Work Text:
Sonic broke into the apartment just as Shadow was about to leave late one afternoon. Well, he came through the living room window that they had left open to air the room out.
“Hey Shads,” he greeted brightly, drawing out the first word long enough to annoy them and then some.
“Hedgehog,” Shadow straightened up, shoving some grocery bags into his quills. “Why are you here?”
“I was bored. Everyone else is busy,”
“And you assumed that I’m not?” he questioned, not much louder than a whisper. Before the other hedgehog could say anything more, they shushed him. “Rouge’s ill,” they explained when he made to protest at being shushed. “And she’s sleeping, so be quiet,”
Shadow grabbed their keys off of the hook by the front door, Sonic followed close behind him.
“I’m going grocery shopping — you can come with if you want to. Just don’t get in my way,” they said when they saw the speedster open his mouth to ask what presumably was going to be “where are you going?”
“Either way, I’m heading out now,”
And that was how the two of them ended up here, standing in the meat section of a grocery shop.
“What do you need to get? You’ve got an entire list so it has to be at least eight things,”
When had he had the chance to look at their phone screen? But then again, this was the self-proclaimed ‘fastest thing alive’ so that was a null question.
“Chicken mince, three different vegetables, kitchen paper, dishsoap, rice, tin corn, laundry buds, and cucumber juice,” Shadow listed off.
Sonic — who had been examining the packages of sausages further down the aisle — whipped back around to face him.
“Cucumber juice?” he parroted. “Why is that on your list?”
“It’s good. You just dont have good taste in drinks,”
The speedster spluttered, taken aback. “I do — you just can’t appreciate my taste,”
They picked up a package of chicken mince and dropped it into the basket before moving onto the vegetable aisle before saying anything more.
“I can’t, because you don’t have any,”
“Guess I'll just have to try some of your cucumber juice and develop some,”
The quip was so quick and unexpected that it actually floored Shadow for a minute, but he recovered soon enough.
“You better not steal the entire bottle when you end up liking the superior juice flavour,”
The items off the rest of the list were easy to track down. There was a near-continuous stream of conversation between the two of them the whole time.
For three p.m. on a Wednesday, there was a surprising number of humans about the shop. The more humans there were around, the more that there were who looked at them weirdly. Shadow, personally, wasn’t bothered by those looks (or care about others’ opinions at all, really), though he noticed Sonic definitely seemed to be bothered but kept trying to pretend he wasn’t. He wasn’t doing a very good job at pretending. So Shadow made sure to not linger too long in the aisles where there were the most humans.
The few times that it seemed like someone was about to start talking to them, Sonic looked more and more uncomfortable to the point where he looked like he was about to run off. They placed themself between the humans and Sonic, and when they couldn’t do that, they glared off anyone who looked like they were about to start talking.
By the time that they got to the checkout, a box of tea had joined the bottle of juice in the basket. Mint-chocolate tea, to be specific. Sonic had insisted that if he was going to try Shadow’s ‘weirdly healthy vegetable juice’ then they were going to try his favourite tea in return.
“You don’t live with us; meaning you didn’t need to come with me or help with any of this,” Shadow started saying as they walked out of the shop. Sonic had taken the heaviest bag and had left him with the most evenly-weighted ones — he had noticed but, for the sake of saving face, pretended not to. “So why did you?”
“I told you earlier, I was bored. Tails is working on something he won’t let me see. Knuckles kicked me off of Angel Island pretty much as soon as I showed up there, and I couldn’t find Amy anywhere,” Sonic rattled off. “And I know going grocery shopping solo can be lonely, even at a time as busy as three p.m. I also know that having someone with you to carry this back home is easier than taking all of it yourself,” he added before Shadow could wonder what all of that was supposed to mean.
Huh. That was…far more insightful than Shadow had expected from him.
And he was right, not they would ever admit that to Sonic out loud. While he and Rouge usually went together, he had gone grocery shopping alone a handful of times when his housemate was at work or just busy with something (read: theiving). Every time Shadow had, a pervasive shadow of lonliness had followed them from the second he left the apartment to the second he returned. They hadn’t noticed how much of a difference that it made having someone to talk to while they shopped until they had gone with someone other than Rouge.
The two of them finished the rest of the walk back to Rouge and Shadow’s apartment in silence. And then, instead of taking off once the bags were on the bench, Sonic stayed. He sat up on the bench while Shadow put away what had been bought so that he wouldn’t get in the way in their narrow kitchen.
Once he was done, Shadow got out two mugs and filled up the kettle.
“What’s with the mugs?”
“You promised to try my juice, I promised to try your tea. So, mugs,”
“…You drink your juice from a mug?”
“We don’t own any glasses anymore,”
“Oh,”
Sonic grabbed one of the two mugs while Shadow got the bottle of juice back out of the fridge.
“Catch,”
The bottle went flying through the air on a direct trajectory path for the cobalt hedgehog’s head. He caught it before it could knock him clean to the floor.
Shadow poured water from the kettle into their own mug, straight on top of a tea bag.
The two of them sat side by side at the bench with their respective drinks. A pot with the vegetables that they had bought earlier was simmering into soup on the stove in front of them.
“…This has mint in it!”
“Yes,”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that earlier? The mint alone would have convinced me to try it,”
He shrugged. “I wanted to see your reaction,”
“And did my reaction live up to your expectations?”
“…It did,”
Not long after Sonic left their apartment less than an hour later when both of their mugs were finally empty, Shadow checked the time on their phone and as they did, noticed the date.
June 23rd.
That explained why his friends had all kicked Sonic out or had been otherwise unfindable today.