and catastrophe in unequal measures. Josh asked what else Tyler had turned into.

"Golden retriever. Raccoon. Fox. Robin. Small couch."

Josh's face lit up.

"Wait. Raccoon?"

Tyler closed his eyes.

"The raccoon lifestyle!" Josh exclaimed. "That's what you meant?"

"I was going through something."

"Oh my God. The dumpster actually taught you things."

"It was a formative month."

Josh stared at him, grinning. "You really did open a childproof lid with your teeth."

"And I deserved to be proud of that."

Josh started laughing, then abruptly stopped.

"Wait. Back up."

Tyler sighed.

"Please explain couch."

"I would prefer not to."

"Tyler."

"I was trying to become a lynx."

Josh laughed so hard he had to sit on the floor.

Tyler showed him small charms once they agreed on boundaries. A candle flame changing colors. A lost sock tugged out from under the dryer. A spell to warm coffee that overshot and created coffee with the surface temperature of fresh lava.

Josh watched everything with wonder.

Not fear.

Wonder.

That did something to Tyler he did not know how to name.

Shay came over alone on a rainy Tuesday. Josh had asked her to. Tyler offered to leave; Josh shook his head.

"I need to hear it from both of you," he said.

Shay stood with her hands folded, an unfamiliar stiffness in her shoulders. "I'm a witch," she said. "I've been one all the time you've known me. I have always kept that part of my life hidden."

"Why?" Josh asked.

"I was taught to. I told myself it was private, and then I got used to you not knowing. That's an explanation. It's not a defense." She swallowed. "When I found Tyler, I knew he was your cat. I helped him with Jesse. And I helped put another cat in your apartment because I thought losing the animal you loved a second time would wreck you."

Josh stared at the carpet. "You thought I couldn't handle it."

"Yes. I was wrong."

"You were my best friend."

"I am," she said, then corrected herself. "If you still want me to be. But you get to decide that."

For a long while Josh didn't speak. Tyler could hear rain tapping against the window, the hum of the refrigerator, Shay trying very hard not to cry.

"I don't want to lose you," Josh said finally. "But I want you to stop making decisions about what I can survive."

"I will."

"And no more 'just worked my magic' jokes when you are literally doing magic in my living room."

Shay gave a shaky laugh. "That one is very fair."

Josh stood and hugged her, briefly, fiercely. He was still hurt when he let go. Nobody pretended otherwise.

Afterward, when Shay was leaving, she looked at Tyler in the doorway. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you're here."

Tyler smiled faintly. "I thought you were still picking Josh."

"I am," she said. "I can be your friend and still pick Josh. It turns out being a person is complicated."

"Disgusting," Tyler said.

She smiled for real. "Revolting."

At her next visit, Shay came over for official damage assessment and unofficial gloating. Jesse accompanied her with a box of donuts and a level of satisfaction nobody had invited.

"I told you," she said.

Tyler pointed at her. "Do not."

"I told you," Jesse said from behind her, carrying a box of donuts.

"You're not even part of this."

"I am medically invested. Hello? Curse eater who ate your curse."

Josh, who had taken Jesse's whole existence better than anyone expected, shook his hand and said, "Thank you for saving him."

Jesse looked startled, then pleased in a way he tried to hide behind a donut. "Yeah. No problem."

The former replacement cat, now fully himself and green-eyed, watched Jesse from the top of the bookshelf.

The cat knocked a bookmark off the shelf, landed on the floor, and strolled past everyone like he had summoned them for an appointment.

Jesse crouched and clicked his tongue. "How's little Felony doing?"

The cat stopped dead. His ears flicked. He turned, trotted directly to Jesse, and sat down in front of him like a criminal reporting for parole.

Josh stared. "Did you just call my cat Felony?"

"That's what I called him the first day," Jesse said. "He was under a couch. I was losing a fight. It seemed legally accurate."

"You ignored Buddy," Josh told the cat. "You ignored Pepper, Agent, Pumpkin, Mochi, Scout, Oliver, Milo, Salem, Mr. Whiskers, and Prince Meatball. But you answer to Felony?"

The cat blinked with the untroubled peace of an animal who had accepted his place in the criminal justice system.

"Felony," Josh tried again.

The cat meowed.

"Oh my God," Josh whispered. "He knows who he is."

"Good for him," Jesse said. "Self-awareness is important."

Tyler, a man who had once transformed into a cat to commit emotional trespassing, chose not to judge anyone's record.

"Felony Dun," Josh announced, stroking the cat's head. Then he glanced at Tyler and grew pink around the ears. "Felony Dun-Joseph if things go well."

"We are not hyphenating a crime," Tyler said.

Shay made a sound like a kettle losing hope. Jesse covered his mouth with a donut.

"I meant in a cat custody way," Josh said.

"Sure," Tyler said, unable to stop smiling.

"Don't look at me."

"I'm looking respectfully."

"You're looking like the vending machine's going to give us chips again."

The vending machine was downstairs, but one of Josh's kitchen drawers slid open by itself.

Everybody looked at it.

Tyler sighed. "Respectfully."

Felony sat on Josh's foot, licked his own shoulder, and declined to comment on his legal name.

+++

Things got easier after that.

Not perfect. Easier.

Tyler knew they were truly moving forward when Josh agreed to meet his parents.

This was either a beautiful sign of trust or proof that Josh had no instinct for self-preservation.

"You don't have to," Tyler said for the eighth time while they drove to his parents' house on a Sunday afternoon. "My family is a lot."

Josh sat in the passenger seat with a container of brownies on his lap because he refused to show up empty-handed. Felony was not with them, despite Josh suggesting he might enjoy "meeting his grandparents" and Tyler threatening to walk into traffic.

"I've met Mark," Josh said. "I've met Jesse. Your definition of a lot has been calibrated."

"My mom once tried to charm a roast chicken to stay moist and it recited the Gettysburg Address."

Josh turned his head slowly. "Did it do a good job?"

"Emotionally, yes."

"Then I'm excited."

Tyler glanced at him. Josh looked nervous, but not regretful. That was Josh all over. Scared sometimes. Careful sometimes. Still showing up with brownies.

"She's going to hug you," Tyler warned.

"Okay."

"And possibly cry."

"Okay."

"And say something embarrassing about me as a child."

Josh smiled. "Great."

"Not great."

"Tyler, the first time you invited me over, you answered the door wearing an apron that said I TURNED OUT FINE while your kitchen filled with smoke."

"That apron was a gift from my mother."

Josh's smile widened. "Then I feel like we've already met."

"Josh."

"I am prepared."

His parents' house smelled like coffee, laundry, and whatever candle his mom had recently declared emotionally necessary. The door opened before Tyler knocked. His mom stood there with both hands pressed to her mouth, eyes already wet.

"Oh," Tyler said. "We're starting at crying."

"My baby brought a boy home."

"I am thirty."

"My thirty-year-old baby brought a boy home."

Josh's smile went soft immediately. "Hi. I'm Josh."

"I know exactly who you are," Tyler's mom said, then hugged him hard enough that the brownie container squeaked between them. "Thank you for loving my wonderful disaster son."

"Mom."

Josh laughed, arms carefully around her. "He's not a disaster."

From somewhere inside the house, Tyler's dad called, "He turned into a couch."

"That's historic," Tyler shouted back.

"History teaches us."

Josh looked delighted.

Tyler's dad was in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove with one hand and floating plates from the cabinet with the other. He was the kind of witch Tyler wished he could be: relaxed, precise, magic moving around him like a second set of limbs. He shook Josh's hand warmly.

"So you're Josh."

"Yes, sir."

"None of that. Call me Chris."

"Okay. Chris."

Tyler's dad studied him with kind eyes. "You handled our boy's nonsense with more grace than most people would."

Tyler looked at the ceiling. "Is everyone going to keep saying things like I'm not here?"

"Probably," his mom said.

Dinner was loud and affectionate and only slightly cursed. Tyler's mom did, in fact, tell stories about Tyler as a child. Josh learned that at age six, Tyler tried to charm his shoes to tie themselves and instead made every shoe in the house hide under the kitchen table. At twelve, Tyler accidentally turned his eyebrows blue for three weeks. At sixteen, he made the school vending machine dispense only raisins for an entire semester and became a mysterious campus villain.

Josh laughed until his face hurt.

"The raisins were not my fault," Tyler said.

His dad gave him a look.

"They were not entirely my fault."

His mom patted Josh's hand. "He always meant well."

Josh glanced at Tyler, warmth and humor in his eyes. "I know."

Two words. So simple. They landed in Tyler like forgiveness he was still learning how to accept.

After dinner, Tyler helped his mom carry plates to the sink while Josh stood with his dad by the back door, watching the warm porch lights glow through the bare branches over the yard. Tyler could not hear what they were saying, but he saw his dad talk with his hands, saw Josh nod seriously, then laugh.

His mom bumped her shoulder against his.

"He's gentle," she said.

Tyler looked down at the plate in his hands. "Yeah."

"Not weak. Gentle."

"I know."

"Good." She rinsed a fork. "Let him be mad when he needs to be."

Tyler looked at her.

She did not soften the look she gave him. "You got that from me, you know. Thinking love means protecting people from things they have a right to feel. It doesn't work. It just makes the truth lonely."

Tyler's throat tightened.

"I know," he said.

His mom kissed his cheek. "You're learning."

On the way home, Josh was quiet for several minutes, brownies now replaced by a casserole container because Tyler's mom was physically incapable of letting anyone leave with empty hands.

"Your family loves you a lot," Josh said.

"Loudly."

"It's nice."

"Overwhelming."

"Both."

Tyler smiled.

Josh reached over the center console, palm up. Tyler took his hand.

No lights flickered. No windshield wipers started. No small objects floated in celebration.

Then the radio turned on by itself and played three seconds of smooth jazz before cutting out.

Josh looked at the dashboard.

Tyler sighed. "That was barely me."

Josh squeezed his hand, laughing. "Sure."

Josh still had days when the weirdness hit him sideways. He would look at Felony curled on the couch and go quiet, remembering that the cat he loved first had been Tyler, remembering Catsup, remembering the lies. Tyler learned not to rush those moments. He learned to say, "I'm here," and let Josh decide whether he wanted space or a hand.

Sometimes Josh wanted space.

Sometimes he wanted a hand.

Sometimes he wanted to ask increasingly specific questions about Tyler's animal memories until they were both laughing.

"Did you enjoy the catnip?"

"I refuse to answer."

"It looked like you did when I gave you some."

"It was one time."

"Tyler."

"You laid it out and I saw God in a carpet scratcher."

Josh laughed into a pillow until Felony came over and slapped the pillow as if defending family honor.

Tyler's magic did not calm down entirely around Josh. It probably never would. Love made Tyler spark. But once Josh knew, the accidents became less frightening and more like weather they could plan for.

They learned not to kiss near glassware.

They learned Josh whispering compliments in Tyler's ear could cause nearby electronics to reset.

They learned that if Josh called Tyler beautiful, any open umbrella in a thirty-foot radius would deploy.

That discovery happened in a restaurant coatroom and nearly gave a hostess a heart attack.

"You're beautiful," Josh had murmured while Tyler was helping him find his jacket.

Six umbrellas burst open at once.

Josh stared.

Tyler stared.

From behind the counter, the hostess whispered, "Oh my God."

Josh, who was the sweetest thing in the entire world and also a menace when encouraged, smiled slowly.

"Beautiful," he said again.

Another umbrella fell off the rack and opened at Tyler's feet.

"Stop weaponizing affection," Tyler hissed.

"I would never."

"You're doing it with your face."

Josh leaned closer. "Handsome."

The automatic hand dryer in the restroom screamed to life.

They had to leave before dessert because Tyler was laughing too hard to pretend the building was haunted.

Two months after the curse broke, Josh stayed over at Tyler's apartment for the first time since everything came out. Not because they had never slept in the same bed as humans. They had, carefully, after long conversations and slower trust. But Tyler's apartment had been the place of the spell, the mess, the hiding. Letting Josh into it for a whole night felt like offering him the least polished room in Tyler's life and hoping he would still want to take off his shoes.

Josh did.

He brought a bag, a toothbrush, and Felony, because Felony had developed strong opinions about shared custody and expressed them by sitting inside Josh's overnight bag until departure.

"He packed himself," Josh said.

Felony peeked out, green eyes bright.

"He's going to unionize," Tyler said.

"He already has. I'm management and I'm scared."

They ordered pizza, because Tyler's relationship with cooking remained aspirational. They watched TV. They kissed until Tyler's lamp flickered, then paused to move the water glasses to the kitchen like responsible adults with magical safety training.

Later, in bed, Josh curled behind Tyler and slid an arm around his waist.

Tyler went still at first. Not from fear. From the size of it.

Human. Chosen. No curse counting down under his skin. No fur. No lie between them sharp enough to cut.

Josh kissed the back of his neck. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Good yeah or panic yeah?"

Tyler smiled into the pillow. "Good yeah."

Felony jumped onto the bed, walked across both of them with the grace of a drunk landlord, and settled near Tyler's feet.

Josh sighed. "He really is ours now, isn't he?"

Tyler felt warmth spread through him. "Yeah."

"Felony Dun-Joseph."

"We are not hyphenating a crime."

"He's a child of two households."

"He's a former magical accomplice."

"Even more reason to give him stability."

Tyler laughed softly. Josh's arm tightened around him.

For a while, the room was quiet.

"I love you," Josh said.

Tyler closed his eyes.

It still made magic stir in him. It still made something glow under his ribs. But nothing broke. Nothing fled. The power stayed warm and contained, like a candle cupped safely in both hands.

"I love you too," Tyler said.

Josh pressed his smile into Tyler's shoulder. "No cat curse?"

"No cat curse."

"No couch curse?"

"No promises if you keep talking."

Josh laughed.

Tyler had spent so much of his life afraid closeness would expose every strange, broken, badly wired part of him. He had thought love would require becoming something easier to hold. A cat. A joke. A version of himself with the worst truths hidden under a veil.

But Josh held him as he was.

Awkward. Magical. Guilty. Trying. Funny when terrified. Brave only after being cowardly for a very long time.

Felony purred at their feet, loud and ordinary.

Tyler listened to Josh breathe behind him and thought, with a wonder that felt almost too large to fit inside one body, that he had come home to his own life.

No spell had ever done that for him.

Only love.

And maybe, Tyler admitted as Josh's hand found his and their fingers tangled under the blanket, one extremely weird cat named after a crime.

The End.