Chapter Text
Beaver was shaking like a leaf. He didn't know what had possessed him. He didn't think he ever made a conscious decision to go through with things. First he was just paying Nocturnal District another visit. Then he just happened to find himself at Sunset Drive, and there was nothing wrong with having a bit of spending money in his pockets, was there? And now he was back at home, looking at a small square of folded cloth that felt unnaturally heavy in his hand.
He looked over at the door to his room, checking the lock for the third or fourth time, before taking a deep breath and unwrapping the cloth with a shaking hand. Maybe he got scammed, he thought desperately. Maybe there'd just be a small container of tapwater or something and he could forget any of it happened. But when he peeled back the cloth, he was faced with six tissue-wrapped objects, and when the tissue was peeled back he was looking at a half-dozen glass vials filled with a sky-blue liquid that seemed to shimmer eerily in the light. Pastor. The taming drug.
He felt out of breath, staring at the small handful of vials. They seemed so small and innocent, but they represented so much. He never should have listened to the damn thread. Even if his roommates did have their issues, even if life did seem to get them down, it wasn't right to even be considering this.
He made his mind up to dispose of the vials as soon as the coast was clear, and stuffed them under his pillow for safekeeping until then. Then he rose to his feet and went out into the shared living area to spend some time with his flatmates.
---
Once again, Beaver cursed the thread.
Surely Freddy and Jacob hadn't changed. They were the same they always were. But suddenly all he could see was the cracks in their facades. Freddy sat on the couch playing a video game he'd beaten three times already just to keep from having to think about anything else with no sign of enjoyment. Jacob sat at the table skimming through a magazine and making inane conversation but kept checking his phone for a message that would never come from a girl that had broken up with him three weeks ago, and every time he did his smile got a little more strained.
And on the other side of the coin he kept... noticing things. Maybe it was the thread's fault, maybe it was just a bit of an awakening after the events of his grand tour of Zootopia. Either way, when Freddy hauled himself off the couch to plod over to the fridge to stare blankly at it's contents, Beaver couldn't help but notice how his lithe otter body looked dressed in the tank-top and shorts he always wore when lounging around the house. And when Jacob tried to distract himself from his thoughts by pottering about in the kitchen and making a dish of clams and oysters for himself and Freddy, Beaver watched Jacob's self-doubt pick away at him until he was constantly running back and forth from the kitchen to Freddy to take samples trying to perfect the level of spices, until Freddy got fed up, turned off the console and slunk away to his room, leaving Jacob trying not to show how hurt he was.
Jacob put together a couple of dishes of the probably-perfectly-fine-but-in-his-mind-flawed meal and left one outside Freddy's door with a timid knock, covered with another dish to keep it warm, and took the other to the table to pick away at it half-heartedly. He looked up to see Beaver's gaze lingering on him and gave a tremulous smile. "You're quiet tonight."
Beaver jumped slightly, having almost forgotten he wasn't just a silent observer of his flatmates. He gave a shaky smile of his own and did his best to come up with an excuse. "I just- life getting to me, y'know?"
Jacob gave a shaky laugh. "I know that feeling. Never really got the hang of life, y'know? I just think everything's going right and then-" he looked down at his mobile again and shook his head. "I just get the shit kicked out of my heart."
Beaver looked at Jacob for a long moment, his heart beating hard in his chest, and without thinking said; "if you could give up control of it to someone else, would you?"
Jacob laughed again, but this time it was bitter. "Shit, that was what I was trying to do. But then she decided she didn't want it. Couldn't even give it away, how pathetic is that?"
Impulsively, Beaver reached across the table and put his paw on Jacob's. "Hey, man. Her loss."
Jacob blinked, and then smiled, a genuine smile for probably the first time that day. "Thanks. Really. I appreciate that."
They sat together for a long while, Beaver's paw on Jacob's, smiling at each other.
After the moment ended, Jacob took back his paw and turned to take his plate back to the kitchen, and Beaver finally fled back to his room. He hadn't dared to until Jacob had turned away, lest he see how painfully, throbbingly hard he was.
---
Beaver was staring at the vials again. For the past few days every spare moment had been spent hypnotized by the possibilities inherent in them, either staring at them thoughtfully or spending time with his flatmates, desperately searching for any hint that they were happy with their lives and finding none. Freddy seemed to drift through life on pure inertia, doing the things that used to entertain him out of habit and being frustrated with the world in general. He was aimless, angry, and probably depressed as hell, and because he didn't know what he wanted from life he didn't even have a destination to start dragging himself towards. So he just marinated in his own bad moods.
Jacob was a hot mess. He was painfully codependent and without anyone to codepend on, which was just magnifying his own neuroses. Jacob clinged to the people around him reflexively, and with Freddy it ended in tears (usually, but not always, figuratively) as Freddy's constant dark moods rubbed off on him. When Jacob turned his clinginess on Beaver, however, it got weird. Beaver had found himself disturbingly receptive to Freddy's attentions since the damn thread had laid their twisted seed in his mind. And though Jacob was straight, at least as far as he knew, his reliance on positive attention from others overpowered it, and with a receptive target in Beaver he almost started acting like a housewife. More than once he had dragged himself out of bed in the morning to find an annoyingly chipper and half-dressed otter pottering around the kitchen making breakfast for him, and since their diets were mostly incompatible he couldn't even say that he was just making breakfast for himself and doubling up the recipe.
But when Jacob was away from Beaver - most of the day, since Beaver had to go to work - Jacob was consumed with his own lack of a partner. Every day when Beaver got home, Jacob's morning chipperness had eroded away and he was morose and mooning over pictures of his ex and staring at a phone that would not ring. He was clearly miserable, and unable or unwilling to drag himself away from his angst.
And on the other side of the coin, the more Beaver watched them the more he started to wonder about himself. He'd always considered himself heterosexual, even though he had an adventure or two on his grand tour that suggested otherwise. But truth be told, there wasn't much difference visually between beaver men and women, so he didn't really have a mental link between gender and appearance, and his otter flatmates didn't smell male or female by beaver standards. So the fact that they were males didn't even enter into his mind unless he forced it to. Which he was having to quite often, lately.
They were just so lithe. The word kept entering into his mind whenever he looked at them. Even when Freddy was slouched on a couch it just seemed to emphasize how slim he was. And when Jacob was in a good mood, the spring in his step and bounce in his tail just made him seem so alive. Everything about them seemed to be built for happy, carefree playfulness, and when he saw his two flatmates haunted by their own issues and so far away from that ideal, it tore at his heart.
He could fix it. He could make them happy. All it would cost... is their free will. Which sounded monstrous, but when they seemed so unable to find their own way to happiness, would it be so wrong for someone to take them by the hand and lead them there?
He couldn't pretend his reasons were entirely noble. But that didn't change the fact that they could be so much happier.
The sky-blue liquid glimmered back at him from the vials, taunting him with possibility.
What was it the dealer had said? One dose, compliance for a day. Two, infatuation for a week. Three, puppy-love for a month. Four, tamed for life. And each vial was enough to dose both of his flatmates. Maybe he could just... try it. Give them a break from themselves for a day. And then he could let it wear off and forget it ever happened. The break from stress might even be good for them. Medicinal, you could say.
Beaver knew he was talking himself into taking baby steps along the road to Hell. But he also knew that the path looked oh so inviting. And he could always just turn around and walk away, couldn't he?
Sleep didn't come easily to Beaver that night.
---
He decided to do it on a work day.
It was easier on his conscience that way. He wasn't doing it for himself, or so he reasoned. If he wasn't there to experience their altered selves, it was just for them. And if he got home in time to experience their new selves, it would just be to see how it had effected them. It was just a little break from their usual negative thought patterns. A vacation from themselves. It would be healing for them.
Or so he reasoned.
So he got up early and started making breakfast for Freddy and Jacob. A bit of research online had turned up a nice recipe to pamper them a bit, cream cheese, egg and salmon breakfast burritos, and one with much less salmon for him - the taste of fish was unusual but not bad on his palate, and as long as he didn't eat too much he could stomach it fine. And on the side, nice tall glasses of blueberry cider. One each for the two of them, that would be tainted with the contents of one of the vials. He'd considered pouring one for himself, but that had shenanigans written all over it, and he'd decided on some nice lemonade instead.
Jacob awoke first, as usual, just before breakfast was ready, and was lead out of his room by his nose while dressed in nothing but boxer shorts, and Beaver had to busy himself in his cooking to keep from staring, his thoughts so distracted he had to read and reread every line of the recipe several times before it sunk in. Jacob had been surprised at first and then excited, hugging Beaver from behind in gratitude, and then rushing into Freddy's room to rouse him. Beaver could hear the groaning protests of both bedsprings and Freddy and Beaver busied himself even further with the cooking, trying not to imagine the scene with two near-naked otters in the same bed.
By the time the burritos were placed upon plates and plates and the all-important glasses placed on the table, a protesting Freddy had been dragged out of his room, as near-naked as Jacob, and his protests dried up the moment he spied breakfast. With hasty muttered thanks that Beaver knew from long experience with him were heartfelt, he took his seat and tucked in. Jacob did the same, but with a thankful smile shot at Beaver that did funny things to his heart. To occupy his thoughts, and keep from staring too hard at the glasses, he busied himself with his own meal. The cream cheese and eggs were almost but not quite too heavy for breakfast, and nicely countered with the lemonade besides, and the taste of salmon, though alien to his beaver palate, combined nicely with it. It was a sinfully indulgent way to start the day.
Before long, all the plates were cleaned off and the glasses emptied. Beaver tried to busy himself with clearing the table, but was brusquely stopped by Freddy, who's eyes were partly closed. Beaver watched Freddy take the dishes to the kitchen. It must have been starting already, then, he reasoned. While he was watching, Jacob sidled up to him and hugged him again, snuggling into his side. "Thanks, Beaver. I appreciate it."
It definitely must have started, Beaver thought, putting an arm around Jacob's shoulders and enjoying the physical contact.
---
It wasn't just about having them cater to him, or so Beaver told himself. This was supposed to help them. So after breakfast was cleared away, when the three of them were reclining on the couch and just digesting, Beaver took a deep breath, remembered his plans, and spoke up.
"Look, Jacob, I know you've been struggling a bit lately. Honestly man, she was a bitch and you're better off without her, and torturing yourself about it is pretty much what she wanted. Just for today, leave your phone alone, man. If someone texts it can wait, if it's important they'll call. Just leave it in your room and enjoy the day, okay?"
Jacob looked shocked, but absorbed what Beaver said and nodded after a moment. "I guess I've been a bit obsessed lately. I don't think you're right about her but it might be a good idea to put it all out of my mind for the day."
Beaver was internally thrilled, glad the Pastor had made Jacob so suggestible. He knew that Jacob wouldn't have agreed to give up that tiny glimmer of hope without a push. And now for the harder of the two problems. "And Freddy, man, I've got nothing against video games but I don't think I've seen you have fun with a game you've been playing in months. You've just been drifting, and you don't enjoy life any more. Maybe you should take a break for today. Get some sun. Spend some time with Jacob, you two used to hang out all the time."
There was a long silence as Freddy mulled it over, and Beaver knew that without the Pastor this would probably go terribly. Freddy could be awfully prickly at the best of times. But after a long, tense moment, Freddy nodded reluctantly. "I guess it couldn't hurt."
Beaver reached out and patted their knees, one in each paw, before hauling himself up. "Well, I've got to get changed and go to work. Have a nice day, you two."
---
Beaver's thoughts were spinning as he made his way home from work. He had been unable to concentrate at work through most of the day, consumed with wondering what had been going on at home. He had had a number of fantasies, of course, each less likely than the last, as well as a number of imagined scenarios where it all went terribly wrong. Would he get home to a pair of nubile and eager slave-boys, or to police officers waiting to take him to jail? So it was with some trepidation that he walked up to and eventually opened his front door.
The sight that met him was only slightly unexpected. An armchair had been dragged across the room to sit in a sunbeam in front of a window, and Freddy and Jacob were dozing in it - not quite snuggled up in each other's arms as some of his fantasies had suggested, but side-by-side and holding paws. Holding paws was purely innocent for otters and didn't have the same implications it did for most mammals, he knew - it was to keep them from floating apart if they were side-by-side at sea or in a river - but it still made his heart melt at how adorable it was.
He closed the door behind him as quietly as he could and made his way to his room to drop off his stuff.
---
Beaver quickly set up camp in the living room with his laptop as cover to observe his two flatmates. When the two of them had woken from their adorable sun-warmed slumber, they had parted with a friendly 'no homo', with Freddy returning to his book - an old fantasy novel that he had loved as a teenager but had been gathering dust on his shelf for years - and Jacob watching water polo on TV. It hadn't taken long before Freddy had been sucked in - with a little nudge from his Pastor-backed instruction to spend time with Jacob, Beaver figured - and he had immediately started backing the team up against Jacob's. The two of them started wrestling good-naturedly in the ad breaks while Beaver watched thoughtfully.
He had helped them. His intentions hadn't been entirely pure but they hadn't been entire selfish either and it had done them good. They looked happier than he had seen them in ages.
Maybe he should dose them again the next day. Extend the little vacation from their troubles to a week.
---
Beaver had the next day off, giving him more time to wrestle with the decision - enough of the Pastor would be lingering in his flatmates' systems that he had until about mid-afternoon to dose them again to get the longer effect. Neither of them was working this week, so if he did go for a week-long experiment it wouldn't hurt their lives if it had odd side-effects. Something that lingered shamefully in his thoughts was that he hadn't taken advantage of the Pastor at all, and that it was a missed opportunity.
The instructions he had given seemed to linger in his flatmates' minds. Jacob had checked his phone a couple of times, but then had scowled, picked it up, and taken it back to his room, giving Beaver a fragile smile as he emerged again. Freddy had gone through his entire game collection restlessly, declared them all 'shit', and had ventured out to the local video game store in search of something that would hopefully be less so. He was supposed to be home in time for lunch, so Beaver's theoretical plan was to supply and spike lunch. In the meantime, he was spending time alone with Jacob.
They had been chatting about this and that while Jacob lounged on the couch and Beaver idly surfed on his laptop, sitting on the armchair next to the couch. After a long period of building up his nerve, Beaver closed his laptop with a snap and embarked on a conversational gambit.
"Hey Jacob?"
"Mmm?"
"You're straight, right?"
"Yeah?"
"You ever do anything... not so straight?"
Jacob twisted to look over at Beaver, taking in his troubled expression, then shrugged. His tongue loosened by the Pastor still in his system, Beaver figured. "Sure. Had a wingman back in college, we used to put on shows for the girls. Worked a lot of the time. When it didn't, and I'd drunk a bit much, I used to think about going home with him instead, but he was either fully straight or ridiculously in denial." He smiled at Beaver's shocked look. "I didn't fall in love so easy back then. Got laid like crazy. Then I got my romance fetish and the rest is history. Miserable, pathetic history." He gave a dark little chuckle at himself, no real mirth in his voice. "Why do you ask?"
Beaver wrestled with his voice for a moment before going for broke. "When I went on my grand tour of Zootopia I had a few... encounters. They made me wonder about myself, I guess."
Jacob smiled comfortingly. "Don't sweat it too much, man. Everyone's a bit flexible, whether they admit it to themselves or not. Hey, you know Freddy's bi?"
"What?"
"Yeah, back in high school when he was hooked on MMOs he was internet-dating a girl in his guild that turned out, when they met in real life, to be a really femmy guy. Didn't hurt that he was a river otter, either. Freddy stewed on it for a while until he decided to go for it. They were together for a year and a half before they ended up going to different colleges."
"Wow. I never realized." Beaver stared into space, trying to reconcile this with what he knew of Freddy. Freddy had always been a fairly private mammal, so he knew there were parts of his life that he had no insight into, but he'd never even considered that Freddy might swing both ways. But, he supposed, that was the point Jacob was getting at. Everyone was a little bit flexible.
"Hey, Beaver?"
"Yeah?"
"Is your vacation the only reason that's on your mind?"
Beaver sat skewered by Jacob's look, which suddenly seemed to be uncharacteristically piercing, and felt his heartrate increase. He had grown overconfident from the power that Pastor had given him over his flatmates, and had forgotten how surprisingly insightful Jacob could be at times. He opened and closed his mouth a few times as he fumbled for a response, until Jacob freed him.
"Hey, don't sweat it. Guess we're all a bit flexible, huh?" Though his words seemed to let him off the hook, his lingering gaze suggested a deeper meaning that didn't require much interpreting. As Jacob's gaze finally left him in favour of closing his eyes for a snooze, Beaver was left shaken to his core and wondering what it meant. And how much the Pastor was to be credited for Jacob's lack of inhibition on the matter.
---
Beaver paced back and forth in his room, feeling two paths opening up before him. On one path, he threw away the vials and let things return to normal. Let Jacob go back to mooning over goddamn whatshername and Freddy get lost in his own moods again. But at least they'd be themselves.
Or he could dose them again. Continue tip-toeing down the path to hell. Keep pushing them to better themselves. Explore where things were going with Jacob, maybe it didn't count as making him a sex slave if he seemed to be pursuing it himself. And Jacob seemed so much happier today. And when Freddy had called all his games shit, at least he had been engaging with the world on some level. It was progress, it was betterment! It was for their own good, right?
As his thoughts chased each other in circles, his foot met some discarded clothes with a clink of claw on glass. He absent-mindedly picked up the garment - his shorts from yesterday morning, he remembered - and fished through the pockets. He had left the vial in the pocket, he thought. Clumsy, stupid. His paw found the vial and pulled it out, and he saw, in his paw, a full vial of sky-blue liquid.
He stared wide-eyed at it for a moment, before striding over to where he had hidden the others. Five full vials greeted him.
He thought back. Jacob had woken up earlier than he had expected, and then he'd busied himself with the cooking to distract himself from thoughts of scantily-clad otter boys frolicking. He'd never actually remembered to spike the drinks. He'd just put them on the table and then watched so carefully as they drank the perfectly ordinary cider...
So nothing in the past day and a half had been under the effects of the drug. The only thing new had been that he'd cooked for them, and cared for them, and been absolutely convinced that his actions would have an effect.
He'd just had confidence that he could help them, and he had. Just as he had confidence that, if he so desired, he could turn the two of them into his love slaves, and suddenly Jacob was not-so-subtly hitting on him and he'd learned that Freddy was bi.
He didn't need the drug. He'd never needed it.
---
>just because someone is unhappy doesn't mean you should turn their minds to mush and make them your slave.
>You just gotta be there for them, talk and listen, make them their favorite snacks, crack jokes, be an actual friend!
-Beaver, /trash/ Zootopia Thread, 19/6/16