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In a nondescript apartment complex deep within the Marshlands,
"We're clear?" asked the fox, resting a paw upon the elevator panel.
"Crystal," replied the gopher, matching the predator's movements. The moment the gopher leaned over onto one of the hallway's miniature oak trees, though, a branch started to snap and plopped the prey mammal's paw against the wall.
"Look, I've been your roommate for over three months now," the fox remarked, lowering his gaze.
"Yeah," the gopher mumbled, not making eye contract.
The fox watched for a few seconds as the smaller mammal slid anxiously against the wall. The gopher finally steadied himself against the tree's trunk. "I can tell what it means when you make that face," the fox said.
Both mammals hesitated for another, long moment. The predator held his mouth open without saying anything. The prey nervously pressed his glasses tighter upon his face. The dinging sound of the elevator finally broke the silence.
"You're positive, Gail, that it's alright with you," the fox continued, making every step into the open elevator space drag out as long as he could, "spending two days with Scamper and his friends? My college buddies?"
"Yep," Gail responded.
"You don't have to feel obligated to do that just because I brought it up."
"I know."
"You don't need to wait and make some other arrangements or something, do you? There's no immediate hurry."
"I know," Gail repeated.
"You're planning to just walk out of here, right after me, and stay with them as our place gets fumigated?" the fox asked, his tail's orange fur tapping against the elevator's door-frame.
"I'm about to leave right now, absolutely," Gail declared, a few beads of sweat popping upon his face even as he raised his voice.
"If you're sure," the fox began, making a friendly wave before finally turning away, "well, bye, my mammal."
The elevator doors snapped shut. A soft chime sounded out as it dropped to the lobby floor. It hit Gail that he was truly on his own, at least for the afternoon. That didn't bother him much— not with a nice-looking library complex and a group of decent resturants within walking distance. He had something far more troubling in mind.
The e-mail had imprinted itself into the back of Gail's mind. Without even having to park himself back behind his laptop, the gopher could picture every single worrying word. After some pleasent enough remarks, Scamper had added out-of-the-blue that even if Gail "had never slept in a communal bed before" the "smaller tube dude had nothing to worry about". The message's ominous final text had turned Gail's insides to jelly.
"I'll 'quickly love'," Gail whispered to himself, "the 'infectious tightness'."
The gopher's big eyes— getting gradually trapped moment by moment as splotches of fog appeared on his thick glasses— rapidly blinked while his flat, brownish-grey paws flopped down the nearby oak. The gopher slapped his arms against his back and pulled out his smartphone for the umpteenth time that day. It seemed really possible, the back of Gail's mind tried to reassure the rest of him, that Scamper's friends didn't act the same way. After all, the odds had to have it that some otters developed a healthy respect for personal space.
"Oh, I got a message from somebody," the gopher said out loud, feeling a happily interrupting tinge of excitement, "a few picture ones? From a— what the— a 216 area code? Who the hell do I know from the edge of the Sahara?"
It took a couple seconds before the gopher recognized his predator roommate at the corner of the first image, the fox guzzling down from a champagne bottle. Groups of minks, stoats, and weasels wearing huge smiles crowded around the foreground. Gail quickly scrolled through the rest of the message. The truth didn't hit him until he'd scrolled down the last and the biggest of pictures.
The gopher plopped down on the corner of the pot, letting the greenery smack across his small white ZASA cap, and stared at the screen in his paws. The gopher's eyes drank in detail after detail of the selfie that Scamper and the otter's buddies had last sent out. All of Gail's nightmares seemed to have come true.
The tubular mammals clutched together as pairs of novelty golden bras stretched across their heads. That coupled with the splatters of silver glitter on all their chests and colorful streamers fluttering high above them clearly placed the scene from some recent public celebration of the flamboyant kind. Their slick black shorts clutched their flesh tightly enough that the edges of their striped grey-and-gold panties stuck out. What struck the gopher most, however, was the otters' suggestive posing— probing paws intermingled with thick thighs and twitching tails.
"I... I think I'm doomed," Gail whimpered. He clutched the device against his belly. He could barely even think.
Gail's eyes fluttered over to the obnoxiously small and frustratingly plain apartment beside him, with the gopher's keys still in the door. It didn't look or feel anything like a 'home', but it had come to serve as one all the same. Yet, in a matter of hours, every nook and cranny of that apartment had a bath in poisonous chemical to look forward to.
"It can't be like what I'm thinking. It just can't," Gail muttered to himself, switching the cellphone over to a Zoogle search, "and things wouldn't... I mean, after all, I'll be spending most of my day either at work, at the library, or someplace else. All we'd be doing would be sleeping together—"
That unfortunate word choice shut the gopher up— even when he only had himself to hear it. Still, some hints of a spine stiffened deep inside of him. After all, Gail thought, he didn't know that much about ferrets, otters, stoats, and the rest. Even as he got frequently confused with the likes of them— something that constantly bugged him— that didn't change that he had a habit of making huge mental challenges out of minor, easily-solved problems.
"Let's ask Zoogle about it, after all," Gail thought out loud, his voice at barely a whisper, "and there's got to be, somewhere, some website about interspecies roommates coming together when one of them is totally outnumbered."
Gail locked the apartment door, put his keys away, and headed for the elevator that his fox friend had used. A few embers of courage burned deep inside of him. The gopher had dealt with a bunch of species-related challenges before. Asserting his right to personal space and security in his sexual orientation had to be doable.
"Dealing with sleeping patterns and all that, why I—"
The gopher froze mid-step. His head bonked against the still shut elevator doors. His eyes grew wide as dinner plates.
The autocomplete to "Otters sleeping __________" rewarded Gail with "Otters sleeping in hot cuddle piles", "Otters sleeping cuddle pile blowjobs", "Otters sleeping cuddle pile pawjobs", "Otters sleeping nude together," and the final yet no less direct "Otters sleeping pile gay movies". The last one made Gail let out a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn't clicked on either Zoogle Images or, worse yet, Zoogle Video. The gopher anxious hovered a digit in the air, unsure if he dared to keep scrolling.
"There's... got to be something appropriate," he moaned, tapping the screen, "something like... oh... oh, Lamb of God..."
"Otters sleeping on horsecock" and "Otters sleeping on wolf knot" followed. Neither "Otters sleeping twink boyfriends" nor "Otters sleeping sissy bottoms" changed the tone. Last but not least, the gopher's eyes locked on "Otters sleeping ferrets creeping".
"I guess," Gail muttered, "that could be at least slightly promising." He made a few clicks. "And... and that's a penis."
The gopher snapped the device off and flicked it into his pants pocket.
"I'm definitely doomed."
Not too long later,
The term "wannabite" irritated Gail to no end. Even though he'd never heard it tossed in his direction before, its misuse almost bothered the gopher more than idiots using the silly slur properly. In truth, the term only applied to prey mammals with a habit of eating formerly living creatures. Gail felt like he'd rather get shoved down a flight of stairs than taste a basket of cricket fries or— Lamb of God forbid— chomp down a roach burger.
The gopher, however, didn't deny that what his friends called "meatish" food— in contrast to whatever nightmare-inducing material counted as "meat"— tasted heavenly. He could find smaller, prey-centric meals in Marshlands' grocery stores without a hitch, but Gail loved to eat something more open-minded at least every afternoon. He had the perverted hunk of hormone-soaked foxy flesh that he called a roommate to thank for that.
The friendly aardwolves at Daryl's Diner waved the gopher inside. Gail had a few fleeting thoughts about which of them his fox friend had screwed last— most likely the skinny guy with the rainbow bracelets and gel-covered hair, who announced that the specials were ready— before the gopher took his seat. The plain silver-on-white decor only had a few hints that the diner was inside the Marshlands, and that was just how Gail liked it.
"Potato patties platter?" Gail asked, tucking himself awkwardly into the booth. Like just about everything in the Marshlands, somebody had designed it for mammals at least twice his size, but Gail didn't mind that much. "Pretty please?"
"One alliteration coming right up," the aardwolf announced with a big smile. Every other tooth appeared to have a shiny white cap on its pointed edge.
Gail used to feel utterly terrified after seeing that much teeth on one face— especially when shamelessly flashed by somebody hovering just a few inches from his head. He'd adapted to that pretty quickly, Gail thought, right after graduating college and winding up among pack after pack of predators. Any sense of threat was long gone. At that moment, what popped up in the gopher's mind was something about the aardwolf drowning in dental bills.
"With the otters, maybe it's just like that?" Gail softly murmured, "you set up boundries and get used to it fast?"
"Boundries? What did you say?" the aardwolf chimed in. His bracelets clinked against his silver-striped uniform.
"Oh, uh," Gail remarked, wiggling in place, "I mean: forget about boundaries. Forget about portion sizes. Forget about proper place. If you could drown those patties in cheese sauce, you know?"
"Got it."
Being pathologically incapable of remembering names, having a hard enough time even with faces, the gopher strained to make out the aardwolf's name-tag. "Thanks... A'Chiu."
"No problem," A'Chiu replied, jotting a quick note down in his small paper pad.
Having apparently pronounced the name right, the gopher's mind turned to exactly why he'd come there. His mouth started to water. "Piling on as many chopped-up bits of those soy steaks as you can? Please, go all out—"
"Somebody's in an indulgent mood," A'Chiu interjected, slipping his tail upon the side of the booth, "any occasion?"
"I'm, well," the gopher began, hesitating as yet another aardwolf placed a big glass of tea in front of him, "I'm kind of preparing myself, if that make sense? Treating myself?" He clutched the straw. "Hell, I know that I don't have to justify anything to you, but it's like I'm trying to be in the best mood now— before tonight."
"Ah, I get what you mean." A'Chiu leaned against the retro-style jukebox beside Gail's booth. The predator gave Gail a knowing gaze. "Job interview? I hate those so much. I've worked here for years and no chance I'm quitting anytime soon." A'Chiu tossed his little notebook into the air before whistling.
"Ah..." Gail didn't feel sure if he wanted to start a conversation in the first place, especially given how little he and the predator likely had in common.
"Or a late-night class? Like," A'Chiu asked, Gail's lack of a response kept the aardwolf going, "one of those historical ones that bore you to death— memorizing how King Yakko and King Wakko killed Queen Dot at Blah City on Bleh-Bleh B.C. or whatever?"
"Nope," Gail flatly replied.
"Oh, silly me, you've got some lucky girl or lucky guy in mind? A date, isn't it?" A'Chiu's face lit up entirely, the predator letting out a little chuckle before bringing a paw to his chin.
"It's actually— like— the exact, polar opposite of that," Gail responded, his eyes drooping as he fumbled for words, "totally the other way—"
"A break-up or, wait, you mean turning somebody down over something?" the aardwolf interjected, slapping a paw against his thigh, "oh, shit, I'm sorry to even talk about it! Those are the worst, my mammal!"
"It's hard to explain. I just, well," Gail murmured, feeling his insides turn to jelly yet again, I'm spending time with these guys, and I don't want them to get the wrong idea."
"Say no more," A'Chiu declared, stepping away from the booth and standing up straight, "I know far too well what giving out the 'already got a boyfriend' line is like." He made a final stroke in his tiny notepad. "Screw all that, forget it all, and let's get you some kickass grub!"
"That's not really," the gopher whispered, passively watching A'Chiu speed into a tall door, "what I meant." Gail trailed off as he heard various cups, plates, trays, and the like getting clattered around in the kitchen area.
The gopher found himself basically left alone yet again. He spotted a collection of three wolves, all of them looking middle-aged or older, deep in conversation at the other side of the dining area. The youngest of them sported a baseball cap in green and white stripes— constantly pointing and jeering at the haggard-looking fox on the diner's big television. The other two focused far more on their table's huge bowl of sweet potato fries. A bunch of skunks coupled with a pair of old, tired badgers took up the other tables that Gail could barely see.
All of them had, at least, Daryl's Diner in common. They seemed nice enough anyways that they'd even welcome a prey stranger talking to them out of the blue. The badgers, Gail thought, honestly looked as if they needed a hug— with the baggy white and red jackets of the Zootopian Disability Services Network around their shoulders, they couldn't get more non-threatening if they'd tried. Yet, unfortunately, all of the mammals had de facto segregated themselves within the restaurant.
Gail turned to face the window. He could see the sun coming down. The gopher pressed his glasses up against his face and started to mutter to himself.
"Time to face the music sooner or later." Gail gripped his tea and sucked it halfway down. "The 'communal bed'... with this strange species, one that apparently doesn't have 'respectful distance' in their vocabulary..." He tapped two paws against the table. "C'mon, I can psych myself up for this."
The gopher turned his eyes back to the skunks, a group of the thick-looking, curvy mammals chowing down on almond-coated cakes. They'd act cheerful and pleasant, Gail thought, if he struck up a conversation with them or even asked to sit with them. Yet that wouldn't be, the gopher fretted, anything at all like asking to sleep side by side with one of them.
"Lamb of God, help me," Gail murmured, drinking down the last of his deal, "they're pushovers if I need to assert my physical space to them, right? They're otters. How weird could it all get? I sleep in a bed one thin wooden wall away from a predator's bed normally. It's just less distance. I'll just be rubbing up to one with his leg on my face, and his face on my— oh, ugh—"
A sharp jangling noise snapped Gail out of his inner monologue. He blinked and stared straight up. Another aardwolf had picked up his empty glass and gotten the gopher another tea.
"Hey, thanks," Gail said, forcing himself to smile.
"Talking to yourself? Got some worries?" the aardwolf asked, brushing her arms against her chest. It only took a second of looking at the gopher's face for her to know the answer. "Hey, whatever it is, I'm sure that it'll work out fine, sweetheart. Even better when you get your meal, which will be like less than a minute now."
"Hey, uh," Gail began, straining to make out this other aardwolf's name-tag. He leaned himself forward and nearly fell right out of his booth. "Ester, can I ask you something?"
"What, sweetheart?" She seemed willing enough, standing in place with a tray of empty glasses balanced on her arms.
"What do you think about otters?" Gail asked.
"Otters?" Ester repeated, not moving.
"Yeah," the gopher said, scratching across his face as waves of embarrassment splashed through him, "it's a peculiar kind of question, but what about what really happens during their 'cuddle piles'? With otters, I—"
"Otters? Honestly? Best lay I've ever had!" Ester declared, spinning about before wiggling the tray off onto an empty table.
"That's, wait," Gail spat out, the color draining entirely off of his face, "not at all what—"
"Now, don't get me wrong, I love wolves! Love them to pieces! Foxes too! They're irresistible in bed and everywhere else, sweetheart! Otters, though? Oh, God!" Ester remarked, closing her eyes as she melodramatically wiped a paw across her forehead. "See, now, the truth is that foxes and wolves are 'bottle rockets'. You know?"
Gail stared out blankly. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. The aardwolf suddenly crouched down in place.
"Lots of anticipation before they fire off between their legs! There's that spectacle, you know," Ester went on, flinging her paws in the air and making imaginary sparkles, "All of the 'oohs' and 'ahs' for a glorious little while, but then it's back to normal, alright? Now, with tube dudes, especially the otters—" She slapped her arms tightly against her body and began jiggling her legs. "They're 'jackhammers'! He gets ready for a romp— barely much to get 'em started since they're 24/7 horny, all those bi-boys— and he's all like 'boom' followed by 'boom-the-boom-boom'! And that's only the beginning!"
The gopher sank into his seat, still looking upon the little scene. He felt almost like vanishing into nothingness. Still, the aardwolf stood up straight and locked eyes with him yet again.
"Speaking of long-lasting, let me get you another tray of our peppermints, sweetheart," Ester said. She kept on grinning as she pulled away a small bowl from the corner of the booth. "Ah, 'speaking of long-lasting', damn, I should write that one down." She trailed off as she stepped into the kitchen, Gail anxiously watching her every move.
"I'm completely doomed," moaned the gopher.
A little while later,
The faux wooden walls sorrounded by randomly assorted barrels mixed in with dripping wet bushes made Whisker City look appropriate enough for the Marshlands. At the same time, though, the apartment complex seemed rather plain and sparsely occupied compared to the nearby towns. Gail parked his small white sedan beside an even smaller grey truck. He counted less than a dozen vehicles in the whole lot.
Still, no matter how simple and non-threatening the environment looked, nervousness coursed through every last limb of the gopher's little body. He'd put off things long enough. The sun had started setting. He needed to finally step into the otter-crammed apartment.
The gopher clutched his black suitcase and stepped onto the concrete sidewalk. He made his way to the door. He sucked in a deep breath, standing up as straight as he could, and rang the doorbell.
"Oh, goodness, there he is," murmured a tense-sounding voice from deep inside.
"Hello," Gail began, sticking out a paw and watching as the door slowly creaked open, "I'm the—"
"Before I let you let out another word, dude, I badly need to apologize," called out a frowning otter, reaching out and shaking Gail's paw. The two mammals met eye to eye. "It's been over an hour now, but the fuzes are still busted. Spoony, Slinker, Softy, and half of the guys already turned in too— all of them pooped after the day's work anyways. They're off in the cuddle camp. They left me to solve the electrical snafu, but— well— it's been a bitch."
"The... cuddle..." Gail started to say, soon trailing off. He let the otter hold his paw and lead him inside. "Oh, that thing."
It finally hit Gail that the inside of the apartment was, indeed, almost totally dark. The occasional small electric lantern, placed across the floors, lit up every other corner. Yet it still felt like stepping into a dim cavern.
"I'm really sorry about this," the otter continued, popping open a pair of doors, "and I know that you were told, 'Hey, don't worry, Scamper can fix anything'. Or something like that? But, damn it, all that we're able to do now is eat, use the bathroom, and sleep, basically. Worst possible timing when a guest is coming over, you know?"
"I understand," Gail said, "uh, Scamper?" The gopher tapped the doorframe beside the frowning otter. "So—"
"Lamb of God be praised, at least we still have tons of batteries," Scamper interjected, pointing with a leg behind him. The electric lamp on the floor sat atop a large plastic case. "No worries having to fumble around in the bathroom or stuff like that."
"These," Gail anxiously continued, his eyes narrowing, "ah, 'cuddle camps' or whatever you call them?"
"Oh, yeah," Scamper said, putting on a smile, "if you want to slap down your suitcase and just turn in, hell, I'd do that too!" He shoved a paw out into the air, pointing into the nearby room. "Right now!"
Before Gail could even respond, a sharp electrical noise sounded off. Scamper turned tail and rushed to the end of the hallway. Gail heard a muffled swear word but immediately forgot about it. The gopher's attention had gotten completely sucked in by the sight.
What looked like a group of four dark blue bean-bag chairs, all clumped together, sat in the middle of a curved room. Countless nooks and crannies in the smooth fabric seemed to beacon the gopher. Little bits of greenery in decorative pottery stretched in a big circle all around the bed as well.
Most importantly of all, five sleeping otters— all nude except for their light grey briefs tightly hugging their fuzzy bottoms— cuddled closely together right before Gail's eyes. The broken lights only made the dim scene look even comfier. The two skinniest otters even twitched their noses while the gopher stepped closer.
"It's," Gail whispered to himself, finally setting his suitcase down, "going to be fine, I think. I hope." He reached up and prodded the massive bed.
The material appeared to suck in his flesh, feeling dry yet gooey at the same time. No matter how strange it all seemed, the fact remained that Gail's mood had flipped. He carefully took off his glasses and folded them into his pocket case. Slipping that into a side pocket, he closed his eyes and slowly flopped his body onto the bed.
It felt like swimming in a pool on an alien world. Gail shifted his body upwards and wiggled a bit. As relaxation washed across his entire body, he noticed his paw scraping along an otter's warm tail. A little movement brought the otter's entire back to rest upon the gopher's shoulder.
He had expected that sort of contact to bring a burst of anxious energy. Instead, it only made him fall asleep even faster. The aura of rest took over him, and he breathed out a happy sign. He didn't know how long he lied down, but he didn't care. Everything felt comfortably numb in his life for the first time in ages.
It was a butt.
"The... hell..." Gail groaned out, suddenly squirming as something a little bit wet and a whole lot hot slapped against his face. He popped his eyes open and held up his arms. Yet his limbs got caught in the smooth fabric all around him. "Is... oh... my..."
It seriously was a butt.
"Oh, lamb of God," Gail remarked, trying to shift himself about. He had gotten trapped. The otter's rear end seemed to lock itself up against the gopher's forehead. "I can't be... stuck, can I?"
The damp flesh had claimed half of Gail's face as its property. The gopher didn't have a chance. Every wiggle of his limbs only buried him in deeper. He tried to kick himself out of the tight place, forcing his body standing up straight, but the gigantic bed's smooth crannies wouldn't let him go. The gopher quickly lost his patience
"Well," Gail declared, raising his voice in hopes that the otters would wake up, "can anybody hear me being doomed? Because I—"
The butt slid down onto Gail's entire face.
"I am!"
The End