Work Text:
John wakes up and walks to the kitchen to make his usual three-step breakfast, to find a sticky note on the fridge.
Please feed the bunnies by noon and check their water too.
They need a full bowl from the can on the table and 3 handfuls of hay.
See you tonight. Thanks, Bri.
John looks at the clock from the oven, to see it is nearly half past eight. He's got half an hour before he has to leave for Uni and decides to go and have a look at the bunnies Brian has apparently brought from his late-night shift at the shelter.
In the living room, he is met with a low fence, encircling about 2 square meters next to the couch. In it sits a small cage containing four or five small furry balls. Baby rabbits.
He can't clearly see how many there are exactly though.
Endeared, John crouches down and watches them sleep, contemplating if Freddie will be up to the task given.
After his shower, he sets his own alarm for eleven o'clock, just in case, and puts it just around the corner in Freddie's room.
As an apology, he leaves Freddie some already made toast in the kitchen.
Freddie wakes with a start to an unfamiliar sound blaring through his room. Wildly, he bats his hands around his bed until he finds his light switch.
Squinting to the light, he sits up and looks around, looking for the source of this rude interruption of his peaceful sleep.
He grimaces as he sees John's alarm clock on the floor next to the door.
As it gets clear that the thing won't shut up anytime soon without his physical interference, since all his swearing before he found it appears to be useless, Freddie gets up and turns the thing off.
He is awake and up now anyway.
So, with a sigh, he turns his own alarm off too and goes to the kitchen for some tea.
On the kitchen table lays a big book open, the pages showing filled with Roger's hasty scribbling. Apparently, the blond drummer had, quite belatedly, been working on his lab journal that was due to be checked. Only to forget the very thing in the last minute.
Freddie shakes his head, a smile tugging at his lips at the mental image of Roger eating some excuse for breakfast while frantically writing in the book.
Then his eye falls on the note Brian left. He hums to himself. So, bunnies this time.
Clearly, his dear poodle of a housemate had willfully forgotten his promise again, bringing something that wasn't a cat, but Freddie can't be mad. Not really. Sipping on his tea, he goes to check their guests out.
The little fluffs are hopping around or eating from the single carrot laying in their cage. When Freddie sits down in their area, they come and curiously have a sniff of him.
"Oh little thing, you come to Freddie, here, there you go," he babbles while he picks a grey with black one up.
"Hm, how cute you are, although you're not a cat," he tells the little furry ball that's now sitting where he put it in his lap.
The bunnies not in his lap start chasing each other and run around their home. An idea starts forming in Freddie's mind.
"Do you fluffs want some more space?" he asks when his first friend hops off his lap, catching a completely black one, save a white eye.
His stomach rumbles and Freddie looks at his watch. A quarter to noon, time to feed the soft furry balls.
With a final pet, Freddie gets up to fetch the items he needs from behind the couch. Like always, Brian put the stuff they need to care for the animals he brings there.
Carefully, he follows Brian's instructions, filling the bowl in the cage and putting three handfuls of hay in a corner where some straws are lying around already.
He fills the water bottle in the kitchen and on the way back he takes the toast John left with him, to eat with the bunnies.
Sitting on the couch, he nods to himself as he looks at the bunnies.
Yeah, he thinks, the area Brian designated to be for the bunnies was definitely much too small.
When he has finished his toast, Freddie showers quickly and gets ready for his shift at the fashion shop where he works.
Then he returns to the living room and pets the remaining three bunnies for a minute.
After he's given all five bunnies equal amounts of attention for the morning, Freddie removes the fence to place it behind the couch, around the bunny food instead of the cage.
"There you go," he says as the bunnies hop away to explore the room.
He closes the door as he leaves for work, deeming the living room enough space for the bunnies to entertain themselves for an afternoon.
When Freddie comes home, he finds the living room in huge disarray.
One peek inside tells him the bunnies didn't only peacefully wander around.
To his horror, they had pulled pills out of the rug, chewed on every cord and wire to be found on and near the floor, eaten from the plants standing in the corner next to the window and round rabbit droppings are in patches everywhere.
Moreover, they ripped Roger's favourite pillow which had fallen on the floor.
Most likely in a bid to dig a hole in it, judging from the look of one of the fluff balls currently taking that very task rather serious.
When he enters the room completely, four of the five bunnies hurry under the cabinet or the couch.
Following one bunny with his gaze, Freddie notices that they also gnawed at the wooden underside of the cabinet, to make matters even worse.
Realizing his mistake, Freddie flops on the couch and buries his hands in his hair. Luckily, he is the first to be home, he thinks.
Although, soon the others will be back from Uni.
How in hell and the name of all cat gods is he going to clear this mess up?! And preferably before John or Brian comes back...
A look at his watch tells Freddie he has around half an hour. If he's lucky, maybe forty-five minutes.
That's hopefully enough time to at least make it look like nothing happened. There's no chance he'll be able to fix everything.
With that plan in mind, Freddie gets to work.
He starts with putting the fence back in place so he can put the bunnies back where Brian put them. That's easy enough.
Now, he has to catch the bunnies.
Unfortunately, that turns out to be a nightmare of a task.
The cute fluff balls may still be babies, technically, they're impossibly fast. And Freddie can't reach all the way to the back under the cabinet.
He decides to let them be for now and start cleaning up the droppings first when an idea strikes him.
He fetches a bucket, the dustpan and a whisk and places the bucket on its side next to the wall against the cabinet.
Then he puts other items next to the bucket to block the rest of the opening at the underside of the cabinet and uses the whisk as an extension of his arm.
It works, he manages to urge all three bunnies from under the cabinet into the bucket. Quickly, he flips the bucket upright and carries the bunnies to their original home.
Two left.
Only, Freddie has no idea where they are.
Shrugging, he starts to clean the droppings with the cleaning tools he just got. He'll have to find the bunnies later then.
The others really can't see the mayhem he let the bunnies make.
When he's done, he gets some needle and thread from his fashion-aid kit to repair the rug hit-or-miss style. It's not as neat as it used to be. Still, at least it's flat again.
Turning his attention, plus the needle and thread, to the poor pillow, he has to conclude he can't repair that in a minute, nor in five. He'll have to hide that until he's found a way to repair it or until Roger has forgotten about it, in case it turns out to be beyond repair.
The plants are next. After putting the dustpan and whisk away, Freddie gingerly prunes the lower half of them.
He makes sure to leave no signs of nibbling on leaves but tries to keep the cropping to a minimum at the same time, afraid to kill Brian's precious air cleaners on top of the mess that already exists.
The result looks a bit weird, maybe, but Freddie doesn't ponder too long over it, there is more to do.
One look at the cords tells him they're useless. Even if the things still work, they're no longer safe to use. However, there is no time to run to the stores. If he doesn't want the others to find out, he has to camouflage all damage. He'll also have to make sure the important devices, like the tv and the radio, still work.
Hoping for the best, Freddie snaps a picture of the way the tv and the radio are connected. Then he pulls all cables out.
A quick look at his watch tells him he's almost out of time.
He nearly runs to their music room to find some tape to patch up the broken parts in the cable, not realizing he leaves all doors open in his hurry. The lost bunnies are completely forgotten.
Freddie is almost sure John has some special tape that he uses for cables of their music gear.
Yet, after two minutes rummaging through their stuff in all drawers he knows of, he still has no tape.
Impatiently, he relocates to the kitchen.
Indeed, in the second drawer, he finds some tape.
He is rather sure it is not the same tape as John uses since this is see-through stuff but at this point, he doesn't care all that much.
From his own room, Freddie gets an old radio and some black paper which he neatly folds around the cables, over the places where the bunnies had eaten through the protective cover. He secures it with the tape.
Then he checks if they still work with the old radio he got from under his bed, using the picture on his phone to figure out how he should plug the cable in.
Intense relief washes over him when all seems to be working as intended, the radio producing sounds in front of him without any explosions or cables spontaneously bursting into flames.
Using the picture on his phone again, he reconnects the radio and puts it back in place.
He has no way to check whether the tv still works by lack of a spare monitor, so after looking the cables over two more times, he reconnects the tv too.
Now actually running, Freddie returns the old radio to his room and takes some white nail polish to re-paint the damaged cabinet. He really wishes he still had his white oil paint but he doesn't have it anymore, so he can only hope the nail polish will be close enough to the original colour of the cabinet once dried. In a few wipes, he covers the teeth marks.
Freddie puts the nail polish away again, praying the liquid won't drip onto the floor below it and pauses in the doorway.
As he inspects his handiwork, he nods to himself. It should do, right?
Exhausted, he sits down on the couch with a sigh and looks at the bunnies, who are innocently eating what is left of the hay.
Suddenly, Freddie jumps up, seeing there are still only three bunnies.
As his eye falls on the open door, he curses out loud. The remaining two could be literally everywhere in their apartment.
And John and Brian can come home every bloody moment now.
Determined to find them, Freddie drops to all fours and looks to the living room.
No bunny to be seen.
Still on hands and knees, Freddie moves through the doorway and peers into the hall.
Nothing.
The door to John's room is open and Freddie peeks in, head flat on the floor.
Nothing again.
The next door leads to the music room.
When Freddie looks around the corner, he sighs with relief. In the middle of the room sits the black bunny with the white eye, washing his face.
He looks really cute and Freddie watches for a moment.
Silently, Freddie gets up and steps into the room, with the intention to catch him, when the bunny starts hopping.
Now, Freddie sees the little tail is also white. It's truly funny and cute to watch.
Until the bunny changes course and hops straight to another cable.
Freddie startles. It's not just some cable, it is the cable that powers John's amp.
"No, no! Stop! Don't," warns Freddie and the bunny freezes for a moment.
Just in time, Freddie slams the door close.
A second later, the little fluff starts running.
Luckily, it's not as fast as before, so Freddie manages to catch it after a minute.
Holding the fluff ball close in his arms, Freddie walks back to the living room.
He is about to put the bunny down when he hears a key in the door.
When John gets in, he finds Freddie on the couch, desperately trying to keep a very active bunny in his lap.
Nervousness practically radiates off the singer as he looks up to greet him but John can't tell why at first glance.
"Hi, Fred," greets John back, "how was work?" he asks while making his way to the kitchen.
"Work was rather boring, dear. Only tasteless customers today," replies Freddie quickly.
Too quickly to be normal and John looks over his shoulder to check whether he is ok. The bunny seems to have settled down now, Freddie is merely petting it.
When John looks back, his eye falls on a pillow, or something that once was a pillow, lying next to the couch. Turning around, he has a better look.
It's Roger's pillow but rather... deformed.
Slowly, John checks the whole living room, suspicions why Freddie is so nervous rising in his mind.
Freddie tries to ignore his actions but fails, John can feel the singer looking from the corners of his eyes.
As he looks around, John notices that the cords from the tv and radio aren't tucked away as neatly as he put them.
Then he sees the shimmering bands around them and unconsciously cocks an eyebrow.
Freddie shrinks in the couch as he sees the brow go.
John sends him a questioning look before continuing his inspection from the kitchen doorway.
The cables are a hint for John that the bunnies might have something to do with all this.
Indeed, he finds another piece of evidence in the rug.
At two spots, the rug has been repaired with hasty patchwork.
It's not too obvious but if you look at it the spots are clearly visible.
He bites his lip, whatever happened, Freddie tried his very damn best to hide it.
John feels almost guilty for noticing something was off right away.
Not that he can leave it at this now, he has to be sure everything, and especially every one of the bunnies, is alright.
That thought makes him walk to the fence.
By now, Freddie has put the bunny down and John counts the bunnies.
He gets to four.
That wouldn't have made him concerned in itself, he wasn't sure if there were four or five in the morning, but Freddie looks really miserable now.
"Freddie, what happened?" asks John gently and defeat washes over the singer in front of him.
John sits down on the couch too.
"I didn't mean to, I thought they wanted to run..." murmurs Freddie into John's shirt.
"You didn't mean what?" presses John. This starts to get really confusing. He really can't imagine Freddie hurting the bunny, accidentally or not.
Finally, Freddie talks: "I gave them the whole living room to play while I was at work. But when I got home they'd made a real mess... How was I supposed to know they eat all and everything, dear?"
He ends his sentence with an exasperated question, hands flailing wildly through the air.
John shakes his head. "I suppose you tried to clean up after them then?"
Freddie nods but looks really anxious again.
"Yeah, but two of the bunnies ran off while I did so. I think I forgot the door. I was going to look for the last one but then you came in, darling. And I didn't want you to find out." he explains.
John can't help it, he starts laughing. First, only small giggles bubble up but soon he is really cackling.
Freddie sends him an offended look and he holds his hands up in surrender.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just, it's really funny, sorry," manages John through his fits of laughter.
The longer it takes and he doesn't calm down, the more agitated Freddie gets.
"But what if it's hurt himself?!" says Freddie desperately after a minute or so. "John, stop it, it's <i>not</i> funny, we need to find him."
And with a look at his watch, he adds: "Preferably before Brian kills me!"
John has to agree with that.
As the situation is, Brian might even kill him as well.
If not for his ruined rug, then at least for the fact the bunny isn't located and safe yet.
Finally, he manages to pull himself together.
John orders Freddie to inspect the living room again, just in case.
He himself checks the kitchen and then proceeds to the hall.
When he gets to Brian's room, he drops to all fours as Freddie did earlier and looks under everything for a hiding bunny, unfortunately to no avail.
He closes the door after him.
John checks his own and Freddie's room in the same way but finds nothing there either.
Right when he gets to Roger's room, Freddie joins him.
"Only two possible places left," remarks John optimistically, ignoring the fact that those two rooms are the messiest of all.
In Roger's room, their technique of looking under everything won't work.
The view is blocked by piles of jeans and shirts in various degrees of neatness.
Closing the door behind themselves, they start looking under and behind and even in everything.
They find nothing but a sticky note on the drummer's desk, which was likely intended to go on the fridge that morning. It says he's off to a date tonight.
John sighs when he sees it and shakes his head.
Suddenly, Freddie utters a triumphant "Ha!".
When John turns around to look at him, he's dancing and jumping with a black and white spotted thing in his arms.
It looks rather fluffy but John can't make out if it's actually a bunny.
"Did you find it?" he asks, just to be sure.
"Of course I did, darling, what else do you think this is?" says Freddie mock-indignant.
John watches Freddie softly pet the little fluff ball in his arms and smiles.
He pulls the singer and the bunny in a hug.
"See, he's not hurt. Come on, let's get some bunny cuddles," he says.
Up close, he wonders how he didn't miss this one right away.
It's the most notably coloured of all five bunnies.
He pulls Freddie with him and they collapse on the couch together.
Freddie still holds the bunny as if he found his lost sheep.
It's one of the cutest things he's ever seen, thinks John as he puts another bunny in Freddie's lap, the grey one.
Immediately, the three cuddle up and John doesn't even think of making dinner anymore.
Somehow he manages to pick up the other three bunnies and he curls up against Freddie with them.
A few minutes later, they are all sound asleep.
Only the black bunny with a white eye notices when Brian comes home.
The curly boy just might be a favourite of his.
Of course, Brian notices the traces of the damage caused but he doesn't say anything.
Nor does he when a day later, half of the cords in the tv corner are new.
He just silently shares a look with John, leaving Freddie proud of his handiwork.