"I swear to god, Shane, sometimes I hate being this much of a bottom."
Shane nodded sympathetically as Cat slumped down next to her. The two of them were at a table in the local, trendy lesbian bar, where they had been drinking and dancing all night. The evening was winding down and the place was emptying out - but Shane and Cat were still there, with no-one to keep them company except each other. It was a situation the pair were, sadly, very familiar with.
"Things didn't work out with that girl you pulled, huh?" Shane asked. "I thought she had major top energy."
"I thought so too," Cat replied, sagging dejectedly. "I mean, she was hot! Fun, too. But, I mean, you know it is. We've all seen the meme."
"And they were both bottoms," Shane quoted solemnly. "But that doesn't mean you can't have a good time together, right?"
"Doing what? Kissing each other's cheeks? Snuggling?" Cat snorted. "Please. If it was that simple, you and I would have hooked up a long time ago."
"True," Shane conceded.
The two of them shared a fond smile. They had been best friends for years, and their friendly banter often crossed over into flirting. There was no-one they liked spending time with more than each other, and some of their other acquaintances had often joked that they would make a great couple. But then there was the issue of compatibility. Both Cat and Shane were fiercely sexual people. They wanted partners who could satisfy their physical needs, as well as their emotional ones. And that, they both knew, ruled each other out.
"Anyway," Cat added. "Don't act like you're not in the same situation. If you were having any more luck than me, you wouldn't be here."
"Also true." Shane sighed. "Lemme tell you, it's not easy being a hopeless idiot for femme tops."
Cat reached across to rub her shoulder. Frankly, it didn't make sense to her that Shane wasn't drowning in femme tops. Her friend was ridiculously cute. She had this scruffy, androgynous look that managed to look good even the morning after a night of drinking and partying. It wasn't fair. No-one made a pixie cut look better than Shane, and she had a dazzling, lopsided, cheeky grin that the brat knew how to deploy to get whatever she wanted, be it a free drink or a nice hard spanking. When she was in a tank top and a pair of nice, tight, high-waisted pants, like tonight, she was always turning heads.
If only there had been any femme tops with heads to turn.
"Yeah, I know," Cat said. "Although statistically, as a femme bottom, I'm not having any more luck."
Part of the irony of their friendship was that Cat was exactly Shane's type. She was a tall, statuesque femme who could manage perfect eyeliner in two minutes flat and owned more vintage dresses than most thrift stores. Her thick mane of red hair was always just as perfect as her lipstick, but her big, round, thick-rimmed glasses gave her, in Cat's own opinion, a cute, slightly nerdy vibe that made her approachable to tops.
In theory, anyway.
"Why does it feel like tops are rarer than unicorns around here?" Cat complained. "I need a drink."
"I got you, babe." Shane slid a glass of wine across the table towards her.
"Oh my god, you're the best. I love you." Cat had been assuming that the drink belonged to Shane, or perhaps whoever she was trying to seduce that night. Although, strangely, she hadn't seen Shane talking to anyone else all evening. She'd have to check her friend was doing OK - right after she finished this glass of red. "We seriously need to find ourselves a couple of tops soon."
"You can say that again." Shane was watching intently as Cat sipped her wine. "I'm done waiting for one to come long. I'm taking matters into my own hands."
Cat threw her a look. There was something off about how Shane was talking. "What are you talking about?" she asked.
Right before her vision started to swim, and she noticed the unfamiliar, chemical aftertaste to her wine.
Shane grinned, and whipped out a small, clear, plastic bottle filled with a handful of strange-looking pills. "Dissolved in your drink," she said. "Sorry."
Cat rolled her eyes. "Ugh. You bitch."
In all honesty, Cat wasn't particularly distressed. Shane often had funny ideas for how to liven things up, and Cat wasn't a stranger to drug use. That said, whatever Shane's drug was doing to her didn't feel familiar. Was it something new? Something designer, maybe?
"Jesus." Cat grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. "What did you dose me with? GHB or something?"
Shane shook her head. "Something new. Something real special, too. I found it online."
"Feels... weird." Cat was starting to get a little worried. She preferred to know what she was in for when she was tripping. "What... why?"
"Cat." Shane's eyes were shining with anticipation. She rested her elbows on the table, and her chin on her hands. "Have I ever told you how crazy I'd be for you, if you topped?"
"Umm..." Cat was finding it impossible to think, with how her head was swimming. "Uh... ye-... um... h-huh?"
After just a few moments, the question completely lost its shape in her head, and she was left wondering what she had even been thinking about. The low, pounding music still playing in the bar didn't help. It was like she could feel her whole body throbbing with the beat. Whatever Shane had dosed her with was seriously potent.
"Ooo, fun!" Shane clapped her hands and giggled. "You're really taking to it, that's great news."
"Nnn-nnnoooo," Cat protested. She was starting to sway on her stool. It felt like she was about to fall over - or rather, like the room was about to fall upwards around her.
"Hey! Hey!" Shane reached across the table and snapped her fingers right in front of Cat's face. "Stay with me, babe. No sleeping yet."
Cat snapped upright. She was a puppet, and the sharp noise had pulled her strings taut. She could still hear it, ringing in her ears, commanding her attention.
"Wwwhatttt," she slurred, "are youu... doing?"
"God you're cute like this," Shane giggled. "It's like drunk Cat, but even better." She winked. "OK, sure, I guess I can let you in on the secret! I've kinda been dying to, actually."
Cat's brow was furrowed as she tried to follow Shane's words. It wasn't easy. They drifted over to her in slow motion, the sounds all drawn out, stretched, and distorted in a way that made them all unfamiliar. She had to double-check to make sure of what she was hearing, and that was hard, because her thoughts were moving slower still, and struggling to keep up.
"That pill you just took - sorry, again, by the way - was a special little cocktail I had custom-ordered on the dark web," Shane explained. "It had some long, boring, science-y name. I don't remember it. Not important. You're probably more interested in why you feel so weird."
Cat tried to nod. That proved to be a bad idea. The nausea was almost overwhelming.
"Well, so, it does a few things," Shane continued. "You're kinda zonked out, obviously. Plus, your senses are real dialed up. You'll get used to that part soon, don't worry. It's made you really uninhibited, too. Like alcohol. But, uh, more."
That part, Cat wasn't quite so sure of just yet. She didn't have a lot of spare mental energy to be uninhibited with. Most of her attention was on trying to keep her stomach on the inside of her body while Shane was speaking.
"W-w... w... w-whyyyyy," Cat slurred. The words dribbled out of her lips, feeble and half-formed.
"Oh, none of that stuff is the point, of course," Shane clarified swiftly, an amused smile dancing on her face. "The point is, that you're super fucking suggestible right now."
A chill ran down Cat's spine. "Hh-uh?" she managed.
Shane giggled. "It's like this: the drug unlocks a kind of malleable state for your brain. It's a little bit like how young kids have super plastic brains when they're learning to walk and talk and stuff. A whole lot more concentrated, though. Oh, and not permanent, obvies. Think about like... a candle being all warmed up." Shane smiled, pleased with her metaphor. "Once the wax gets soft, you can put it in any shape you want. Once it cools down, it'll set, and stay that way."
Cat blinked rapidly as she struggled to process all of that. It made a worrying amount of sense. She certainly felt like her brain was being melted like candle wax. But even so, it was hard to fathom that the drug she'd taken was as powerful as Shane was making it sound. What her best friend was describing sounded like pure fantasy.
"Don't believe me?" Shane said slyly. "OK! Lemme demonstrate. Um... hm, what's a fun one?" She tapped a finger to her lips, deep in thought. "Oh, I know!"
Still unable to stand up, Cat was forced to simply sit and watch as a sly, lop-sided smirk spread across her friend's face. What was Shane thinking? What was she going to do to her?
Those thoughts were brushed aside with another deafening snap of Shane's fingers.
"Your favorite color," Shane pronounced slowly and seriously, "is pink."
At once, Cat's eyes shot wide. Despite how nauseous it made her, she was shaking her head. Nuh-uh. No way. Cat wasn't that kind of girl. She'd been a lipstick lesbian all her life, yes, but pink wasn't her color. She thought it was tacky. She wanted to feel like a queen, not a Barbie girl. That had always been her retort whenever someone suggested a pink dress to her. Blue, purple, red, black - yes. Give her those. Cat adored rich, dark colors, and she wouldn't be caught dead in anything pink. She still wasn't sure what Shane was trying to achieve, exactly, but she wasn't going to take it lying down if her friend had drugged her just to make fun of her.
"I-it'sss nn-nnoot," Cat tried to insist. "You knoooowww my f-fav is... is pi-"
She froze.
She had been about to say 'pink'. She could feel it. Her lips were already parted, ready to form the shape.
P-I-N-K.
Pink.
Calm down, Cat, she told herself. It doesn't mean anything. She was just confused. With the way her head was all messed up, it was no wonder Shane was able to run rings around her. She just needed to collect herself, ignore the impossibly annoying, smug expression on Shane's face, and try again.
"My favorite... color," Cat said, slowly and deliberately, like she was a sixteen year-old trying to sound sober talking to her mom, "is pin-"
It was the same again, and this time it couldn't be dismissed so easily. She had been concentrating and taking her time, and it hadn't mattered. Cat had ended up repeating exactly what Shane had told her. She could still hear Shane's words, echoing in her head like a choir-song in a huge cathedral. They drowned out everything, and there was an unnatural force to them that Cat didn't know how to handle. She couldn't just hear what Shane had told her. She could feel it. The words pushed down on her, into her, and when she tried to speak for herself, they pushed out of her, too.
And more than perhaps anything else, Cat could feel how true they were.
Pink was her favorite color. It just... was. It didn't matter that it hadn't been five minutes ago. It didn't matter that she'd spent her whole life hating pink. Pink was her favorite color. But that was just the start. That one thought caused a chain reaction, like dominoes falling, and new opinions and priorities started to crystallize in Cat's head.
Suddenly, the red dress she was wearing felt lesser, somehow. It wasn't as vibrant or as pretty as she'd thought. She'd have to go home and change. Only, she didn't have any pink outfits. A further need possessed her: she needed to go shopping. Before next weekend, she'd have to get something in pink. Maybe she should redecorate, too. Her apartment's decor was a little goth. That wasn't her anymore. But... wasn't it?
She wasn't sure anymore. But she was sure that her favorite color was pink. It could have been anything else.
Shane could evidently see acceptance settling over Cat, and could barely contain her glee. "Yes! It worked!" she squealed. "It actually worked! I wasn't- I needed a little test, to make sure. But it really, truly works!"
Cat was still reeling from the implications. Her mind was melted wax. Shane was going to reshape her. Nothing she'd ever felt before came close to that level of vulnerability. She trusted Shane, yes, but this...
And there was nothing she could do about it.
"OK!" Shane clapped her hands together. "Now. That's probably enough warm-up."
"Sh- Shaneeee," Cat said hastily. It was getting easier to speak as she got her sea legs, so to speak, but not easy enough. "Wwwait, I-"
