Pit Fighters 4: Family Ties 2

NSFW! This section should make it a bit more clear what this particular chapter is about (we're not getting to the tournament yet but that's my idea for the 5th part)

NSFW! Comments always appreciated!

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While Paris was left pondering the eventuality of a real match in front of real people, Logan dragged him—literally—to the “upstairs shower”, one of the green buck’s favorite secret places. Carrying a bucket of towels and shampoo under his arm like a picnic basket, he tugged Paris by the wrist all the way up several flights of stairs to the FEC’s open, air-conditioned, and frequently packed lobby, only to take a turn to a pair of doors that didn’t really go anywhere.

The Fighters Entertainment Center was composed of several buildings in a conjoined campus, and where two buildings didn’t quite merge with each other or the outer wall, a small courtyard remained. These were triangular gaps, mostly grass and colorful weeds poking up through the block pavement. Logan’s favorite one was out of the way of normal foot traffic, and so nobody used the stone bench for anything but occasionally eating lunch.

At the moment, however, the forecast called for at least another hour of rain, making the small patch of stone and green a nice place to take a shower. Paris sat with Logan on the stone bench as the green deer lathered up his fur, and Paris barely dabbed the soap up and down his arms and ears. The place reminded him of the times he and his brothers washed under the rain in the plaza behind their house, much more freeing than being scrubbed down in the wash basin, although with Logan insisting on helping Paris scrub his more intimate crevices, it was quite a bit gayer.

But the thought brought a troubling possibility to Paris’s mind. Besides the bench, the courtyard had an awning covering one of the FEC’s public terminals, where Logan had stowed their towels. Paris squeegeed shampoo off his hands and broke away from the rain to look up information about the upcoming tournament.

“Paris?” Logan asked, his voice muffled by the rush of rain. He approached with the soapy loofah, hoping to pull Paris’s attention back toward their now common back-and-forth about of Paris would just allow a little heavy petting.

“…oh god,” he mumbled, letting Logan pull him out into the rain.

“What’d you find?” Logan asked, brushing the loofah meticulously over Paris’s increasingly sculpted body without even asking. While Logan was still ever-so-slyly pressing Paris for some more intimacy with his mere proximity, his actions when they were in the shower were directed, almost parental, especially the way that Logan swabbed around the insides of Paris’s floppy ears.

“Bad news,” Paris said. He pulled away and swatted at Logan’s hands, splashing rainwater everywhere soaked deep into his fur.

“Are they matching you against Porte again?” Logan tilted his head, his torn ear flopping upward.

Paris shook his head. “Nah, I could kick his ass,” he said, entirely uncertain. He’d been getting better, but Porte had been getting less cocky, and he’d already started out way ahead of Paris in terms of skill. If he fought Porte at the tournament, it might even be an even match. “No, I mean, the tournament’s location. It’s in Lowtown.”

“Lowtown?” Logan snorted and folded muscular arms over his broad chest. “That’s a bit slummy, isn’t it?”

Paris squinted through the drops up at Logan. “That’s where my family lives.”

Logan’s grin dropped off his lips. “…and a very beautiful slum it is!”

“Logan, it’s fine,” Paris insisted. “I know, I’m not exactly the result of upper-class breeding.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Logan tilted his head the other way, his torn ear falling down but his one good horn poking up like a lightning rod.

Paris sighed. “Like, before I actually came here, I promised my mom if I’d let her watch me fight if we did a public exhibition somewhere she could access.”

“You mom!” Logan’s eyes lit up, and he started scrubbing Paris down harder like they were late for a dinner date. “She’ll be proud of how far you’ve come in the last few months!”

“No, no no!” Paris said. “I haven’t told her anything about my contract situation!”

Paris had barely talked to his mom at all, besides a few video calls. She literally lived just a few kilometers away, and even with all his running he hadn’t even stopped by one morning to see her. That guilt stuck with Paris, especially after all the support his mom showed in him doing the incredibly stupid, childish thing of joining the Pit Fighters.

He’d been putting off a visit for ages, because he knew the moment he did, he’d have to tell his mom the sort of trouble he got himself into. If he didn’t, he’d just be putting it off until the next visit, and the next, until the secret just somehow broke out on its own accord.

Now, his mom had said that Paris had to deal with all the risk on his own. But he knew his mom. She would not leave something like this alone, regardless of what was said. This was his problem to deal with! She didn’t need to put herself on the line—it was Paris’s stupid fault and he refused to allow it to drag the family down with him!

And, at the same time…

“Oh.” Logan leaned over on his knees. “Are you gonna tell her?”

“Hell no!” Paris exclaimed. “She’d kick my ass, and then try and dig me out of this whole thing herself. That’s gonna put pressure on the family and they’re gonna hate me for it…”

“Then just tell her you want to handle this yourself.”

Paris didn’t say anything. The rain picked up to its midpoint, pouring down in sheets, the noise of it smacking against the pavement drowning out any half-hearted mumble Paris could have made.

When the rain died down again to a drizzle, Logan, frowning at a wet, dejected Paris, asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Logan…” Paris muttered, sliding his grip down his long ears to squeegee the water off of them, “… this is gonna sound weird, but… I’m due to pay my family a visit. Could you come with me?”

Logan’s eyes brightened. “Really?”

“You’re like one of two people I can talk to here. And I think my mom would be happier if she thought I had a…”

“Boyfriend?” Logan’s smile picked up again.

Paris scoffed. It was so easy to predict Logan’s emotional state at any moment, given he was like a big puppydog who forgot everything but the last sentence of information. “Friend-friend.”

“Aww!” Logan stuck out his considerably long tongue and playfully swatted a limp wrist at Paris. “I’m all too happy to help, bun! But maybe Kinny should come too, if you don’t want it to be weird.”

Paris rubbed the back of his neck. “Eh, I don’t know, I mean… you’re pretty easy to like, my mom will adore you, but Kinny’s… I mean, he wouldn’t be interested, right?”

“How’s your mom’s cooking?”

Logan and Paris twisted their necks to find the blue opossum had wandered by sometime during the argument, tail wrapped around a towel as he poked at the public terminal underneath the awning.

Paris felt stupid to reject the proposition now. Besides, it wasn’t as though he didn’t like Kinny. He just couldn’t read the possum. But if he was interested, he was interested… right?

Even so, he could barely judge Kinny’s question. “Um, well… better than the cafeteria?”

“Good enough for me,” Kinny said, dropping his towel on top of Logan’s picnic basket and stepping out into the rain. “Is that tonight, then?”

—

The afternoon streetcar was packed to the brim, standing room only. Kinny and Logan had each brought a small knapsack, strapped over their chests like bandoleers, loaded with what Paris presumed to be toiletries. Public transport shut down at night, and they probably weren’t going to walk all the way back to the FEC in the dark.

Kinny and Logan both pressed rather uncomfortably against Paris, with Kinny and Paris holding onto the same ceiling strap that substituted for a seatbelt in case of sudden, catastrophic stop. The strangers all around them would provide better safety and cushioning, in any case.

“So what’s gonna happen if you see Sultan in the skybox?” Kinny asked, his mouth almost pressed up against Paris’s ear, but he didn’t even keep his voice down on account of the rail noise.

The local Lowtown stadium, Brok Stadium, didn’t have a skybox—it barely had what one could respectfully call bleachers, but he understood all the same. Sultan could just show up.

“I’ll probably embarrass everyone,” Paris said.

“You might want to think about having sex with a partner,” Kinny said, the flatness of his tone making the statement even weirder.

Paris blushed, his eyes darting to the passengers surrounding them, but these were commuters in a big port city, certainly used to hearing strangers talk about intimate things like big clumsy ogres.

Logan, his bulbous snout poking down into the tight space in which Kinny and Paris were wedged, said, “I’ll voluntee—”

“We know what you’d do, Logan,” Kinny stated.

“I’m just saying.” Logan shrugged. “My door is always open! Or your door, whichever way you prefer.”

“God, no!” Paris exclaimed. “I’m still working it out enough. Granted, after the incident, I needed to work it out twice, but…”

“It’s not just about working it out,” Kinny said. “That’s the mechanical part. There’s also a part of your brain that isn’t satisfied, and so keeps feeding your cock.”

“Can we not talk about this in public?”

“Would you rather talk about it at home?”

Paris’s face wrinkled up, and he took the point.

“So,” Kinny said, “What is it that you want?”

“Well…” Paris shrugged, nervously rubbing at his side, certain some intense glares were being directed at this rude, exceptionally naughty trio. “You… you know what I want.”

“I want you to say it out loud so we can proceed without further assumptions.”

Paris was tired of dancing around the point, and their stop was coming up soon, so he blurted out, “I want Sultan to wreck me until I can’t walk!”

That did get a few head-turns, though at least the worst was the agreeable-looking yellow weasel standing just behind Kinny breaking into a smile before typing something into her phone. Paris mumbled something under his breath that didn’t match any known words, but communicated clearly the idea, “can I go throw myself in front of this streetcar now?”

Logan grinned. “Oh my gosh you’re always so adorable when you talk about Sultan.”

“I mean, in this league it’s not out of the question,” Kinny said. “He seemed to like you. I’m sure next time you meet, maybe you’ll have a chance to hook up.”

“That’s the problem!” Paris pulled his hand away from the strap for half a second to gesture his frustration, only to have it taken up immediately by another commuter who was paying attention. He let it go and just stood, strap-less. “I don’t want to ‘hook up’. I might just be pretending but I want him to be there for me. It’s not even about the sex, it’s—“

“Right.” Kinny stated. “Sex and comfort are highly correlated. So right now, in your mind, you’re equating Sultan with your chance at comfort and this fact sexually excites you.”

Paris glared at Kinny. “You have a way of explaining nice things in the driest way possible.”

“Sorry.” Kinny said, his ears uncharacteristically wilting, even if it was only an inch. “It’s my demeanor. I’m actually quite an emotional guy, I just tend to repress it as a coping mechanism, since in my family it was seen as a sign of weakness.”

“Oh. Uh.” Paris rubbed his arms uncomfortably. “Sorry.”

“That’s just a fact.” Kinny shrugged. “You look at your life from the outside for long enough and you can see the patterns most people miss about themselves. Hence why I’ve somehow been tricked into playing your psychiatrist for the past months.”

Paris planted his hands on his hips. “So, as my psychiatrist, you think I need to find someone other than Sultan.”

“I’m not saying you should give up on Sultan. Just maybe you can find some satisfaction in addition to your obvious infatuation with a figure that’s miles above you.”

Paris had, of course, considered it. He’d considered it a lot. He couldn’t really live around a barracks filled with hot, sweaty, fit-bodied guys having ball-slapping sex with each other all the time and not think about it. And he’d questioned, many times, why he was so hesitant. The answer he’d come up with was stupid. He knew it was stupid. But he’d been brought up to kinda sorta maybe think about his potential love life in a certain way, and the thought of breaking away from that caused him more anxiety than he cared to admit.

“It just… feels wrong,” Paris said. “Like I’d be cheating on him.”

Logan tilted his head above them, and his ears flopped. “Is that why you haven’t had sex with anyone since you got here?”

Save that one time with Porte, of course, but Paris wanted to bury that memory so deep that it’d end up on Satan’s coffee table.

“Well… kinda.” Paris rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess I’ve been saving myself for Sultan.”

Kinny and Logan both exchanged glances… and then both broke out into a fit of giggles.

“Oh, what do you know!” Paris slapped at both of their exposed bodies.

“Do you know how many guys someone like Sultan has sex with in a week?” Logan asked.

“That doesn’t matter to me!” Paris exclaimed. “I could be, you know, maybe… one of them!”

“And you think that’ll satisfy you,” Kinny said. “Taking up approximately one thirtieth of Sultan’s attentions. Like you’ll be his favorite harem boy.”

Paris sank. “Maybe.” He shrugged, as the wheels of the streetcar squealed, and everyone leaned in with the braking as it slowed down for the stop at Lowtown. “I know. I’m kinda stupid like that.”