Pit Fighters 4 Family Ties 3

Part threeee. This one is less NSFW. Comments appreciated!

--

The facade of the house looked exactly the same as Paris remembered it, though he couldn't imagine why it would have been any different. Houses in Lowtown were tall, narrow, and scrunched together like a defensive formation. But they were also painted colorfully, his own home bright pink and flanked by a bright yellow and a bright blue, because there was simply no other way to make the muddy clay and plaster—and sometimes actual mud—look decent without paying more money. None of the windows had any glass on them, just shutters which usually kept out the rain decently enough.

Paris knocked on the front door, which rattled in its frame. His mother, Tyree, answered. The short, dark maroon rabbit wore a cotton poncho and carried a wooden spoon still sticky with the brown sauce cooking from dinner. Paris could smell it the moment the air from the open door hit his nose, and he tried to not suddenly tear up at the smells, or the sight of his mom's ears perking into a warm smile.

“Paris!” She exclaimed. “Oh it's so lovely to see you!” She wrapped herself around her taller son, forcing him down to kiss him on the cheeks. Paris let her, because she was his mom and while it was a little embarrassing, he missed the sincere attention badly.

“Uh, hi mom.” Paris said, squeezing her tight and holding on for several long moments.

“Saints save us, you've certainly bulked up! What are they feeding you over there?”

“Not important,” Paris muttered as he pulled away, then gestured to the two behind him. “Mom, there are my friends I told you about, Logan Acer and Kinny Fithmore.”

Kinny, still waiting in the middle of the narrow street, nodded. “Hey.”

Logan flourished with a bow. “How do you do, Mrs. Patroni?”

Tyree giggled and swatted at Logan as though he'd made an off-color remark. “Oh, you! Just call me Tyree, handsome.”

Paris wanted to remark that Logan was extremely gay, but he didn't think it would have stopped his mother for an instant from taking everything the big green deer said as a come-on.

“You're a tall drink of water,” she said, looking Logan up and down, her eyes stopping ever so briefly on his rather prodigious junk, but not quite long enough to make it awkward. “I take it you're Paris's new boyfriend?”

“Mom!” Paris exclaimed, turning red in the face.

“Well that's why you were going, wasn't it?” Tyree asked.

“Logan's not my—I mean—I haven't—”

Logan nodded and added, “We're just good friends.” Though his grin and seedy glance at Paris made it look more like a shared secret than an outright denial.

“Mmm.” Tyree gestured to the open door. “Well, come on inside you three, dinner's still got some time to go so make yourself comfortable. And watch your head, tall green and handsome.”

–

The house was not built for someone of Logan's stature, especially with the extra height of his one good antler, so he went to stand in the kitchen, which took up a floor and a half of the house, to which Tyree didn't object but put Logan to work doing... something. Paris wasn't certain, but he expected it was just an excuse for his mom to ogle Logan's extremely fit body. She had a thing for people his size, after all.

Just as Paris collapsed onto the patched-up couch, facing the empty wall where the TV had been before it was stolen, his teal blue brother Konner came down the narrow stairs from the bedrooms above. “Paree!” he said, apparently ignoring the small blue opossum standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, “knockin' em dead in the ring?”

Paris and his teal brother exchanged something that resembled a fist bump. “More or less,” he said. “Konner, this is Kinny.”

“Hey,” Kinny said, just as flatly as he did with Tyree. He twisted his naked tail awkwardly.

“Well, at least you made some friends,” Konner said, falling on the couch next to Paris. “That's more than you managed in ten years of school.”

“I'm not terribly surprised by this revelation,” Kinny said.

“Hey!” Paris exclaimed, folding his arms defensively. “If I'm so friend-repellant, why did you tag along?”

“You wanted company for your big reveal.”

“Oh!” Konner leaned closer to Paris, waggling his eyebrows. “A reveal, huh? What’s my little bro planning?”

“N-nothing much!” Paris exclaimed. He was less certain now that he even wanted to say anything. Being back home felt normal, all of the sudden, and why should he do anything to break that peace and tranquility? He wanted to just stay here and not go back. He could keep up his feeling-good routine of exercise and combat training at home, with at least two family members who were supportive of him. It was a better proportion of support than he got at the FEC.

But Kinny was staring at him, and Paris couldn't exactly deny what was going to happen, so he said “Just... you know... at the end of the month I'm gonna be in a tournament over at Brok stadium, and I figured you guys might want to see—”

“Really?” Konner tilted his head, his long ears moving with him. “You want us... to watch.”

“It would be nice to have sympathetic witnesses.”

“You never want us to watch!” Konner said. “Ever since that incident with dodgeball in middle school...”

“You like watching fights?” Kinny asked, even though it was clear from his attentive expression that he really wanted to ask about the dodgeball incident. He'd certainly force it out of Paris sooner or later.

“Oh a little,” Konner shrugged it off. “Paris has always been the big Pit Fighters geek in this family. But I can't blame him for it! The fighters are really nice to look at after all.”

Kinny raised his eyebrows. “You like the fighters?”

Konner laughed. “I'm like to say I'm more a lover than a fighter!”

“Mmm.” Kinny hummed, stroking his chin in consideration.

“Though I always figured that Paris was too, but well, then he decided he could fight with the big boys and it seems like he’s been keeping up!” Konner pinched at Paris's growing arm muscles. Paris was surprised to find that his arm had actually gotten thicker than Konner's own—he knew he'd been building strength, he had hadn't had such a stark point of comparison.

“Ha ha, yeah!” Paris shoved the probing fingers away and rubbed where Konner had pinched. He suddenly felt awkward, like he shouldn't have been allowed to bulk up faster than his older brothers. Youngest is always the baby, after all.

Kinny tilted his head. He asked Konner, “What's your role in Paris's career?”

“Huh?” Konner tilted his head at the strange question. “Uh, I dunno.  I guess I've always been a bit of a wingman for Paris. He's always had coming out of his shell. I mean, what's a sibling for?”

“Okay,” Kinny said. “Just... you seem rather nice about it.”

“Is that wrong?”

“No, just that Paris implied he didn't like at least one of his—”

The front door slammed open so hard it could have broken from its hinges. As if on cue, Paris's oldest brother, the dark blue Blitz, marched inside. Immediately behind him, a scrawny pink... dog, weasel, something... followed right behind, chewing and snapping bubblegum while messing with something more interesting on her phone.

“Mom, I'm home, I brought my girlfriend—” Blitz managed to get out before he noticed Kinny standing in the center of the tiny living room rug, and Paris slumped into the couch behind.

“Logan,” Paris heard his mother say from the kitchen, given the walls were thin as tissue, “Be a dear and set the table for one more.”

“Yes Ms. Tyree,” Logan said with a certain giddiness.

“Oh, hey Paris,” Blitz said, deliberately looking past Kinny like he wasn't even there. “I didn't know you were coming over tonight.”

“Sorry,” Paris said. “Who's your girlfriend this week?” He didn't mean it to come out like snark, but then again, it was an entirely natural method of communication between siblings.

Blitz snorted. “Uh, rude? This is Samsa, and we've been going steady for well over a month now?”

Paris raised a tired arm in greeting. “Hello, Samsa.”

Without looking up, Samsa raised a middle finger in his direction.

“You pick 'em clever, don't you?” Paris asked, this time with deliberate snark.

“Oh?” Blitz stiffened. “What about your boyfriend here?” he gestured to the blue opossum as though he'd only then just noticed him.

“Kinny isn't my boyfriend,” Paris said, weakly, knowing that Blitz wasn't going to pay an ounce of attention to his denial. Kinny, for his part, stood perfectly still and calm as Blitz circled him like a wild dog.

“I just figured the entire reason someone like Paris went and joined the Pit Fighters was because he was chasing some meathead celebrity, and you pick someone who makes you look...” Blitz's eyes fell on Paris's newly chiseled body, and his tone faltered for a half second as he registered the disparity. “...Beefy...” he coughed and corrected his course. “I mean, come on, I could do better than that!”

Paris sat straight up. “What, you're saying the only way I can win someone's respect is by beating them in a fight?”

“That's how you were expecting it to work, wasn't it?”

Now, Paris had gotten used to Blitz's hot-air arguments. He didn't like them, but they were so frequent that this didn't even clear the watermark for “annoying” in Paris's estimation. He could take this bit of snippy back-and-forth in good humor all evening, so long as Blitz kept it relatively tame. But Kinny had never been here before. He hadn't said anything, but the longer that Blitz rattled off his own world where his boasts were fact, a slow, wide grin spread across Kinny's lips.

This made Paris very nervous.

“Say,” Kinny said, placing a hand on Blitz's shoulder like an old chum. “Why don't we give you a bit of an exhibition in the back courtyard?”