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One afternoon, a gay couple - a tabby and a fox - sat in the living room of their apartment playing one of their favorite console video games, VoreWars. That they were doing this would have been apparent to anyone who knew them, even by sound alone. The ferocious clacking of joysticks, the verbal ranting and smack-talk of two gamers in combat, the periodic crushing and yelping sound effects coming from the TV speakers - all of these things together would give it away.

But, much as these matches between them usually went, that interesting cacophony of sounds eventually gave way to an even more intensely focused conflict - with the two gamers settling down into wordless determination as their match came down to the wire. The fox won more often than not, but the tabby had been practicing, and practicing hard - and today it looked like he just might have the game in hand - or in this game's case, "in mouth."

Then the tabby lost, and the mrowling, disappointed wail of his defeat sounded through the apartment.

"That's downright sneaky!" the tabby whined, before directing several irritated licks at the tan and brown-striped fur of his left arm. "When did you pick up that shrink ray!?"

"When you weren't looking, obviously," said the orange fox with a grin, sticking out his tongue at his mate. "You weren't even bite-sized by the end - so thoroughly destroyed! Haha! Such a very little snack." His blue boxers sported an aroused bulge as he said this. That the fox enjoyed the game on more levels than the tabby did was no secret, but also not something in which the tabby minded indulging him.

At least, that was ordinarily how it went, but today the tabby seemed extra hurt by his defeat.

"What's wrong?" the fox asked, his voice not especially sympathetic but still clearly interested in finding out the answer.

"Oh, I just..." the tabby's voice cracked and trailed off, while the silence of the postgame screen settled in. He looked away from both the screen and his partner.

The fox blinked at him. "...Why're you acting so surprised? You know I usually win."

"Meh." The tabby looked down at his right hand and rubbed at an old amethyst ring he was wearing.

The fox caught sight of this and frowned. "Aww, c'mon, don't tell me you're being superstitious about that stupid ring again?" He reached for his beer on their sofa's end table - found it empty.

"I wished that I'd be the one to get to eat you today," the tabby whined, rubbing the ring harder and looking at it in desperation.

The two had a history surrounding the topic of that ring. The fox found himself sliding rapidly down from the high of his victory into a decidedly bad mood. "And what have I told you about that stupid ring, huh?"

The tabby looked at him pitifully. "You've told me it isn't magical and it doesn't do anything, but-"

"That's exactly right," he interrupted, pointing a finger at him from around his beer can. "You seriously need to give that fantasy up. It's not healthy. I know it's a memento of your mother's, but come on man, it doesn't do anything! Wishes and getting them granted is not a thing that happens!"

"But mother said-"

"She's dead, man. More than four years ago."

"Yes, so isn't that all the more reason to take her wishes seriously?" the cat demanded, his voice cracking and eyes watering.

The fox shook his head and buried his muzzle in his hands, eventually sliding them up the bridge to cover his eyes.

"It's not a magic ring," the fox said, starting over after realizing he wasn't going to get anywhere useful by complaining about the cat's excessive dependence on his mother here.

"But it is!" the cat insisted, drawing the ring close and clutching it to his chest with both hands. "Remember that time when..."

"Yeah, of course I do! I remember all those times. But none of them were anything that couldn't have just happened by chance, and you're delusional if you think..." he stopped himself - gestured "no way" by waving his arms horizontally in front of his own chest. "Never mind I'm just going to go get another beer, and sit down and enjoy the feeling of having kicked your ass at a game you play about twelve times as much as I do."

"Okay," said the cat meekly. "I'll try to calm myself down.

* * *

The fox hated that thing. The cat was ridiculously superstitious about it to the point of refusing to take it off, and also to the point of refusing to begin any sentence with "I wish (whatever)" unless he did take it off first or actually wanted the thing in question to happen. More often than not he wished for the lamest, most attainable things anyway, so he got plenty of "good results" from using it, which had led to all sorts of confirmation bias.

And of course, complainingp about it was a very sensitive subject for the cat - one of those crazy soft spots people so often had. The fox seriously couldn't stand to look at those spots most of the time, yet they were so easy to see, and so very hard to ignore...

Open fridge - grab beer - pop the top - drink beer.

That was the habitual order of events, and the fox executed them on full autopilot, his mind still focused on its friction with the tabby's beliefs. Yet around the time he got to the actual drinking part he started to feel very, very strange. His head pulsed with a sudden shock, as if he had been struck by a sound punch to the skull.

He felt disoriented; his breath seized. Trembling, he put the beer down on the counter, focusing his eyes on its open aluminum-can lid as a kind of visual anchor to try to keep from passing out. He felt his center of gravity having problems - felt the weight get heavy on his arms.

It was all he could do now to force himself to breathe, much less call out for help - and being a self-defined manly man he generally didn't do that very often in the first place. Yet as he stared down his own nose at the can, his arms wobbling above the counter as he supported the weights of his body, he felt a bizarre sensation like falling, as if the can were getting closer and closer to his face, the hole getting wider and wider, the muscle strength in his legs turning to jelly and letting him fall the rest of the way forward and down, down, down...

Suddenly he felt himself crash full-bodily into a calm sea of strong, alcoholic liquid. Struggling in confusion, he stuck his nose above the surface and sneezed out the invading flow of booze.

He was quite adept at swimming but had never traversed something like this. For that matter he had no idea how this was even happening. Was he hallucinating? Impossible, that never happened to him!

He noticeably did not have his boxers anymore either. The booze found its way into his sheath, its texture fascinating to his bare skin. He felt his member coming out; what was turning him on!? He had no alcohol fetish. Was there even such a thing? The odor was horrible, assailing his nostrils more pervasively than he had ever experienced, badly enough that it seemed it might put him off the scent of beer for many months to come... and yet he was getting hornier?

Perhaps part of him was anticipating the events to come - but his conscious mind found it all quite the annoyance. Struggling to swim along, he made his way over to the distant metallic walls that he could barely see in the shadowy dark of the can's interior. Was it just him, or were the walls getting further away? Or was he...

He was shrinking. It was the only explanation, terrible though it was.

"H-hey!" he yelped, hoping his small voice would carry to the tabby's sensitive ears. "Hey! HELP!!"

* * *

The tabby stepped into the kitchen some minutes later.

"You know I've been thinking," said the tabby conversationally as he entered, trying to act as though nothing had gone wrong, "VoreWar is a stupid game anyway. About half the people play to lose! You can't get a competitive game going when you really want one. Isn't that funny?"

He looked around. The fox was nowhere in sight. The only thing left was a beer can on the counter.

"Oh, he opened his beer and ran off without even drinking it," commented the tabby. "I wonder if he got a text from one of his friends and ran out. Strange for him to go without even taking his beer though."

He made a pass around the apartment, including checking the bathroom, to confirm that the fox was in fact gone.

It wasn't until his return to the kitchen that he noticed the fox's boxers lying on the floor. He picked them up and turned them all around and inside out. Feeling very confused, he shrugged and tossed them aside onto the chair the fox usually used at breakfast. Him taking off the last shred of his clothing randomly wasn't exactly something new, but it was odd that he'd done it in the kitchen. Then again, if his gamer friends had called him up suddenly, perhaps he'd gone to change into new clothes and then hurried out the door...

Sighing, and annoyed with himself for not being more observant of his mate's behavior, the tabby returned to the kitchen counter. He stared at that open can.

"Well, so long as he's out for the moment, I suppose I'll have this beer. No more of a featherweight than I am, it'll at least take the sting off what he said to me." He picked up the can and spoke to it affectionately. "Bottoms up!"

* * *

"BWOTTOMNZ UUUP!!"

That was what the fox heard - a roaring, rumbling sound that made the liquid around him tremble.

Then the tiny fox's life became much more complicated. First, a tilting - a sloshing that drug his tiny body harshly against the thin metal - drew him down into a corner between the can's wall and lid and pressed his pawpads hard against it, while a drowning flood of the brown liquid pooled all around him, took his head firmly below the surface. He flailed his arms around - couldn't orientate himself fast enough to make any headway.

Then just as suddenly he found himself sliding the other direction again, the liquid slipping away back down into its more usual configuration - though still sloshing around from the momentum - with him falling face first back into it as it went. He stubbed a toe against the side of the can while on his way back down; the pain shivered through his tiny body as he sank once again - and then the flow tilted up once more, slamming him once again into the corner of the can.

This process continued twice more until finally the tabby turned the can fully vertical, determined to down the whole thing without any further thoughts. The beer flowed into his maw, and as the can's contents depleted, the fox found himself struggling to understand where the flow was going. He saw light outside, and something pink... and then...

Suddenly the flow caught him again, swept his legs, and carried him out onto that rolling, knobbly plain of pinkness below. White spires rose around him, his body mercifully passing clear of all of them and landing on the warm inner surface. Then the warm surface moved, and he once again was thrashed around - this time into the pool of beer that was forming below the pink plain. The pink plain was alive. It rose and fell like a great monster, like a great whale...

Oh shit, it's his tongue.

The realization hit the fox, and he swam frantically around looking for anything resembling a good option, something to hold onto, but he was just too small, and everything too far away and slippery in the flow of that stinking drink. Glottal action behind him warned of an impending journey; the tongue swept him up; the liquid flowed back, back, and down into blackness, surrounded by warm and rhythmically moving walls...

* * *

"That was a good beer... had a strange kick to it though," commented the tabby as he sat down at the table and waited for the inevitable slight tipsiness to rush to his brain. He took off his shorts and looked at himself - rubbed at his ring. "I wish he would come back to me soon," he invoked, "so that we can kiss and make up!" He had a warmhearted smile at that thought.

The fox landed in a pool of something sickening - something that felt so roughly textured that it must be capable of burning his skin... yet for some reason it didn't. The heated stomach walls sloshed and gurgled around him like some malevolent living cavern, and yet he did not die. He whimpered in terror even while he found himself getting bizarrely hard from his plight.

It seemed he might last long enough to get out of here after all... but there was still a long, messy tour ahead...

Story (C) 2014 dolphinsanity, commissioned by starsage on FurAffinity.