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Sonic had scars.
This was not new information. Everyone knew it. It was near impossible to live the life he did and come out clean. However, it was hard to tell just how many. His fur and quills hid them almost perfectly. Very few were big enough to cause some lighter fur regrowth around them. Those ones being just a touch more visible.
For example, Shadow noted his chest scars that marked a very old surgery. Even female animal mobians had bigger chests than males normally, much like overlanders. And, similarly to overlanders, animal mobians also tended to seek out methods of transitioning gender for their upper bodies. Sonic was no different.
Shadow’s fingers gently traced over the two, slightly curved, scars that told this tale. The fur around them was much thinner when it grew back. It made them easier to find and touch.
But they were not the only scars across Sonic’s skin.
Shadow laid against the blue blur. His whole body draped half atop the other. He could feel the weak purrs rumble from the half-asleep hedgehog under him as he raked slow fingers though the soft fur.
Shadow’s fingers left the top scars and trailed down Sonic’s stomach. The scars littering his stomach were less harsh but still there. Some definitely older than others as he traced each and every one he found.
His hand then moved up, past his chest, and to his shoulder. Down his arm. Tracing every last wound left over from a life of fighting and running.
Shadow was older. Made to be a weapon, made to fight. But even he didn’t wear as many scars as Sonic. Sonic was reckless, constant. He’d met the hero when they were teenagers but he had heard of the stories before then. A childhood in a war. A hero starting no older than eight.
Every time Shadow’s fingers traced an older wound, he would wonder to himself, just how young Sonic had been when he’d gotten it.
Even then, Shadow was Ultimate. He healed at rates much faster than any other living being. It was rare for any of his own injuries to scar over. Sonic was mobian. Even with all his abnormalities, he was still mortal. He wasn’t like Shadow. He bruised and scarred and bled. If Shadow lost a limb it would (albeit, painfully) grow back. If Sonic lost a limb it would be gone for good.
Shadow’s fingers took pause at Sonic’s fingers. Their gloves were off, as they sometimes were when they were alone like this.
Sonic had once explained that it was first an aid for animal mobians. Their hands and paws sensitive to touch and the pads on the fingers and palms were easy to injure if not taken care of properly. The gloves were started to protect that. After a while, they became fashion statements just as well as sensitivity aids.
Shadow wondered if his own want for gloves came from a similar mobian sensitivity or if it stemmed from his aversion to touch based on a touch-starved developed repulsion to the sensations.
Either way, even Shadow was not immune to the almost ritualistic way of allowing bare hands with those closest to him. Even going as far back as a young Maria curiously feeling the pads and claws he allowed her to touch.
Even in that moment, it felt special. Maybe it was all instinctual. Shadow liked instinctual. He liked the feeling of actions that came from an indescribable stir in the core of his very existence. It made him feel real. It made him feel natural.
For a child born of tubes and beakers; to feel a call from a voice as old and as natural as the dirt below his feet was freeing.
And so, his hands and the hands he paused to hold were bare. Gloves neatly left on a bedside table. Forgotten till the morning.
Shadow’s fingers lazily curled around Sonic’s. Fiddling with each digit. Pressing softly against each pad. He spent longer at Sonic’s hand than anywhere else.
Shadow had heard the jokes of how 'scandalous’ holding hands was. The humor, he believed, came from equating them to some form of public intercorse. Exacerbating the intimacy and privacy of the action for comedic effect. However, Shadow didn’t think the joke was too far off.
He looked at their hands. Each finger fit perfectly between each other. As if hand crafted to hold each other. Made to tangle and lock together. Shadow would be hard pressed to find anything in the world more intimate.
When Shadow’s hand finally left Sonic’s, he traced his way back up the other’s arm and shoulder and towards his neck. Surprisingly there were a couple of scars here too. He traced each and every one as he had before.
After his hand finally reached Sonic’s cheek, Shadow looked up to match the other’s eyes.
Emeralds gazed at him lazily and full of love.
“Havin’ fun over there?” Sonic remarked with a smile.
Shadow gave a hum. “Yes,” was all he said before leaning up to press their lips together.