Chapter Text
Home.
Home was warm breezes over sun-warmed water, rustling palm trees abundant with round coconuts, and the salt-scented waves lapping at the shoreline. It was the rush of the open sky, wind whipping through his golden fur and the joyous roar of a plane engine. It was the spicy scent of comforting food and a gaggle of laughter in many voices raised together.
It was the beat of leathery wings and a low, sultry chuckle, the twittering of birds and a bright laugh in the noon-day sun, the sound of crushing rocks and a satisfied hum of a job well done, and a gale of a cobalt-colored wind buffeting the land and sky.
Home is where your friends are, or so he’d always believed, and Miles Prower was certain his home was the best of all. Day-in and day-out was spent inventing and tinkering to his heart’s content, feeding the voracious hunger of his prodigious mind, sharing laughs and chili dogs amongst his brother and their friends, and, of course, saving the world a few times along the way.
No— the twin-tailed fox mused as he looked up from a piece of gadgetry in his gloved hands and glanced at the sound of his brother’s raucous belly laughter— it couldn’t get better than this.
And yet— Tails hummed softly as he trained a pointed ear on his brother. There had been a shift in the cobalt hedgehog since they’d stopped Eggman from taking the Paradox Prism months ago. Sonic had been late, as had become his usual, and yet barging into the cave his demeanor changed entirely. He was suddenly taking charge while listening to his team, adamant that they should stick together and actually holding to it.
And while it was a welcome show of the leader he knew his big brother was, something didn’t sit so well in Tails’ chest. It didn’t really start bothering him until later, after the tension of a battle well fought had passed, and everything should have returned to normal.
First was the clinging.
The cobalt hedgehog was always insisting upon their friends getting together, overly helpful with any and all tasks no matter how monotonous, and overly affectionate amongst them all, especially with Tails. Sonic’s hands were seemingly magnetically drawn to his shoulders, constantly ruffling the flounce of hair above his eyes, or pulling him in for a hug and high five. And while Tails adored his brother and would always accept his displays of affection, there came points where it began to rankle, almost out of the blue. A normal conversation with Sonic about falling coconuts or his to-do list in his workshop would end up with Sonic crushing him to his furry chest, and it sometimes took Tails pushing away for him to get the point across that he needed space to work and, more importantly, his own air to breathe. Then the wobbly, wistful look Sonic gave as his fingers slowly released his little brother would turn and twist in Tails’ guts.
Sonic would loom over his shoulder in the workshop more often. Tails knew full well that the hedgehog was well meaning, a friendly, tries-to-be encouraging presence, but he also knew that if he actually explained what he was doing, as the hedgehog seemed so eager to hear, the foundational framework that he was adapting to new and improbable science would float straight over Sonics adorably simple head. So, he was constantly digesting the elaborate processes and formulas he was following down to levels comprehensible by speedy blue hedgehogs and feeling careful green eyes peeling him apart in layers over his shoulder. Sonic was desperately taking in every little detail, as if he didn’t, the sight before him would disappear.
The second thing? (And boy, was it a doozy, without his own physical eyes telling Tails that he wasn’t imagining things the fox couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t made up from whole cloth.) Tails’s blue eyes scanned the gathering in front of him and settled on the dark figure standing to the side, intently watching and listening.
Shadow.
Between occasionally seeing a dark figure against the sky on a high vantage point and Rouge casually swiping a few sweets from their parties for the road, most knew he was around and simply respected the dark hedgehog’s preference for peace, quiet, and most importantly, not being bothered by a certain blue hedgehog.
So when he appeared not so long after teleporting away with the Paradox Prism and opted to hang around without any explanation, a tangible surprise rippled through the team. Rouge had beamed the first time he’d sat amongst the group, and Amy was certain Rouge had finally gotten through to him. Or at the very least threatened him with something dire enough that he was hanging around without complaint.
Sonic seemed overjoyed and delightfully oblivious, whatever the reason.
Tails, however, realized very quickly that there was more to his presence than a sudden desire to be social, or, as close to it as Shadow got. What exactly, he didn’t know— the only one amongst them who was fluent in black hedgehog was Rouge— but he noticed him intently watching, listening, an ear trained pointedly on Sonic.
Sonic, for a wonder, seemed aware of it as well, brushing it off by constantly laughing about and dismissing his rival’s watchful eye the same way he deflected Tails’s own voiced concerns. An unspoken conversation burned between ruby and emerald gazes that Tails couldn’t translate. For someone so used to the ebb and flow of his and Sonic’s friendship, as familiar and comforting and homey as the crashing of waves on the beach, finding himself on the outside of this conversation set Tails adrift like a kite with its strings cut. Tails was certain there was a connection between Sonic’s clinginess and Shadow’s vigilance, but sussing it out was taking longer than his big brain was used to.
Tails stifled a sigh as he tore his gaze away from the tech in his hands, too distracted by his suspicion to focus. There were several small electric burns on the tips of his gloves, and too many to explain away with excitement. To make matters even more frustrating, their friends didn’t seem to notice this change in behavior from the Blue Blur. They went along with his clinging and compliments and increased invitations for the group to spend time together. Perhaps they had noticed, though? And Tails was simply the only one disturbed enough— concerned enough to ask.
Still, the fox mused, he wasn’t sure of their feelings on the matter. He eyed the empty tray of chili dogs in front of him and cast a glance towards the team. Sonic and Rouge were in the midst of roasting Knuckles with increasingly outlandish jabs to make the echidna bark, which wasn’t too much of a surprise, while Shadow and Amy looked on, one in bemusement and the other with a face so icy an industrial flamethrower couldn’t melt it.
“Hey, Amy,” he called, standing with a stretch that reached from the tips of his ears to the tips of his tails, the joints of his shoulders popping with a satisfying click. “I’m gonna go grab more food. Could I get some help?”
The pink hedgehog’s ears perked as her eyes flicked up from her dumb, dumb, idiot boys, and up to her intelligent little friend. “Of course, Tails! I’m getting a little tired of these jokers anyway. Lead the way!” Her voice was light and playful as always, friendly to a fault.
“You’d think after so long teasing Knuckles, Rouge and Sonic would come up with new material!” Amy giggled as she followed Tails back into the actual home part of his home lab. The kitchen wasn’t far, and though the grill outside being manned by a quiet and contented Big held all the steaming hot dogs, the buns and fillings were littered across Tails’ spare counter space in his small kitchenette. No one followed, but trying to fit another person in the tiny space would have been an exercise in futility regardless.
Tails giggled, high and stressed, “Yeah, yeah, new material… Hey, speaking of, have you noticed anything off with Sonic?”
Amy’s good humor dropped, and she curled down closer to Tails’ eye level, “With Sonic? No, I can’t say that I have…though I suppose you’re with him more than any of us most days!”
Tails’s sense of unease rumbled further down his spine, tickling his stomach with nerves and he pressed his lips together. “You haven’t noticed how clingy he’s gotten? We all know he’s a social butterfly, but he wants us all together every single day. It’s never been this excessive. How many times have you eaten dinner at home this week?”
Amy hummed, then opened her mouth to answer, and then Tails could see the spark light behind her green eyes as she really thought about it. “I mean, I see where you’re coming from, but that hardly seems like something to worry about. Wanting to be with your friends is hardly the behavior of a disturbed individual,” she said.
Tails groaned, “I don’t know, Amy. This behavior is not normal.. He hovers , Amy, anytime I’m working on a project. He has me explain it to him until he understands, even if it takes forever and—”
“I really don’t see how that’s an issue? I mean, I know we all wish Sonic was more mindful of those around him— maybe this is a good change?”
Tails forced himself not to childishly stamp a foot, “I thought that at first, too. But I get messages from my sensornet to keep track of his runs, and after he spends all day with us, he runs all night.”
Amy’s eyes were focused somewhere over his shoulder, “Huh?”
“I said he runs all night. He wobbles back into the house just before I wake up and will either go straight to sleep or make us breakfast without sleeping at all, and it’s starting to— to…Amy? What are you looking at?”
Amy jerked back with a wide-eyed, quiet yelp, “Nothing! It’s nothing, I don’t think I’ve been sleeping well is all,” she sputtered with a lopsided smile. Her eyes kept darting to the same miniscule corner of the tiny kitchen, focused and tracking something that Tails couldn’t discern.
“Can you focus, please? I’m really worried! Sonic isn’t sleeping and I—”
“Haha! Same here, really. In fact, I should go right now and—” Amy startled, jumping back from an invisible foe and rattling the bowl of chili hard enough for the spoon to knock to the ground with a rattle and a clang, one hand raised up over her face as though she were guarding against an overhand blow. Her breath came in fearful pants, face pale under the peach fuzz of her facial fur.
“I’m so sorry, Tails,” she said at last, half wheezing, “I–I’m going to keep a closer eye on Sonic for you, but for now, I really think I need to go home and lie down. A bit of a nap would do me some good, I think.”
Tails stared after her as she returned to the main room where the voices of their friends still cheerfully nattered away, a stinking fear catching under his fur, right down to his skin. He strained his ears to listen as the pink hedgehog apologized her way through her goodbyes, citing tiredness and a busy day to cut her evening with them short.
It was barely a minute later, before Tails could parse out Amy's abrupt change of mood, that Sonic’s blue crest popped around the threshold with a grin and tired eyes that pleaded for Tails’s time and attention. His smile pulled at his mouth as cockily as it ever did, but the bags under eyes as green as the hills were bruising darker by the day. They darted around the tiny kitchen, taking in the spilled spoon of chili, Tails’s hunched posture, and the grimace he could feel on his muzzle. Sonic’s youthful face squeezed painfully around his grin.
“Hey, bud,” Sonic said, “can I help you with the food?”