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“It is so good to see you, my dear friend,” Blaze smiles.
Across from her, Silver wraps his hands around the mug of tea she’d provided him with, the sunshine beaming onto Blaze’s favourite secluded terrace nearby the castle making his fur shimmer. “Likewise,” the hedgehog nods back, a similar warmth glowing in the little smile on his face and psychokinesis making a cookie float up so he can nom it in one go. “How’s this place been?” Blaze gets inquired amidst the crumbs, and the Imperial Princess laughs softly. Silver’s never been one for manners.
“Good. Peaceful. I recently finished a trip to various cities on different islands.”
“Sounds neat. Were they happy you were coming?”
“Having the princess over is always an important occasion,” Blaze answers. That is to say, probably yes: the people had been elated to have her visit, a grand welcome thrown in every settlement and officials and civilians alike clamouring for her attention to show her how they are doing. Which seems to be fine, luckily, with children playing in the streets and adults chatting warmly with each other on their jobs and no smiles withheld for anyone. A princess could not ask for more. “But that is not why you are here,” she adds, taking a sip from her tea as well. “What is your occasion?”
Silver hums slowly, the second cookie that has found itself in the midst of a psychokinetic swiping freezing in the air. Blaze had received her friend’s request to go spend some time together most hectically this morning… by Silver just materialising in her bedroom right as she’d been about to get dressed, resulting in one fright-induced heart attack and one almost-singed hedgehog getting his ears scolded off as he got pushed into the hallway and ordered to wait. But Blaze’s happiness to see him had quickly gotten the overhand, and thus she’d moved some things in her schedule around to allow for a hassle-free afternoon to spend sipping tea and eating cookies at her favourite isolated spot besides the nearby beach. Except Silver hadn’t been that clear about why it was so important he talked to her… “That’s a bit of a story,” the hedgehog muses, Blaze raising an eyebrow in turn.
“I have time galore.”
“I have no idea how long this might take. I don’t want to bother you if it doesn’t work right now.”
Keeping her lips pressed together about how it’s already far too late for that Blaze shakes her head amusedly. “Having you over is never an inconvenience. And I made sure to have the whole rest of the day off. It is all working out, I assure you.”
Silver’s little smile grows just a bit. “Thanks, Blaze,” he grins at her, cookie munched and his posture straightening as the cat gets fixed in the most serious of looks. “I wanted to ask you something. About Espio.”
That catches Blaze by surprise. “Espio?” she repeats, one ear twitching. She knows who he is, for sure: Sonic likes throwing parties and inviting as many people as possible, and thus Blaze had ran into the chameleon twice or thrice before. Except it had stuck to that, and minor small-talk or the occasional collaboration to fend off an Eggman attack aside, she cannot say she really knows him. “I am afraid that is not a person I am well-acquainted with, apologies.”
“Well, it’s not really him. It is him, but more just like… him, and me, and us,” Silver explains, or at least tries to, because the words hold little meaning for Blaze like this.
“Do elaborate, please.”
A deep sigh follows. “I think I like- No, I know I like him,” the hedgehog tells her, Blaze’s head tipping to the side slowly.
“Pardon…?”
Something lights up on Silver’s face. “Yeah! He’s great!” the enthusiastic reply comes… and it is as if Blaze’s question has knocked down the dam inside the hedgehog and allowed for a sea of words to spill out onto the beach, like the waves lapping at the stones below. “He’s so cool, Blaze. He’s the bravest guy I’ve ever met, for sure. And he’s epic at fighting too! He’s always so calm and collected and he always knows what to say and do, it’s truly strange. But good strange! And I don’t know how he does it, but he’s always right, somehow. And he’s just…” The smile on Silver’s face grows only more, grand gestures accentuating every word. Blaze cannot recall ever having seen him this eager; when fighting adversaries, maybe, but that lacks the pure happiness seeped into every word. “He makes me laugh when he’s snarking at Vector and Charmy, and I always feel kinda light when I’m around him- kinda safe. Like I can do anything when he’s there to help me. And I just really like going to his place and being around him, or being outside with him and helping him out in turn- He’s doing so much to help me! I don’t really get why, but I appreciate it so much.” Finally the final wave of the sea of words seeps away, a few deep breaths drawn before Silver peeks back up at her. “Soooooooo…”
It’s only after a little stretch of silence that Blaze realises.
“Oh. Ah!” is her approximate answer. “That is… quite marvellous. Congratulations, my friend. Falling in love is a wondrous thing.”
With a muffled noise of displeasure filling the air Silver fusses in his chair. “That makes it sound so official,” the complaint comes, as if the hedgehog didn’t just yell out to the blue sky and azure ocean his feelings for all to hear. “Also, he doesn’t know. I think. That I feel like this.”
“…Oh dear.”
“And I wanted to ask you if you had, like… tips. Or help. Or something like that.”
That gives Blaze pause. Of course, as the princess, she knows marriage is not unlikely in her life: at the very least, there must be an heir eventually. But it’s not something she’s ever put so much thought towards, either. There’s so many other issues to focus on right now, ranging from fighting back the ever-diminishing pirate forces plaguing the seas to discussing and passing new laws to going on trips to see with her own eyes how the populace is doing…
Romance is just not on her mind.
Which does mean that disappointment could be imminent here, which is a concerning thought if the cat has ever had one before.
“I am not… exactly knowledgeable on this field,” her carefully-measured response comes. No, she must not get frightened now: it is okay to not know everything, Sonic would tell her. “I would be more than happy to help you, or at least give you a listening ear, but please do keep in mind there is little I might be able to do in the way of giving you advice.”
Slouching down into his seat Silver sighs deeply. “That’s fine. That’s better than Amy.”
With the pink hedgehog’s voice – or rather, delightful babbling about romance and feelings and marriage, because also Blaze has not managed to escape Amy’s love for love – filling her mind immediately Blaze hums in sympathy. “She didn’t give you any advice?”
“Too much. I went to her like ‘Hey, so Espio is cool, how do I tell him that?’ and she just went off,” Silver grouses, the twitch of Blaze’s lips not adding much credibility to her gentle chastise.
“She has the best intentions, my friend.”
“I know that! But I don’t know what she actually meant, and I know even less what to do now.”
Grabbing the teapot so she can pour some more into Silver’s cup Blaze ponders this all over. Amy would have been her first suggestion too… “And who else can I ask?” the hedgehog meanwhile continues his bemoaning. “Vector’s just gonna make fun of me, so is Rouge, Charmy is literally a toddler, Shadow would just get annoyed, Knuckles has no idea for sure, Sonic always runs away from Amy so he probably doesn’t even know either, Tails is like six… Who can I go to?”
“I can see why this would be an issue,” Blaze soothes, keeping a perfectly straight face at the character assassination all Sonic’s friends are swiftly and brusquely put through. “Regardless, some of them might be able to help you more than I can. Tails, who is not ‘like six’, might be able to give good advice, actually. And so does Sonic, of that I am certain. Our friends are wiser than they seem at first glance.”
Silver’s eyes squint at her all irked. “They’re also just as likely to tease me.”
“Has that ever stopped you before?”
“Of course not.”
“Well then,” Blaze smiles at her friend, whose arms lay gruffly crossed over his chest and whose face gets adorned with the most fiercely serious of looks. That is the Silver she knows: unbelievably, unwaveringly headstrong in the face of adversity, be it imminent destruction threatening the world or slightly-awkward social happenstances.
Elbow coming down on the table so his cheek can rest against the palm on his hand Silver sighs deeply, fiercely serious look falling into something far more deflated. “You really got nothing for me? No ideas, or tips, or any advice, or…?”
“I can only tell you what Sonic has told me before.” Drawing a deep breath Blaze looks into her tea, the pinkish-brown reminiscent of a fiery fracture in the space-time continuum and a burning blaze rushing beside a golden glow. “Be yourself,” she murmurs, the tiniest but most bittersweetly loving of smiles forming on her face at Sonic’s kindness. In that moment, and before too when she’d fought him so foolishly, and every single time they’d met afterwards. “You need to be true to yourself, Silver. Espio likes you for you. Don’t put on a show, don’t try to pretend you are someone you’re not, don’t bend over backwards to impress him. I do not know Espio well, but I don’t think he is someone who would extensively spend time with people he doesn’t like. That means your genuine self is more than enough already.”
“We do hang out a lot…” Silver murmurs back, eyes trained on the ocean.
“How does he act around you?”
A deep sigh fills the air, and Blaze is sure she could hear the gears audibly turn in Silver’s head if she were to perk up her ears. “Cool and collected. But that’s just who Espio is,” the hedgehog muses… before blinking. “Actually, that’s not true- That is, sometimes he gets kinda awkward. Like, he’ll touch my shoulder or something and then he gets weird about it. Or he stumbles over his words a bit when he’s talking and I look at him, and every time Vector or Charmy say something about it he gets all huffy and he takes me to leave so we’re alone. Happened multiple times. And he’s always worried about me. Always like, ‘But will you be safe in the future?’, and ‘If you need anything, just come to us, we’re here to help you’ and stuff like that. Everyone else says that too, but from him it feels… different?”
Quietly Blaze listens, letting each word sink in slowly. Awkward, stumbling over words, worrying… “You know,” she speaks up once Silver has fallen silent, “I am not an expert in the slightest, but that does sound like he has a crush on you.”
“…But that would mean he already likes me back.”
“Why would he not?”
Silver vaguely waves his hands around in the air… except no audible response accompanies it, nor does Blaze really know what else to add. “I think… perhaps it is best to just… be honest,” she eventually murmurs, every word weighted carefully and turned thrice over. “To go to him and ask if this is a good time- really ask. Don’t just appear in his bedroom at the brink of dawn.”
“Sorry,” her friend mutters back.
“All is forgiven,” Blaze smiles, because somehow Silver has become one of those people she cannot seem to stay angry at for long. “But take him somewhere nice, and just tell him. Tell him what you told me: all the things you think are great about him. And ask him if he feels the same. Then you’ll know, and so will he.”
Slowly Silver’s cup gets spun around telekinetically. “I think I can do that.”
Downing the last bit of her own tea the cat nods. She could dive extensively into the fact there is a chance Espio might not reciprocate, that everything he’s been doing that Silver took note of means nothing after all, that Silver should be sure to harden his heart to prevent it from hurting more than it should if such a scenario were to come true, but… She does not want to. Silver already knows that anyway, surely; he is not blind to the realities of life. To bring up such negatives would only serve to put a damper on his tentative optimism. “That is all I can tell you, I am afraid. Apologies,” she adds, though Silver shakes his head at her.
“Nah, that’s exactly what I needed.” A brighter look slowly takes form on the hedgehog’s face again, before he jumps to his feet. “Should I go right now? I want to!”
“Then go,” Blaze agrees with a little laugh, because Silver’s enthusiasm has never failed to be infectious. Getting up as well she dusts off her purple robe, giving him a nod. “I believe in you. You can do this.”
A third cookie gets snatched and devoured, the crumbs swiftly wiped from Silver’s cheeks with the back of his hand. “Thanks for having me over,” the hedgehog nods to her. “I’ll tell you how it went!”
Scrutinising him Blaze reaches out, fixing his mane a bit and smoothing his quills with an ease she still does not know the origin of. “You look great. And good luck. And don’t push yourself to come back here and inform me, I do not mind waiting.”
“Will do. And thanks again!”
Bright cyan spins to life around Silver’s feet as his hands are flung to his sides, and Blaze averts her eyes by instinct. “Take a cookie with you for him!” she calls out over the loud drone of Silver’s powers, before that and the glow dissipates together with Silver’s form… and two of the snacks, leaving the plate rather empty indeed bar one. “…Cheeky,” the cat sighs to no-one in particular. “Does Espio like that about you, Silver?”
She cannot know. But she can be certain that Silver knows what he is talking about when it comes to Espio with his strange behaviours around the hedgehog. She’ll simply have to wait and see, let Silver return at his own pace to tell her what occurred, and root for him in the meantime.
Though she cannot deny her own heart is fluttering just a bit as she sinks down onto her chair again and absent-mindedly bites into the final cookie, the distant cries of seagulls over the noises of the ocean waves sinking into her being like a gentle blanket. Perhaps she’ll give Silver some tips about nice places to go to in her dimension, snacks to eat and sights to see with a sweetheart at one’s side…
But that is for later. All she can do is wait now, and hope for the best.
And yet, she cannot shake the feeling Espio might just reciprocate, if what Silver told her is true.
That would make her most happy for her dear friend indeed.