Opossum Eleven

He needed to talk to him face to face.

It was thankfully not clear to Ian, but to him? He could tell that Ammo was still extremely depressed.

Yes, meeting Ian and goofing off had helped a little, but his friend still hadn't sounded right. His words had also been a little hesitant, which definitely wasn't Ammo's normal way of speaking. Especially not to him.

His fingers were hovering over his keyboard after having said goodnight to Ian, leaving him alone with Ammo, but the other man hadn't said anything after his own quiet farewell to his new friend.

Pursing his lips, he lifted his hands up to his hair and tugged on it a little before silently sighing. He wasn't an emotions kind of guy. He wanted to try and be gentle about it by typing something out first, but he just couldn't find the words to say with his fingers.

Fuck this shit.

"Ammo, what are you doing tonight?" he asked instead, needing to just cut to the chase.

His friend seemed a bit surprised by his question and remained silent for a moment, but when the words he expected to come after nearly a minute never did and silence remained the only answer, Grim ground his teeth together and scowled at his computer screen.

"So what you're saying is that you're coming over to my place to crash tonight," he told him, not even bothering to put a question mark at the end of his sentence.

There was another stretch of silence before Ammo finally spoke.

"You... you really want me to come over there? Why?"

Fuck, you sound like you're about to cry because someone wants to see you.

"You're forty fucking minutes away and deserve to get your ass beat for being such a bitch tonight!" Grim growled, his filter falling away.

He then typed out his address for Ammo in Discord.

"Get your ass over here, Michael. I'm gonna start making dinner," he said, his tone a little softer this time.

"I'll be waiting for you, alright?" he added.

He waited so long for Ammo to respond that he decided to get up and actually go start prepping to cook. He left his headset on the entire time, though, waiting for the other man to answer.

It took about five minutes, and quite a few faint shuffling sounds from Ammo's end, before he finally did.

"Alright... I-I'll see you soon."

Grim expected him to disconnect the call, but he never heard the sound to signal the guy had left. He was going to question him after a few minutes, but then he heard the sound of keys jingling, followed shortly by a door opening, then closing.

He was using Discord on his phone the whole time?

Shrugging, Grim started chopping up vegetables while letting some seasoned ground turkey brown in a large pan.

By the time everything was ready to work with, he had boiled some large cabbage leaves and lined a pan with several open ones. Now that his filling was all set, he mixed the ground turkey, veggies, and a bit of mozzarella cheese together and began wrapping up his cabbage rolls one by one.

It was one of his favorite meals because it was full of vitamins and protein, so he easily knocked out the normally-arduous task in a little under five minutes due to muscle memory.

They were in the oven a moment later with the timer set.

Alright, next.

He wasn't a big fan of muffins, mainly because they often had more sugar than donuts or cake in them, yet were marketed as a healthier option, but if it was one thing he knew about Ammo... the guy loved lemon poppy seed muffins.

He calmly got to work making a general recipe he'd memorized from scratch, but subbed in lemon juice and zest, along with some poppy seeds he already had on hand, and some monk fruit sweetener instead of sugar.

Within about fifteen minutes those were in a muffin tin and in the oven, too.

Alright, now to clean up a bit.

His place wasn't messy to begin with, so he easily got things taken care of by the time he heard a hesitant knock on his front door.

He knew that Ammo wouldn't be in the best shape since he'd gotten pretty depressed from his wife passing away so suddenly, but when he opened the door, he felt as if his own heart was breaking.

His friend, who was honestly one of the most relaxed, put-together guys he knew, looked about ready to pass out. The dark circles under his eyes were enormous, and his normally-soft blueish-brown eyes were nearly lifeless. His hair had also clearly been neglected and looked like a dried-out blondish-brown tangle atop his head.

Okay, slight change of plans.

Taking the guy's small backpack of things that he'd brought with him, Grim swung it over his shoulder, then took his warm hand and led him to the bathroom.

"Bath first, then dinner," he said, glad that the food had finished cooking only a few minutes ago and he'd already taken it all out of the oven.

He could tell as soon as he said those words that Ammo wasn't really interested in cleaning himself up, but that was no surprise. Depression made a lot of tasks infinitely harder to accomplish.

"That's an order, Michael," Grim said calmly but sternly as he nodded to the man's unkempt clothing.

"Strip, but leave your boxers on."

The man's brow furrowed, but after a moment of hesitation, he slid his bare feet from his untied tennis shoes and began doing as told. His clothing came off and was dropped to the floor one article at a time until, after about three minutes, he finally stood before him, naked except for his black boxers.

"Alright, good job," Grim said as he lifted a hand to gently pat his hair.

He knew that Ammo was technically a dom, but he'd also said that he'd be willing to sub for him, and considering his current situation, even if he'd been joking at that time...

You just need some love right now.

Giving a rare gentle smile, Grim walked over to the bathtub and got the water started. He kept it warm, but not hot.

Thankfully, Ammo didn't need any nudging to step in, then sit down for him.

Once the water was about three-fourths of the way up, he switched it to the overhead function but turned the sprayer off as he took it down from its holder.

"Alright, hair first," he said as he knelt back down.

He expected Ammo turn a little so that he had better access to the back of his head, but as he moved, he seemed to shrink...

Uh... well. I was not expecting that.

In fact, what even was that?

A big rat?

Tilting his head, Grim looked over the odd creature now staring straight at him.

You look like a mix between a rat and a schnauzer.

When it didn't move or react at all, he mentally shrugged and lifted the nozzle, then gently sprayed down its tannish-brown coat.

Almost seems waterproof.

It took him a good while to get enough of it wet to begin working in some shampoo. All the while, the strange creature simply stared up at him with Ammo's soft, curious eyes.

"At least you're a well-behaved rat-dog," he said quietly as he continued to scrub the miscellaneous animal.

He let the shampoo sit for a minute as he dried his hands and looked up the animal on his phone. It didn't take long after typing in giant rat dog before the image of Ammo's shift popped up.

"Capybara? The fuck is that?" he mumbled as he stared at the strange pictures.

It was evidently a huge water rat native to South America. He'd never heard of or seen one before, but the more he looked at it, the more he thought that it wasn't too ugly.

"Alright, let's rinse this off, then do some conditioner," he told it after setting his phone aside again and grabbing the spray nozzle.

The dog-rat, or really, capybara, slowly followed the nozzle with its gaze, moving its whole head as Grim picked it back up. It turned out to be quite an inquisitive little rat-dog... and his own inner animal didn't know what to think of it.

Of course, that didn't stop it from screaming every now and then as it nervously peaked out from behind Grim's eyes, but thankfully it wasn't running around yelling loud enough to wake the dead.

At least, not yet.

He managed to get the conditioner worked into its coat after a bit of effort, but it didn't sit still very well for the brushing that came next.

"Your hair is pretty coarse, isn't it?" Grim told it as it sidestepped for the tenth time, clearly not interested in the brush... unless it could chew on it.

It didn't seem to care when he told it not to do it, too, and nearly nipped his fingers more than once!

"Alright alright, we'll just wash it out," he grumbled, even as he saw the amount of hair still coming off with each brush stroke he fought for.

I guess I'll just brush your hair when you shift back... and vacuum a lot until then.

Resigned, he put away the brush to save it from being gnawed, then knelt back down with the intention of grabbing a towel to dry him off, but before he could reach to the side where he'd put it, he had a capybara already halfway in his arms!

"Um, we need to get dry before we do the hugging thing," he told it as he tried to reach for the towel again, only for the strange creature to promptly jump out of the tub and land right in his lap!

It quickly tried to climb up his front, and once it managed to strong-arm its way to a spot it liked, it settled down against his chest and began to purr.

Why does this situation feel so familiar?

It didn't take him more than ten seconds to remember, and another five for his expression to deadpan.

Ian's cat did the exact same thing to him when he was trying to play.

Feeling his shirt and pants begin to soak through, Grim sighed and gently picked the capybara up and set it back in the tub, then reached over and flipped the switch so that it could begin draining.

"I'm going to go grab a few more towels. Stay right there, okay?" he told it, earning a twitch of whiskers and a quiet squeak in response.

I'm going to take that as an agreement.

Slipping out of the bathroom, he quietly closed the door, then ran to the laundry room and grabbed an armful of towels.

When he returned, however, he froze for a moment in the doorway, surprised that the bathtub was empty!

He thankfully noticed a slight movement to the left of the tub after only a moment and looked in that direction, only for his lips to immediately turn downward into a frown as his eyes fell upon his new large rat-dog friend... contently sitting in the toilet bowl.

I...

A quiet, tired sigh slipped from his slightly-parted lips.

I guess it's time for a second bath...