Chapter Text
“Shit—that's it, baby...that's it. Ah, fuck...just like that..." Gloved hands bury in his quills. "With how frigid you were back there..." the lion huffs through his teeth, sucks in a sharp, pleasured breath. "I really didn't think you'd be this much of a fuckin' whore.”
Shadow ignores the lion's words. He came here for a use. A purpose. The fists tugging at his quills drag him forward and his nose buries into coarse pubic fur and mashes into heated skin. His gag reflex is about as non-existent as his need to tuck his thumb into his fist and yet he does it every time regardless. Grounding point, perhaps. Some kind of familiarity maybe.
All he knows is that it is a unique advantage to not need to breathe around the cock fucking his mouth and throat.
“Look at me, baby...” the lion rumbles, thrusting jerkily. “Look at me, fuck—”
Shadow can tell the lion is pathetically close the same way he always can. He turns his eyes up to the lion, bored and aggravated. It seems to do the trick regardless.
Groaning the lion hunches over him, fingers scrabbling at his quills and ears and holding him in place. The lion's throbbing cock slips past every resistance, shoving as far as it can go as cum hits his throat in striped bursts. Shadow slams his palms into the lion's hips to keep him upright as he feels him start to buckle at the knees. It's always the ones who boast the most arrogant 'game' that never hold their feet in the end.
He swallows. It's all as salt-riddled bitter and distastefully textured as every other time. He pops off the lion's softening cock with a grimace, swiping at the spit and pre collected on his snout before leveling the lion with an annoyed snarl.
Useless. The man hardly lasted long enough to make this endeavor worth the effort. And with the way the lion’s cock drools limply and retreats back into its sheath, he knows he won't find what he's after here tonight either.
Shadow gets to his feet, brushing off his knees.
The lion sighs, head knocked back against the hotel wall, chest still heaving. “Not gonna stick around, princess?”
Shadow slams the door shut behind himself on the way out.
“Okay, hm, how about truth or dare?” Amy asks, glancing around at all of them, her legs pulled onto her arm chair and a beer bottle cradled in the pink koozie in her hand.
“Isn't that for, like, I dunno, babies?” Sonic says, settled beside the coffee table, grimacing.
“Well, what about Never Have I Ever?” Tails asks from his spot beside Sonic on the floor, looking around at the others gathered as if to garner some kind of praise for his suggestion.
Shadow tsks, rolling his eyes at the fox. Rouge nudges him with her foot, mouthing ‘play nice’.
“What a lovely idea, kid,” Rouge says. “I for one am just dying to know what Big Blue here hasn't gotten up to.”
Sonic laughs, raising his own bottle. “Hey, let's just say I'm about to have quite the morning tomorrow.”
“Okay, well, since Tails is the only one who can't drink, we'll just have him do Ring Energy shots or something,” Amy says, heading for the kitchen. “Anyone have preferences on tonight's punishment?”
“Whiskey,” Shadow says flatly, arms crossed.
Rouge laughs. “Do you want us to end up vomiting tomorrow, handsome?”
“It's not my problem you can't hold your liquor.”
“Pfft, whatever, bring it on, man,” Sonic says, beaming. “I'll knock you right under the table flat.”
Tails stares at Sonic flatly. “You do realize you've been drinking beer all night on an empty stomach, right?”
“So?”
“Liquor before beer ringing any bells?” Tails asks.
“What?" Sonic laughs. "C'mon, how do you even know that stuff?”
“Well, for starters, I'm literally old enough to pilot an airplane and drive. Not to mention you're sitting in my Workshop.”
“Whatever. Look, I'm just sayin', I'm gonna smoke every single one of ya.”
“I assumed the point of this game was not to drink,” Shadow remarks dryly.
“Yeah, well, where's the fun in that?” Sonic asks, rocking back with a laugh and a challenging grin.
Amy hurries back into the living room, Ring Energy drink cans, vodka bottle and shot glasses somehow all bundled into her arms. She deposits it all onto the table with the clink and scatter of glasses.
“My, my…vodka, Pinky? You must really be after some secrets tonight, hm?” Rouge asks with a knowing smirk.
Amy's snout colors. “Honest, I'm not! It's all we happened to have stashed here from last time. I guess we must've flown through the other stuff already.”
“Never took you all for those kinds of partiers,” Rouge says, leaning forward in the other half of the two-seater she’s claimed alongside Shadow. “Why, you should really come by Club Rouge sometime, I've got something of an in with the owner.”
"I—"
"No chaser?" Sonic butts in, eyeing the vodka bottle skeptically.
"Are you admitting you can't handle a measly shot, hedgehog?" Shadow asks.
"What? No. I'm totally fine going raw."
"Hm." Rouge eyes Sonic with far too much amusement. "I'm sure someone's heard that one before."
Amy laughs behind her hand and Sonic's snout colors.
Shadow huffs, entirely unentertained by their antics. No one's poured the shots out yet and he doesn't particularly want this game to be dragged out any longer than necessary. There's plenty of other things he could be doing with his night besides this.
It had been Rouge's idea to drag him to this get together in the first place. Some pseudo celebration of something or other. He can't recall what exactly. She happened to text him in the midst of a dull evening of having someone's more than lackluster cock inside him and he had replied while waiting for the lizard to clumsily finish up. He only half-read her messages as a result. It's something he regrets now, however—agreeing to whatever this is.
It's something he finds himself doing more often than he would like. Saying yes to her and to anyone who asks while he's got something shoved inside of him. A mere consequence of endorphins, most likely. That drifting, floating, too light sensation that takes over the moment he's pushed down into someone's bed and slotted into.
It makes it difficult to say no to entirely wasteful gatherings such as this.
“Okay! Who wants to go first?” Amy asks, clapping her hands together.
Shadow blinks and the room slingshots back into play. She's already poured out more than a generous amount of shots. All different colors, shapes, sizes. She, and the others, have quite the collection stored here for someone who claims to not be much of a drinker nor partier.
Sonic's eyes slide right to Shadow and he grins. “I'll go first.”
Shadow narrows his eyes.
“Never have I ever lived in space,” Sonic says cheekily.
Shadow reaches for one of the shots and knocks it back without flinching. Not even a sound. He swallows easily and sets the glass, rim down, back on the table. Completely empty. “You're an imbecile.”
“Yeah, yeah, you make it too easy.” Sonic laughs. “Okay, now you go.”
“Never have I ever been assumed dead.”
Sonic grimaces, ears flicking back. “Gee, talk about a low blow.”
Tails perks up, pointing at Shadow. “Wait, weren't you technically assumed dead after the Finalhazard?”
Shadow frowns. Sometimes he greatly dislikes this fox's ability to memorize nearly everything.
Sonic barks out a laugh. “Guess we're both drinking this time, Shadow.”
Another shot knocked back. The burn is pleasant, the warmth under his fur growing ever so slightly. It takes quite a lot more than this to make him buzzed, or even drunk, but the sensation of it all—he's found he doesn't really mind the feeling.
“Oh, my turn!” Amy says, butting in with a smile. “Okay, hm. Never have I ever…” She trails off, looking around at all of them. “Been kissed by Rouge.”
“Guess that's me," Tails says as he grabs one of the Ring Energy shots.
Sonic balks. “Dude, what?”
“Oh, come now, it was a harmless little thing on the cheek, Blue. Don't get jealous on me,” Rouge says, blowing Sonic a kiss for good measure.
Shadow grabs another shot and Amy covers her mouth, a high pitched sound leaving her.
“Now, that one was on the mouth,” Rouge says lasciviously. “Handsome’s got quite the tongue on him, I must say.”
Tails scrunches up his muzzle. “Gross.”
“Wait, wait—” Sonic holds up his hands and makes a ‘T’ motion with them. “Time out. You ‘n Rouge?”
“Oh, honey, look at him. You're telling me you wouldn't hit that at least once?” Rouge asks, legs kicked up over the arm of the couch.
Shadow gives her a flat look, snout wrinkled.
Sonic makes an indignant sound and he glances over to see the hedgehog’s ears pressed back, a put-upon look on his face. “As if.”
Rouge laughs. "Keep telling yourself that, Blue.”
The game turns boringly innocuous after that.
Less targeted and more childish. He drinks when he falls into the category they've set up and watches idly otherwise. The words drift in and out. Shadow stares at the collection of shot glasses on the table, caught on the reflections stuck in the rims and rounded bodies of them.
After a while, his phone buzzes. He checks the message while Amy and Tails argue over the semantics of the exact ‘Never Have I Ever’ Sonic just posited.
'See you tonight?' The text is from an unknown number. He knows who it is. He doesn't usually keep regulars around. Casual flings are easier. More physical sensation and burning off whatever he needs to than anything else. Humans, though. Humans are—
“Never have I ever slept with a human,” Sonic blurts, the insides of his ears flushed. Already drunk.
Everyone's quiet, nobody moves. Shadow reaches for a shot and drinks.
“No way! What the hell?” Sonic asks, slamming a hand onto the coffee table. “Dude, what do you get up to in your free time?”
Shadow narrows his eyes at Sonic. “That's none of your business, hedgehog.”
“Okay, well, never have I ever slept with a human in space.”
He grabs another shot, knocks it back without a flinch and then sets it down empty on the table, keeping eye contact with Sonic all the while. The others are dead silent around them.
Sonic narrows his eyes skeptically. “Never have I ever fucked a human in a science lab in space.”
Shadow drinks again. All the eyes in the room stick to him and refuse to budge. Sonic's snout wrinkles the way it does when he's pinned Sonic down in a fight, when Sonic knows he's only one mishap away from losing if he doesn't turn the tables on him already.
Amy reaches for Sonic. “Sonic, maybe we should—”
Sonic leans away from Amy, teeth bared, a challenge bright in his eyes. “Fine, Faker, how's this then? Never have I ever fucked my Da—”
“All right,” Rouge says, holding her hands out. “I think perhaps it's past Blue’s bed time, hm?”
Sonic laughs, wobbly and on the edge of mean. “Nah. I'm just gettin’ started.”
Rouge grabs up the bottle of vodka and heads for the kitchen. “Well, I'm calling it quits. Shadow, be a dear and help me with those glasses.”
Shadow gathers the glasses mechanically. Tails and Amy's continued silence is deafening, their eyes raking at him the longer they stare and say nothing. He's so used to them chattering non-stop it's almost worse when neither of them have anything to say at all.
A hand brushes Shadow's shoulder and he stiffens, glasses already stacked and gathered into his arms.
“Shadow?” Amy asks, frowning.
Shadow wrenches away from her, jerking to his feet with a grimace. Rouge is in the kitchen. His task is to bring Rouge the glasses and then—and then—
He's in the kitchen before he realizes it, hands under hot water, scrubbing more than is necessary for these particular glasses. More than he's supposed to be doing, but—his ears flick back. His phone buzzes in his quills. He needs to go already. He's supposed to—
A hand touches Shadow's arm and he snarls under his breath.
Rouge hums consideringly. “Shadow, as much as I don't mind you turning those gorgeous pearly whites onto me, I'd like to know what’s got you so…growly all of a sudden.”
“Nothing.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I've got a prior engagement to get to.” Shadow drops the glass he was working at into the belly of the sink. “This whole thing was a waste of my time.”
Rouge sighs. “It's fine, you know, to admit you like hanging out with us. No one's going to judge you for daring to have friends.”
He thinks about Sonic grinning rakishly, with a gnarl to his muzzle. A dangerously knowing look in his eye despite the childish jokes. 'Never have I ever fucked my—'
Shadow curls his lip at her. “That blue hedgehog isn't my friend.”
The human currently inside him hunches and curls over him, smaller than other human's he's been with, able to nuzzle at his throat, his shoulder if they bend and contort over far enough. Sleeping with humans is always a game of contortion in one way or another, compatibility doesn't really matter when they can't hurt him regardless. Not permanently. Not in any way that matters.
Always murmuring into his fur, lips soft and skin softer. Something about his waist. His hands. His eyes. Pretty. This one always calls him pretty for some reason. Shadow takes the brief reprieve to stare at the texture on the ceiling and connect the irregularities like constellations. It doesn't last. It's taken up by skin again before long.
He grabs at the human as he's fucked into harder and his legs spread wider and pushed farther up into his chest than they're meant to go, sweat dripping onto his nose from the human's chest over his muzzle, all of it sliding between his bared teeth on another harsh thrust. Salt-tinged. The sheets under him stick to his back and quills, precum and slick snaking down to his tail. Sweat always weighs his own fur down, making everything unpleasantly heavy and tacky, while human's sweat slides under his palm pads and slickens everything properly as he holds onto them in kind.
“You're so perfect.” Huffs and grunts. Bare hips jarring into him. “Fuck... you feel so good. Always so fucking tight.”
Shadow closes his eyes and hides his snout against the human's sternum as they bear down further over him. It's someone else's hands on him. Bigger. Rougher. Weathered by calluses and astringents and harsh soaps. The scratchy fabric of a lab coat draped against his fur, the harsh stench of rubbing alcohol and the too loud hum of the fume hoods behind him. The click of metal. The sliding hiss of a leather belt. The sound of the buckle clattering onto the floor with the rustle of fabric.
'It's okay, Shadow. It's okay. It won't hurt. I promise, it won't—'
The human groans above him and comes. There's a sudden moment of stillness and then desperate movement where he can feel the human's muscles twitching and jerking involuntarily, the man grunting on every near involuntary push of hips into him as he's filled with heat, until the man's pressed in deep, rooted and stuck. "Fuck..." There's a long, drawn out sigh, a satisfied, breathless chuckle. He grits his teeth at the slide out as the human pulls free. A protest squeaks from the mattress as the human readjusts again, onto his knees and hunches over him in a forced bow. Hands cradle his sides, run up and down them, caressing and pushing and groping at every inch of him. Lips pepper his brow, his muzzle, a tongue slipping into his mouth before withdrawing with a huff of hot air. Cum eases out of him. Dirties his fur, the sheets.
“You did so good for me, baby. So good…”
Shadow's tail wags through the slick and spend on the bed. Satisfaction at a task well completed swells in his chest.
He desperately tries to find the same connection with the genetic half of his own kind. He tries and he tries, but it's always inadequate. It's never enough. It's never quite the same.
There's always something missing, this hollow gap in his chest that fur against his own simply never fills. He still tries regardless. He cannot be flawed. Even in this. Perfection is key. So he keeps coming back to it, hoping it'll work.
The coyote slips two fingers inside him and hooks them harshly. Shadow glares at the ceiling. It's clumsy. Unpracticed. Fingers stab at him rather than stroking or searching with any kind of finesse. Thankfully, the coyote keeps his snout buried in his shoulder and throat and can't see Shadow grimace at a particularly harsh jab.
“That's it, baby. Do you like that?”
No. He's quite sure someone who's never touched another person before in their life could do a better job. Shadow fakes a quiet moan regardless, clenching around the fingers inside him.
If he pretends, at least it's over sooner.
“Commander Tower.”
“Agent Shadow.”
Shadow narrows his eyes at the Commander. He'd been summoned to his office the moment he arrived at headquarters with little to no explanation. Which means either there's a mission for him that even Rouge isn't privy too, or he has stumbled his way into a disciplinary meeting. The arrogant, loud-mouthed Spider Troupe Captain he blew in the janitorial closet the other day comes to mind.
Perhaps he had wrongly assumed the cameras weren't angled towards it. With the disapproving frown on the Commander's face, he's beginning to think they definitely were.
The Commander sighs, kneading at his brow. “I assume you know why you're here.”
Shadow grimaces, teeth bared silently in answer.
“Fraternization between personnel is to be kept to a minimum for a reason. We can't have agents becoming involved with superior officers and causing issues in the field or worse, more paperwork for me to have to—”
“It meant nothing.”
The Commander blinks, dual toned eyes narrowing. “And by nothing I assume you mean…?”
“I merely provided a service in return for a favor.”
“Right,” the Commander clears his throat. “You do understand that sounds as if you're soliciting yourself to your superiors, correct?”
“Yes.”
The Commander frowns. “And what was this exchange for?”
“Meal credits.”
The Commander's frown deepens. “Shadow, if your current allotments are inadequate you merely have to ask for more—”
“No,” Shadow says carefully. “I gave him my meal credits.”
“I don't understand.”
Shadow grits his teeth. “I requested to give Captain Andrews fellatio and in exchange for allowing me to do so, I provided him with my credits."
He doesn't understand how the Commander isn't grasping such a simple concept. The man is intelligent. Intelligent enough to lead G.U.N. and to put aside decades old grudges as well. This too should be easy.
“You—” the Commander looks at him like he's seeing something strange. The way someone squints through fogged glass. “Excuse my vulgarness, Agent, but are you saying you gave him a blowjob and then you gave him your meals for deployment as well?”
“Yes.”
The Commander reaches for the phone on his desk and pushes one of the buttons. It rings. And then crunches.
“Yes, sir?” the assistant asks, tinny through the connection.
“Get Agent Rouge in here.”
“On it, sir.”
“Well, I certainly didn't expect to be put on babysitting duty, I'll say that much, handsome.”
“This is entirely unnecessary.”
Chow hall sits mostly empty, the tray Rouge shoved in front of him is something particularly distasteful. Shadow's had worse things in his mouth and somehow still, he'd rather be holding bad cum, curdling and sour, on his tongue than try to choke down the gruel currently in his spoon.
“In your case, Abe apparently assumes it is,” Rouge props her chin in her hand, eyeing him. “Now why do you think that is?”
“Tch. It's merely a waste of resources and time.”
Rouge sighs and taps the tray. “Either way, you better start eating up or we're both going to be spending a long afternoon here.”
Shadow grimaces, ears pressing back. Eating is the last thing on his mind. It's not as if he requires sustenance often, barely at all really. It's a luxury he can thankfully ignore.
He stares at the off-white chowder and thinks about the watery semen he smeared off his stomach and chest fur last night. The old human's spend had been particularly strange. Perhaps age. Perhaps something else. Shadow wrinkles his snout distastefully.
There's footsteps, the stench of a familiar body wash, something heady and pine-laced. A large hand falls on his shoulder and Captain Andrews slides into the seat beside him.
“How's my favorite, little alien freak doing today?”
Rouge rolls her eyes. “Don't you have some deck to go swab, hot shot?”
Andrews smiles rakishly. “Being in Spider Troupe's got its perks, sweetheart. I could take you for a spin sometime, show you all the works?”
“Oh, in your dreams, flyboy,” Rouge says with a smirk that's more like a threat.
Andrews laughs and his hand squeezes Shadow’s shoulder tightly.
Shadow thinks about the closet. Boxed in by the human in front of him, his quills tacking harshly against the wall behind his head, skull tacking off of it with each thrust. Spit down his chin, his throat. Choking, impossibly so. Andrews' hands planted flat on the closet wall above him as he fucked into Shadow's mouth mercilessly and huffed through his teeth the whole while. The human looking down at him. Muttering praises and insults in kind. A warmth seeps low in him. Building.
Rouge's brow furrows for a moment as she looks at him.
“Hey, I got something I wantcha to check out real quick, Shadow. If you don't mind taking a walk with me that is. I know we got off on the wrong foot with that whole Comet fiasco, but the Commander said you're kinda brainy. So, I'd like to pick your thoughts about something in R&D regarding Troupe’s new field kits.”
“He's currently under my detail,” Rouge says sharply. Sharper than usual. Her eyes narrowed.
“Cool it, lady. I'm sure he can handle being without his babysitter for five minutes.”
“Shadow—”
“It's fine, Rouge,” Shadow says, mouth dry, heart thudding in his ears.
Andrews’ thumb rubs circles into his fur and he thinks about that same hand grabbing at his snout, long fingers sliding so far back into his mouth he'd actually gagged for once.
Rouge points at Shadow. “Ten minutes or I'm fishing you out. Got it?”
Andrews slams him belly down onto the sink counter, his chest fur triggering the automatic faucet with a hiss, his snout smacking into the lip of the mirror and then the fixture. Shadow can hear the clink of a belt being undone behind him, the rustle of fabric. The sound of Andrews spitting into his hand.
Two fingers jab into him without warning and he jolts against the counter, knee jamming into it hard enough he hears a crack from the stone.
Andrews laughs. “Careful there. Wouldn't want the Commander to ask why he's gotta replace a sink now, too.”
Shadow snarls, shoving at the counter as a hand grabs the back of his neck and pushes him back down. The hand on him is weak, barely anything. He allows it to hold him in place regardless.
It's not the first time they've played at this charade between them, and it won't be the last.
“We only got ten minutes before your little bimbo comes in and gets the show of a lifetime. So if you'd rather not give her an eye full of me stuffing you, I'd suggest making this easy for the both of us.”
He glares at Andrews out of the corner of his eye. “Fuck you.”
Andrews laughs and slides his fingers all the way to the knuckles harshly. “Yeah. Honestly, you put on a pretty big game, but you're the one who was practically drooling over getting my cock in your mouth.”
Shadow slams an elbow back and Andrews catches his arm, pinning it down. He could easily throw Andrews off, but that's not the point of any of this. The sink turns on again as he's pressed down into the bowl of it.
“I think you've got a thing for it,” Andrews says, pulling his fingers out with a lingering burn. The human's cock presses against him, blunt and hot and too big. “Humans, I mean. If I were you, I would've been shacking that bat chick day one, but you act like she's not even there.”
Andrews sinks into him slowly in one long press with a satisfied groan.
Shadow tries to relax despite the too large stretch of it all. His snout scrunches with the lance of pain up his spine and he goes limp the way he knows how, forehead falling against the counter as he tries to breathe evenly. It slides thick. Warm. The beyond full feeling curls up in his chest and he closes his eyes. Hips roll shallowly against him and then Andrews pulls out and shoves back in hard enough he knocks into the mirror. He grits his teeth. He braces himself better, thighs digging harshly into the counter.
“Do you think about the Commander fucking you like this? The others...?" Andrews babbles—always talking too much the second he's inside of him—grabbing his waist and pulling him back onto his cock as far as he can go in time with each thrust. "Shit...I could probably, y'know—" Andrews breathes hard through his nose, fingers flexing around him. "Get—uh...a few of the guys to run a train on you." A laugh sears through Andrews' teeth, an eager breath at another snap forward. "You'd like that shit...wouldn't you?”
Shadow curls his hands into fists, forehead pressed into the sink counter. Something inside of him is struck on each thrust that sparks painfully in his middle. Andrews drives too deep, too carelessly to be comfortable in the slightest. It's all he can think about. Feel. Like his entire world's narrowed down between his legs. Like nothing else matters except for this. He moans despite his best efforts to keep it stuck in his chest, his thighs shivering in abject anticipation.
“You really, hf— are into this, huh?” Andrews huffs, fucking into him harder, pace picking up. “Fuh-ck. You're so...god...damn...tight." Each word another breath punched out of the man raggedly. "Geezus...with the way you act, I—mm, I really thought you'd be all used up by now...Guess that's the, fuck—the alien shit, though. Once a pet freak—hah, shit, sh..." Andrews drags him back enough to meet another cruel drive in that shoves him forward once more. "Always a pet freak...yeah?”
He doesn't even get a chance to slur out an answer through his spit-slacked jaw before another hard thrust sends him snarling into the countertop as something burns sharply inside of him this time. He grits his teeth. It's no matter. He'll heal it off regardless. Another harsh smack of hips into him sends heat shooting up his spine, his quills flexing out with the sudden full body ache. Andrews' cock knocks into it all again on another rut and he slams his fist into the backsplash of the sink counter, the stone splintering. His eyes flare hot. He swallows back every pained grunt until he can't, his gut heavy with strained pleasure as it happens again and again. Every inch of him wound tight as Andrews curls over him and grabs at his hips in even harsher fingers and fucks him ruthlessly.
He smells astringent soap. Chlorinated water. He hears the panted huffs over his back and all he can feel is the laminate of the lab bench under his stomach. See the beakers and vials past his nose. The jostle and clink of glass on every shove into him. His own reflection warped in them. Wide-eyed and wet.
'You're doing so good for me, Shadow... You're so good. Just like that... Perfect. It's okay. Shh... I've got you. I've got you... Just a little more, just a little more—just—'
He comes disgustingly, writhing and tearing at the counter under him. He pulls at the sink fixture until it warps with a groan of metal as he clenches down on the cock inside him. He chokes out the breath he'd been holding and shakes from head to toe.
“Fuck! Oh, fu—” Andrews grunts as his hips stutter frantically, cock throbbing inside of him. Andrews grinds into him as he comes, pressure and heat filling him, before finally seating in as hard and far as he can go with a wrecked groan, consequently shoving him into the bottom lip of the mirror, hands gripped hard and bruising around his waist.
Everything stills.
Shadow feels sweat dripping onto his back. Hears Andrews breathing heavy and fucked out above him with a shaky laugh. Disbelieving almost. He can feel the man's cum easing out between where they're pressed flush. A hand pets down his side and he twitches away from it.
He can smell blood. The fluorescent lights flicker for a moment, white-blinking then red, deep and dark, the ringing in his ears turns high and rhythmic. There's an alarm. Wet, struggled breathing. Fast and too shallow, his own, someone else's. Blood scattered in blonde hair, on the floor, everywhere, more of it, too much, she's not moving, she's not moving and he can't—he can't—
Soft hands cradle his muzzle, cupping his face and raising it up from where he tucked his chin. His snout tear-stained and damp. 'What happened?' Blue eyes always so bright and pinched with too much concern. 'Shadow…?'
“Man, your pussy is—”
Shadow bucks Andrews off with a snarl and kicks him away hard enough the human stumbles into the partition behind him. “Get out.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
Shadow slams the side of his fist into the wall beside himself and the tiles under it give, pieces cracking off and littering the ground. His ears press back tightly. His breaths crouch too loud in his ears. "Leave."
Andrews is gone by the time he looks up.
Turned over on it, he sags against the counter, his chest aching, cum and slick staining the inside of his thighs, leaking down his ass and tail, tightening his fur as it dries. Itching. Unpleasant. Thankfully, cleaning up in the aftermath is always easier than it should be. His prior suggestion to utilize the bathroom instead of one of the closets or abandoned office spaces this time around makes it all easier and far more efficient as well. As he swipes at himself, he notices the blood. It goes away quickly the same way it always does. The pain too.
By the time he hears heeled footsteps, he's already presentable again, the bathroom as orderly as he could make it. The ruined faucet and the cracks in the counter and the wall are still far too noticeable, but there's nothing he can do about them now.
“What the hell happened in here?” Rouge asks, blinking, her ears strained down for once.
Shadow shoulders past her with a grimace. “Nothing.”
Sonic scratches at his quills, a sheepish look that's not usually there plastered on his snout. “Listen, about what I said at the party, man...”
“Forget about it,” Shadow says, jogging his air shoe against the ground to dislodge the clump of grass and sod caught in the lip of it after his last turn. "I was merely being facetious."
"Uh?"
Shadow sighs. "I was joking."
"Oh, cool. Same, dude. 'n sorry, I know the joke was kinda shitty, I really thought you were jus' drinking to be a dick to us, I should'nt've—"
"It's fine," Shadow says, swiping his hands over his own wind mussed quills to fix them back into proper place.
Sonic had won today's race. A more than loathsome outcome, and one that's particularly annoying to admit. He'd been distracted. Last night hadn't gone well.
He'd fallen into it with some wolf more than two times his size and he'd left the encounter with a limp from the knot that got shoved into him and stuck there for longer than he would've liked. Sitting outside the man's apartment and waiting for himself to heal had been humiliating to say the least. The only boon had been the other soul on the bench, two down from his own, who bumped a cigarette out of his pack and paced over to hand it to him. Saying he looked like he needed it.
He's never particularly cared for smoking, the same way he doesn't care for drinking, or eating, or consuming much of anything at all. It's not a necessary luxury. Still, at times, the slight buzz of it helps immeasurably.
He sucked the rabbit off in the alley behind the place once the man made his interest in him known. Sitting too close, an arm slung over the back of the bench and knuckles petting at his shoulder, eyes tracking his mouth the whole while, sticking on where the cigarette stuck between his lips. While the rabbit's cock had been relatively insignificant and not worth noting, the hand curled under his quills and cupping the back of his neck the whole time had gone straight down to his gut.
He thought about the Commander's eyes after, when he'd smeared the saliva and spend off his muzzle and leaned his shoulder against the brick wall. The disapproving scrunch between them, the slight curl of the human's lip. Distasteful. Disgusted.
“Hey, Shadow?”
Shadow grimaces, eyes narrowing. “What?”
“This might be kinda weird, but didja wanna, like—wait, okay, not that you really have to or anything, but if you wanted to, maybe we could—” Sonic starts, faltering strangely as he gestures vaguely between them.
And he's sick of Sonic acting like this around him. It's not even ever since the party. It's before that. Whenever they cross paths now, it's like the buffoon can't utter a word properly. It's not correct and it's not the way it's supposed to be and it grates at him the more often it seems to happen.
“—no pressure or whatever. I was just wonderin’ if you wanted to grab a bite to eat or something? Nothin' too big or fancy, just us wherever,” Sonic says, finishing it all off with a smile that doesn't quite fit the way it took him a jumbled handful of half-sentences to finally get there.
Shadow's brow furrows, his muzzle scrunching. “Why?”
"Cause, I dunno.” Sonic shrugs. “Thought maybe it'd be cool to sit down ‘n chat some. Hang out without tryna deck each other for once.”
“We're talking right now.”
“Wow," Sonic says with a laugh, "Amy was right.”
Shadow grits his teeth. “Right about what? Spit it out, I don't have all day to listen to you flounder around constantly.”
“I was trying to ask if you wanna go on a date with me, genius.”
Shadow stares.
“Well?” Sonic asks, hands held out. “Y’know, I usually stun people into silence pretty often, but you're really taking the cake on the whole thin—”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“I'll go on your…‘date’.”
Sonic laughs wryly. “Geez, tone down the enthusiasm will ya, pal?”
“Are we going or not?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sonic says, grinning wide. “Just try to keep up.”
Shadow sneers. “It'll hardly be a challenge.”
The ‘date’ is strange.
It's a restaurant. Some diner. The tabletop tacky with old grease, the seat sticky vinyl, shiny and red. Sonic seems to know the waiter—everyone, really. Smiling, waving, asking about friends, family, loved ones, like he's got some kind of yellow pages stamped on his eyelids, like he's talked to every single one of them before. And with the way Sonic chatters—near endlessly and on this side of doing it to merely fill the silence Shadow leaves—he's quite sure Sonic has.
It's uneventful at least. It's fine… It's something to tell Rouge about later instead of shrugging off her questions of what he gets up to. He knows she's tired of him filling in the gaps with a clipped nothing.
She's tapped his phone in the past. She's tailed him before. He knows she's watched him enter motel rooms and leave them more used than he entered them. Still, she waits every single time for him to tell her what he does most nights and he never does.
“So, didja want me to walk you home?” Sonic asks cheekily outside the diner. To-go bags for Tails and Amy in his hands.
Shadow sighs. “If you must.”
“Cool.”
Thankfully, he doesn't live far from the diner Sonic chose. He has to wonder if Rouge helped him pick the location somehow. If he staked it out before working up the nerve to ask him out to it. Shadow's not sure what exactly about him makes Sonic want to date him. He assumes, to some degree, Sonic finds him decently fuckable.
And perhaps, in that, there's an opportunity.
He checks his phone as they make it to the apartment stairs. Rouge hasn't sent him anything about coming over so he can only assume the coast is clear. And Omega is on a short-term mission for G.U.N, deployed to eliminate an E-123 series copycat that was spotted in the wider U.F. territories. It is as opportune a moment as ever.
Sonic rocks back on his heels, smiling. There's a nervous sort of tilt to him that's unfamiliar as Shadow gets the apartment door open.
“So…”
“Did you want to come in?” Shadow asks, flat and unamused.
Sonic's ears flick back as he laughs. “Nah, I should probably get this stuff to Tails 'n Ames already, and I wouldn't wanna impose or nothin’.”
“I have a refrigerator.”
“Right, yeah.” Sonic's eyes dart between him and the apartment door that's wide open. “I guess killing a few hours couldn't hurt.”
Sonic picks the movie while Shadow shoves the take out into the mostly empty fridge. There's tequila stashed in the freezer from Rouge's last visit, but otherwise, nothing.
When he settles down on the couch, Sonic grins at him. His own air shoes removed in the hall properly while Sonic's were toed off and strewn somewhere between the door and where his tail fell.
“Hope you like scary movies, dude.”
“They're adequate.”
He doesn't particularly care. He hardly turns the TV on regardless. There's a blanket folded on the back of the couch that Sonic drags down into his own lap and tosses over his legs. It's a housewarming gift Rouge gave him when he decided to finally move out of her place and into his own. A decision only partly made to avoid the scrutiny of either coming home late or not at all. The other part he's sure Rouge hardly even recalls much of, besides the fact that she did indeed kiss him—evidenced by her admittance at the party—considering how deep into her cup she'd been that night. Regardless, how he spends his evenings is his own business, no one else's. He knows Rouge wouldn't particularly care, but—
“Didja wanna share?” Sonic asks, ears turned back slightly.
The back of Shadow's skull buzzes. Anticipation hot under his skin. “Fine.”
Sonic scoots closer on the couch, throwing the blanket over him. His thigh settles against Sonic's. The movie's music swells, a screech of violins, a dramatic sting, someone screams off camera and Sonic laughs.
“Man, this one's kinda cheesy,” Sonic says.
Shadow grunts noncommittally. He needs to figure out how to move this along already. He pushes his leg into Sonic's harder and measures the reaction. Sonic doesn't move away.
He pulls the blanket tighter around himself, nudging it so Sonic loses more than half on his side. Sonic's eyes are glued on the screen and he seems to unconsciously shuffle closer to get back under the blanket. Their shoulders knock together as a result.
“Oh, shoot—my bad, dude.”
“It's fine.”
Shadow can feel Sonic's eyes stick to the side of his face instead of the film. He keeps his own eyes carefully trained on the screen, the pictures losing all meaning as Sonic’s ungloved hand lightly falls on his thigh under the blanket and sits there. His fur prickles. Heat swells low in him. Finally. At the least, he doesn't have to keep playing at this whole, useless charade.
Sonic's hand slides higher, wandering between the seam of Shadow's legs. “Is it okay if I—”
“Yes, you idiot.” What kind of imbecile asks for permission like some virgin?
Sonic’s fingers slide over him and he widens his legs to give him better access. He's already wet. Beyond wet. If this was Sonic's goal all along he's not sure why the hedgehog didn't merely cut to the chase ages ago.
“Woah, you're really warm, man.”
“Have you ever actually fingered anyone?” Shadow grits out.
“Yeah, sure, loads of times. Totally.”
No, then. Shadow scowls at the TV. Just his luck.
Sonic's fingers wander over him slowly, exploring, there's a confidence to them despite the tentative way they avoid just curling into him already. Sonic finds the nub of flesh higher on him and smooths over it and then circles at it steadier. His gut shrivels. He hears grunting in his ears, smells alcohol swabs and disinfectants. Always such a good boy for me, Shadow. Let me hear you. Let me— His heart thuds in his ears.
He grabs Sonic's wrist.
“Don't.”
“Alright, okay,” Sonic says quietly.
He drags Sonic's hand lower, until Sonic's finger finally slips into him the barest amount instead and he sighs, relaxing into the couch behind him. He can hear Sonic's breathing pick up, the way Sonic squirms on the couch and his heartbeat goes high. Sonic worms even closer, pulling his own leg up under himself as he turns into Shadow's side, thin chest fur slipping along his arm. A snout buries into his neck. Shadow watches the TV. There's a spray of blood and a choking sound as the character on screen dies. A warm nose bumps into his jaw. His arm is pinned down between his own side and Sonic’s body. Breaths sticky his fur as Sonic adjusts the angle of his finger and kisses at his throat. Shadow's skin flares hot at the small point of contact, the spit left behind as Sonic does it once more already cooling as Sonic rests his chin on his shoulder and breathes against it.
Maybe this was where they were always going to end up. The killer on the TV swipes the blade off with their fingers and Shadow's stomach curls with a warmth like he's been gutted as Sonic's finger softly strokes at something inside of him. All of the races. The fights. The way Sonic looked at him anytime he got the idiot on his back, eyes half-lidded and grin smug as he panted with adrenaline under him. Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe he should've seen it coming this time.
Sonic huffs into the crook of his neck, leg shifting against his pointedly. Shadow looks down to see the blanket tented at Sonic’s crotch quite noticeably. He removes his gloves with his teeth, letting them fall to the cushions. With his palm, he settles it over Sonic's cock and kneads softly, the blanket a more than inconvenient barrier between them. Sonic grunts and bucks up into his hand anyway.
The finger inside him sits at the knuckle and pulls out even slower than before, the drag of it burning up Shadow's spine. Another digit nudges at him and then pushes in alongside it and Sonic crooks both of them gently, coaxing and exploring. It's a little fumbly. It's not the worst he's ever had though. Sonic's confidence isn't one built on false bravado like all the others, it's an honest one. One that's constructed from knowing he's at least mildly competent at whatever he puts his mind to.
“You okay?” Sonic asks into his fur, quieter than he's ever heard the hedgehog's voice dip. There's an uncertainty there that's uncharacteristic, that doesn't follow the pattern of their usual encounters and Shadow grits his teeth. A numb buzz gathering at the base of his skull.
“What a stupid question.”
Sonic laughs and Shadow can feel it vibrate against his arm. Feel Sonic wrapped along his side like flesh around a fingernail. “Just making sure.”
Sonic needs reassurance then. Validation of some sort in this endeavor. He waits for another caress of the fingerpads buried in him and cants his hips into Sonic's hand and moans quietly for show the way he's learned how. Sonic instantly stiffens against him. There's a smirk on Sonic's muzzle that he doesn't have to look over to see. He can feel it burning between them like thin white knives. Shadow barely resists the urge to roll his eyes at Sonic and instead spits on his palm and gets a hand under the blanket. He wraps his fingers around Sonic’s cock without fanfare and pumps at the wrist.
Sonic huffs, hips jerking up immediately. The fingers inside him work faster at him in response, petting upwards methodically. It strokes a low numbness to life in his belly that Shadow clenches down on and tries to ignore. A hand grabs desperately at his forearm as he jacks Sonic off steadily to distract the hedgehog from his current endeavor. His thumb swiping over the head of Sonic's cock in a way that makes Sonic grunt and then moan breathlessly.
It's something. It's still not nearly enough for his taste and the way his stomach tightens as the pads of Sonic's fingers massage at something inside of him sends bile crouching in his throat.
“You can fuck me,” Shadow says dryly.
Sonic sucks in a breath. “What?”
“If you want to fuck me, then fuck me.”
“Isn't that like a bit of a jinx or something? Y’know, to bang on the first date? What about my reputation, Shads,” Sonic jokes like an idiot, breathing heavy. Beyond horny. “It'll be in total shambles.”
Shadow grabs Sonic's muzzle and wrenches it towards him and kisses him. He doesn't particularly enjoy kissing in the slightest. He rarely does it at all if he can help it and he's certainly never the one who initiates it with the people he sleeps with. It's tolerable at most. He'll go along with it if someone else wants it from him though and Sonic seems more than eager to delve into it.
Sonic sighs into his mouth, tongue sliding over his and the sounds crouch like something eating, sloppy and gross in his ears. There's spit. Lots more than he always expects. It's like some slimy slug moving inside his mouth, lukewarm and wet. He'd rather have Sonic's cock in his mouth, but he's trying to get it shoved somewhere else.
Sonic gently pushes him back after a moment. Shadow lets himself fall onto the couch. He lets Sonic straddle him. Cock falling hot onto his stomach fur, precum leaking from the angry tip. Sonic kisses him this time, pressing into it more, a renewed enthusiasm to every movement as hands slide over his and fingers lace with his own. Shadow stiffens minutely at that. Sonic's heartbeat tacks against his palms and his stomach shrinks with the rest of his middle. His jaw slacks and Sonic laps into his mouth with a pleased huff. Sonic's fingers squeeze reassuringly around his. He feels the fur prick along his arms in response.
Shadow draws back from the kiss first. Spit threads between them for a moment, Sonic's eyes wide and blown as he pants down at him. Breaths ghost hot over Shadow's muzzle, drying his fur and lips further with each huff. For once, Sonic seems to be without words. Shadow's quills scrunch against the couch cushion under him as he shifts and pulls his hands out from under Sonic's carefully. He can taste Sonic in his mouth still. The sensation becoming an overwhelming one the longer it lingers.
Sonic frowns slightly at the retreat and Shadow places his hands on Sonic's hips instead, massaging at the junction of them with his thumbs. It erases the slight concern on Sonic's muzzle quickly. It doesn't spur Sonic into any further action as he had hoped however.
Shadow narrows his eyes up at Sonic. “Are you going to put it in or not?”
Sonic smiles lazily, hands resting over Shadow's lightly for a moment. “Yeah, just wanna make sure you're good with this. I don't wanna hurt you.”
Shadow scoffs. “You're small compared to what I've handled.”
“Wow, gee, thanks.”
“Put it in or leave. Stop wasting my time.”
"Should we—" Sonic looks off to the side. "I mean, I didn't bring any condoms and I dunno if you've got lube…”
"It's not necessary."
"You sure?"
He has to stop himself from practically snarling. "Quit stalling, hedgehog."
"Okay, okay," Sonic laughs.
He knows it will be quick. Sonic will fuck him and bury his face in his neck and grunt when he comes. And then it'll be over. Just like every other race and fight between them. They'll part ways and never speak of it until the next time Sonic wants to ‘blow off steam’.
Sonic wriggles off Shadow's stomach and settles between his legs, grabbing at his thighs and loosely wrapping them about his waist and readjusting his hips. He digs his heels lightly into the back of Sonic's legs as the hedgehog squirms lower. Shadow hears Sonic pump at himself and take a few deep breaths before a cock bumps blunt against him. Sonic tenses all over on top of him, nearly shivering with how tight he locks up.
He knows Sonic will come fast if this his first time—not that he particularly cares to ask if it is, nor does it matter anymore—and if that's the case, it means he'll have plenty of time to do something else with his evening. Cleaning. Chores. There's a new bar down the street. Dive type, with a back alley and a brick wall, perfect for—
There's a low whining breath from Sonic as the head of his cock finally pushes in. A desperate pant. Shadow's snout scrunches at the sensation until he forcibly relaxes and lets the feeling of being filled curl up his spine. He grabs at Sonic's arms braced to either side of him, his claws digging in like spurs.
Sonic rolls his hips forward tentatively and Shadow can feel the way his arms are already shaking slightly under his palms. Sonic moans strained and through his teeth.
“Oh, fuck, dude, holy shit—”
Sonic slips in further. Shadow can practically hear Sonic's tail wagging. The blissed out expression on Sonic's snout inexplicably annoys him as hips finally sit flush to him. The back of his thighs rested over Sonic's legs. Fur to fur. It's different from the other times in a way he can't extrapolate. He clenches down and listens to Sonic breathe sharply and watches that irritating grin crumple up for once.
He revels in that part of it all. Shadow knows there's a chance he's taking something from Sonic that he won't get back. Selfishly, somewhere low in him, he preens at that.
Sonic shifts slightly, looking down at him with heavy, blown-out pupils. "Are you—nh, uh—okay?"
“Move already,” Shadow bites out.
The fur on Sonic's arms is already damp with sweat, the hedgehog's face screwed up in careful concentration, the cock inside him throbbing with need. Sonic bucks forward and moans breathlessly and then continues in a sloppy pattern. It's all Sonic chasing his own release. Uncoordinated, quick. It's about what he expected and he keeps his head tipped back, making what sounds he deems appropriate when he needs to knowing it will help Sonic finish quicker. Sonic grabs at him and humps and huffs. Breaths quickly turning into strained grunts the faster he goes.
“Shadow, Shadow...oh, fuck, fuck, I'm—” Sonic legs tremble, thrusts turned desperate and hard.
Shadow wraps his legs around Sonic tighter, pulling him in closer and relishing in the way Sonic whimpers on top of him. It's almost pathetic to him how easily reduced others become by something so simple. There's a few more thrusts, a sudden strangled sound from Sonic's throat and then the hedgehog goes completely still mid-thrust, everything stuttering. Quills flexed out, eyes screwed shut and face crumpled, Sonic grinds in as hard as he can with a low groan.
After a moment, cum eases down to his tail and the couch below. Shadow sighs with an annoyed frown. He'll have to scrub the stain out of the fabric tonight. Sonic's arms finally give out and Sonic sags against him, breathing heavy.
“Shit, dude.” Sonic sighs, out of breath and laughing into his neck. “That was…”
Shadow stares at the ceiling, his chest aching all the while. A pit growing ever larger in his stomach. Nothing. Even still. Even this.
He lets Sonic fuck him again to see if it makes a difference. Maybe the first time was merely a fluke. Like all the others. Thankfully for him, Sonic's refractory period is minimal. Sonic's cock already hard without much time wasted at all and shoved back inside him with little fanfare. Other than the annoyingly incessant way Sonic looked down at him and asked are you sure, as if he wasn't still leaking and drying with the hedgehog's spend.
An asinine question. He already told Sonic he could fuck him. He does not see why Sonic has to ask it again. The answer is more than obvious and irrelevant regardless. Sonic wants to fuck him, that's all that really matters in the equation.
“We shoulda—hff, done this forever ago. Fuck, Shads...you feel so fucking good. I could—hah—I could stay in you forever." Sonic humps into him and the cock inside him moves thickly, but still not enough.
Sonic noses at his jaw, kissing him before burying his face over his shoulder as he leverages down and snaps his hips forward. The couch legs shift angrily along the ground. The frame bumping on each thrust.
Shadow idly contemplates whether Sonic will eventually notice he hasn't made a sound the past minute. That he's gone beyond quiet besides the breaths forced out of him on each shove into him. Continuing to fake it crosses his mind, but he deems it ultimately unnecessary. Sonic's oblivious enthusiasm fills the gaps between them regardless. And he supposes it's difficult to notice much when all of Sonic's blood has vacated his brain and gone straight to his cock.
Sonic pulls back suddenly, brow pinched as he looks down at him. "You okay?"
Shadow wriggles his hips, huffing in annoyance at the loss of friction. "I'm fine. Keep going."
"Alright, jus' wanna make sure."
What an annoying habit. He doesn't understand why some people want him to be so vocal constantly. It's not as if it changes anything. Sonic shifts on his elbows and readjusts himself, tail flicking as he shuffles his knees and legs into a better position. Shadow huffs at the sensation of the cock moving inside him and then plays up his response to Sonic thrusting back in fully.
Something about that sends Sonic into an actual rut finally and Shadow grabs at Sonic's back quills, dragging the hedgehog chest to chest with himself as Sonic fucks him properly. He continues his string of tight and high breaths and feels the way Sonic's legs nearly shiver as he pretends to moan quietly.
The slow, methodical unraveling that takes over Sonic is at least satisfying and worth the effort the same way their spars are. Their races. There's still something missing though. Something he can't quite place as Sonic huffs desperately on top of him, hips grinding frantically.
"M'close, m'— oh fuck, fuck, Shads, ‘m—" Sonic whines, movements erratic as he nears his own completion again. "You're so good, you're so—"
He clenches down and listens to Sonic grunt in response and feels Sonic fuck into him a few more times before going still with a shudder and a groan. Cock throbbing inside him as Sonic cums and then collapses over him, more than spent.
Shadow rests his chin on Sonic's shivering, sweat clumped shoulder and stares at the ceiling. Fingers pet softly over his side. A contented rumble in Sonic's chest starting up where it's plastered against his. Their heartbeats mirror each other in an eerie stampede that has Shadow curling his lip in silent distaste at the sensation. He supposes he doesn't mind the warmth of Sonic laying on top of him, the weight all over him, the way Sonic buries his snout in the crook of his neck and leaves it there. Maybe he hates that there's parts of this that he wants to hold onto at all. His fingers curl into Sonic's fur hard enough it has to hurt.
And somehow still, despite all of it—despite everything—he still thinks about who else he's going to fuck tonight.
Rouge is at the computer console, her fingers moving fast over the keys meant for much larger hands as she disables the last of the base's security system and digs into the digital padlocks and keys they need to pry under. It's a simple infiltration mission, all things considered. Hardly worthy of deploying their unit over all of the other ones available, but Shadow can't deny that it's nice to stretch his legs. Sawing Eggman's robots in two is also nothing to balk at in terms of passing the time.
“OBSERVATION: YOU ARE SLOWER THAN USUAL.”
Shadow grimaces at Omega.
“Oh, my, so it wasn't just me who noticed?” Rouge says, smiling slyly at Shadow.
“EXPLAIN WHAT IS CAUSING THIS FLESHBAG DEFECT.”
“Well, you see, big guy,” Rouge starts conspiratorially, “it's on account of him getting laid last night.”
Shadow turns his grimace to Rouge, ears flipped back.
“Oh, please, I figured it'd happen eventually, but going at it all night. Now that's something,” Rouge says.
“It wasn't all night.” It'd hardly been an hour. Barely.
If he goes strictly by the amount of time it took to get Sonic to finally touch him, how long Sonic actually spent fucking him, recovering, and then fucking him again, it was hardly anything at all.
He went out and fucked someone else later, too, after the movie finally finished. After Sonic decided to go and fall asleep in his bed for some reason. He texted Sonic to inform him of his departure once he left regardless, along with a reminder to take the to-go bags in his fridge with him on the way out in the morning. It's not as if the reasoning he gave Sonic for leaving was a lie either. There was a mission and G.U.N. had requested his presence.
There were the other things that spurred him out the door as well. Such as the fact that he didn't particularly want to share his bed with anyone, and that Sonic had made no indication of vacating his premises after already fucking him. Twice.
“Those bags under your eyes would say otherwise,” Rouge teases.
Shadow frowns, arms crossed.
He doesn't have bags under his eyes. He looks the same as ever. The same as always. He knows because he combed his fingers over his quills in the mirror in the Field Agent's locker room before their departure. After Andrews had hoisted him up against the stall wall and fucked him, keeping a hand over his muzzle when someone passed by to utilize the showers, shallowly thrusting into him the whole while until Andrews came with a grunt of mint-stained breath against his brow.
Besides his less than planned encounter this morning—though, admittedly, he'd been the one to hesitate at the sight of Andrews at the sink and then walked into the stall first—he went through his usual meticulous routine without a hitch.
He looks as perfected as he's supposed to be.
“QUERY.”
Rouge hums, still typing. “Shoot away, Omega.”
“WHAT IS ‘GETTING LAID’?”
Rouge laughs and then sobers quickly, pushing back in her seat. “What do you think it means?”
“Don't encourage him,” Shadow says.
“SHADOW IS CURRENTLY STANDING, NOT HORIZONTAL. 'GETTING LAID' INDICATES HE IS ON THE GROUND.”
Rouge laughs even harder, grabbing at her stomach.
“THERE MUST BE A DEFECT WITH YOUR VOICE MODULATOR. EXPLAIN THE MEANING OR I ACCESS THE SYSTEM TERMINAL WITH MY FIST.”
Rouge puts up a hand, almost hiccuping. “Stop, stop, seriously, I'm—”
“It's a turn of phrase, Omega. Regardless, it's not important, we have other matters at hand."
“RESEARCHING: ‘GETTING LAID’.”
Omegas eyes dull and flash as he accesses his Internet hook-up. Something Rouge and Tails helped provide the E-100 unit with. Something Shadow finds particularly grating at times like this.
“YOU HAD SEX.”
Rouge laughs again, giving up on her endeavor at the console to cover her face.
Shadow sighs.
“THERE ARE LESS LAME TERMS AVAILABLE.”
“Well, rattle 'em off for us, c'mon,” Rouge says grinning wide and catching her breath with a hand on her muzzle.
“INTERCOURSE, COITUS, KNOCKING BOOTS, DOING THE HORIZONTAL TANGO, ROOTING, SHAKING SHEETS—”
Rouge doubles over again, her arm barred on the desk as she laughs hard enough Shadow's positive her sides have to hurt.
“Omega, stop.”
“No, no, let him keep going,” Rouge says through gasps of air.
“BANGING, SCREWING, BUMPING UGLIES, PORKING, SMASHING, SWAPPING SPIT, NAILING, HIDING THE—”
“Rouge.”
“Okay, okay, that's good. I think we got it now.” Rouge swipes at her face, mascara smeared in the fur under one eye. “Thanks, Omega.”
“AFFIRMATIVE.”
Shadow's ears are pressed back as far as they can go. “Are you finished getting into the system yet or not?”
Rouge gives him a smug look and primly presses the enter key. The Eggman logo on the screen spins and vanishes into a desktop. “Oh, I was in ages ago. I just like to see you get all red in the ears. So impatient. At least Blue finishes fast, hm?”
"FURTHER QUERY." Omega makes another auxiliary pinging tone. “WHAT IS ‘FINISHES FAST’?”
Shadow groans and covers his face with his hands.
His phone vibrates in his quills during the flight back to headquarters. The hum of the jet rumbles under his back and shoulders as he pulls it out.
>>> Hey, when you're done playing Commander's Favorite Pet, I got something for you
There's a map, a pinned location with coordinates. Shadow can only assume it's Andrews’ domicile outside of the G.U.N. Barracks and Headquarters. Another attachment follows. He opens it and scowls at his phone, deleting the message and attached image quickly.
You're disgusting. <<<
Lose my number. <<<
>>> See you tonight freak ❤️
Fuck you. <<<
>>> That's the plan sweetheart
He grimaces at his phone, thumb hovering over the keyboard. Another series of messages pop up in a separate thread.
Thankfully, these ones are far less phallic in nature.
>>> good luck on ur mission dude!!!
>>> sorry i slept in so late btw. didn't mean to miss u leaving :(
>>> lemme kno if u wanna get a bite to eat once u touchdown <3
He stares at the messages. It's usually not difficult to figure out what script or manner he should reply to them in. Most follow simple patterns. Are you available? Yes. No. Later. Tomorrow. I miss you. He deletes those and blocks the numbers. Humans are often clingy. Easily attached.
There's a slightly strangled feeling in his chest as he looks over Sonic's messages. He can't tell if it's the kind that makes him want to delete the messages or reply to them.
He leaves Sonic on read instead.
After a moment there's another buzz. He fishes out his phone and checks it.
>>> do u got any preferences? i was thinking chun-nan maybe. there's this place that makes these killer meat buns
Shadow sighs and closes his phone. It vibrates again immediately.
>>> ur probably busy.
>>>spy stuff. i totally get it.
>>> maybe some other time????
Shadow stares and for once he isn't sure how to respond. Some part of him had merely assumed what happened with Sonic was a one time thing, or at the least as infrequent as the times Sonic texts him a succinct ‘wanna race?’ out of the blue. Perhaps that was in error. Perhaps it's something akin to his arrangement with Captain Andrews then.
Shadow frowns. It will make it difficult to arrange around Sonic's erratic schedule and inherently disorganized nature. He assumes Sonic's libido is high as well, his latent energy is far higher than humans after all and his refractory period is comparably shorter, too. It means he'll have to—
“Planning another late night rendezvous with you know who?” Rouge asks, leaning back from the pilot's seat with a knowing smirk.
“No,” Shadow says, shoving his phone back into his quills. “And it's none of your business.”
“PER CURRENT RATE OF RESPIRATION BIOMETRICS, YOU ARE PLANNING ON ‘GETTING LAID’.”
Rouge laughs so hard it's a miracle she doesn't nosedive the jet.
“Shadow.”
Shadow glares at the desk, the name placard. Commander Tower. Abraham. Abe. Maria only ever called him Abe. He remembers the Commander the way he remembers the ARK, pieces of stained glass fettered together, a whole image fragmented, distorted by the time of day.
He'd fucked Andrews after his mission, in the man's home for once. On his too slick bedsheets that slid under his knees as he straddled the human. Legs spread nearly too wide while Andrews' hands grabbed his hips and pulled him down on each thrust up. It'd been different from the other times. The office desks and the bathroom sinks and the closets. He laid his muzzle on Andrews' sweat-slicked and heaving chest after and felt the human's heart beating under his chin.
He thought about texting Sonic while he laid there, cum drying between his legs, an ache all over him and tight in his chest. Before he could grab his phone, Andrews' grabbed him by his scruff and rolled him over underneath him and he forgot why he ever thought about Sonic in the first place.
The Commander clears his throat pointedly. Andrews' texted him again this morning, requesting a meetup at their usual spot on the fourth floor of the Tacs Unit Building. He didn't have a chance to reply before his ear comm clicked on and the Commander demanded his immediate presence. His phone vibrates in his quills again. Shadow smooths his fingers over his thighs and thinks about checking it, the fur pricking on his arms.
The fluorescents above him stick in his eyes, a pressure at the base of his skull growing larger the longer the Commander's stares through him.
“Agent.”
“Was there an issue with my latest mission report?” Shadow asks, forcing his eyes up to meet the Commander's.
He always finds himself focusing more on the green-blue one regardless.
The Commander sighs. “No, Shadow. It was fine.”
“Then why am I here?” Shadow asks, ears flicking backwards.
“Internal’s gotten back to us finally. We interviewed with Andrews and since they've assessed you're of similar technical ranking and relatively sound mind based on your previous assessments, there's no disciplinary action to be taken at this time.”
Shadow grits his teeth. “I don't understand.”
“Andrews should have declined your proposition in the first place. It's inappropriate conduct, borderline grounds for temporary suspension, termination if he wasn't as valuable as he is.”
“I'm the one who asked him.”
“I understand,” the Commander says. “But you're also—”
“I’m what?”
The Commander frowns. “I don't know how to put this delicately, Agent.”
“Then don't.”
The Commander slides a sheet of paper over the desk despite Shadow's words. “I'd advise you see the on-base psychologist, at least once a week, if not more.”
“That won't be necessary.”
“I can't pull rank and force you at this time, but if there's any more incidents, Shadow, I'll have to—”
Shadow shoves his chair back as he stands. “I'm more than capable of carrying out my duties with G.U.N.”
“This isn't about G.U.N.”
He narrows his eyes. He heads for the door, the proper dismissal not given yet, but he knows the Commander of all the humans in this base won't order him to sit back down.
The supplies in the medkit are old, soured and outdated.
Thankfully, he's never had to use it. He only kept it as part of his ‘welcome package’ to G.U.N. Its current usefulness isn't lost on him as he threads a needle through the neat-edged gash in his arm and pulls it through the other side.
He had severely miscalculated. The allure of actually being hurt for once had been hard to ignore. It's not often he's left bleeding longer than a few minutes, even the most egregious wounds heal on him with little time wasted. This is different.
He can still feel where the suppression cuffs sat on his wrists, the coiled, pathetic tendril of Chaos Energy left low in him even still. He assumes it may take hours to siphon back to full without an Emerald to assist him. Nausea, dizziness, the back end of some nightmare prescription advertisement, except he'd gotten into those cuffs and experienced every single symptom all at once, like taking a G.U.N. Heavy Dog Unit straight to the chest.
It had been his own idea anyway. All of it.
He snaps the end of the thread embedded in his arm off with his teeth. There's blood sticky in his fur, slick on his palm pads and the sink counter he's balancing his arm on. He sighs. There's still three more to go.
The cuffs had been something R&D put into development at the request of the Commander following the beginning of the Black Arms Invasion, and then subsequently scrapped following his reconciliation with the man. He only found out about them through Rouge, who apparently keeps tabs on most things G.U.N. scrapes together and intends to ever use against him. He understands it's merely a precaution in case he goes AWOL once more. It's only logical. To him, however, it's also an opportunity.
Andrews had pulled rank and card to get his hands on the cuffs once he explained them to the human. Only one night. Andrews had smiled as he explained it, I'm sure we can make the most of it.
The knife had been his own idea as well. Andrews had been more than willing to oblige him per usual. Curiosity. Excision. He'd wanted to see how long he could truly bleed with the cuffs on. Andrews’ headboard had been too wide to secure his arms to each bedpost, and with one set of cuffs, the standard configuration he read about online was impossible. Instead, a system of rope tied over and around the middle of them had made up for the gap. His legs were left free of course, to be spread apart when everything else lost its novelty.
His phone vibrates on the bathroom counter. Shadow picks it up, smearing a thin line of blood across the face of it with his thumb as he answers blindly. He can only assume it's Rouge. No one else calls him.
“Yo! Shads!”
Shadow stares flatly at the wall of the bathroom. Apparently, Sonic calls him now, too. He's not sure if it's the fact Sonic finally got his cock into him or something else, but the hedgehog seems particularly bold in regards to him now.
“What?” Shadow grits out, the stench of iron everywhere and too heavy.
“Geez, that bad?”
“What do you want?”
He doesn't have time for games or antics. He needs to finish stitching himself up and sleep for once so he can heal already. He'll pop the stitches back out once the healing process starts, but for now he's stuck with this. Crude and rudimentary and primitive.
“Why does it sound like you just ran a marathon, dude?” Sonic asks.
“I'm—” Shadow grits his teeth. “Injured.”
“What?!”
Shadow holds the phone away from himself, wincing.
Sonic blurts out a laugh and then a confused sound. “Sorry, man, I just—I didn't even know you could get, y’know, and Rouge didn't say anything when I called—”
“Why did you call her?”
“To make sure you weren't dead? I haven't heard from you for like four days. And I wasn't expecting much honestly, but a ‘hey mission success’ woulda been nice.”
Shadow glares at the bathroom wall, ears pressed down. “You're not my keeper.”
Sonic laughs tightly. “I mean no. But I'm kinda your boyfriend, or whatever we are, so—”
“Why did you call?”
“I got food. Was wonderin’ if you were hungry.”
He'll need to eat in order to facilitate a quicker recovery back to top form. He currently has nothing in his apartment that is edible and isn't alcohol, and Sonic's offer of food is appealing. The price tag, he assumes, is having sex with Sonic. It's a more than adequate trade off in his mind.
Shadow sighs. “Fine.”
His ear twitches at the sudden rush and crackle of wind over the phone, a knock that echoes from the speaker and from the front door of his apartment.
“Were you waiting on the street?” Shadow asks.
“Sorta. Can you get the door?”
“It's unlocked.”
He hears it open over both the phone and in reality and the duality doesn't do favors for his current bout of vertigo. He hangs up the call and drops his phone on the sink counter, reaching for the needle and thread again.
“Shadow?”
He can hear Sonic zip around the living room and the kitchen and then his bedroom.
“I'm in the bathroom.”
Suddenly, Sonic's standing in the bathroom door. “Do you always leave your door unlocked like that?”
Shadow grimaces, listed against the sink counter, the closed toilet lid under him smeared with deep purple-red the same way his hands and arms are. “Why would I lock it?”
“Yeah…” Sonic looks over him properly and whistle's low. “Geez, dude, you look like you took the bad end of a buzzsaw.”
What an inane remark. Every end of a buzzsaw is the 'bad' one. Shadow bares his teeth without a word and begins stitching up the next incision.
“Do you need help?”
“No.”
There's the rustle of plastic bags, something set on the floor. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” He can smell cooked meats, rice flour, sesame oil, others he can't quite place. His stomach curdles in a way it usually doesn't. The sensation grows worse and he can't tell if it's hunger or the need to vomit.
Sonic fidgets, shifting his weight to his heels and then his toes in a repeating pattern that sways in his peripherals and makes the room spin slightly. “So, how'd ya get those?”
Shadow drops his fist onto the counter, pulling the thread until it snaps where he tied it off. “It doesn't matter.”
“...you didn't? I mean, you wouldn't like—”
“No.” It doesn't take much to gather Sonic is implying a more self-inflicted nature.
Sonic sighs heavily. “Just wanna make sure.”
“What a foolish assumption regardless,” Shadow says, shoving the dirtied gauze and supplies into the sink for him to take care of later. “I need to rinse off. Go wait in the bedroom.”
Shadow towels off carefully. Something he's unused to in most regards to himself. He knows showering with stitches is generally not recommended, and a few of the sutures popped from the heat and moisture and when he reached around to scrub at his quills and the dried cum Sonic didn't see.
Sometimes, Andrews likes to pull out and finish on him instead. On his stomach, on his back. He doesn't particularly understand the habit, the clean up is a hassle compared to when the man just finishes inside him. The singular time Andrews pulled out mid-blow job to finish on his face he'd raked his claws into the human's thighs deep enough to remind him to never repeat the same mistake ever again.
Sonic's already settled on the bed when Shadow leaves the bathroom. The take out container flipped open on the sheets. He wrinkles his muzzle at the lack of concern for grease and spills. The only thing keeping him from barking at Sonic to take the meal to a table is that it won't matter in an hour regardless. He'll have to clean the linens again anyway after they have sex.
A Styrofoam tray is shoved into his lap the moment he settles cross-legged on the bed.
“Here, wasn't sure whatcha liked so I just sampled some of everything.”
The meal isn't unpleasant. It's better than he anticipated. It gets rid of the hollowed, dry sensation behind his eyes and the world stops tilting to one side the more he eats.
Finished, Shadow sets the mostly empty tray aside carefully on the side table and gathers the other pieces of the scattered, impromptu dinner. Sonic's settled back against the headboard, pecking at his phone and frowning at something. He's not sure who the hedgehog's been texting back and forth with, but obviously the chain hasn't been a pleasant one with how Sonic's fidgeted and sighed through the exchange.
He supposes it's as good a time as any to get what Sonic actually came here to do over with.
Straddling Sonic's lap is easy, green eyes blink owlishly up at him and the hedgehog's phone falls limp against his chest.
“Shadow?” Sonic asks, legs shifting under him. “Are you sure you should be—”
Shadow kisses Sonic to make him shut up. There's a moment of stiffness and then Sonic relaxes into it all, hips rolling up into him. He grinds down in kind and Sonic pants breathlessly into his mouth.
He ends up in the usual position he ends up in with most of his encounters. On his back, sheets pulling under his shoulders and quills, hands fisted in Sonic's back fur as Sonic tucks his face into his shoulder and fucks him.
It's adequate. He can feel the stitches in his side pulling and there's a dull ache where Andrews also fucked him earlier, but it's manageable. He can tell Sonic's finally close when he tenses up all over on top of him, hips rocking into him faster. Sonic grabs at his shoulders, chest to chest, snout buried in the crook of his jaw with heavy-huffed breaths, a whine of his name, and then Sonic comes with a groan.
Shadow stares at the ceiling. Sonic's heartbeat is a full body one all over him, sweat sticking their fur together as Sonic continues to lay on top of him and pant heavily. There's lips pressed to his shoulder, his collar bone, a muzzle shoved into his chest fur. Sonic hums contently and the rumble of it sits in his own chest.
He lets his arms and legs fall from where he wrapped them around Sonic and waits for Sonic to pull out. Cum already easing out of him and staining the sheets, the cock inside him softening slowly.
He faked coming at the start, when Sonic kept insisting on trying to get him off with his fingers first. He's familiar enough with the performance, it hardly took anything to lean into it and move on to something more familiar. He's unsure why Sonic cares if he comes at all. It's not as if it affects anything pertaining to how Sonic's cock fits inside him. It goes in regardless. His anatomy is perfectly adapted to this particular kind of intercourse after all.
“Hey, I know you should definitely use the bathroom 'n all real soon, but is it okay if I—” Sonic starts, breathing heavily still. “Sorry, if this is super weird, man...but you feel really good and I just—”
Shadow's muzzle wrinkles. “You what?”
“Can I stay inside you? Like, for a bit?”
He huffs. “Fine.”
Sonic pushes up at that, his brow scrunched. “Fine, like good? Or…?”
“I don't particularly care either way.”
Sonic frowns. And then rolls off of him, pulling out with the slight familiar burn instead of staying in like he assumed Sonic would.
“What are you doing?” Shadow asks, sitting up, annoyance hot down his spine.
“Well, you didn't sound very enthusiastic about the idea, so I'm—”
Shadow snarls under his breath and slips out of bed, Sonic's cum sliding down the fur of his thighs all the while as more pushes out of him. He needs to clean the sheets. Himself. He needs to get this imbecile out of his apartment before he tries to spend another night in it. And he needs to find someone else to fuck him who will stop asking him so many useless questions constantly.
“Shadow?”
Shadow hears the sheets rustling as Sonic gets up from the bed to presumably follow him. The fridge opens under a hard yank and he grabs out the more than chilled tequila. He drinks from the bottle instead of bothering with pulling down a glass. Rouge was right at least, keeping it cold makes the slide far, far smoother.
“Yo, what's going on?”
He smacks the bottle onto the counter with a hard clink. “Why are you still here?”
“Uh, ‘cause I'm worried about you.”
Sonic says it like it's obvious. Like he's some idiot for not gathering how simple this all is. Shadow takes another long pull and sets the bottle back down. “I'm fine.”
“Clearly.”
He bares his teeth. “This isn't a motel.”
“What?” Sonic asks, ears pressing back. “Dude, what're you talking about?”
A snarl tangles up in his chest. He wants to be alone. He needs to— “Get out.”
“Shadow—”
He slides his hands over his ears and tries not to tug at them. It's a childish, immature habit he broke a long time ago. One that he doesn't need to resume here. He—
“What's going on, man? Did I do something wrong? I'm—”
“Please, just—” Shadow grits out, his head pounding, everything too loud, too close. He can feel Sonic standing close to him like a brand of fire, too warm. Everything hurts and he— “Leave.”
A hand touches his shoulder and his skin crawls under his fur, knife’s ends slipping under the surface, fire ants chewing through every inch of him. Eyes staring. Breathing and breathing. Panting. Grunting. The sound wet and ragged and disgusting and he—
“Get out!”
There's the sound of a door. Finally. The refrigerator thrums loudly behind him. He sags against the counter, shaking, palms pushing at the surface of it, everything aching and hurting all at once. Too much. It's still too much and it's not going away. It's not…
His phone vibrates in the bedroom. He stumbles for it. An ice pick lancing through his skull as he flips it over and the light blares at him.
>>> sorry.
>>> i left the rest of the food in your fridge
>>> i hope you feel better tomorrow dude
Another buzz.
>>> <3
Shadow slams his phone into the nightstand hard enough he hears a crack.