Chapter Text
It was three in the morning, in the highway diner, when Tails finally popped the question.
"You wanna talk about it?"
Amy had been staring at the remains of her eggs, shuffling them around with the scraps of hash browns. There was a ketchup smear on the collar of her bridesmaid's dress, as her gaze lurched up to his. "'Bout what?"
Tails was gentle. "About Sonic and Blaze?"
She offered a slurry smile. "Wha's there to talk about? He's happy, she's happy, I'm happy."
She's not happy.
Tails tried again. He'd thought encouraging her to accept Blaze's invitation to the wedding would give her closure. Maybe it did. But she wasn't taking it well. "Do you want to talk about it, though?"
Amy leaned back in the booth, crossed her arms, and answered him with silence. When Tails began again, she spoke up. "Spent years chasing him," she mumbled. "Dancin' around each other. You know that's how we court, right? Hedgehogs? I thought it was just a matter of–"
The waitress, a thickset but young white goat, interrupted. Her voice was artificially cheerful. "Can I get you two anything else?"
Tails returned the artificial cheer. "Just coffee, please."
"No dessert?"
"Well…do you have a menu for those?"
"I'll get one, hold on."
The waitress departed. Tails reached across the table, gently took one of Amy's hands. "Shadow shouldn't have said what he did."
Amy huffed. "No, he was right. I had to get it through my thick fricking head."
Shadow hadn't said "fricking." And he'd said a lot more.
"Have you?" Tails asked.
"All the way."
The waitress returned with coffee and a dessert menu. They ordered strawberry shortcake and a brownie topped with ice cream, drizzled with chocolate syrup.
Tails had learned that you never could tell the quality of dessert in these places. Sometimes it was just offbrand slop that gave you acid reflux and was priced at a huge markup; sometimes it was practically homemade. You just couldn't tell.
The waitress disappeared with their order.
Tails offered Amy a small smile as he poured coffee. In her mug he added a sprinkle of powdered creamer and two packs of sweetener, the artificial stuff that came in a pink wrapper. He left his own mug black.
He sipped. "You're honestly taking this a lot better than I thought you would."
Amy snorted before taking a sip. "Yeah? How'd ya think I'd take it?"
"Truthfully? I thought you'd flake."
Amy scowled. "No. Not ever. I'll nev, never flake, on him."
The desserts came.
Amy's bleary eyes lit up.
Good sign. She'd eaten cake earlier, a polite whole slice. So had he. But that was many hours and drinks ago.
She spooned out a piece, lifted it. Then set the spoon down, mouth crumpled.
A stupid, reflexive question. "What's wrong?" Idiot. She just watched him slip out of her hands into Blaze's. She hasn't been like this since the Metal Virus.
Amy glared at him. Then with a sigh, she limply pushed her plate away. "He hated it."
"Shortcake?"
She nodded glumly. "Made it for him once. He hates strawberry. Didn't know." She met his eyes, sniffed. Her own eyes were reddening.
Tails glanced at his brownie. The ice cream was mint chocolate chip, his favorite, and already starting to melt pale green on the hot brownie.
"Did he tell you he hated it?"
Amy looked out the long window onto the dark parking lot, to her pink beetle of a car. The keys had gone into his pocket when she was getting dressed with Cream and Vanilla.
Shouldn't have gone for the open bar, Sonic, Tails thought. They'd all expected Vector and Knuckles to be the issue, but Amy had drunk them both under the table.
"He ate a piece," she said finally. "But I could tell. He huh, he hated it."
Silently, he shifted the brownie toward her. "Wanna trade?"
She rubbed the back of her fist on her eyes, took up her spoon again. "Sure."
Tails dug out a piece of the red-and-white confection. It was fluffy, sweet, tangy, a little dry, but a bit of whipped cream helped with it. Not the best, but good.
His eyes scanned the diner. The place was deserted, but for them, the waitress behind the counter, and...
Huh. A jukebox.
To Tails's slight disappointment, it was an older digital model, not the ancient kind that used vinyl records. Those were expensive; this one was cheap.
Amy saw it, too. She didn't have to ask him to drop a few creds in for some music; anything was better than the dead, wee-hour buzz of cheap florescent lights.
Tails swallowed his bite and stood. Amy took a cautious taste of brownie and ice cream, then a second, and a third, a fourth...
Tails could have easily hacked the jukebox and not paid. But he didn't. Instead he scrolled through the playlist on the dim, dirty touchscreen.
Anything was better than silence.
Except this.
All country. Steel strings, tractors, lewd innuendo, and that nasal vocal twang that he could feel in his teeth. Crap.
After a moment he came back to Amy. The brownie was half-demolished. "Nothing good," he sighed, "it's all Big's music."
Amy glanced at the jukebox again, her ears flattening. "He, he has a couple good ones though, why–"
Jingle of the door behind them. Another customer.
Tails turned.
Red irises on black sclera. Blue paint. Steel claws.
"Metal?"