"Move."
A finger prodded Fox McCloud in the small of his back.
He complied, stepping off the elevator and into a hallway on the… Great Pygma, I guess, since I can't think of anything better to fracken call it.
Pig Daddy
by backpiper
The cat behind him followed closely; his considerable height intimidated Fox more than slightly.
He almost wondered if Pygma had hired Panther just because of that.
The fox had tried to make small talk with him on the ride up from his cell.
Rather, he'd asked Panther things like: Where he was going? Had they contacted his team? What had they said?
But the cat remained quiet all throughout, which only increased his intimidation factor.
Fox didn't deal well with the silent treatment.
He looked down at his boots.
Each of his footsteps clanked against the metal floor of the ship as he was led around the ship.
Handcuffs around his wrists kept him from, well, taking control of the situation.
It was more than a little humiliating, to be honest.
The great Fox McCloud, hero of the Lylat War, completely at the mercy of his rival.
Even the thought of that put a pit in his stomach.
Pygma had some kind of code of honor, he'd learned as of late. He just wasn't sure how far it extended.
Then: "Stop," Panther suddenly commanded.
They stood in front of a door that blended in—almost seamlessly—with the sterile grey of the ship's walls. Fluorescent lights above revealed a nameplate etched into the door. W. O'Donnell, it read.
As Fox's eyes registered the name, the pit in his stomach got worse. 'I guess I'm about to find out,' he thought.
With two knuckles, Panther rapped on the door twice. "Pygma?" he spoke. "I've brought the prisoner, as per your request."
The door hissed open.
Fox dry swallowed, confused, and slightly more concerned, somehow.
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room, the first thing he noticed was a piece of notebook paper tacked to the wall: with her arms above her head, a poodle stood on some tropical beach, wearing a wink and nothing else. Hand drawn in crayon, by what looks to be someone with undeveloped skills and concept of anatomy.
Underneath the poster was an unkempt bed, topped with a crumpled-up pile of dirty sheets, creased leather jackets, and torn fishnets.
Empty bottles and boots littered the floor, and in the corner stood a desk, the surface of which was covered with stained star charts and half-empty mugs of coffee.
The last thing he noticed about the room was that in it, Pygma O'Swine was nowhere to be found.
"Oh, excuse me," Panther said—maybe to Fox. "It seems he's not in this room."
"I'm in the observatory, dummy," came a voice over the ship's loudspeaker. "Shee-irt."
Panther fished in his pocket for his communicator and almost dropped it as he pressed the call button. "Please pardon my mistake, as well as our intrusion into your private quarters," he said. "I'll bring the prisoner to the observatory at once."
"Y'know in the time it took you to say all that, you could've just walked here?" said the loudspeaker.
"Continue down the hall," Panther said, still shadowing Fox as he led the way. It was not as though he had much choice in the matter.
Less than a hundred feet down the hall—but on the other side—was a door marked Observatory.
Unfortunately, the short trip did nothing to alleviate Fox of his anxiety; if anything, that pit had turned out to be a cocoon, and now his stomach was full of butterflies.
The cat again rapped on the door as he had done in front of Pygma's room. "Boss?" he asked.
"Yeah, come on in," came a muffled voice.
The door opened, casting a long trapezoid of light into an otherwise pitch-black room. Fox couldn't make out whether the dark room was large, small, or just decently sized; as he squinted his eyes to try and focus on something within the dark, a plume of cigar smoke rolled out into the hall and right into his nostrils.
He made a face.
"I've brought the prisoner as purr your request," Panther repeated to the dark room.
"Thanks, Caroso," came a gravelly response from the darkness. "Yer dismissed."
The cat's hand sent Fox forward into the room. He tripped on nothing and stumbled, catching himself before he made his already ungraceful entrance even worse. Then the door slid closed behind him, putting him completely in the dark.
"So glad you could finally join me," the voice continued. Then, it commanded: "Computer, make the bright and shinies happen in the downspace."
"Did you say: make the guys in whitie tighties happen in the downstairs?"
"Computer, no-"
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"Computer-"
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"Computer. No."
"No?"
"Computer: No."
"OK then. Powering down."
An audible sigh. "Sorry, this takes a second." Maybe twenty seconds of silence go by. It's hard to tell, from Fox's position. "Computer: make the bright and shinies happen in the downspace."
"Did you say: make the bright and shinies happen in the downspace?"
"Computer: Yes."
"Okay. Making the bright and shinies happen in the downspace. Thank you for choosing dingoboots."
A series of lights around the room's edges lit up one after the other, revealing the room's contents.
One wall had a full bar, Fox noted, full of expensive liquors he'd never heard of before.
Or wait, some not so expensive—there were a few plastic jugs of Baaka, Old Raven, and other things he'd recognized as rail drinks from any old dive bar in the Lylat system.
Barstools lined the bar, and several plush-looking pieces of furniture were scattered around the room; a mounted chair sat in the center of the room, almost like a second captain's chair.
And then, Fox saw it. The wall at the end of the room was actually a window looking out onto an endless parade of stars.
He took a deep breath, suddenly feeling the tension escaping from his body.
The Great Fox had no observatory of its own, but sometimes—if he found that he couldn't sleep after lights out—he'd sneak onto the bridge by himself and watch the autopilot guide his ship through the majesty of outer space.
It was beautiful and humbling all at once.
His eyes darted from one speck of blue to the next, following them as they moved from the right of the window and disappeared off its left edge.
One star stayed right in the center, though, glowing a dim orange.
'A red dwarf, perhaps?' Fox mused.
But wait, that didn't make sense.
Why would it be right in the center if it wasn't on the ship's course?
Suddenly it flared, growing brighter and revealing the grey snout it was stuck in.
A lit cigar.
"Howdy," said Pygma's reflection in the window.
Fox felt his ears flatten against his skull.
The chair in the center of the room swiveled, revealing his nemesis, chewing on the filter of his cigar and swishing a glass of bourbon in one hand.
He was clad in a dark flight suit that was stuffed into his boots; however, he'd slightly unzipped it, revealing a tuft of short, dark and curlies.
The fox's eyes first went to that tuft, but then continued on, scanning the rest of his body.
He noted that Pygma's jumpsuit was oddly tight around the arms and legs, barely hiding the irritatingly defined muscles underneath.
Not that he'd ever admit it to Pygma without a hearty dose of sodium pentathol, but he did appear to take good care of himself.
Pygma coughed. Fox finally looked at his face.
His sight landed on one eye, one eyepatch, and two raised eyebrows.
"Enjoyin' the view?" he said, then pursed his lips; Fox grumbled to himself. "Go on and pop a squat wherever."
"I've been sitting in your brig for hours," McCloud replied, terse. "So I'll stand, thanks."
"Uh-huh." Pygma sucked smoke through his cigar, causing the cherry to glow brightly again. "Well you sit whenever your butt lets you. I know you're probably smarting from that kicked butt you got today, is all."
Fox glared at him.
"Gee, what a smile you got there, sunshine!" chirped O'Swine. "Can't tell you how I've been looking forward to seeing it since we captured you. Sure doesn't look much like it does when your mug gets printed up in the Corneria Times."
"Why the hell'd you bring me up here, Pygma?"
"We'll get to that. Now—" O'Swine then put his glass of bourbon down on the floor and got up from his chair. "Can I get you anything? We don't have the fixings for appletinis or whatever you kiddies sip on these days, but you might take a shine to a good bourbon."
Fox decided to ignore that. "I'll just have a water, thanks."
A half-smirk appeared on Pygma's face. "What," he said. "You don't drink?"
"Of course I fracking drink, Pygma," Fox snapped. "I'm 29. I'm just imprisoned on an enemy ship, so I'll stick with water, thank you."
O'Swine rolled both of his eyes, the visible one and the one under the eyepatch that he was wearing for fun, simultaneously, then walked over to the bar and produced a can of cola.
"If I wanted to drug you I'd drug you," he says with a scoff.
Fox doesn't say nothing to nobody nohow. He knowed Pygma was right.
"Have a coke," he said, cracking it open and putting it in front of McCloud. "Live a little."
"My hands are in handcuffs."
"Why, so they are! You want a straw? A funnel? How about a little umbrella, too?"
"How about I just knock it over? Make a puddle on your nice, clean floor?"
"Oh, but then your clothes might get all sticky." Pygma batted his eye. "You don't happen to keep an extra pair stuffed up there with that stick in your mud, do ya?"
"Go jump in the lake at the end of a long walk on a short bridge."
Pygma practically barked. "Ha! Hit a nerve, did I?"
He had no response to that. If the handcuffs on his wrists weren't keeping him from folding his arms, he'd have done so. Instead he just settled for a pout and a refusal to make eye contact with the other man, who walked out from behind the bar, picked up his glass of bourbon, and resettled himself in his chair.
"Oh c'mon," O'Swine finally commented on Fox's expression. "We're just shooting the shirt. That's all."
"Well, forgive me if I'm not in the mood to talk," McCloud said through his extremely serious pout. "Especially to someone who was trying to make me go nini a few hours ago."
"Hey, gimme some credit." Pygma leaned forward in his seat. "If I'd really been trying to make you go nini, you'd be go'ed nini. Are you gone nini?"
"What do you mean if?" he said. "You were shooting at my Arwing."
"Yeah."
"In space. You know what would have happened if you'd breached my hull?"
"Yeah." Pygma blinked. "But I didn't."
"I—" He had no words to follow that, so he just closed his mouth. Then: "This is the worst interrogation ever."
"Well," Pygma sipped from his bourbon. "I just have to make do since your crew picked up my information retrieval officer."
Right. Leon.
Fox had some weird lucky stars, but he thanked them anyway. "Well, even if you don't follow the Corneria Convention Treatment of Prisoners—"
"Ah, the good ol' CCTP!"
The fox rolled his eyes. "I'd recommend you keep in mind the fact that my team has Leon. If I'm returned in anything less than a not hurt condition, they'll keep Leon and move to arrest both you and Panther. And then they'll arrest Leon and lock him up in a different and worse place than he's locked up now - in jail with you two. That's where you'll all be. In jail. And then in prison. For space crimes."
Pygma's jaw dropped open; his lit cigar fell to the metal floor of the observatory, where it died. A small funeral was held by the cockroaches at their feet, but it largely went unnoticed.
"Oh my!" he said. "Little ol' me, pursued by team Star Fox. Why, if I'm not shakin' in my boots!"
"What is it you want," followed by him letting out what might have been the largest sigh possible. "Why'd you capture me? Why'd you call me up here?"
"Alright, down to business." Pygma leaned back into his seat. "I got a question that I need you to put to rest."
"Okay," Fox said. "I'm waiting."
But his captor only swirled his drink, silently. He stared—maybe at Fox, maybe through him at something inside himself. Inside his brain, or maybe... inside his heart?
And it unnerved Fox, which might have been the point. "Do you want to know what we were doing patrolling this sector?" he offered.
"Nah," Pygma said.
"Do you want to know who we were looking for out here?"
"Still a nope."
"Well then, what is your dang hotdog question?"
O'Donnell cleared his throat, but still didn't say anything. He crossed his legs in the chair. Then he uncrossed them. Then he crossed them again on the other side.
And then he asked: "Are you gay?"
If Fox had been able to drink his soda, it would have shot out his nose along with several marbles.
"What?!"
Pygma smirked. "I mean, who's punching your dance card these days? Is it mostly covered with snail trails or mushroom stamps?"
And then: "Don't tell me you don't know what those are, Mr. Of course I drink I'm 29."
Fox made a noise that sounded like an engine running out of gas. He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks and desperately hoped beyond hope that Pygma wouldn't see him blushing underneath his fur. He could, though, because blushing lights fur up like Christmas, or the computer did at the floor.
"Is this some kind of joke?" he sputtered. "You called me up here to ask me that? Well it's none of your dog gone business if—"
"I'm gay," Pygma interrupted.
McCloud went silent.
"Well, not gay gay," O'Swine clarified. "Just not straight, neither. I think the kids call it 'pansexual' these days. Or bisexual, that's also valid. I'll get it on with anybody—trans, cis, innies or outies or in-betweenies. It's all good."
Words still eluded his captive.
"As long as they want to have an intimate relation with me, I mean," Pygma finished. He took a sip of his bourbon. "That's the caviar."
"Well thanks for sharing, I guess?" Fox finally said.
The Pygma raised an eyebrow. "Now it's your turn. It's only fair."
Gears whirred in Fox's brain. He wasn't sure if he should tell Pygma without knowing what his agenda might be. Where would this information end up going? Rumor mill? Blackmail? Tabloid spreads? But then, Pygma told him that he wasn't straight; no sense in lying about that. Would Pygma really try to ruin his reputation if he divulged his own sexuality to Fox? Did Pygma even care if people found out about him? Was he really going to trade live ammunition for blanks?
A wrench finally fell into Fox's machinery and brought all of it to a grinding halt. Against his better judgment, he decided to tell him the truth.
"Yeah," he said, pinning his ears back. "Yeah, I'm gay."
"All the way gay?"
"I like men, Pygma."
Pygma's nostrils flared. "That's good," he said, calmly and evenly. "No shame in it."
Fox narrowed his eyes. "At least act like you're a little surprised."
"Try not to be too disappointed, alright?" O'Swine said through a grin. "I have a way of knowing these things."
And then his grin somehow got even wider. "It's the bird, innit?"
All the burning in his cheeks that Fox had been trying to suppress only moments ago—it came back with the fury of a thousand stars.
"No, no way," he lied.
At that, Pygma only laughed. "Leon owes me 50 credits."
"I said we're not together!"
"Mmhm. Right."
Fox slouched and mumbled a couple of choice words about Pygma under his breath. "Am I really that easy to read?"
"Like I said, I have my ways," O'Swine responded. "Now for the lightnin' round: Do you pitch or do you catch?"
Finally the blush overtook Fox's face completely. "What?!"
"You really don't get out much, do you? Are you a top or a bottom?"
"I understood you," he said, shakily. "I just don't… why are you—"
"Let's just say I wanna make you a proposition," Pygma said. "I'm propositioning you."
And then every fiber of Fox's body began to scream.
"WHAT."
"Okay, now I'm concerned for your hearing," said Pygma, who was not at all concerned. "When was the last time you got your ears checked?"
The hackles on the back of McCloud's neck rose. "Y-you can't just go around, point-blank asking people to have intimate relations with you."
"Why not? So far it's worked out pretty good."
"Remember when you tried to make me go nini a few hours ago?!" McCloud roared, indignant. "Why the heck would I want to have an intimate sexual relation with you?"
"To pass the time until your team contacts us?" Pygma paused to uncross his legs and swirl his bourbon. "Plus, I saw the way you were eyein' me when you came in here. Don't deny it."
Fox scoffed. "Don't flatter yourself. I was sizing you up."
"Oho. Didn't take you for a size queen."
"Remember when you made my father go nini a few years ago?"
"Yer really gonna hold that against me forever?"
"Why would I want to have an intimate relations with the man who made my father go nini?"
"Pigs change, Fox," he said, a weight lifted from his soul and escaped through his mouth in a shaky sigh. "Pigs can be different now than they was back then. And-" More weight, escaped through Pygma's tear ducts and leaked from his face like opened bottles of eyedrops being ever so gently squeezed. "Some pigs would do anything they could do to take back some of the hurt and going nini that they caused."
Fox's expression was cold like a muffin left out in the rain on a cold day.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Unlock me."
A sniffle from the pig as he collected himself and drained his bourbon from the ice in his tumbler, much like the moon would suck the ocean water off the rocks at shore in times of low tide.
He got up and he fumbled with his keys before unlocking Fox's wrists, waist, and feet, one at a time.
The shackles fell to the floor, physically and metaphorically.
Fox looked up at Pygma into his sad, porcine baby blue eyes. Pygma closed his eyes and anticipated the hard smack of revenge and hurt to curse his face like a sailor curses a nasty wind.
But it didn't come.
Instead, his piglips was blessed with foxlips, in a kissy face no less. He made a kissy face of his own and they hugged each other with their bodies.
Nice, warm fur against smooth porkrind.
Fox broke the kissing and the hugging like my daddy breaks his promises; quickly, without warning and he'll stop for awhile before doing it again.
"Wait," he said, out of breath. "Do you wanna get Panther in on this?"
"...Yes," Pygma said before calling him in with some beep boops on his communicator. "Panther get in here real quick, I want you to check something out."
They quickly got back to hugging and kissing before the door opened and Fox broke the hugging and kissing like my daddy breaks his promises: again.
"Whoa!" Panther said, astounded by what he seen't. "You guys are having a intimate relation! Should I come back later?"
"No," Pygma says, full of sexual lust. "This is what I wanted you to see. You wanna get in on this?"
"I-is Fox okay with it?"
Fox nodded confidently, and full of the kind of lust you can't just buy at the grownup store. Then he went back to kissing and hugging on Pygma, and he kissed and hugged Panther too with his body and their bodies together when he joined in.
"Please film this," Fox whispered into Pygma and Fox's respective ears. "Please film this and send it to my crew."
"Okay," they both said.
"Okay," the three of them said. And they hugged and kissed and did all kinds of wonderful and titellating things with their bodies against each other's bodies.
"'Pig Daddy'?" Peppy said, confused, reading the tape. "An intimate film by and about the Star Fox and the Great Pig for the Star Fox crew?"
"That's mine," Falco said as je greedily swiped it and stuffed it in his breastfeathers. "If you'll excuse me, I'll be off to my quarters."
"Falco," Slippy said stopping him. "That tape is addressed to all of us. We're supposed to watch it together."
"Yeah well," he said as he scoffed and took the tape from his breastfeathers and pushed it into Slippy's slippery, slimy sternum. "I bet you I finish before you do."
"And I bet you I finish before the both of ya!" Peppy chimed in.
"You're on!" Slippy said.
Nobody won this bet. They all finished at the same time, when Fox and Pygma was cuddling on that monitor, on that screen - and Pygma said to Fox through them speakers in that there video tape, he said "Fox, baby? You put the why in Pygma."
And Fox, he giggled at the both of them. He giggled and smiled and said "yeah, and you two put your c*cks in this Fox."
The end.