Archive of Our Own ^beta

Fox checked the chronometer on his comm-device for what felt like the hundredth time this morning.  He’d messaged Wolf a day ago to give him the exact time and coordinates for their rendezvous, but he never got a response.

And yes, this was a rendezvous.  A meeting.  As long as he thought of it like that – and not as anything else – he could keep himself stable.  Categorizing it as a ‘date’ in his mind got him jittery and awkward, and he carte blanche refused to act like that in front of Wolf on their first date.  Meeting, that is  Or maybe even an appointment, that sounded even better.  More clinical.

And there was no guarantee their first appointment wouldn’t also be the last.

Wolf’s lack of response had him on edge.  Was the lupine too absentminded to check his own messages?  Too lazy?  Was he being an asshole on purpose?  Or maybe he ran into trouble, was mortally wounded and could even be dying at this very moment?

Fox took a deep breath to calm himself, shutting his mind down before it ran away from him.  He inhaled slowly through his nose, filling his lungs to the brim, and then exhaled just as slowly through his mouth.  It was a deep-breathing exercise Krystal taught him to keep his nerves under control.

Fox was cool as a cucumber in virtually every situation, but there were a handful of exceptions to this rule.  He didn’t like being in tight, enclosed spaces for one – he was heavily claustrophobic (the cockpit of his Arwing being the one exception).  Anything and everything involving the realm of romance fit into a similar grouping, albeit not as severely.  He guessed this partially had to do with his self-denial for so many years, but he knew it didn’t make up all the equation.  When he was with Krystal, he always preferred to stay in rather than go out; and whenever he did go out with her, it usually took the form of a typical outing one might take with friends.  The few times they went out for more formal dinners and the like were always awkward affairs – and Fox knew he couldn’t chalk all of that up to his… preferences.  He just never quite knew what to do with himself.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sight and sound of a fast-approaching Wolfen-class starfighter.  He couldn’t decide if the abrupt end to his internal fretting was a mercy or not.  On one hand, he couldn’t psych himself out anymore, which was good – but on the other, the rendezvous was at hand, bearing down on him like a Goras whipped into a monstrous frenzy.

As Wolf’s ship landed on the small platform and its engines settled, Fox anxiously ran a hand through the fur on his head and put on a smile he hoped wasn’t too alarming in its self-conscious falsity.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy to see Wolf (finally) arrive – he really was – but it was a really, really long time since he last did something like this, and he felt distinctly out of his comfort zone.

Wolf, on the other hand, looked no more or less comfortable than he ever did as he jumped out of his cockpit and landed on the plastoid-composite cementite below.  He looked utterly in control of the situation and seemed to treat everything as a mildly entertaining joke.  Fox knew that this was on some level a carefully manicured façade – but damn if it wasn’t effective.  Wolf walked up to Fox with the same laissez-faire attitude he had when doing anything from having a casual drink to shooting pirates out of the sky.

He stopped an arm’s length from Fox and gave him an appraising look.  He stayed silent just long enough to be awkward before speaking up.

“What’s with you?”

The side of Fox’s mouth twitched through his smile.  “Well good morning to you, too, Wolf”, Fox responded with a hint of good-natured ire.  “Not sure what you mean, though.”

The lupine folded his arms and gave him a disbelieving look.  “Yeah you do.  You’re making a weird fake smile at me.  Looks like someone’s forcing you to grin at gunpoint.”

Fox felt like the ersatz smile subside, and sighed.  “I’m just a little…”

Wolf apparently realized where his statement was going, and developed a wicked grin.  “Awww, is little Foxy nervous?”  He began to cackle a little, and Fox’s ears fell.  He couldn’t believe Wolf thought this was the best way to open a first date.

Rendezvous, he corrected himself.

The vulpine folded his arms, mirroring Wolf’s pose.  “And I was wondering why you were still single after all these years”, Fox shot back.  “Openers like that kill the vibe a bit.”

“Hey”, Wolf said indignantly.  “I’m only single cause I want to be.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s true!”, the lupine emphasized.  “Why would I want to saddle myself down with some dumbshit, anyway?  It’s not like I can’t get laid whenever I want – don’t need a relationship for that.”

Fox couldn’t deny what he said; Wolf was definitely the type of person that could score with virtually anybody if he tried.  Hell, he’d gotten him back on Zoness, and he was notoriously cagey to do anything sexually with, well… anyone.

The vulpine’s expression grew a shade sardonic.  “Glad to know you’re considering me to ‘saddle down’ with, then.  I’ve always thought of myself as a dumbshit.  It’s nice to know others agree.”

Wolf laughed at that, and the sound made Fox’s stomach do a backflip.

“No, you’re not a dumbshit.”  Wolf’s face turned a bit more serious, something strangely warm in his eye.  “That’s why I’m even entertaining the idea of being tied down.  Truth is, I haven’t been on a date in a long-ass time.”

Fox frowned.  “Neither have I.”

Wolf made a dismissive noise.  “Well aren’t we a couple of losers?”

Fox smiled shyly and shrugged.  “…Better to be losers together then alone?”

The lupine grunted.  “Yeah, maybe.”  He took a look at his surroundings: the landing pad was set at the edge of the settlement, within a roofless building that looked a bit like a warehouse.  There were only a handful of ships besides theirs, and they were all fairly old.  “Why’d you choose this place to meet, anyway?”

“Well, I didn’t choose the hangar specifically, obviously.  Come on – I’ll show you the town.”  Fox gestured towards the exit with his head and began to walk towards it, Wolf tailing him.

Here we go.

……….

They walked side-by-side down the charming thoroughfare.

At least Fox thought it was charming; he hoped Wolf did too, at least on some level.  The narrow cobblestone road was lined with two-to-three story buildings built in a rustic style, each one with a small shop on the first floor with dedicated personal housing above.  The buildings’ roofs were tiled with flat, burgundy-colored stones that made it looked like they were coated in scale-mail – and there was no shortage of signs and flags of a wide number of pastel colors advertising the shops’ purposes and wares.

All of it in a language he could barely read, of course.

Katina was one of the first habitable planets colonized by Corneria; but that had been seven centuries ago, and the language and culture of the planet had diverged greatly from the Cornerian mainstream on account of distance and time.  Though the largest cities on the planet were slowly becoming more ‘Cornerianized’ – merging with the Lylat System’s overarching interplanetary culture over time – the towns and villages retained their distinct, bucolic vibe.

Many found the pastoral regions of Katina dull; but for Fox, they were almost something of a respite.  He was glad they hadn’t yet made the leap into being prime tourist territory.  He felt like he could come here to unwind, and he often did just that when he got some free time.

He only hoped Wolf wouldn’t be as bored with it as most people seemed to be.  The lupine took in the sights and sounds with an expression Fox couldn’t parcel.

“So, this is Tlachtsiy”, Fox tentatively put out as they passed a baker hawking his wares.  They had to start talking at some point – that was, after all, the whole intent of this appointment.

“I gathered.”

That didn’t give Fox a lot to work with.  Maybe he really was bored.  “Aren’t you wondering why I chose this place?”

Wolf chewed on his lip for a second or two, taking note of a mother and her two children pass by, all three of them wearing decidedly archaic headwear that looked like it came straight out of a painting of the Cornerian Renaissance.  Granted, not all the civilians were wearing such out-of-time gear, but even so…

“I’m guessing you have a thing for history?”

Fox chuckled some.  “Not quite.  I have a thing for relaxation.”  They turned a corner and passed a communal well set within a garden full of pleasant-smelling herbs.  “The Great Fox was stuck here for repairs once after the Lylat War.  I ended up spending a lot of time here.”

Wolf scoffed.  “Wouldn’t you rather kick back on a planet with, I don’t know…”  His gaze lingered over the environment around them.  “Beaches?  Bars?  Bitches?”

“You know I’m not into that last one”, he said somewhat indignantly.

Wolf only laughed.  “Oh come on!  You don’t have to be a chick to be a bitch.  Trust me, there are plenty dudes walking around looking to get fucked.”

Fox couldn’t help but frown somewhat.  “Is that all you ever do with your free time?  Get drunk and have sex?”

The lupine shrugged.  “Pretty much.”

Fox hummed in response – it made him think.  What, exactly, did he have in common with Wolf?  They were both ace pilots, true; unparalleled in their field.  They were both undeniably physically attracted to each other as well, that was obvious.

But as far as Fox could tell, they shared nothing in common when it came to their daily lives.  It filled him with doubt.

“You starting to realize how different we are, pup?”

He jumped a bit, and looked to his side to see Wolf staring at him as they walked.  Unfortunately, he was to Wolf’s left, and couldn’t gauge the other’s expression on account of the cybernetic eye.

“What makes you think so?”

Wolf paused.  “You seem quiet.  I’m guessing you don’t share my preferred type of vacation, so you don’t know what to say.”

“Yeah, that… that sounds about right.”

They remained in silence for a moment before Wolf spoke up again.  “Where are we going, anyway?”

“There’s a café a few blocks ahead, still.  Thought we could grab lunch.  Talk.”  He was tripping over himself to get the words out, growing more awkward by the second.  “That sort of thing.”

Wolf gave a remarkably noncommittal grunt that Fox hoped was one of approval.

A few of the passersby spared the pair a second glance as they walked by their stalls, but no one seemed to be too upset by their appearance.  Sightseers might be rare in outlying towns like Tlachtsiy, but Fox and Wolf had the look of weatherd space-farers about them; people on business weren’t that out of the ordinary.  Katina was a part of the greater whole of Lylat after all, even if it didn’t feel as Cornerian as, say, Fortuna, or Aquas.

Definitely more than Titania though, Fox thought.  He willed himself to not think any more about that mission right now.

As they were about to enter the café, an unassuming building sandwiched between a law firm and a haberdashery that appeared to specialize in the peculiar hats some of the civilians were sporting, Wolf put an arm out to stop Fox from entering.

“Hey”, he started.  “What’s up?”

Fox was mildly annoyed at his antics.  “Well, I was about to eat lunch before someone decided to bar me from entrance.”

Wolf chuckled, but shook his head.  “Funny.  But you know what I mean: what’s up with your attitude this morning?”

The vulpine was starting to turn from mildly annoyed to fully annoyed.  “My attitude?  Don’t you think you’ve been a bit rude?”

“Yeah”, Wolf said without a hint of shame.  “But I’m always a bit a rude.  You, on the other hand, never look this worked-up unless you’re in the middle of a firefight.”

Fox couldn’t deny his words – he’d been anxious all morning.  He sighed.  “I’m just… a little out of sorts.”  He broadly gestured to both of them standing in front of the café.  “About this.”

Wolf’s expression was staid.  Unreadable.  “You don’t think this will work?”

“No”.

He quickly corrected himself as Wolf’s ears dropped by an almost imperceptible degree.  “No – no, I mean, ‘no’ as in ‘no, that’s not why I’m out of sorts’; not ‘no’ as in I don’t think this will work –”

Wolf laughed disarmingly and waved him off.  “Stop, I get it.  But that brings us back full-circle.”  He looked directly into Fox’s eyes and cocked his head with the hint of a challenge.  “What’s up?”

Fox sighed.  “I’m just unsure about the whole… date thing.”  He forced the word out of his muzzle.  “It’s been so long, and I’ve never really… you know.”

The lupine shook his head.  “I actually don’t.  I’m not your ex – unlike her, I can’t tell what you’re thinking unless you say it.”

“She’s not my ‘ex’”, Fox instantly shot back.

Wolf raised a single eyebrow in response.

He sighed.  “Okay, she is”, he admitted.  “But you know what I mean.  She’s not just my ex.  She’s my best friend.”  He looked down at the pavement.  “And what I was saying earlier… I’ve never dated a guy before.”

For a split-second that comment shattered Wolf’s mask of indifference, and a look of surprise peeked through.  “Not gonna lie, wasn’t expecting that.”

Fox looked up at him.  “You weren’t?”

The lupine scratched his nose.  “I mean – I knew you had some issues with the whole ‘gay’ thing, but I didn’t guess that…”  He trailed off, and his expression slowly morphed into something inscrutable.  “Wait, hold on a sec.  On Zoness…”  His good eye narrowed.  “…That wasn’t your first time with a guy, was it?”

Fox felt his ears heat up.  “Let’s go get some lunch”, he unartfully attempted to change the subject.

Mercifully, Wolf raised his arm to let him pass, but not without a peal of that laughter that wavered between good-natured and cruel.  “Oh, man.  And in a dirty alleyway too?”

Fox’s ears pressed against his head as he entered the establishment, Wolf right behind him, snickering all the while.

It was a charming spot.  It eschewed the prototypical ‘café aesthetic’ that had become ubiquitous to breakfast and lunch eateries over the last few decades, opting instead for more traditional décor.  The walls were a sort of creamy off-white, and there was lots of natural light coming in from the skylights set in the ceiling.  The tables were made of red-tinted hardwood, and there were so many plants lining the walls and forming dividers between the tables that it made the room look half a restaurant and half a garden.

Fox seated himself at one of the taller tables for two – having already been here, he knew that was the way they did things, and that a server would be by shortly.  Wolf haphazardly sat across from him, turning the chair around so the back faced the table, and propped his arms up on the backrest.

“I’m sure that’ll be a comfortable position to eat”, Fox said without looking up from his menu.

Wolf shot him a lopsided grin.  “Who says I’m eating?”

Fox eyed him with a knowing gaze.  “I mean, that’s what people usually do when they go to a restaurant.”

“Well maybe I feel like breaking the rules”, he shot back in a way that made it unable for Fox to tell if he was being serious or not.  “What are they going to do, kick me out?”

“Probably not.  But it’ll make you look like an asshole if you don’t at least get something to drink.”

Wolf chuckled and finally reneged, turning his chair back around and sitting like a normal person.  “I’m just yanking your chain, pup, don’t get so worked up.  I could eat.”

Fox nodded to him as their waitress came by and dropped off a pair of menus.  She began to rattle something off in Katinan in a singsong tone (perhaps unsurprising since she was a parakeet), and Fox caught maybe half of it.  He was only semi-fluent in Katinan, and the dialects spoken in the older parts of the planet were even harder to parcel.  “Përshtoui”, he responded to her in thanks.  “Uh... Chouiyl me brätzya, unda – no, wait – undo braçiyena… ahhh… ava ruil.  Dous!”  He knew his pronunciation was rusty, as he was out of practice; but based on her nodding she understood.

Or at least he hoped she did as she smiled and walked away.

“Didn’t know you knew Katinan.”

Fox smiled softly.  “I don’t, not really.  I almost forgot how to order our coffee.”

The lupine scoffed.  “If you know enough of the language to know how to ask for something as specific as ‘coffee for two’, you know enough for it to count.”  He smiled.  “If it were me, I would’ve just brought up a picture of a coffee on my comm-device and shown it to her while grunting.  That’s what I do on most planets where they don’t speak Cornerian, anyway.”

“That’s incredibly rude.”

He grinned and shook his head.  “What am I supposed to do?  Learn the local language wherever I go?  I go too many places to have the time for that.”

Fox thought on his statement.  “That’s interesting.  I only know two years of academy Katinan and some spare Saurian, and I’ve never really run into a situation where that was a problem.  Most of Star Fox’s clients speak Cornerian.”

Wolf hummed thoughtfully.  “That’s because Star Fox gets higher class clients.”  He leaned in on the table.  “Let me guess: the people who hire you all tend to be either working with the Cornerian government, or are independently wealthy – right?”  Fox nodded and he continued.  “Well there you go.  Most people in the upper classes know Cornerian because of the social mobility speaking it gives you; and people who directly work with Corneria definitely know it.  When you work the lower jobs, though?  Or the criminal ones I used to?  It’s a total crapshoot.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense.  To be honest, I never thought of it that way.”

Wolf leaned back.  “That’s because you had no reason to.”

The waitress came by with their drinks.  It was served in the traditional Katinan way – a full carafe of black coffee placed in the middle of the table along with two mugs on a tray, accoutrements on the side  to mix in to the custometr’s liking.  Fox nodded his thanks as she walked away, promising to come back in a few to take their lunch order.

“What is this?”

Fox started to explain as he saw Wolf pointing to the four small tins next to the carafe.  “It’s a Katinan thing.  You pour your own coffee into one of the cups.  And with the tins: two of them are cream and sugar, so you can put in as much as you want.  The other two are more of a local thing – you probably won’t like them.”

Judging by the lupine’s expression, he took that as a challenge.  “How do you know what I do or do not like, pup?”

Fox almost laughed at Wolf’s indignance at the mere suggestion that someone else might be able to predict him.  “Trust me, I’m not trying to hem you in.  You’re not going to like them.”  At that, Wolf’s ears went down and his eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, well we’ll see about that.”

Fox couldn’t take his eyes away as Wolf summarily ignored the cream and sugar, and instead loaded two spoonfuls of the first condiment, and then another two of the second, and stirred it into his coffee.  He stared Fox down with a challenging glare, and knocked back half a mug’s worth.  Fox wondered how he could stand the heat, let alone the flavor.

Wolf slammed the mug down on the table, causing some of the other patrons to glance their way.  At first, he smiled triumphantly… and then his face fell, growing into a grimace, and then a rictus of disgust.  He pointed at the tins like a street preacher proselytizing about the apocalypse might point to a sinner.  “What.  Are.  These”, he managed to grunt out.

Fox struggled not to laugh.  “Well, the first is poûri.  It’s a local jelly made of Katinan ghost peppers, though you’ve probably figured that out by the spice already.”  Wolf’s eyes held the haunted look of someone who had gazed into the abyss and watched it gaze back.  “And the other is mashed chérogi, which is a type of fruit.  It’s actually banned by a lot of grocery chains – not because it’s dangerous or anything, but because the smell tends to permeate whatever store stocks it.  And it smells a bit…”

“As bad as it tastes?”, Wolf gritted through his teeth.

“Well, yeah.”  He watched in a sort of stunned interest as Wolf picked up the carafe and started chugging it, not even bothering to pour into a cup first.  “How can you even do that without burning your throat?”

Wolf finished downing the hot coffee and put the carafe down.  “I don’t”, he said with a pained expression.

Fox couldn’t do anything but stare.  “You know that was for both of us, right?  The coffee?”

“Oh whatever”, Wolf bit out through his panting.  “It’s not like we haven’t shared spit before anyway.”

The waitress came by again and Fox ordered an omelet before asking Wolf what he wanted.  The lupine was still struggling to get himself under control – he pointed at Fox and said, “Whatever he’s having.”  She must have understood the context as she flitted away, promising their orders would be by shortly.

Fox absentmindedly stirred his coffee with just a hint of cream and sugar before drinking slowly.  They sat in silence for a few moments before Fox asked Wolf something.  “So… you worked for the Venomian Navy, then?  Before the war, I mean.”

Wolf pulled a conflicted face, and Fox was afraid he stepped on inappropriate discussion material before the lupine answered.  “Yeah.  It was a stupid idea.  But then again, I was a stupid kid.”

“You were right.”  Fox looked at Wolf, trying to read him.  “About what you said on Titania: I don’t know anything about you.”

The lupine turned away.  “I didn’t say you didn’t know anything – just that there’s lots of stuff you don’t.”

Fox mentally chewed on how he wanted to respond for a bit.  “Would you be willing to share?”

They were interrupted as the waitress handed them their meals – omelets filled with cheese, olives and tomatoes, and with a local sauce made of pepper oil and aioli drizzled on top.  Fox was hungry, but left it alone as he watched the play of expressions on Wolf’s face.  They were hard to catch, but they were there.

Wolf finally made eye contact with him.  “Sure”, he said.  “Later though – lunch comes first.”

Fox smiled and nodded.

……….

They walked side-by-side on the nature trail leading through the forest just outside of town.

‘Forest’ might be overselling it though – as far as Wolf knew, forests were supposed to be full of trees, not… whatever was going on here.  Giant fungi?  Damn if he knew.  Maybe he would ask Fox.

“So… we were talking about Venom earlier.”

Or not.  Wolf had hoped the vulpine would somehow forget about that over lunch – no such luck, apparently.  He snorted to himself, realizing how dumb it was to think Fox was that distractible.  Of course he was thinking about it just beneath the surface the whole time; this was Fox we were talking about.  Intrepid hero of Lylat.  No way he’d let a topic he was interested in go that easily.

“Is it really that much of a funny story?”, Fox asked.

Wolf glanced to his side to see Fox, bless him, looking somewhat confused.  “Nah, I’m just laughing about something else.”  He awkwardly stuck his paw in his pocket and fished around before remembering he’d left his cigs back on the Wolfen – specifically so he wouldn’t fish one out and potentially annoy Fox, in fact.  “Venom was shit.”

And now it was Fox’s turn to laugh.  “You don’t need to convince me of that”, he said with a devilish smile.  “I’d like to hear an insider’s perspective though.”

Wolf wondered if Fox knew just how handsome he was – how hard it was not to just grab him, right now, and push him up against one of those towering mushroom things and ravish him.  Fox probably wouldn’t even resist.

The vulpine was right.  He really did think about sex all the time.

“Well, what do you want to know?”  He kept up the conversation while taking chances to glance at Fox’s ass whenever possible.

Fox looked lost in thought.  “Why did you join?”

Wolf was taken out of his lustful mental ambling by the question.  He should’ve known this would come up at some point – it was stupid to think it wouldn’t, especially given the line of questioning Fox was taking up.

“I didn’t like Corneria, and I knew Andross didn’t like Corneria, so I thought it would be a good fit.”  He stuffed his paw back in his pocket as he walked, grasping for the cigarette that wasn’t there.

“Well, why didn’t you like Corneria?”

And he asked so earnestly, too.

“It’s a long story.”  Now he knew he was just being obtuse on purpose.  Did he do this to make himself seem more mysterious?  More inaccessible?  How was he going to form anything more meaningful than a quick fuck if he wouldn’t open up?

Did he want more than that, though?

He wasn’t sure.

“Well, we’re on a long trail”, Fox offered.  The vulpine waited a moment before adding on.  “I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.  I don’t want to push –”

“The Cornerian Navy killed my brother.”

Well now that’s out there.  He felt bad, opening a can of worms like this.  But Fox had asked, so…

Fox stopped dead in his tracks and looked at him aghast.  “Wolf, I’m so sorry.  I had no idea.”

“Of course not.  I never told you.”  He was afraid the words came out too harshly as Fox’s ears dropped.  Damn.  He never quite mastered the art of dropping conversational bombs without causing any collateral damage.

They continued to walk in silence for a few moments, the strange mushrooms growing in size and density as they made their way deeper into the wildlands.  Wolf mentally cursed, realizing he needed to address this.

He stopped walking and looked around for somewhere to sit.  He thought the lilac-colored shelf fungus growing off of that rock over there was as good a place as any; so he dropped his ass down on it, arms propped on his legs.  Fox warily followed his lead and sat next to him, still quiet.

“…You don’t have to talk about it, you know”, the vulpine said quietly.

Wolf scoffed at that.  “Yeah, I do, if this is ever going to go anywhere.”  He glanced at Fox from the corner of his cybernetic eye, fully aware the vulpine wouldn’t be able to gauge his expression from where he was sitting.  “It’s not like I’ve never been in a relationship before, pup.  Kicking them off with unanswered questions is a non-starter.”

Fox thought on that.  Wolf wondered if Fox knew just how much he could see with his implant.  Infrared, radar, sonar, electrical impulses.  Wolf was technically blind in that eye, and yet he never saw half as much as he did now before losing it.

“So you’re thinking of this as a relationship?”, Fox asked.  “Potentially, I mean.”

Wolf wanted to kick himself.  Of course Fox wasn’t sure of his intentions – hell, he wasn’t even sure of his intentions, not really.  “Yeah.  I mean, why not?”

The vulpine laughed softly.  “’Why not’ seems like as bad a way to kick off a relationship as unanswered questions.”

He had him there.  “Let me put it like this: I like you.”  He paused, hoping Fox would really listen.  “You’re clever, you’re attractive, and more importantly, you’re the only guy I know who can keep up with me.  So if I’m going to settle down with anyone, it’s going to be you.”

Fox looked out across the semi-arid field of mushrooms, spores and tall grasses.  “You say ‘if’.  That’s no guarantee this is going anywhere.”

“So?  Relationships are never guarantees”, Wolf shot back.  “Shit, pup.  You’ve gotta know that by this point.  There are no absolutes.  No promises.  You ride with it until the ride ends.”

Fox’s head jerked towards him.  “And what if I want a promise?”

Wolf really wished he’d had worse manners and just brought the cigs along, Fox’s opinion be damned.  He let out a suffering sigh.  “Look, I’m not saying I’ll never go steady with you.  Just that this is only our second date –”

“First.”

He laughed.  “You don’t count Zoness?”

Wolf made careful note of the rising color in Fox’s ears.  He liked that color.  Fox kept his head held high as he responded.  “I’m pretending Zoness didn’t happen and that this is a clean start.”

“Suit yourself.  I’m counting it though”, he said with a lopsided grin.  “But anyway – I’m not going to commit to something this early on.  Give me some time to adjust, here.  Time to think about it.”

Fox nodded.  Apparently Wolf’s words sufficed.  “Alright.”

“Just… ‘alright’?”

“I mean, you’re right”, the vulpine added.  “I wasn’t trying to push you into a steady thing – just making sure you were even willing to consider it later down the road.”

Wolf turned to look at him, letting him see both of his eyes.  “Of course I’m willing to consider it.  If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Fox smiled shyly at that, and Wolf grinned.  Crisis averted.

“Now, about what happened with my brother.”

Fox’s smile dropped.  “Wolf…”

The lupine raised his paw.  “No, you’re not going to stop me.  I’m entertaining the idea that this ‘us’ thing goes somewhere – and if it does, then it’s not fair that I know your morbid backstory while you don’t know mine.”

The vulpine nodded carefully.  “Alright.”

Wolf leaned his head back and paused, thinking.  “This was a long-ass time ago; better buckle in, this is a long one…

……….

My dad was Lord Mac O’Donnell.

No, don’t ask if you should know him.  You shouldn’t, he was a nobody.  Or at least he was by the time I was born.

The O’Donnell family is an old Cornerian noble house.  I’m talking ‘second colonization wave’-old, back when having a house was politically relevant and meant you were actually in charge of shit.  The O’Donnells made their fortune from anything and everything they could stick their paws in; and even after the reforms, when the lords’ council was replaced with parliament and Corneria turned into a democracy, they stuck around and stayed prominent because of all the wealth they accumulated.

But the years went by, and that wealth started to trickle away.  I mean, what family stays rich after several centuries?  The O’Donnells got successively worse at investing in the right stocks, getting into the lucrative trades.  By the time my dad came around, the family was all but bankrupt.

So dad had the brilliant idea to restore the glory of the house by investing in black market weapons.  And illicit drugs.  And smuggling.  And basically any and every criminal enterprise short of wetwork and trafficking, as long as it turned a profit.

And it worked for a little while – the O’Donnells were rolling in dough again.  But then the authorities caught on, and old Mac found himself facing a litany of charges in court.

But the thing with being from old money is that it gets you out of a lot of tough spots most people wouldn’t be able to.  Dad handed over the remnant of the family fortune – what little was left anyway – and instead of going to prison, he was banished.

So, he packed up and moved to the cheapest planet he could find: Alarbus.

Again, don’t ask – you shouldn’t know it.  It’s a crappy little rock about halfway between Eladard and Macbeth.  Hell, I’ve even seen mainstream system maps that don’t even bother to include it.

He set up shop there as a mechanic – he’d always been good with ships, he’s the one who taught my brother and I how to fly – and shacked up with a lady wolf.  Pretty soon they had a kid: my brother, Ulf.  Then I came along a few years later.

My mom died giving birth to me though.   I think it wrecked dad, probably even more than being exiled did.  It definitely wrecked Ulf.  But me?  I never knew her; and to this day, I don’t even know her name, since neither of them ever wanted to talk about her.  And they’re both dead too.  Been dead for a looong-ass time, so I’ll never know.

Don’t give me that sad face.  You wanted to hear this shit, after all.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, dad and Ulf.

Weren’t they a fucking pair?

Dad couldn’t ever let go of the past.  He trained us to fly, but he also trained us in the lordly ways of a proper Cornerian noble.  I just went along with it, but Ulf rebelled.  He was always wilder than me, if you can believe it.

Whereas dad wanted nothing more than to go back to being a lord, Ulf wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Corneria.  He hated everything the planet stood for; blamed it for everything wrong in his life.  Growing up on a shithole planet?  Corneria’s fault.  Having a dad obsessed with the past?  Corneria’s fault.  Dead mom?  Corneria’s fault.  I was just a pup when this went down, and even I knew he was being stupid about it.

So what does he do?  He joins up with a local gang of pirates.  I say ‘local’, but really they were a bit bigger than that.  Called themselves the Half-Moon Highwaymen – it was one of those species-exclusivist gangs, you know about that shit.  They started making a name for themselves when Ulf joined, took on bigger and bigger jobs.

It was funny: doing all this criminal shit, Ulf took after dad, but not in the way dad intended.  Me too, come to think of it.

Anyway, Ulf pushed for them to start targeting Cornerian trade convoys.  Now that was a risky endeavor.  If it had been me, I would’ve steered clear of that sort of shit as much as possible.  You can get away with low-level banditry when you’re going after private stuff in a Podunk part of the system; but hitting proper Cornerian ships?  You better have a real sturdy outfit going if you want to pull something like that and live to tell the tale.  Hell, I avoided it even when I was running Sargasso.

You’re making a face.  What?  You forget my old job?  I’ve done some raw shit, pup.  Don’t let my naturally trustworthy, heroic looks trick you into thinking otherwise.

Ulf, he gets blasted out of the sky by a Dogfighter acting as escort duty for the Cornerian convoy.  At the time I thought, man, whoever could take out someone as good as Ulf must be one heck of a pilot.  Now though, looking back on it?  It was probably some regular, unremarkable pilot just doing his job.  Ulf wasn’t half the pilot I was – best in his gang, sure, but I was flying circles around him even at that point.

So Ulf gets blasted out of the sky, and I’m in ruins, of course.  Mom’s dead.  Brother’s dead.  And my dad might as well be dead, considering he spends half the day wasted and looking at old O’Donnell memorabilia.

And what do you know, that hatred of Corneria Ulf held onto starts to infect me.  Not for the same reason, of course.  Ulf hated Corneria mostly because he blamed them for our lot in life.  But me?  I blamed my dad.  Old Mac sucked at parenting, and every time he whipped out a ribbon, or a medal, or whatever from the ‘good old days’, I learned to hate Corneria a little more.

So you asked why I joined Venom, right?  Well, it didn’t start with the Lylat War – at least not fully.

The tension between Corneria and Venom had been thickening for a few years by the time I joined the Venomian Navy.  You see, Alarbus is in Venomian space, right along with Macbeth and Eladard.  I knew Venom didn’t like Corneria, and I knew I didn’t like Corneria, and I knew I was a good pilot – so it seemed like it all fit nicely.

Dad was pissed, though.  He never liked Andross, not even when the old dog was still a lord.  Said the ape was shifty – untrustworthy.  But by this time, some of my brother’s contempt for dad rubbed off on me, and the fact he disapproved of my life trajectory made me savor it all the more.

In time, I even lost my original reason for joining.  You see, when I joined the Navy, it was purely to spite the idea of ‘Corneria’ I had in my head – or, to put it another way, to spite my dad.  But a few years went by, and what do you know, I’m all-in on Andross’ propaganda.  Corneria was stifling progress by forcing itself into places it didn’t belong.  Corneria considered the people of the colony worlds to be second-class citizens.  You know, that kind of stuff.

And the thing is: Andross wasn’t technically wrong about those, especially the second one.  And don’t give me that look, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  Andross was a monster, but don’t forget that Lylat fired the first shot.  He may have been a power-hungry warlord at the beginning – but trust me, as someone who actually met him several times: he wasn’t insane from the get-go.  Ruthless, yes.  Cruel, undoubtedly.  But the insanity only came later.  I still think he accidentally did something to himself – like one of his experiments went too far, and he paid the price with his own mind.

But what do I know?  That’s just a fringe theory.  You’re the Hero of Lylat.  I’m sure you’ve got more info on him than I do.

Yeah.  So that’s what happened to Ulf.

……….

Fox waited for a moment, letting Wolf’s story wash over him.  He’d always assumed Wolf had a harsh upbringing, but he never had any of the details.  “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

Wolf shrugged in response.  “It wasn’t any worse than what you went through.”

Fox shook his head.  “On the surface our stories sound the same – mom dead in early childhood, dad a little later on, joining the Navy.”  As he thought about it more, he was struck by the similarities.  “But there’s one big difference between us: I had someone.  After my dad died, Peppy more or less became my foster parent.”  He tried to make eye contact with Wolf, but the lupine stayed facing the opposite direction.  “It sounds like you didn’t have anyone.”

Silence lingered for a moment before the lupine broke it.  “I didn’t have anyone even before dad and Ulf died.”

Fox grimaced.  They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Fox had no idea what to do.  Wolf had pushed to tell him all this even though Fox said he didn’t have to, and now the lupine was brooding.  Fox had never seen Wolf so… sorrowful; and he didn’t know how to cheer him up, or even if he should.  Not for the first time he wished he had Krystal’s powers.  Wolf was hard to read at the best of times, and now Fox wasn’t sure if he could decipher him if he tried.

He absently inched his paw towards Wolf’s, and slowly covered it with his own.  If he couldn’t figure out the right words to say, he hoped body language would suffice.

Wolf turned to face him, his violet eye burning with a sort of electric intensity.  “You don’t have to pity me.”  His words came out softly, at odds with his countenance.

“I’m not pitying you”, Fox said just as delicately.  “I’m empathizing with you.”

They sat together in silence for a long while, their paws ensconced in the other’s.  Fox looked out across the valley below, the farmlands interspersed with towering mushrooms stretching into the horizon.  He felt at peace, and hoped Wolf did too.

But that inability to ever truly know struck him with something approximating fear.

……….

The lupine was in remarkably better spirits on the walk back into town.  Fox still wasn’t sure how to read him, or if he even could, but he thought this was a good sign.  He was starting to think that, the more Wolf acted like an asshole, the happier he actually was on the inside.

“But why do they wear them?”, he asked with a Cheshire grin as they passed another pair of locals wearing the slightly overlarge caps.

Fox shook his hide with a smile.  “They were en vogue during the first colonization wave.”

“Which is exactly my point – that was centuries ago.”  His eyes lingered rudely on the pair, who clearly noticed and were visibly irritated that someone was judging their traditional garb.  “You’re telling me they’ve been wearing the same clothes for over six hundred years?”

The vulpine shrugged.  “Why not?  The only reason fashion changes so much on Corneria is to sell more clothes – and the only reason it changes on other planets is that they’re trying to be like Corneria.”

“Yeah, but… come on.  Look at them.  They look ridiculous.  And I’m sure they still looked ridiculous back then, too.”

“And who elected you High Judge of Fashion Sense, exactly?”  He gave Wolf the once-over; he looked good, but he was also wearing an unremarkable flight suit and jacket, same as Fox.

“No one”, he answered immediately.  “I was appointed.”

Fox laughed.  “By who?”

“By myself”, Wolf said with a self-satisfied smile.

Fox sighed.  “Alright, Wolf.  How do you judge me, then?”  He gestured to himself.

“That’s ‘High Judge”, to you.”  He made a mock thoughtful gesture with his paw on his muzzle and hummed.  “And you’re passable.”

“Only passable?  But we’re wearing the same thing!”

“Yeah but it looks better on me.  Everything does.”

Fox pinched the bridge of his muzzle with his paw.  “How do you even function at such a high level of conceitedness?”

Wolf shot him a grin with a half-lidded eye.  “You like my conceitedness, though.”

The vulpine’s ears grew hot.  “I do not.”

“That why your ears blushing?”

So Wolf could see that, damn it.  “That’s because you gave me a look, not because you’re a self-centered ass.”

Wolf started laughing darkly.  “What, this look?”  He made it again, this time with the grin more pronounced.

Fox turned away and Wolf laughed again, more boisterously.  “Christ, Fox.  You need to get laid more often if stuff like that sets you on edge.”

Fox was keenly aware he was getting awkward, and he was also aware Wolf was aware of this – and he was furthermore aware that Wolf’s awareness of it made it irresistible for Wolf to continue pressing in this direction.

“You’re so… pent-up.  You need to let that out.  Relax.”  The lupine snaked an arm around Fox’s waist, and Fox gave an involuntary yelp.  Not a loud one, mind you, but more one of surprise than anything else.

A saggy-faced porcupine manning a fruit stall looked at the pair with mild disinterest.  “Wolf, we’re in public”, Fox gritted between his teeth.

“So?”

Fox felt one of Wolf’s fingers rub back and forth on his side, and fought his desire to melt into the touch.  “So, we’re well-known public figures.  Walking down a street.  In public.”

He felt more than heard the low rumbling of Wolf’s laughter.  “That implies I care if anyone sees.”

Fox didn’t know whether to find this incredibly obnoxious, or if it just made Wolf even more magnetic.  “You’re way too devil-may-care about things, you know that?”

Wolf grinned.  “And you’re way too anal-retentive, so it evens out.”  He relaxed his grip and let go, and Fox was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.  “Look, I get where you’re coming from, but we’re in the middle of nowhere here.  No one thinks anything of us, let alone that we’re legendary mercenaries.”

Fox’s eyes narrowed.  “So Star Wolf is a legendary mercenary team now?”

Wolf stopped in his tracks gave Fox an appraising glare.  “…Was that a burn?”

Fox’s ears shot up started stammering, “I mean, I didn’t mean it –”

– but Wolf started laughing uproariously, causing some of the passersby to stare.  “Oh man, I’m a bad influence on you, aren’t I?”

The vulpine broke out of his stammering and smiled awkwardly.  “You might be rubbing off on me a bit.”  Wolf raised a single eyebrow at that – and only then did Fox realize how it sounded, and blushed.  “Don’t say anything.”

“Wasn’t going to.”  That was what he said, but what Fox heard was ‘I don’t need to’.  Wolf could make a dirty comment with just a look.

As they approached the hangar, the conversation started to die down some.  Fox didn’t really want their time together to end; but on the other hand, he needed to get back and touch base with his team.  “So, I had a good time.”

He looked at Wolf expectantly, but the lupine’s attention was elsewhere.  “Uhh… did you?”  Wolf waved him off and pointed towards the hangar.

Confused, Fox tuned to look, and –

“Oh, hell.”

The bay doors were sealed up tight, and the open roof-dome was closed.  A sign hung out front in dual Katinan and Cornerian.  Wolf approached and read out loud.  “Closed for wedding, open tomorrow morning at nine.”

Fox shook his head in disbelief.  “How can they do that when there are ships still inside?  Is that even legal?”

“You tell me, pup”, Wolf responded.  “This is your spot, not mine.”

Fox slapped his paw against his forehead.  “This is ridiculous.  Now what do we do?

……….

Wolf awkwardly leaned against the wall, arms folded, as Fox talked to the concierge.  He’d already commed Panther and Fay after dinner (he stayed away from anything kept in tins this time) to say he’d be back later than he said he would, but neither of them were too surprised by this news.  Panther even told him he’d expected Wolf to be out all night despite saying otherwise, citing his captain’s tendency to go out on ‘escapades’.  Wolf wondered how his own unit put up with him sometimes – unlike Fox, he hadn’t actually told his teammates where he was; just that he was out.

Though as far as he knew, Fox hadn’t clued his teammates in to who he was with either – save Krystal, who seemed to know everything the vulpine did.

Unsurprising given her being a psychic, maybe, but Wolf still wasn’t happy about it.  He couldn’t hold back that hint of jealousy rising in him every time Fox mentioned her, which was just a little too often for his tastes.

He broke off his thoughts as their object returned from the concierge desk and approached him, a mixed expression on his face.  “I have good news and bad news.”

“You’re joining my team but you had to quit Star Fox to do it?”

“Har har”, he said dismissively (though not without a hint of affection, Wolf thought).  “No, that’s not it.  They have space for us here.”

Wolf nodded his satisfaction – this was the closest hotel to the hangar, and it beat sitting outside overnight.  Katina got cold at night; he could say so from experience.  “And the bad news?”

The vulpine’s expression shifted awkwardly.  “They only have one room available.”

Wolf waited for an appendment that never came.  “…And that’s ‘bad news’?”

Fox sighed exasperatedly.  “What am I going to do with you?”

“Lots of things, hopefully.”  Fox slid his paw down his face and Wolf chuckled.  “Don’t take me too seriously, we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”  He glanced back at the desk.  “How is it even possible they’re that booked-up anyway?  It’s not like this is a popular spot.”

The vulpine laughed.  “The rooms are all taken by wedding guests.  Apparently both sides of the family are pretty large.”

Wolf’s eyes narrowed.  “What are the odds…”

“…That it’s the same wedding that has the hangar closed?  High.”

“This is the worst wedding I’ve ever been to and I’m not even there.”

Fox thought for a second.  “Speaking of: Slippy’s getting married in a few months.  Can you believe it?”

Wolf did a spit-take.  No, he did not believe that.  “You’re shitting me.  How?”

Fox simultaneously looked indignant and laughed, reaching out to playfully punch his shoulder.  “Hey, now!  Slippy’s a catch.  I won’t let you think otherwise.”

“Yeah, maybe a catch of the day.”  He shook his head in disbelief.  “Isn’t he younger than you?”

“Three years, yeah”, Fox answered.  “He’s twenty-four.”

Wolf frowned.  He forgot how much of an age gap there was between Fox and him.  For some reason he thought of Fox as older than he really was, and Slippy as even younger, even though that made no sense.  “Making me feel like a cradle-robber here, pup.”

Fox made an incredulous expression.  “You’re not that much older than me.”

“How old do you think I am?”, he asked.

Fox paused and examined him.  “…Thirty-two?”

“Thirty-six”, Wolf corrected.

Fox shrugged.  “…Okay, that’s sort of a gap.  It doesn’t bother me, though.”

Wolf stared at him.  “Does anything?”

……….

The room might charitably be called ‘cozy’ – but as far as Fox was concerned, it was small.

There was one bed, as he expected, and it was only a twin.  At least it was tastefully decorated: the same off-white aged plaster walls with burgundy highlights as the façades of most buildings in-town.

Wolf barked out a laugh when he saw the bed, and Fox could already feel his ears heating up.  This was going to be an experience.

As he headed off to the single bathroom to shower (he’d accumulated quite a bit of sweat and dirt on the hike), he looked off to the side…

“What.”

Wolf caught his tone and turned to look at the source of the vulpine’s confusion.  He let loose another peal of laughter, this one even louder than the first.

The bathroom was separated from the main room by a door, and the shower was further closed off from the bathroom by a curtain, but there was… Fox didn’t know what to call it.  A window?  A portal?  There was a large octagonal hole in the wall of the shower facing off into the main room, with no way to close it off.

Wolf was still laughing, though it was starting to subside into labored breathing, tears forming in his eyes.  “What… what is this?”

Fox looked flustered.  “How am I supposed to know?”

Wolf finally started to calm down.  “Aren’t you the expert on the local culture?”

“I’ve been to plenty of other hotels on Katina, and none of them had… whatever this is.”  He walked up to the ‘window’ to get a better look.  It was about four feet in length from one side to the other, and there was definitely no curtain to seal it off from the room.  “This is ludicrous.  Privacy issues aside, this has to cause water from the shower to fall into the main room.”

He turned to see Wolf sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him expectantly.  “…What?”

Wolf made a dismissive gesture.  “Oh don’t mind me, go take your shower.”  He smiled wickedly.  “I’ll just be right here.”  He patted on the too-small bed.  “Front row seating.”

Fox laid his ears back so Wolf couldn’t see the blush rising in them.  “You will not.”

“Oh?  So where should I go then?”  He got up and began to approach the vulpine.  “I guess I could wait in the hall, though that seems a bit harsh.”  He took another step, now only a foot away.  “Maybe I could wait in the bathroom, but it’ll probably be uncomfortable.”  One more step, and Fox had to fight himself from trembling.  Wolf leaned in, his muzzle only centimeters from Fox’s ear.  “Or maybe I could just hop in with you?  After all, I’m pretty dirty myself.”

Fox swallowed nervously, pointedly ignoring the tightness of his pants.  Why did Wolf always have such an effect on him?  “I won’t fight with you on that one.”

Wolf chuckled deeply, and Fox could almost feel the sound vibrating through him.  “You gonna fight me on this one, though?”

He almost said yes… and then Wolf kissed him, and he was gone.

He pressed into the kiss, and slammed forward into the lupine with a bit more force than he intended, accidentally throwing them both to the floor.

“S-sorry”, Fox stammered.  Wolf only glared at him with something approaching hunger in response.  Fox was about to ask him what was wrong when Wolf pounced on him.  Fox opened his mouth in shock, and found a tongue inside before he could say anything.  Wolf was on top of him, straddling his legs around both sides of Fox’s body, their crotches colliding.

Fox involuntarily moaned into the kiss – it was a gasping, desperate thing.  Wolf pulled back to his immediate disappointment, and put a finger to Fox’s lips.

“Weren’t you going to shower?”

Fox gulped, pupils somewhat dilated in his frenzy.  “Yeah.”

Wolf grinned.  “Then go on.”  He got up off of Fox and lent the vulpine a paw to stand back up himself.  “Take a shower.”

Fox wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this, if anywhere, but did as he asked.  Maybe Wolf decided not to go any further tonight?  On one hand Fox was almost relieved by this – he still felt they went way too fast back on Zoness, and maybe hitting the brakes a bit to see if they were really compatible was a good idea.

But on the other hand… Well, the other hand was self-explanatory.

His shirt was halfway over his head when Wolf entered the bathroom behind him, and put his paws on either side of Fox’s taut abdomen.

“Uhh… Wolf?”

“I’m just helping you take your clothes off”, he said with a degree of casual innocence that contradicted the contents of the sentence.  Before Fox could respond, he felt Wolf’s paws slowly caress upwards, around his chest, under his arms (where he jolted, ticklish as he was), and upwards over his paws, helping him remove the shirt.

Fox could still feel the ghost of his touch.  “Um, thanks.”  His eyes grew a bit wider as Wolf unceremoniously dropped his jacket to the ground and took his own shirt off.

“You, uh… I guess you go the gym a lot?”  Fox cringed at his own comment.  No shit Wolf went to the gym a lot.

The lupine laughed and stalked towards him, pressing their bare torsos against each other, pushing Fox back up against the wall behind him.  “Well doesn’t this feel familiar?”

Fox was dizzy with lust, any thoughts of ‘slowing down’ or ‘hitting the breaks’ dropped behind him as summarily as their shirts.  This time he initiated the kiss, meeting Wolf force-for-force.  Then Wolf actually moaned, and Fox smiled to himself.

Oh, how the tables are turned.

But not for long, as Wolf broke the kiss and got down on his knees, violet eye twinkling with a look of pure mischief.  He lowered his paws across Fox’s body, stroking down the front of his chest, towards his stomach, and finally to…

“It feels like someone’s excited.”  Fox could only nod, words failing him, as Wolf pressed against and squeezed him.  Wolf’s deft paws made quick work of his belt buckle, and he undid the button and pulled the zipper down with his mouth (Fox hadn’t even considered that was a thing that could be done).

The lupine pressed his muzzle up against the bulge in Fox’s briefs, teasingly licking at it.

“Wolf.  Please.”

He looked up at Fox with a nonchalant expression.  “Please what?”

“You know what”, he whispered.

Wolf grinned, and Fox felt his paws slip under the brim of his briefs and pull them down, letting him free with what Fox thought was an embarrassing spring.  Wolf’s paws migrated to his ass and squeezed, pushing him forward into –

Fox moaned loudly, and quickly covered his muzzle with his paw to keep the sound contained.  Wolf’s mouth was warm, and wet – which in and of itself was trivial, because of course it was, but damn.  Wolf bobbed up and down his cock at a leisurely pace, and his tongue slipped in and all around it in lazy spirals.

He tipped his head back against the wall.  “Oh my God.”

Wolf continued for a moment before letting up, his mouth making an audible popping sound as he removed it.  “When was the last time you got head, pup?”

Fox frowned awkwardly.  “…a few years.”

Wolf chuckled and gave it another lick, eliciting another gasp from Fox.  He stood back up and kissed him again, more slowly this time – more delicately.  Fox began to more thoroughly explore Wolf’s mouth.  Wolf’s tongue was prone to sudden movements, whereas Fox’s moved slowly.

Fox began to trail his own paws down Wolf’s body, admiring its musculature, tenderly caressing the scars – he’d have to ask about them later.  As they drifted down to Wolf’s belt, shaking, Wolf grabbed his paw and guided it, steadying him as he undid the pants and let them fall.

Wolf had apparently been going commando all day, and Fox laughed.  His laugh was met with another kiss as Wolf pressed their naked bodies together, the contact of fur on fur.

The thought that this was much nicer than a quick, frenzied handy in a back alley crossed unbidden through Fox’s mind.

“We really should shower off, you know”, Wolf whispered into Fox’s ear.  Fox nodded in agreement.  This contact was nice, and he wanted to share more of it.

Wolf let go of him, crossing over to the shower to turn it on, his cock standing upright at attention all the while.  Fox wondered what else Wolf was into, because – looking at it – he wasn’t entirely sure it would… fit.

The lupine beckoned him over with a grin, and Fox followed, keenly aware of how ridiculous it must look with his dick bouncing up and down.  Sure Wolf was in the same situation, but Wolf could make anything look sexy.  He was Wolf.

Fox sighed contentedly as the hot water poured over him, seeping into his fur and removing the rough particulates of the Katinan landscape.  He felt Wolf come up behind him, snaking his arms around his body, nuzzling his face into the crook of his neck, and his member under his ass, large enough to poke his balls from behind.

He involuntarily shuddered with pleasure at the feeling of being completely ensconced and surrounded by Wolf.  The lupine started licking his ears, his cheek, anything he could reach, as his paw lowered down to grasp him and jerk him off.  Wolf began to hump him slowly from behind in time with the motion of his paw, every thrust bumping against his testicles.  It was a sensation Fox had never felt before, and he found himself enjoying it immensely.

Wolf slowed down the pace and whispered into his ear.  “So you’ve never been with a guy before me?”

Fox swallowed, already knowing where this was going.  “No”.

“So that means you’ve never been fucked?”  Wolf said it so quietly, but Fox could feel the heat of this words across his ear, causing his skin to break out in goose pimples.

“…No.”

Wolf thrust forward, hard, and Fox moaned at the sudden movement.  Wolf braced him against the wall.  “…Do you want to be?”

Yes, he thought.  Oh god, yes.

“…I don’t know”, he said.  He wanted it – desperately – but he wasn’t sure he was ready.

He could feel Wolf’s smile on his collarbone.  “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Fox nodded, half-lost in a haze of lust, the pressure of Wolf’s hand, the pressure of his cock – he was in sensory overload.

Wolf must have taken his nodding for the decision it was, turning Fox around.  He was about to get back on his knees when Fox put a paw on his shoulder.  Wolf cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I, uh… Maybe I could…?”  Fox could feel his knees shaking.  Maybe he wasn’t ready for fucking, but… He could do this.  Probably.

Wolf grinned and moved away, sitting on the edge of the open window into the room beyond.  He gestured to his cock, and Fox nervously approached.  He got down on his knees and looked up at Wolf, who looked back at him with a confident smile.

Fox smiled back, and grasped Wolf’s cock with his paw, causing him to grunt.  Fox thought it was probably eight inches long as he stroked it slowly.  He experimentally gave it a lick, and Wolf bucked forward in response.

That was all it took to convince him to go further, and he swallowed it down as far as he could.  It wasn’t as weird as he thought it would be – he was filled with the smell and taste of Wolf.  Watching the lupine’s lidded eye glaze over in pleasure caused his own cock to throb, and he started to jerk himself off.  As he continued, his muzzle started to get tired; he hadn’t ever considered how much work it was to suck someone off.

Wolf gently lifted his muzzle up off of his cock and made eye contact with him.  “Getting close.  Want to get you close too.”

Before Fox had a chance to ask for clarification, Wolf was lifting him up in the air.  He gave a yelp at the sudden action before Wolf sat him back down on the window.  The lupine walked out of the shower, leaving Fox to sit there on the edge of the portal with a look of confusion before he reentered with something in hand.

It was lube.

“Uh”, Fox began.  “Wolf, I don’t think –”

Wolf cut him off with a finger to the vulpine’s lips and a shh.  “Relax.  We’re not going to fuck.”  He opened up the tube and liberally applied the slippery substance to his paw.  He shot Fox an arrogant grim.  “We’re just going to make handjobs more fun.”

He lowered his paw back to Fox’s cock, and lathered it up with the lube.  Fox made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan in response.  Wolf did the same to his own cock, and grabbed both his and Fox’s in his right paw.  He started to jerk both of them off at the same time, Fox sitting and Wolf standing, letting out his own sound of contentment.

He noticed Wolf preferred to hold Fox’s cock and his own paw steady while he humped into it, and Fox could easily guess what the lupine would rather be doing.

Even as he felt a little bad about that (though intellectually, he knew he shouldn’t have), Fox could feel the root of his orgasm beginning to rise: that initial low-thrumming sensation that precipitated the incoming cascade.  He knew he was already leaking.  He tried to warn Wolf, but he struggled to get the words out – and ultimately failed.

“Oh.  Oh shit.”  He felt the register of his own voice go up an octave as he came, two ribbons of pearly white arcing upwards and across both their chests.  He didn’t even realize he moaned until it was over, the orgasm rode out, and he was self-conscious of how high-pitched the sound was.

Wolf’s face contorted into an expression Fox imagined he had himself but a few seconds ago.  He started humping harder, and faster, onto Fox’s already enervated member, causing Fox to hiss.  Fox could feel himself being rocked back out of the portal into the room beyond, and he didn’t think Wolf noticed.

Suddenly, Wolf arched his head back, his body going still as his legs quaked, erupting all over Fox with a keening sound that bordered on a howl.  He stayed still as he rode out the sensation, and Fox watched, enraptured, as his expression shifted slowly to one of bliss.

Fox began to relax himself as Wolf unexpectedly collapsed forward onto him.  Fox felt himself slip over the side of the window, and he grasped onto the only thing nearby to keep him up – which turned out to be Wolf.

They both went tumbling out of the shower and into the main room with mutual yelps, spilling out onto the floor and covering it in a combination of water and bodily fluids.  Wolf laid on top of Fox and laughed, and before long the vulpine found himself laughing alongside him.

“Guess you were right about the water getting into the room.”

Fox’s voice was still colored by the remnant of his laughter.  “Yeah, but I didn’t mean like this.”

Wolf crlawed off of him and lent him a paw.  Fox eagerly took it and stood back up, if a little woozily.  He had a few seconds to take in the sight of both Wolf and himself covered in more than a bit of each other before the lupine crossed over to him and held him steady with another kiss.  Fox opened up to it without hestiation, melting into the embrace.

Was he going too fast with Wolf?  He couldn’t tell.

But he’d stay on this ride as long as it lasted.

……….

Wolf woke up to find himself naked, an arm draped over his chest.  Not an uncommon circumstance – and for a moment he felt that usual sense of awkward emptiness that followed a night of hedonism.

Then the events of the night previous started to resurface from the depths of his mind, and his discomfort was replaced by a profound sense of peace.  He cracked open his biological eye (he disabled the cybernetic one to sleep) and glanced at the sleeping form of the vulpine nestling into him, and closed it again.  There was no reason to wake him up and ruin the moment.

He gently raised Fox’s paw to his muzzle and kissed it, then drifted back to sleep.

……….

“Well, we should be able to get to our ships now”, Fox said.

“Guess so.”

They sat across from each other at the small table in the hotel’s lobby, nursing their respective cups of coffee.  The drinks came from a vending machine, so neither of them had to worry about strange pepper jellies or forbidden fruits sneaking their way inside to ruin them.

Fox was still basking in the afterglow, and he guessed Wolf was in a similar situation.  The lupine was nursing his drink, grasping the plastifoam cup with a loose grip.  Fox knew he was doing the same – neither one of them wanted their wayward excursion to end, though they both knew it had to sooner or later.  Fox knew his team was waiting for him, and he was sure Wolf was in the same spot.

“We should do this again”, Wolf said.

Fox nodded.  “Yeah, we should.”  He fished his comm-device from his pocket and started scrolling through the calendar.  “I’m free… kind of a lot right now, actually.”

The lupine grinned at him with that aura of cruelty that Fox now knew for certain was a sham.  “Is the quality of Star Fox’s work starting to slip?”

Fox flipped him off and took a swig of his coffee, eliciting a laugh from Wolf.  “No, we’re just starting to take less jobs.  Winding down.”

Wolf gave him an appraising look.  “You thinking of retiring?”  He said it in such a casual, neutral tone that Fox knew the question meant a lot to him.  That seemed to be a recurring rule with Wolf: the more emotional he appeared, the less it really bothered him.

“Me personally?  No – not for a while anyway.”  He looked down at the table.  “But the rest of the team is ready to move on, I think.  Slippy’s getting married, Falco’s… well, Falco’s tired of taking jobs from Corneria; I think he’d rather live a harder life on the fringes than a comfortable one where he has to deal with so much bureaucracy.  I can’t blame him, honestly.”

“He wants to do criminal work?”

Fox laughed.  “No, no – nothing like that.  It’s just virtually all of Star Fox’s jobs involve dealing with the Cornerian Navy, and it gets exhausting after a while.  There’s less freedom.”  He paused for a moment.  “And Krystal…”

Wolf stared at him.  “You don’t think she’ll follow you wherever you go?”

Fox thought on that for a little while.  “I don’t want her to follow me wherever I go.  It’s not fair to her.”  He sighed through his nose.  “Honestly, I think she only ever joined Star Fox because of, you know…”

“…You?”

“Yeah”.  Fox smiled self-deprecatingly.  “I don’t think she really wants to be a merc, not really.  At least not forever.”

Wolf shrugged.  “With her abilities, she could probably score a job with anyone.  Who wouldn’t want a psychic working for them?”  The lupine grinned again. “Tell you what – she ever dumps your shitty Star Fox gig, send her over to me.  I’ll have her steal corporate secrets with her mind powers and sell them to the highest bidder.”

“That is extremely unethical”, Fox said with a terse tone that brooked no room for argument.

Wolf rolled his good eye.  “Since when do I care about ethics?”

“Since you saved my life.”

They sat in silence again.  Fox guessed Wolf probably didn’t know how to respond to that.  And for good reason; Fox himself was never sure what to say when people thanked him for saving them.

“You know”, Wolf said quietly, almost a whisper.  “You saved me too.”

Fox narrowed his eyes, unsure if this was another joke.  “When?”

Wolf shot him a grin, one that contained the slightest modicum less of his usual cockiness.  “There wasn’t a single moment.  It was more like… you.  In general.”

“…Me?”  Fox didn’t know what to make of this.

“Yeah”, Wolf nodded.  “You were always there.  First you were trying to blast me to bits, forcing me to get better at flying.  Then we fought together a few times, and you forced me to keep up with you.”  The look in Wolf’s eye was something Fox couldn’t place: fiery, electric.  “Then you dragged me kicking and screaming out of the criminal world, and forced me to try and be as good as you.”

“Wolf…”

“And I’m not, and I sure as hell won’t ever be.  But that struggle, that fight to improve, to get there…”  The intensity in his gaze softened.  “That’s what makes life worth living.  It always has been.”

Fox was stunned – he had no idea what to do, what to say.  He sat there for a moment, feeling bad for leaving Wolf to openly admit something like that and not responding himself.  Finally, his mouth started to move again.  He formed words.

“You’ve forced me to get better too.”  The admission came out weaker than he intended.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.  I…” He swallowed nervously.  “I wouldn’t have ever admitted that I’m, you know…”

“Into dick?”, Wolf supplied unhelpfully.

“Yes.  And it’s not even that so much as the fact I was lying about it.  To myself, to everyone.  That was the real problem.”  He paused, forcing Wolf to make eye contact with him.  “I’d still be lying about it if it weren’t for you.”

Their gazes remained locked, and just as Fox was about to apologize for being so corny Wolf leaned across the table and kissed him.  Fox jolted in surprise, but relaxed into it, and kissed him back.

Finally, Wolf broke the contact, causing Fox to whimper – which of course the lupine chuckled at.

Fox frowned.  “…We’re in public.  Again.”

“Yup.”  He had no sham.

But then again, did he ever?

“You don’t care if anyone sees?”  Fox looked around the lobby – as far as he could tell, the only person in there was the concierge, a young female squirrel who was too involved with something on her comm-device to notice them.

“I don’t think anyone saw.  And if they did, and they’re upset about it?  Fuck ‘em.”

Fox shook his head.  “I’m not worried about the public.  I’m worried about… I mean, I haven’t really told anyone except Krystal.”

Wolf cocked his head to the side.  “About me?”

“Yeah”.  He paused.  “…And also about being into guys.”

Wolf laughed.  “Alright, alright.  I’ll reel in the PDAs as much as possible.”  His eyes narrowed.  “For now, anyway.”

Fox smiled.

Maybe this would work out after all.

……….

Fox’s Arwing flew out of the clear morning sky and into the starfield beyond, Wolf alongside him.  They’d kept their goodbyes as chaste as they could in the hangar bay, Wolf staying true to his word of public restraint.

“Don’t know how you’re going to live without me, Fox.”  The lupine’s jovial tone shot over the comms.

Fox chuckled.  “I think I’ll survive for a week, at least.”  They’d made plans for another date, this time on Corneria.  Fox thought it’d be easier without the language barrier, and he knew Wolf hadn’t really spent any time in Lylat’s capital when it wasn’t either being attacked, or in ruins after one.

“We’ll see about that.”  Wolf’s fighter started to branch out in a different direction from Fox’s; soon, Fox wouldn’t be able to see it anymore.  “Catch you again soon, pup.”

Fox kept his voice steady, not wanting his obvious starstruck tone to come across too strongly.  “You too, Wolf.”

He saw the telltale emerald color of a warp gate appear in the distance, set across the black expanse of space.  A warp gate started to manifest in front of Fox’s Arwing as well, and he pressed forward into it, homeward bound,

……….

Wolf dropped himself down on the ratty couch in the Airgead’s lounge with a bit more force than was probably necessary.  Star Wolf’s home-ship wasn’t much to look at, inside or out, but he’d done his best to make it comfortable.  Or at least as comfortable as it possibly could be, anyway.

He reached for the remote to the holovision when Fay sprinted into the room.

“Cap’n!”  She gave him her customary exaggerated solute – Wolf still couldn’t tell if she was joking or being dead serious when she did it, but he was leaning towards the latter.

“Yeah?”  He tried to sound at least somewhat interested in whatever she was going to tell him.

“I just wanted to extend my congratulations on a conquest well-earned.”  Wolf stared at her blankly as she approached him and grasped his paw a little too hard.  “Congratulations!”

“Uh… thanks?”

“I saw the holo-still on WHEEL when I was scrolling through my newsfeed”, she said exuberantly, referencing that social media site she always seemed to be on.  “And I felt a surge of secondhand pride.  I’m sure the firsthand satisfaction is even stronger!”

Wolf stared at her like she’d crawled out from under the couch cushion.  “Fay, what are you talking about?”

“Your victory over Star Fox, of course!”  Her eyes practically glimmered with hero-worship.  “You’ve been fighting for it for years, and now it finally happened!”

The lupine felt a leaden sense of something in his gut.  “…What victory?”

Fay brought a holo-still up on her comm-device.  “Your symbolic victory over our rivals, of course!  No one will ever doubt Star Wolf’s superiority now that you’ve turned the leader of Star Fox into your own personal bitch!”

The image was a bit fuzzy, but still clear enough to make out.  Fox and Wolf sitting at a table, sunlight dappling through the windows, lips locked in a passionate embrace.  It was obviously taken from the direction of the concierge desk.

He sighed exasperatedly.

“Goddamn it.”