Archive of Our Own ^beta

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“Breathe. Silver, you have to take a deep breath.”

Out of anyone else’s mouth, these words would have no effect on him. He’s in too deep, thinking about what went wrong today and the comrades they lost (they shouldn’t even have to call them comrades, they’re not soldiers, they’re kids fighting a monster, what the fuck, what the fuck) and how slim their chances of ever banishing Iblis from their world are, and he hadn’t even noticed he’d started hyperventilating until a hand landed on his shoulder.

But this is Blaze. The hand steadying him is warm and solid and hers, and so is the voice speaking calmly in his ear, stern and no-nonsense as only his best friend can be.

Silver does as he’s told, and slowly but surely he comes back to his senses. He looks up from where he’s crouched in a corner, blinking as if he were resurfacing from underwater, and he sees her. Blaze smiles down at him, a smile with the barest hint of teeth that would be terrifying for everyone else. But not for him. Never for him.

Blaze says a lot of things, entire sentences he can barely grasp the meaning of, but he gets the point: they’re gonna win. He can’t give up. They’ve got to keep fighting together, avenge the lost ones if needs be, and they will be there to see Iblis vanquished.

Out of everyone else’s mouth, this would be a lie.

But this is Blaze, and he trusts Blaze with his life.

So he believes her.

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At least, Vector finds himself thinking sometimes, we get to sleep together.

It’s a surprising show of optimism on his part, since there’s not much to be happy about regarding this whole Resistance thing. They’re fighting a bloody war, after all; they’re pretty much weaponless and hopeless and Sonic-less against Eggman, and even if they somehow manage to win there’ll be half a world to rebuild after months of being stuck with countless scared refugees in a glorified hole in the ground. The Chaotix only got to share a room because the base is packed with people, and said room nearly doesn’t count as such, so small and cramped that Vector’s bulky frame barely fits in the bed and he keeps hitting his head against the ceiling.

Still. It’s easier to forget there’s war raging outside your door when you effectively have a door to shut it all out; and at night, with Espio curled against him, warm and steady and familiar, it’s almost as if they were still safe and sound in the backroom of their agency. Even if Charmy keeps slipping in their bed as he hadn’t done in ages - but Vector can’t kick out a kid who’s having battlefield nightmares, can he? Espio would glare at him. And besides, it’s nice to have the people he cares the most about close at hand, even if they’re all tired and achey, and Espio is too grumpy even for quick morning kisses sometimes.

Home is out of their reach, but Vector will make do with what he has, for now.

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Espio stared at the flower in open confusion.

It was tucked inside a history book he’d left on the table earlier in the day. He was the only one in the house who would ever read something like that (Charmy was having an intense superhero comic phase, and he would have been hard-pressed to remember the last time he’d seen Vector read anything), so there was no question on whether it was meant for him or not.

That wasn’t the problem, though. The problem was who had left it there, and why.

The chameleon lifted it between two fingers and looked carefully at it. It wasn’t anything special, a small flower with yellow petals, and it had been torn quite carelessly from the ground - whoever had picked it had left the roots attached, and some dirt, too.

Shoddy as it was, it looked like Charmy’s work. Perhaps he’d been trying to press the flower between the pages, like people in movies did. Perhaps he’d intended it as a gift, and had only managed to leave streaks of mud on the paper.

Sighing, Espio closed the book and made its way to where Vector was thumbing through some notes on their latest case. For once, the crocodile seemed oddly focused on what he was doing, so it took Espio a moment to get his attention. “Have you seen Charmy anywhere?”

“Nah, I think he’s off bothering someone else for once. Why? What’s he done now?”

The chameleon waved the flower in his hand. “I think he left me this. I wanted to ask him what it was for.”

To his surprise, Vector didn’t laugh or make some distracted comment about what could be going through the bee’s head. Instead he blushed, and he seemed to burrow deeper into his notes.

Espio blinked, perplexed. Then, as realization dawned on him: “Vector, did you leave the flower there? Why?”

“Wanted to do something nice” the crocodile muttered, turning an even deeper shade of red. “For a change, y’know.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Pleasantly stunned, Espio considered the situation for a moment. “Couldn’t you just have given it to me, though? Or - or bought a clean one, you know, there’s dirt everywhere-”

“Can’t do anything nice without you complaining” Vector grumbled. “Next time I want to pick a damn flower I’ll leave it alone, alright?”

A smile tugged at the corner of Espio’s mouth. “Yeah, alright, stop it, you big sap” he said, before kissing the crocodile right on the cheek.

Then he wandered off to find Charmy, a slight skip in his step.

Vector probably needed some time alone to recover from the embarrassment, after all.

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“Don’t you try and say I told you so” Vector snarled, as soon as the last of the gang grunts had fallen unconscious to the ground.

Before him, Espio raised an eyebrow in mute disbelief. He looked perfectly unfazed by the whole situation, as if he’d been expecting nothing less from his day.

Vector’d have probably hated him a bit, hadn’t he been so happy to see his face.

“I wasn’t about to” the chameleon said in the end. “I was thinking more on the lines of You’re an idiot.”

Alright, Vector could concede that. Particularly because for all his superior intellect and planning skills, he was the one tied to a chair in a damp basement, knocked out goons sprawled around him.

“However,” Espio continued after a moment “it’s odd that I’d find you here, because I remember telling someone that barging in to catch these people on the act would be a bad idea, and then that someone decided to split up and finish the job on his own-”

Vector groaned, rolling his eyes. “Just unbind me and be done with it.”

It was not fair. It had been a solid plan. A bit lacking when it came to how many people he’d expected to find in the base he’d tried to infiltrate, but still. Not that bad.

Espio crossed his arms and leveled him with an icy stare. “You know, I’ve got half a mind to just leave you there. What was the point, exactly? Apart from getting yourself killed?”

Well now, that was just plain overreacting. “Aw, come on. I had everything under control. And besides” he added, with what he hoped could pass for a charming grin “I kept them distracted well enough, didn’t I? They were so focused on me they weren’t expecting you at all.”

There was a lull in the conversation, where it looked like Espio might turn around and leave for good. After a moment, though, the chameleon scoffed, shook his head and moved to free Vector from his bindings.

“Don’t you dare do anything like that ever again” he muttered, working through the rope tying the crocodile’s hands together.

Vector’s smile broadened. The fussing had been on par with their usual conversations, but this, this was the truth of it. Espio could talk big all he wanted, swear to hell and back that he was pissed more than anything else, but it was clear he’d been worried from the moment he’d noticed Vector had left. It was comfortingly familiar, just as the fingers trailing ever so slightly on Vector’s skin were, as if to check he was really there, hale and whole. “I’ll do my best, okay? No promises, though.”

He stood up, stretching, as soon as he was free, relishing in the way his joints popped after ages of sitting uncomfortably on a tiny chair. Then he offered Espio a broad grin, feeling a thrill down his spine when the chameleon stepped back to his side, still scowling but with an air of long-suffering relief at seeing him up and about.

“Alright, then. Let’s see what these fools were trying to hide from the Chaotix!”

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“How come I never see you laughing?”

Shadow looked up from the piece of motorbike engine he’d been tinkering with. In the glaring sunlight, he could just about make out Sonic’s silhouette, staring down at him with his hands on his hips.

“What do you mean?” He asked, carefully setting the tools aside.

He was not upset by the interruption: mildly surprised to see Sonic already back from his run was more like it. There were countless things a super-fast hedgehog could do on a sunny summer day, even without any impending threat against the world - it was a wonder he’d run out of pastimes so quickly.

Sonic, though, didn’t seem inclined to explain. Instead, he gestured vaguely towards the old radio Shadow had propped up a few feet away. “I heard a bit of that radio program while waiting for you to notice I’d come back - took you a while, by the way, you might wanna work on those reflexes - and you didn’t laugh even once. It’s a shame, it’s pretty funny.”

Shadow blinked, turning to the incriminated system. He hadn’t even noticed it was still on.

It had become a habit of his, after all, in the lazy, long afternoons during periods of inactivity. Dismantling the bike, cleaning it and reassembling it piece by piece, lulled by the repetitive moments; the sun warming his back; the oldies radio station playing in the background, something Rouge would have mocked him endlessly for but that set his mind at ease, prompting memories that were mostly happy and only slightly painful.

It was…peaceful, in a way. It allowed his thoughts to wander, with no worry in sight. But it did mean he often lost track of his surroundings, so he merely shrugged in answer.

“And besides, you never laugh at my jokes, either” Sonic pressed on, undeterred by his silence. “That’s even worse.”

“That’s just because your jokes are not funny.” Sonic clutched at his chest, gasping in mock outrage. “How dare you - I’ll have you know they’re very amusing.”

Shadow scoffed. Honestly, the sheer gall of it. “Amuse me, then. I’m all ears.”

Silence stretched between them for a minute. Then Sonic took a few steps forward, closing the distance between them, and he cupped Shadow’s chin with his hand, pressing a kiss to his lips.

It lasted only a handful of seconds before Shadow broke it, a small smile on his face. “That wasn’t very amusing. I fear you’ll have to try harder.”

Sonic huffed, draping himself over Shadow’s shoulders. “You’re impossible. One day I’ll catch you by surprise, and then we’ll see who’s gonna have the last laugh.”

“Was that a pun?”

“Glad you noticed, at least.” The blue hedgehog pointed at the pieces Shadow had just discarded. “So, tell me. Did you make much progress while I was gone? Or it’s my glorious presence that makes you work so well?”

Shadow shook his head, smile still dancing on his lips, and went back to working, occasionally pointing some oddity out to the other as he went. It wasn’t the same thing, with Sonic there: it was not as peaceful, nor did he expect to get to the end of it as fast as he would have on his own, but it was not unpleasant, either. It was a different kind of warmth, settling somewhere close to his heart as Sonic prattled on, covering the music streaming in from the radio.

It was, Shadow thought, the kind of afternoon he could happily live through for many days on end.

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“I told you, I’m fine” Sonic said, and then winched as fingers dug into a especially nasty bruise on his right side.

“You look pretty banged up, for being fine.” An impassible look on her face , Blaze kept on patching him up, unmoved by his plight even as the tightening of bandages made him flinch once more.

As a rule, Blaze was not very delicate a healer. Efficient, yes: she cleaned injuries and spread salves like she did everything else - calmly and precisely and with a surety that spoke of years of experience. She was never purposefully cruel, nor did she enjoy making him suffer more than necessary, which was why Sonic trusted her in this, just as he did in many other circumstances.

But she did not take particular pity of his whining, either.

“Perhaps you should consider not being so reckless when you fight, next time” she went on, voice still even and matter-of-factly. A less accustomed listener would have thought she was being serious.

Sonic, though, only groaned in response. “Next you’ll tell me to stop saving the world, too.”

He swiveled around to look her in the eyes. They were sitting down, a rare moment alone between the latest skirmish with Eggman and the responsibilities that would soon sweep the both of them away again.

They didn’t often have a chance like this. They wouldn’t have had this one either, had Sonic tended to his own injuries as he usually did - but they’d learned soon enough to seize an opportunity when it came their way.

“And you’re almost as bad as me anyway” he added with an impish grin. “When it comes to taking risks, that is. You’re just better at not letting robots slam into you at full speed.”

“That’s called being aware of my own abilities” Blaze replied. But there was a cheeky glint in her eyes as well, and he was regaled with one of her rare smiles, small though it was.

She tugged at the bandages again. “Now stop squirming, or we’ll be here all day.”

“Yeah, go on, keep pretending you don’t like having me in your clutches” Sonic said, but he turned back around obligingly, relishing in the quietness of the day and the comforting feeling of her hands on his body.

It was not much, and it would likely not last long. But nobody said they couldn’t enjoy it, in the meantime.

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“What would you do if I kissed you right now?”

She looks at him over the rim of her mug of tea. It’s still piping hot, even though she’s brewed it hours ago, because her powers are useful like that sometimes, and the steam rising from it makes the air somewhat wobbly before her face.

He shouldn’t be focusing on things like that, but he’s too nervous to think about anything else. Especially the words he’s just blurted out apropos of nothing, after seeing Blaze curled up on their sofa the way she always does in the early afternoons, soft and relaxed and utterly beautiful.

Blaze herself seems utterly unfazed by it all, and only quirks an eyebrow as she puts the mug down, and this is what Silver loves about her the most, the way she faces everything with such calm and patience, even when he’s shaken and angry and bursting at the seams. She’s like a safehouse, even more so than their own, actual house, with its leaks and weird noises and the nosy lady that lives upstairs.

“I don’t know” she says in the end, and his heart sinks just a tiniest bit. But then the corner of her mouth turns in a small, amused smile, and her stance changes - she turns to him slightly, unfurling her crossed legs and extending a hand. An invitation. “But why don’t you try and see for yourself?”

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Espio wakes up because he feels someone watching him.

It’d be enough to put anyone on alert, especially someone with reflexes as well honed as his, but he’s too tired for his brain to react properly. And besides, he’s fairly sure that there’s nothing to be worried about, so his hold on Charmy tightens only slightly before he cracks an eye open to see for himself.

True enough, it’s just Vector, looking down at the two of them with an amused smirk.

“Care to share the joke?” Espio mutters, stifling a yawn.

Vector chuckles under his breath. “Nothing. But you look cute, you and the kid. What happened?”

What happened was that Charmy woke up after a bad dream and wouldn’t go back to sleep alone, so Espio thought to stay with him until he settled down. But he’d misjudged how exhausted he was, and the kid has a grip like a grapevine, so Espio  dozed off before he could pull his arm off his grasp.

It’s not bad, per se. In fact, Espio had kind of missed it - Charmy used to be a clingy baby, always tugging at their arms and legs and clamoring for attention, climbing in their bed midway through the night until they gently bullied it out of him because he kicked too much in his sleep. It’s not the first time they’re forced to relive those days, nor is it likely to be the last.

But they’re still fresh off the other side of a war, and Charmy’s nightmares are those of someone much older, full of laser shots and scorched battlefields, so it’s not as easy as it ought to be, letting him go. If anything, it makes Espio want to pull him closer and stay the whole night, even though Charmy’s bed is cramped and not really made to fit two people.

But all of it would take too long to explain, and besides, Vector likely already knows, so he just shakes his head. “Nightmares” he says, which is an explanation in and of itself. “Go back to bed. I’ll follow as soon as he lets me.”

“Heh. Alright.” Vector bends down slightly, and his knuckles brush against Charmy’s cheek, then Espio’s, with a care that feels almost reverential.

Espio blinks - not in surprise, he’s used to such impromptu gestures of affection, especially in the dead of the night, when it’s quiet and private. But it is welcome, and he finds himself leaning into it, just a little, not enough that the kid can raise a fuss.

Then Vector straightens up and grins again, unruffled. “Hurry up. I’ll save you a spot.”

He’s gone without another word, the door closing silently behind his back.

Still, the feeling of his touch lingers on Espio’s skin, warm and soothing. The chameleon lets Charmy scuttle closer, mumbling something unintelligible, and then closes his eyes, settling down once more.

He has a hunch it will be a long night, but he must be more tired than he thinks, because somehow, he can’t find it in himself to be upset.

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“You sure you got all the stuff you need, kid?

Belle nods, though her fingers can’t seem to stop fidgeting nervously with her flicking tail. "Amy said she and Jewel would think about everything, so…yes, I think so.”

Vector hums in acknowledgement, but he still doesn’t seem convinced. “And you’re sure you wanna go? No one’s forcing you, Belle. It’s not a big deal if you’d rather stay home with us. Hell, I think Charmy might even be happy.”

“I…I do want to go.” Belle gives him a tight smile, only slightly forced. “It’ll be fun, I think. A distraction. Right?”

She’s not certain a camping trip might be enough to wipe out the memories of her last few experiences from her brain, in truth, but she has to try nevertheless. She has to. She can’t just wallow in her self-pity forever. Maybe it’s not a perfect solution all around, but a little outing has never hurt anyone.

Right?

“Alright. If you think so.” Vector sighs, shaking his head, then he crouches down to her level and puts a hand on her head, heavy but gentle, waving his other finger sternly.

“But anything happens, you know where to find us, alright? We’ll come get you before you can say s'mores. Got it?”

“You don’t have to be worried about me. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“I know you will. But what you gotta know is that if you need me, I’m just one call away. Understood, kiddo?”

Something warm and clenching settles comfortingly in Belle’s chest, abrupt but not unwelcome. If she were just a smidge more real, she suspects her lower lip would be wobbling with poorly contained emotion, but as it is, she merely throws herself at Vector, wrapping her arms around his thick neck. “I- Understood. Thank you.”

If he’s startled by her actions, he doesn’t let it show, and instead pats her woolly hair with rough fondness, and Belle senses a smile in his voice, too, when he speaks out once more.

“Attagirl. No need to go around thanking anyone. Now let’s make sure you’ve really got everything- Espio will have your head and mine, if you forget stuff in the front yard.”

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If Kit flinches when Surge reaches out to him once the battle is done, it’s due to surprise, and not fear.

He’s not afraid of Surge. He knows that Surge would never hurt him without a reason - he is useful to her, he makes sure of it. He doesn’t have to worry about obeying orders and strengthening his powers, so long as he can provide the help she needs.

It’s just that he hadn’t expected her to be onto him so quickly, is all. His mind retraces his latest actions at lighting speed, trying to determine whether he might have made some mistake. Sure, he’s taken some risky decisions, maybe put himself in harm’s way a couple more times than usual - but that’s his job, right? He was just doing his job.

And still Surge grabs him by the arms with surprising intensity, her eyes blazing, and the first words that come out of her mouth are “What the hell were you thinking?!”

Kit blinks, stunned. That…is oddly generic for a question. He doesn’t know what to make of it. “W-what do you mean?”

The tenrec shakes him roughly, with a franticness that reeks mostly of anger but also - surprisingly - of a tiny bit of panic.

“You could’ve gotten yourself killed, you idiot! You could’ve— fuck! You scared the shit outta me. Don’t you ever pull something like that on me again!”

“Oh.” Relief floods Kit like one of his tidal waves, and conjures a small smile, from satisfaction and a strangely warm sensation building up in his chest alike. “I’m sorry, ma'am. I’m- it’s not gonna happen again.”

Surge harrumphs in disbelief, but she lingers one second more before shoving him away with the usual, comforting roughness.

“It better not. We’ve got stuff to do- we won’t get anywhere if you break your neck pulling stupid stunts, you brat.”