“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-”

Shane just snapped her fingers again. That was all it took to get Cat’s head ringing like a bell. She froze and fell silent, thinking of nothing but that sound, contracted infinity, washing over her in drug-addled waves.

“Man, that’s fun,” Shane giggled. “The site I bought this stuff off recommended handling you like that. It’s psychology, apparently. What do you call it… conditioning? You know - like the guy, and the bell, and the dogs. It gets you all ready for suggestions. Anyway, oops! That’s me getting distracted again. Pay attention, babe.”

Cat paid attention. It wasn’t like she could help it.

“You know, what?” Shane mused. “Drink up. Let’s make sure you get the full dose, before we really get going.”

Cat’s eyes darted to the glass of wine, still resting on the table. It was still about half full. Half - half of the dose Shane had given her had her feeling like this. Her head started to spin again, just from imagining how she’d feel if she drank the rest.

“Drink,” Shane told her firmly. “Drink.”

“Nnn-nnoo.” It was hard, but Cat could push back, just a little. Thinking for herself was an uphill battle, but that didn’t mean she had to do whatever she was told.

Shane rolled her eyes. “Right. Um…” She thought for a moment, and then smiled. Reaching across the table, she slowly pushed the glass in Cat’s direction. “Babe, you’re really, really thirsty.”

Cat’s mouth went dry. Instantly. So fast it didn’t even make sense. She was… thirsty?

“N-no.” This time, her voice cracked. It sounded raw. She tried to swallow, but her throat seized up.

“Sooooooo thirsty,” Shane said teasingly. She lifted the drugged glass of wine up a few inches into the air. “Drink?”

The sight of that deep, red, quenching liquid swirling around in the glass as it was picked up was beautiful. It was perfection. Cat started leaning forward, groaning softly. She… she shouldn’t? But she was thirsty. But it… Shane… why was it so hard to think?

“You’ve never been more thirsty in your life, Cat.”

That bombshell made Cat feel like her throat was full of sand. She snapped. Snatching the wine glass greedily out of Shane’s hand, she downed it without a second thought.

“There,” Shane said. “Much better.”

At once, Cat’s thirst started to abate. Was it the wine, or just Shane? Did it matter? It felt like Shane owned her entire reality, now. Almost as quickly, the drug started to tighten its hold on her. She felt like she was underwater. She was seeing double. After everything Shane had just demonstrated, Cat had no more doubts. She was completely at her friend’s mercy. Her mind was an open book. Cat tried to look around out of the corners of her eyes, to see if anyone else had noticed what was going on. No-one had. Everyone else in the bar was either drunk, or wrapped up in another girl. Or both.

“Now, time for the main event.” Shane was breathing hard as she spoke. “Cat, listen up. You’re a dominant.”

“N-nngh.”

The room around Cat started to sway disconcertingly back and forth as Shane’s words rang in her head like a gong. In her drug-addled state, she could barely make sense of them. Clearly, though, the suggestion that she was a dominant was harder for her mind to swallow than the suggestion that she was thirsty. The words simply repeated, like a sinister ear worm, until the sounds broke apart and lost all meaning.

She was a dominant.

She was… a dominant?

She… was a dominant?

She…

What was she?

A dominant.

Cat’s head was splitting open like an egg. What did that even mean? A… dominant? A dominant dominated… right?

She… dominated?

No.

She was a submissive. A bottom.

No, no, no. That was… that was wrong. She was a dominant. She knew that much.

She knew… what?

No, no, Cat told herself. It was the drug. Just the drug. That was why she was so confused. There was no way she’d normally be confused about the fact that she was a dominant.

No, wait.

Shane snapped her fingers again, and just like that, all her thoughts were gone. Obliterated. It was a like a bomb being set off inside a sand castle.

“You are a top,” Shane told her in a firm, calm voice.

Well, great. Now there were two voices echoing around in Cat’s head. Or did it only count as one voice? They were both Shane, after all, but they barely sounded like her. They were too fast or too slow or too high or too low. Just like every other sound in the world, right now.

Cat had to try and make sense of it all, somehow.

She was a top.

She was a… top?

That made a certain amount of sense, since she was also a dominant. 

Or- no, wait, what?

A… top? A dominant top? That was her? It sounded right. It didn’t feel right, but it-

Cat rubbed her head and groaned. Everything was buzzing.

Once this stupid drug wore off, she was going to kill Shane.

She was going to slap her friend’s pretty, cute, smug little face until her cheeks were glowing and red. She was going to make her kneel and beg for forgiveness. She’d make Shane kiss her feet if she ever wanted to-

Wait. Fuck.

Why was she thinking like that?

And why was it so… so hot?

Cat always found kinky things hot, of course. But this was different. Now, those thoughts were hot in the first person. It was hot that she was the one doing them. In her mind’s eye, they were fantasies of control. Of power. And they flooded her body with heat.

Of course they did. It made perfect sense. She was a dominant. She was a top.

Was…

No.

She was a…

What was it?

A top?

Yes. No. Yes. Of course she was. Cat knew that much, at least… right? She had to. It was practically the only coherent thought left in her head. Everything else was melting away in its wake. It was starting to feel more and more natural, too. The words were sounding less and less like they were spoken in Shane’s voice, and more and more like they were being spoken in her own.

Her mind was an echo chamber, reflecting back on itself the pair of simple ideas Shane had given to her.

She was a dominant.

She was a top.

Fuck.

It was artificial. Cat still knew that much. Shane’s drug was doing this to her. But that didn’t make it any less real, or less potent. And much, much more than being artificial, it was hot.

It was hot that Cat was a top. A dominant. It was hot because that meant she could dominate girls, and dominating girls was hot, for her.

Because she was a dominant.

With each passing moment, those suggestions sunk deeper and deeper into what remained of Cat’s mind. And from the deepest point, her subconscious, they started to spread. The sensation of it happening was head-splitting. It was thunder. It was taking a match to a spider’s web and watching the flame spread from point to pot, synapses and neuron’s firing, scrambling to reorient themselves around the new, deep truth of Cat’s identity.

She was a top. And a top wasn’t a bottom. She didn’t enjoy bottoming anymore.

She wasn’t attracted to dominants - to other dominants. She was attracted to submissives.

Cat didn’t crave powerlessness. She didn’t want the bliss of placing herself into someone else’s hands.

She wanted control.

Cat was yearning, suddenly, for the raw physicality of dominance. She wanted to stand taller than another girl, to impress her will upon them, to make them pleasure her obediently, or to make them quiver and moan with pleasure as she had her way with them.

Those desires were so utterly foreign to her. But now, they were at the core of everything she knew about herself.

From there, the mind-warping wildfire spread further. It started to distort her history, like a colored lens being placed over her memories.

No wonder her past relationships hadn’t worked out. Two dominants, dating? It was a huge compatibility problem.

No wonder she couldn’t find a girl to take home. She was looking in all the wrong places. She’d been trying to catch a top’s eye - how stupid. All along, she should have been hooking up with all the cute, submissive bottoms surrounding her. That was what she needed. It was crazy that Cat had been deluding herself so much, for so long.

No, that…

Cat shook her head.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for what it was like to try and fit together two fundamentally incompatible views of herself. Everything she found herself thinking was bullshit. She knew that. It was the drug. It was all just the drug.

But it felt so powerfully, wonderfully true.

And the feeling - that was the part Cat couldn’t beat. It was more true than the truth. She couldn’t tell herself that she knew who she was, when all she felt was this.

She was a dominant.

She was a top.

After feeling, came desiring.

She wanted to dominate.

She wanted to top.

Fuck. Fuck. Cat wanted it so badly. All of a sudden, she was itching for it. She didn’t want this to stop. Not really. She didn’t want to go back. Those desires simply weren’t part of her anymore. They weren’t compatible with who, deep down, she’d already decided she was.

If you were a top, like her, you didn’t wish you were a bottom.

The only thing Cat was wishing was that she had a girl to fuck.

The desire wracked her body until she was shaking. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. The intensity of it all was doubled, trebled, by the pressure of this leagues-deep, mind-fucking trip she was on. Suddenly, it felt like the one thing she’d been denying herself for her whole life.

Maybe she had. Who knew? Cat was past trusting in her own memories. Here, now, they were flowing like melted wax, just like all the rest of her.

She was so brainwashed by this stupid drug. Fuck.

And then, just as suddenly, the bubble burst.

It felt like coming up for air.

Just like that, Cat could see straight again. She could think and feel and hear. It was so quick, it was like the drug had never been in her system at all. She was back to normal.

And she was a dominant.

Shane didn’t miss the lucidity that washed over her. Suddenly, her cocksure smugness was gone. She looked down nervously. “So… feeling toppy yet?” she said awkwardly.

Cat was. She really, really was.

But obviously, there was something more important to deal with.

“You drugged me,” Cat said flatly.

“Yeah…” Shane admitted sheepishly.

“You drugged me,” Cat repeated, “just so I’d want to fuck you how you want to be fucked? Just because I’m your type?”

Shane nodded, the accusation making her shrink into herself. Cat had never seen her friend blush quite so hard. And no wonder - there was a kind of steel and confidence to Cat’s voice that was new to the tall femme.

“I can’t believe you,” Cat continued. “You’re my friend. My best friend. I trust you. And what do you do with that trust? This. You drug me and brainwash me, all to make me into your personal, perfect partner.”

“It’s not…” Shane protested meekly. “I didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?” Cat folded her arms.

Shane went quiet for a moment. “I could have just made you love me,” she said quietly, eventually. “I was just hoping…”

She lapsed into silence.

After another moment of tension, Cat made her choice. She stood up. Shane stood too. She looked afraid that Cat was about to make for the exit. When Cat reached out to stroke her face instead, her eyes went as wide as dinner plates.

And when Cat seized her jaw in a vice grip, she turned bright red.

“Get down on your knees,” Cat commanded, drawing herself up imperiously. She’d never done that before, but it felt natural.

Nothing matched the rush of watching Shane obey, shaking and trembling.

The sight of her gorgeous friend kneeling for her was so beautiful, Cat couldn’t help finally letting the smile onto her face.

“You’re going to pay for this,” she warned.

True to form, Shane recovered fast. The brattiness returned to her demeanor. She jutted out her chin defiantly, and looked up at Cat with a spark in her eyes.

“Make me,” she challenged.

Cat cocked an eyebrow. They were both smiling at each other now. “You’d like that, huh?”

“Well… yeah, obviously.” Shane flushed a little, again. “Especially if you do it with this.”

She reached into her jacket pocket and fished something out, and held it in both hands, reverently, for Cat to inspect.

It was a simple, pink, leather collar, with a message written into the clasp.

Cat’s.

Even Cat couldn’t help blushing a little at that. It looked so good, and it would look even better around her friend’s neck.

It was even in Cat’s favorite color.

And of course, it fit perfectly.

“Follow me,” Cat commanded. “We’re going home. My place. We have a lot to talk about. First, your punishment.”

“And then?” Shane asked, trembling with excitement.

“And then,” Cat purred. “I’m going to do exactly what you made me want to do. I’m going to fuck you until the sun rises.”