"Now be sure to be on your best behaviour."

"Tails, come on, what are you, my mom?" Sonic snorted, rolling his eyes.

Miles shrugged. How would he know?

"You remember last year's party?"

"Uh… mostly." The blue hero scratched his cheek, having the decency to look embarrassed for a change.

"You took out power to half the zone." Miles dragged a box from the storage compartment of the Vortex. "You ran through a truck." He tucked his chin on top of one container as his tails hefted several more. "And you made Amy cry."

"Uh… Didn't know about that last part." Sonic looked away with a frown. Whatever his feelings toward them, Sonic didn't like anyone to cry, it was one of his better traits.

"And this was when the party was at my workshop." Miles slammed the hatch closed hard enough to make the entire vehicle wobble. "And when Amy couldn't break a battle tank with her hammer."

He turned around and met Sonic's gaze, shoving a box into his hands before carrying on mercilessly.
"This is a populated, human, city. And…" He flailed a hand almost lost inside the sleeve of an oversized green sweater. "I like Amy and do not want her to cry. Or to get hit in the head while buying you time to get away. Okay?"

"Alright, alright." Sonic grinned, his own red sweater a far better fit. "Don't worry, bud. I'll be good. Promise."

Miles gazed at him unconvinced before checking the slender grey band on his glove for the time.

At least he'd got him here. That had been a feat in itself.

Miles trudged in Sonic's wake through the snow, consolidating his grip around boxes until he could peer out through a carefully arranged hole in the pile.

"Uhh… Any idea how we're supposed to ring the buzzer way up there?"

"Try knocking? I can't exactly fly up and press the button right now."

Banging rang out into the evening. Miles peered up at snowflakes painted rainbow hues by Christmas light pollution, feeling neither cold nor festive.

Strange how things changed when you got older. He remembered his first Christmas as an event of some confusion on his part, something others did. A time with more lights and fewer rocks when people saw him.

Never no rocks. The inhabitants of West Side island had cared little for the fox haunting their villages for parts over the months he'd been there, but this event had been a merciful period of comparative restraint on their part, and he, starving over the winter months, with a name he'd picked out of enemy combat chatter and a vocabulary more than ninety percent literal chirping, had never understood why.

Strange how some things never changed when you got older. Sonic rapped on the door again, patient as ever.

What was the true meaning of Christmas? It wasn't even a mobian holiday. A feast to celebrate the solstice where days started getting longer and the worst of winter had passed, hijacked into a gift giving activity. Well he could see why stores liked the change, but wouldn't it have been more pragmatic to spread the food used for feasting across the entire winter period in the first place?

Miles was halfway through the mental calculation when the door opened to reveal a pretty hedgehog whose preview he'd already seen days prior, yet still managed to catch him off guard regardless.

She'd really gone all out this time, going through the not inconsiderable time and discomfort to curl her spines out of their normal downturned bob to splay out in a flip at the back to go with her classic choice of attire, a sprig of mistletoe artfully, if not subtly, arranged by her ear, and even makeup… probably assisted by Rouge, subtle lipstick she was currently biting as she looked up at the blue hedgehog before her.

"Oh… Hi, Sonic." She broke into a shy grin, brushing a self-conscious hand across the spines she'd worked so hard on, her other arm clutched across the chest of the outfit she'd so carefully selected.

"Hey, Amy." Sonic grinned and waved, one hand on the gift Miles had made him carry. "Long time no see! Anybody else here yet?"

"Everybody except Cream. She had a carol thing today, her mom's dropping her off a bit later."

Miles perked an ear at that. A reprieve from some early teasing before he found a nice quiet spot to wallflower was a mercy at least.

"Great! Second door down the hall, right?" Sonic brushed past her. "Hope there's food! I'm starving."

"Don't eat it all this time!" Amy called out, but Sonic had already zipped up the stairs with an excited whooping that surely ingratiated him to Amy's neighbours. She let out a small sigh, clenching her hands together at her waist in silence.

He'd barely even looked at her.

And Miles stepped wordlessly forward, feeling perhaps not quite so invisible as she did.

"... Huh?" Amy glanced back from the stairs. "Tails?"

"Yes?"

"Ha!" Her forlorn expression vanished. "Sorry! I thought you were still out at the car. Can you even see over all those boxes?"

"Nope. Mostly navigating through echolocation."

"Really?"

"Nah. There's a hole in the middle. Can see out just fine."

Amy made a face, but reached out anyway. "Here, let me help you with some of those."

"It's fine, most of the boxes are load-bearing anyway at this point. I'd appreciate help putting them down when we get up there though."

"Fine, but I get to watch you walk up the stairs." Amy grinned.

Miles grunted in response, waddling to the oversized human stairs with the determination of a mountain climber.

"How does Cream even climb these things?"

"She usually flies it."

"Figures." Miles heaved up with a grunt, one step at a time. Each step were just under eight inches high, unpleasant enough for him, well above knee height for Cream. Clambering up these stairs wet with snow would be something preferably avoided in the- oop.

A hand pressed between his shoulders as his foot slipped, pressing him firmly forward.

"Not just keeping an eye on you because it's funny." Amy's smirk was audible.

"Yeah, yeah." Miles rolled his eyes.

"That green looks good on you by the way."

"Thanks. You're the one who made it."

"I did?"

"Yep." Miles made it up another step with a sigh. "Three years ago."

"Thr… Oh wow, it's that one?"

"Yep."

"I… uh. I told you you'd grow into it?"

"... Sure." Miles was quite glad she couldn't see the sleeves at this point. While some mobians tended to grow taller throughout their lives, especially the larger species, his own growth was more akin to tectonic drift than sprouting bamboo, possibly a result of his early deprivations… Or possibly his current, largely self-inflicted, deprivations. It rarely seemed worth making food when he was alone, after all.

"Hm… Maybe I'll make you another one." Amy ran her finger down the fabric of his back, sending a shiver down his spine. "I know how to measure now after all." She giggled.

"It's fine. I don't need clothes."
"Doesn't mean you don't look cute in them."

"That's the problem." Miles reached the top at last, pile wobbling as he shifted his tails around to grip it more securely. "People still ask me if I'm a girl."

Amy laughed again. Miles groaned internally.

"You have the cutest problems." Amy tweaked his cheek fur with a grin as she passed, heading for the door of her apartment, waiting for him to catch up. "Trust me, Cream has no doubt in her mind that you're a boy."

Well that was oddly specific.

"...Wait, you think I'm a girl?"

"Huh?" Amy's eyes widened in surprise. "I- uh- no! Never!"

Miles sighed. "Amy, we've known each other for how long and you're not sure?"

"Shut up, I'm serious!" Amy looked away, cheeks pink. "...Maybe when we first met."

"Amy!"

"I was confused! You were adorable!"

"I'm not-"

"Sorry, and formidable. Adormidable." Amy stuck her tongue out with a cheeky grin. "Anyway thanks. For... bringing him."
"It's the least I can do. Hopefully he's not broken anything in there, he's been on the eggnog all afternoon."

Amy rolled her eyes with a tender, if exasperated, smile.

"We'd better get inside then. What's so special in all those boxes that you couldn't stick some in your hammerspace anyway?"

Miles paused, blinking as his brain processed the question and rebooted.

"Oh Penders!"

It was good to hear her laughing at least.