To SunSera: Thank you for your beautiful review. It makes me happy so happy to hear that people are enjoying the story! Hopefully, you'll enjoy even the rest of it!

Special thanks to HardSonadowFanGirl for betaing this chapter.

Chapter 14: Small Gestures

"Hey, Tails."

A loud thud followed the call just a moment later—Sonic presumed the sound was Tails bumping his head on the underside of his workbench. And, truly Sonic's guess was correct; the young inventor rose to his full height just a moment later, rubbing a spot on his head with one hand while the other held a wrench that was most likely the reason for Tails being under the table in the first place.

"M-Morning, Sonic."

"Morning, Tails," Sonic chirped as he placed a bowl of breakfast cereal onto the workbench, pushing it towards Tails. "I've brought you breakfast."

"T-thanks," Tails stammered a little bit again, laying the wrench onto the table so he'd have a free hand to pull the bowl closer. Once it was safely in his hands, Tails finally met Sonic's gaze with a small smile on the fox's face but his eyes wary, the young kid obviously realizing why his big brother was here, in his workshop, so early in the morning—before Tails would have the chance to leave the house under the excuse of going shopping for things and thus ultimately avoiding the confrontation. "You're up early today."

"You can do more in a day if you get up early...and go to bed late," Sonic commented, taking a spoonful of his own cereal. "Don't you agree?"

"Yeah, but sleep is also important," Tails replied, obviously trying to avoid being given lecture over staying up late by telling him what he knew he'd tell him. "What about you? Aren't you tired?—I mean, you couldn't have gotten much sleep yesterday with the two tournaments and all. Has anything interesting happened at them?" Tails inquired, a bit rambling at this point as he tried diverge the conservation elsewhere.

Sonic was well aware of what was the other trying to do—distract him from scolding him for not keeping the lights-out. Well, I suppose I could let this one pass... Sonic mused, figuring he would sweep the matter under the rug this once; Tails obviously knew he had done wrong. "Well, I met Jet and the others, I lost a bet over a pizza and got hit on by some guys called the Witchcarters."

Tails immediately piped up at the name, "Witchcarters?"

"Yeah." Sonic nodded, raising a curious brow. "You know them?"

"Actually, yes. I do," Tails murmured, his gaze falling to the small bowl in his hands, his eyes getting a bit faraway look as if he were remembering something.

"Truly?" Sonic was surprised. "From where?"

"Um..." Tails once again met his gaze, suddenly looking uncomfortable—almost as if he had realized he had just let slip something he shouldn't have; the young inventor even looked away and started to nervously stir his cereal with his spoon.

"Well, back when we were still little kids, I once went on adventure without you..." Tails admitted as he placed his bowl onto the table, keeping his gaze downcast and focused at the bowl. "I stumbled upon this one island that was controlled by some crazy old lady called 'Witchcart' that wanted to turn everybody on that island into crystals. I knew that if you were there, you'd try to stop her before she could harm anybody, but because you weren't there, I figured I needed to stop her myself..."

Sonic put his bowl down as well so he could cross his arms over his chest. There was a serious expression on his face now. "What did you do, Tails?"

"...Not much actually." With lips pulling into a thin line and gaze still averted, Tails played with one of his namesakes. "I fought her and her henchmen, the 'Witchcarters'. I defeated them and liberated the island. Once making sure everyone was alright, I went back home."

Sonic frowned. You know, that almost sounds like that one time— Green eyes widened, peach arms falling open to instead be raised in the 'Stop right there!' gesture. "Wait, wait, wait—has that by any chance happened that one time when I couldn't find you for a whole three days and then you returned all dirty and scratched up?"

Tails gave a small nod.

"Why haven't your ever told me about that?" Sonic's lips pulled into an unhappy frown, just as peach arms crossed themselves on his chest again. "Do you realize how dangerous that was? Fighting bad guys alone? You could have gotten seriously injured! You should have told me you were going somewhere! I was terribly worried about you!"

"You've also used to fight Dr. Eggman alone when you were younger."

"Yeah, but I was eleven when I started, you were five, Tails. There's a significant age difference there."

"I was six."

Sonic shook his head. "Still too young, buddy," he finished, picking up his bowl again.

But instead of reaching for his own meal, Tails only looked down onto the ground, shoulders slumping.

Sonic sighed at the sight, his expression softening; he hadn't meant to upset Tails. "Just...just don't go on your own again, alright? It's dangerous."

"You are doing that too," Tails pointed out, blue eyes meeting greens once more.

Seeing that one as a good signal, Sonic grinned, emphasizing his words with a jab of his spoon. "I have years of experience, remember?"

"Yeah...you do," Tails confirmed as he picked up his bowl, just stirring the milk for a moment, silence stretching between them as Tails looked into his bowl somehow wistfully.

Wanting to break the odd silence—and remove that wretched look on his bro's face—Sonic cleared his throat and asked, "How's the antidote coming along?"

Tails immediately piped up at the question, the usual excited spark that showed up any time he could 'talk science' back in his eyes, the sad fox that was there just a second ago nowhere to be seen.

"I've managed to separate the serum and even started analyzing it," Tails announced excitedly as he put down a bowl and went to fetch his laptop. He placed it on the workbench, twisting it around to show his brother bunch of diagrams and other data Sonic didn't quite understand but assumed were some form of analysis of the unknown chemical. Tails turned the laptop back around and immediately began to type something into it, his hands rapidly pressing the keys on the keyboard. "Once we know what compounds the serum exactly consists of, it should be a piece of cake to come up with antidote!"

"How long do you think that'll take?"

Tails' brows furrowed at the question, his hands stopping mid-motion. "I'm not quite sure but I asked some other scientists and they promised to help me with it so it surely won't take long! I'm confident Shadow will be alright by next Tuesday!"

Sonic smiled softly. Leave it to his bro to do something quicker than any other scientist. "I'm sure Shadow will be happy to hear that."

And, as if on cue, Shadow stepped into the workshop at the very moment.

Sonic grinned. Speak of the devil... "Morning, Shad."

"Good morning, Shadow!"

Shadow gave a small nod of head to both of them, acknowledging their greeting in the only way he could at the moment. He joined Sonic by Tails' workbench, crimson eyes briefly glancing to their breakfast before focusing on Sonic, a brow raised in a wordless question as he made a vague shape with his hands and then gestured to the window, where the sun was already bathing the forest in the warm early morning light.

It took Sonic a moment and a couple of glances between the window and Shadow to understand what he was being asked. "...Yeah, we'll be emerald-hunting today as well." Sonic nodded, figuring that was the agent was most likely inquiring about. "Just give me a minute, I'll finish this and then we can go," he added, promptly digging into his meal.

Though he did stop his munching for a moment to ask, "Hey, Tails, have you fixed the Emerald radar yet?"

"Luckily for you, I've fixed it this morning," Tails replied with a grin as he went to fetch the aforementioned device, picking it up from one of the metal shelves by the wall. Though there was a noticeable frown on the young inventor's face when he turned back around.

"Though I think it'll be better if Shadow is the one to hold onto it." Tails handed the currently having-a-questioning-look-on-his-face agent the radar, promptly explaining to Shadow, "Last time Sonic had it, he dropped it into a river."

"It was an accident! I swear!"

"Doesn't change my mind about Shadow being the one to hold onto it," Tails shot back as he pressed a button to activate the radar, giving Shadow a quick overview of how the device worked—while pointedly ignoring Sonic and how he muttered it wasn't his fault that somebody had decided to fill the riverside with too many rocks that were easy to trip over—after all, Tails couldn't do much about Sonic being heedless but he could at least prevent his inventions from being destroyed by placing it into the right hands.

O-o-O-o-O

Sonic weaved his way through the bushes and trees, the radar in his hands beeping occasionally, the intervals between the beeps getting longer or shorter depending whether he happened to move closer or further from the Chaos Emerald.

The hero frowned as he once again jumped over the little creek that ran through this part of the forest, walking along it while keeping his eyes trained on his surroundings but still not seeing even a glimpse of the emerald.

Sonic let out a huff of frustration. The radar was built for searching on big-scale so it was great at identifying the general area where the gem happened to be hidden but precisely locating the thing was another matter completely—and the radar kind of totally sucked at it.

Man, Tails really needed to upgrade this thing.

Sonic sighed, wondering whether he should just give up on the radar and wait for Shadow to show up; they had separated to cover more ground. Considering how much time Sonic had already spent wandering around this part of the forest and unsuccessfully trying to locate the gem, Shadow's own inborn ability to sense chaos energy should lead the agent here pretty soon.

Letting out another sigh, Sonic once more started looking around, this time deciding to trust his senses only; he himself could feel there was a Chaos Emerald nearby but his inner radar was about as precise as the one he was holding—probably even worse.

I really need to practice more, he mused, sighing as he tried—and failed—to even pinpoint in which direction he should go. His chaos energy-sensing abilities weren't in any way at par to Shadow's own—honestly, comparing their level of skill made as much sense as comparing a newborn to a surgeon in terms of who could handle a knife better.

While the agent was an expert, he was a complete amateur—in all things that involved chaos energy in some way. So far, anytime he had to do something with chaos energy, he'd just go with his gut feeling and improvise. (To be honest, he was still impressed he had actually managed to chaos control back in the day when Egghead shot him into space in that pod, considering he hadn't really had any idea what he was actually doing at the time—and, to be honest, he still didn't for the most part.)

Once, he had even asked Knuckles to teach him how to manipulate and sense chaos energy but the echidna sucked at teaching so much that when he'd left the Angel Island he was even more confused about the whole thing than when he had arrived.

He had thought about asking Shadow to teach him a couple of times but, considering what their relations used to be like, he had always dismissed the idea as impossible, believing Shadow would not be willing to help him. Though considering recent developments he supposed Shadow might not be as opposed to the whole idea as much as he'd believed the agent would be—

Suddenly, green eyes noticed the spark of purple in a tree crown.

Is it—? Swiftly, as so the emerald wouldn't have the chance to suddenly disappear, Sonic made his way over to the tree, quickly locating the specific branch on which the emerald was and jumping onto it to get it.

(What he, however, didn't count on, was that the thick branch actually might not be able to hold his weight.)

Feeling the branch suddenly give out under him, Sonic let out a surprised yelp, barely managing to curl his hand around the purple gem before he suddenly became airborne without any chance to stop his fall—and thus he ended up right in the shallow creek below, water splashing all around as he landed.

Not one to enjoy an unexpected bath—or splashing in water in general—Sonic quickly rolled out of the creek onto the dry grass beside it and began to sit up, hissing through gritted teeth as he straightened his aching back.

Man, the stones in the creek were sharp.

Stretching his back a bit more, he let out another heavy exhale; he still could feel the strain of yesterday fighting and now it was coupled even with the pain of the ungraceful landing. He really hoped he wouldn't have to do any kind of spin-dashing today.

Well, we already have the emerald so I guess we could call some time off for the rest of a day... Sonic grinned as he twirled the purple gem in his right hand, feeling proud of himself at being able to find it very much on his own—even without the radar. Which now he realized, he actually no longer had in his other hand; he must have dropped it when falling.

Sonic gave his surroundings a quick scan with his eyes, his gaze quickly falling on the item, the corners of his mouth quirking up when he saw it was still in one piece. However, his smile froze when he saw where it was in fact lying.

He chewed the inside of his cheek. Shoot. Tails was gonna be mad at him for getting the radar wet.

Again.

Slowly, the cobalt hero made his way over to the submerged radar, hesitantly taking it out of the water and then shaking the device a bit to shake out the excess water. The device seemed to be off, but if it was because Tails had built in some automatic timed shut-down function or if it was because he had actually broken it Sonic didn't know.

"Man, Tails won't be happy when he sees this." Especially, when he'd insisted Shadow would be the one to hold onto the device.

Sonic shook the device a few more times to ensure all the possible water was out before walking a few paces and placing the device on a nearby rock to let it dry on the sun. He sat beside it, removing both his soaked shoes and socks, as well as wet gloves and scarf to lay them onto the stone too as, man, he honestly didn't want to spend the next who-knew-how-many hours having to wear wet clothing.

However, as he was laying out the items he couldn't help but glance at his still bruised hands. They had gotten darker and were now sporting deep purple color that contrasted darkly with his otherwise peach skin; most likely because of him using his hands quiet a lot in yesterday's fight.

Well, good thing Amy's not here to see; she'd go all mother-hen mode on me... he mused as he finished spreading all the items out, before getting up and making a couple of steps away. Once sure he was far enough that he wouldn't accidentally splash his things and get them even more wet, he began to shake himself off of the excess water, wanting to be dry as quickly as possible.

Just when he was finished, the sound of bushes rustling sounded from nearby, catching Sonic's attention.

It was not much of a surprise to see Shadow come through said bush just a moment later; Sonic had been expecting him to show up for a long time now. The agent was turning his head as he observed the clearing, pausing noticeably at the stones where the Emerald and Sonic's clothing laid, most likely confused to as why Sonic had put them there.

Said hero just grinned. "Heya, Shad," he called to bring the agent's attention to him as Shadow in fact had his back turned to him. Shadow turned to him a just a moment later, an eye-ridge raising in a silent question at his current state of undress.

"I've gotten an involuntary bath when getting the emerald," Sonic explained, one peach hand gesturing to the broken branch that was now limply hanging from the tree, just waiting for gravity to drag it down onto the ground.

Crimson eyes briefly flicked to the mentioned place before focusing back on Sonic again.

"Though if it we could get the other Chaos Emeralds this easily, I surely wouldn't complain. Heh," Sonic added with a grin before he headed back to the drying stone, from the corner of his eyes seeing Shadow approach the place too.

Green gaze once again fell onto the purple Chaos Emerald and an idea popped up in Sonic's head. "Hey, maybe you could teleport us back to my house? I could dry up my things quicker there!" Sonic suggested excitedly as he took the purple gem and offered it to Shadow.

However, the agent didn't make any move to grab it, only staring at the gem in Sonic's hand—which Sonic, of course, immediately assumed meant one thing. "Well, if you don't feel like you can handle it, we can just wait and—"

However, before Sonic could even finish, Shadow was already shaking his head in the 'that won't be necessary manner' and taking the Chaos Emerald from Sonic's waiting hand, the gem immediately lighting up with a soft shine the moment it was in Shadow's own hand.

A gloved hand softly gripped Sonic's own and Sonic was about to tell the other to wait and let him pack his things, but before he could even get a word past his lips, there was suddenly this odd itchy, prickly sensation where Shadow's hand touched his and when Sonic turned to look what Shadow was doing, there seemed to be an odd golden haze surrounding their hands.

Confused as he had no idea what it was that Shadow was doing right now, Sonic only watched the light-show, waiting for Shadow to finish whatever it was he was doing and then explain himself.

Not long after, the haze disappeared and Shadow retracted his hand, leaving Sonic to stare in with wide eyes at his own hand—purely peach now, not even a faint glimpse of purple bruise discoloring any longer.

Sonic brought his hands together to compare them—one healthily peach, one still very bruised.

For a moment, Sonic tongue quite literally forget how to form words, the hero only emptily opening and closing his mouth. "Did you...Did you just heal me with chaos energy?" Surprised, the hero looked up from his hands, receiving a small nod from Shadow just a moment later. Sonic's gaze dropped back to his appendages, still in awe at his hand being healed so quickly. "Whoa, cool. I didn't even know that was possible," Sonic said, still looking at his fully healthy hand in unhidden fascination.

Why had no one told him chaos energy could do this?!

Slowly, Shadow reached even for his other hand, gently grasping it to heal it as well. And this time Sonic was prepared for the prickly sensation when it came and believe him it was honestly like watching magic happen as Shadow only needed to swipe his thumb over the injury to erase it as easily as marker off a board—as if it was never there in the first place.

Man, Shadow really needed to teach him this trick. Do you know how many months of painful injuries he could save himself from in the future?

The agent released his hand and Sonic gave Shadow a big smile. "Thanks a lot," he said, honestly appreciative. Not that those bruises had bothered him in any way, but it was still a nice gesture from the agent. And a nice gesture from Shadow? He could count on one hand how many he had received from the agent—those were extremely rare; they had to be treated appropriately.

However, instead of Shadow somehow acknowledging his thanks, the agent only stared at him with an odd look before switching the emerald to his other hand to bring the now empty one up and lay it onto Sonic's neck.

Sonic felt his breath hitch slightly at the unexpected contact, the hero not sure what to expect of the other considering the last two days. But the agent made no move to pull him closer or move himself closer. Instead where Shadow touched his neck there was this same prickly sensation—

Oh, the hickey, right. Shadow was obviously taking care of that. Of course, he'd do that when he'd healed his other bruises already.

...right?

Sonic's lips pressed into a thin line as he mulled over the thought. While his bruised hands had been an honest accident, the hickey was something Shadow had purposefully made. At first, Sonic had believed Shadow had done that just to piss off Amy so the agent could have a laugh at his misery, but he'd always had a feeling that was not the only reason for creating it.

Shadow actually removing it on his own without being asked to, what...exactly did that mean?

He knew why people gave other people hickeys and he wouldn't put it past Shadow (in his current state) to do it for the same reason—so why would Shadow remove it willingly?

First him distancing himself and now this... Time-wise it was like almost two full days since the last time Shadow had actually tried anything on him. Two days. Instead of Shadow attempting to get close and intimate with him as they all expected him—as he should be doing according to all previous evidence—Shadow was instead distancing himself more from Sonic, even going as far as erasing the mark he had left on him.

Sonic frowned. Just what on Mobius was going on here?

[Last edited: 2018-07-09]

AN: Hello, everyone! It's been a long time, hasn't it? Apologies for not updating earlier, but, you know, university...it's time consuming. Hopefully, I'll be able to update more frequently once the summer break rolls around. (Though let's all hope it's not gonna take that long for another chapter to appear...XD)

On another note, for those of you who enjoy a bit of humor: on April Fools, I'm gonna be posting a short one-shot so watch out for it!