After some struggle, Sonic utters a quiet, amusingly pathetic sound, alerting Amy to his distress.
She doesn't look up from the recipe book, delightfully old-fashioned and a family heirloom of sorts, as she patiently holds out her hand.
He flutters his lashes and places the jar in her palm.
She breaks the seal with a twist of her wrist before she effortlessly pries off the cap.
"My hero," he coos, as if it's foreplay. He's certainly impressed by her casual displays of strength.
She offers a womanly grunt in turn, but her stoicism wavers in the wake of a peck on her cheek, making her almost forget that she isn't a hormonal teenager anymore, that there is a pot boiling on the stove which will soon need attention. She turns to gaze at him, eyelevel, equal, enraptured.
He smiles against her lips upon her kissing him back, feeling her resolve to concentrate on other things crumble away.
Vector is an excellent dancer. Deceptively so. Unexpected, at first.
Vanilla's laughter fills the room as he lifts her in his arms and turns, his tail curling about his shoes, dragging sinuously over the carpet, at risk of toppling furniture.
Upstairs, Cream is seated on her bed. She sips demurely at a cup of tea whilst reading a book, Cheese happily swaying in her lap, enjoying the music that filters jovially from below.
Bent over a machine in a disorderly workshop, Tails is trying to summon the courage to give the pretty rabbit a call.
Keeping Vanilla close, her voluptuous body melding to fit against a broad, firm chest, Vector's smile is broken when she nuzzles against his snout, pulling on his gold chain.
Shadow bares his teeth, a silent snarl, but does not shy away from Rouge's cradling hand, nor is she intimidated by his display.
"I'm sorry I ate all the yogurt by myself, again. I'm a pig and I'm all kinds of awful, besides."
"Except you're not sorry at all."
"Nope." She brings their foreheads together, inhaling him, before letting out breathily against his face, "But I'll make it up to you, like I always do."
He narrows his fierce, otherworldly eyes at her, but she doesn't literally combust beneath his heated glare. He watches blood rise to the skin of her muzzle, tinting her.
"Name your price."
"Dinner."
"Candlelit?"
"Yes."
"Someplace fancy. Intimate. Soft music playing in the background…"
He shows himself a fraud with how easily her purring undertones console him, her strong fingers teasing away his scowl, smoothing aside any downturn to his mouth.
"And afterward, we'll grab another tub of yoghurt on our way home. Your favourite flavour."
He rumbles harmlessly as she softly grinds their brows together.
"I'll even give you a head start."
"You'll permit me the whole thing," he murmurs back, using a low volume that delights her keen ears, "if you want this plot of yours to work."
She sinks fingernails, like glassy claws, into the fur of his chest, her body shuddering.
"Otherwise, I shall stay mad at you."
"Oh, perish the thought." She giggles. "That would be terrible!"
"Are we agreed, then?"
She bites her lip, withdrawing slowly, achingly.
He delights, perhaps cruelly, in how easily he dismantles her.
"Can't we just skip dinner and forget the yoghurt and go right to the sex part?"
"There never is a sex part, despite your many invitations."
"And I think it's safe to assume that, tonight, I will finally seduce you." She says this in jest, at peace with his limitations but always eager to skirt the boundaries of what is appropriate. She adds a conspiratorial wink for emphasis, harmless enough.
"If you have any hope of success, you're going to treat me like a prince." He tilts his head in a manner that effectively prohibits further argument.
"The Ultimate Lifeform deserves no less." She sighs melodramatically. "Very well. Get me all wound up and torture me for the next few hours, then. Anything to make you happy."
"Excellent."
She drags her palm slowly down his cheek, simultaneously gripping a fistful of fluff below his chin.
"Don't disappoint."
Silver dusts himself off with a hum of satisfaction, admiring the disorderly bed of flowers. It feels like this steadily growing garden is the definitive start of something better.
Blaze doesn't articulate her pride. She silently swells with it, standing at his side, uncaring of the dirt smeared over her royal garb, the scandalous disarray of her fur.
He suddenly leans sideways, his shoulder bracing against hers as she keeps him from falling.
Her breath leaves her. She finds his hand and holds it.
Water drips from the edge of a bowing leaf.
"I dread going back."
He knows why.
She is to be married, but she does not love her suitors, and so the non-existent choice seems especially arbitrary. She is to produce an heir, as much as the notion of motherhood doesn't suit her, as much as she delays the inevitable. She told him, once, that she fears carrying on her curse.
He doesn't envy her lot. It is another kind of loneliness, he had said. He couldn't tell her to run away. But he hopes that this place can be her refuge for a little longer. Somewhere she can hide. It seems so silly, how something can seem so inevitable to a time traveller and a princess of living fire.
She has desire in her gut. Hot and throbbing. It's almost enough to subdue her anxieties. It's more effective than the peace of his garden. This lust she feels. At her darker moments, she imagines forsaking her duties and simply staying here, with him, tending to nature, his and hers, leaving a kingdom behind to be picked at by opportunistic subjects that could replace her. She's a symbol, a metaphor, a mere figurehead. But she loves her people too much and her love is too real.
Knuckles places his palm on the glowing stone. It speaks to him, through him, filling him up wherever he senses he is lacking. For a while. And then there is the consolation of silence. Of being alone. Of having no free will and therefore no room for hope, for disappointment. It seems too cutting to call it disillusionment.