Shadow was watching a boring Vietnamese action movie. The "action" consisted of people yelling insults like "dirt face" and "dummy head" at each other when a train passes between them, interrupting their argument and separating them. He yawned and looked over at Honest. Honest was sitting in the old, leather recliner to his right, swiping her finger along the surface of a glowing tablet.

"What are you doing?" Shadow asked somewhat curiously.

Honest looked up at him. "Reading Shadow x Werehog fanfictions." She hit something in the lower left of the screen. "The author is super friendly, so I'm chatting with them about what's happened in the story so far. We have a lot of things in common in the way we like our Sonadow."

Shadow seemed concerned for a second, but he quickly regained his usual frown and instead rolled his eyes. Honest hadn't seen him, but that was fine with him.

Sonic had been out with the rest of the Sonic Heroes (Tails and Knuckles) all afternoon. Snow had just left to go window-shopping in downtown Station Square. Akane was asleep in a laundry basket somewhere.

Shadow glanced back at Honest and cleared his throat. Honest looked up at him. "Can we talk?"

"Sure!" was Honest's fast reply. Even faster did she leap across the couch to sit beside him. "What do you want to talk about?"

"You haven't published a new chapter of your stories lately. When is something big going to happen again?"

"I'm taking a break from writing for the summer. When school starts back up again, I'll try to find time to write daily."

Shadow looked relieved. "That's great."

Suddenly the window next to them shattered and a silver hedgehog came rolling in. "Great!"

"Do you have any idea how many rings it will take to fix that?!"

Silver shook his head. Shadow gritted his teeth. "Well, then you're going to have to start punching numbers because you're paying."

Honest giggled. "That sounds like what someone would say when they've had a terrible date," she pointed out.

Everyone ignored her as Shadow pushed Silver out the front door and nailed a board across the window he broke to keep Silver out.

"That's something I hope to read more of soon," Honest said when Shadow crossed his arms grumpily and sat back down. "Shadow x Silver fan fictions. I'm pretty sure it's called 'Shadilver'. I've heard that sometimes Silver is the more dominant one. That sure sounds interesting.." Shadow "pft"ed as Honest smiled to herself. Honest soon stopped and sat down beside Shadow again.

"That reminds me. Did you ever read those Sonadow fan fictions I emailed to you?" Honest felt Shadow stiffen beside her. "Did you like them?"

"Well, I mean- what? No!" Shadow began to think about it, but then stopped himself. "Why should I? That stuff's only for girls."

Just then Sonic came traipsing in through the front door.

"I just read the most amazing Sonamy fan fiction! Scourge and Mephiles were.."

Honest looked sideways at Shadow. "What were you saying?"

"I was saying that only girls like Sonic fan fictions. And Sonic's a girl, I guess."

"If I'm a girl, does that mean you'll date me?" Sonic asked Shadow.

"No!" He threw several chaos spears that pinned Sonic a foot up the wall. "Why do you have to be so gay all the time?" Honest crossed her arms.

"Go take him down. He was only joking with you."

Shadow sighed and walked over to Sonic. He reached for one of the spears which had pinned his left ear to the wall. Sonic immediately grabbed Shadow's wrist. The chaos spear that had stuck that arm to the wall fell to the floor, dissolving on impact with the floor. "Though I do much more prefer if you were the girl," Sonic whispered. "If that goes against some of Honest's fan-fics, then it's okay with me."

Shadow couldn't speak. His ears slowly turned red.

"It's okay, Sonic! I prefer Shadow on bottom as well!" Honest yelled from where she was standing by the couch.

"That's not helping, Honest!" Shadow yelled back to her.

"I wasn't trying to." Shadow looked back to see Honest sticking her tongue out at him.

The chaos spears eventually all dissolved away, allowing Sonic to drop to the floor.

Sonic turned Shadow to face him by pulling on the wrist he had grabbed. Although Shadow was sure his life was ending, all Sonic said next was "I was only joking."

Sonic then turned to leave the room. Shadow was still frozen in his spot. Sonic turned around for a split second. "Smile!" He then left for his bedroom.

Shadow bowed his head and walked past Honest towards his own bedroom. "Are you going to bed, too?" she asked.

"I'm going to go bury my head in a pillow."

Shadow disappeared around the corner. "Wait for me!" Honest exclaimed, following him.

Shadow was half-heartedly munching on salt-less green beans when he heard Honest purring beside him. She was steadily munching on globs of strawberry cake. "Uh, where'd you get that?"

"Oh, this?" Honest opened her eyes and held out one of her hands, liquid icing dripping through her fingers and onto the floor of the kitchen. "Scourge stole this from-" Honest noticed that Tails was listening to them. She whispered, "The café."

"Why is Scourge stealing stuff for you?!"

"He knows I like cake and sweet things." Honest crossed her arms and turned around, pink icing stuck to her face. "The King pays attention to what I like. Unlike a certain Ultimate Lifeform I know. ."

'Unlike a certain echidna I know,' echoed in Shadow's head. He began to puff steam from his ears. "Be glad I didn't yell at you for being in my bed this morning. Next time, I will."

"But what about when you said you like sleeping with me-"

"I didn't say that!" Shadow hit one of Honest's ears. It was bent backwards for a good 5 seconds before popping back. "Oh..."

Amy came walking by with a platter of food. She heard what they were saying and gave them a strange look. She ignored them and brought the platter to Sonic.

Sonic picked up one of the cookies and took a bite. "This is delicious, Amy. Thank you." Amy smiled and brought the platter over to Silver.

When she was gone, Sonic passed the cookie to Tails. He whispered, "Eat this for me, will ya, bud? I'll pretend I ate it." Tails smelled of the cookie and wrinkled his nose.

Big was watching with bugged-out eyes. Honest noticed the fellow cat, whom had his feet up on Snow's ottoman and was watching episode 52 with Silver.

"Uh, who invited him?" Honest asked. Shadow saw Big and scratched his head.

"I- don't know," he said. Shadow then turned to Honest. "I thought you invited him."

Cream had fallen asleep in the recliner near the far corner of the room with her friend, Cheese, in her lap, asleep as well. She had eaten way too many of Amy's cookies, being polite. Luckily they hadn't made her sick, just tired.

Honest smelled smoke and turned to see Scourge in the doorway leading to the main room. He was puffing on a cigarette, juggling a lighter in one hand.

"Hey! You can't smoke in here! What will Snow do if she sees you?!" Scourge saw Honest was coming and slipped into the main room.

After Honest left, Shadow stood up. He felt Sonic pull on his tail, tugging him back down. "Ow."

"Where are you going, faker?"

Shadow narrowed his eyes. "To follow Honest."

"How about we play a game of cards?" Sonic smiled hopefully.

"Poker?" Shadow asked, annoyed. Sonic stood up.

"No, of course not! I wouldn't do that to you, friend! No, no, no. We're going to play a harmless game of Go Fish."

Shadow sighed. "Alright, faker. Let's play cards."

"Hooray!" Sonic took his hand and zipped over to the table. They both sat around it and Sonic pulled out a deck of cards. He began distributing it between them.

"Let's go!" he announced, laying the leftover cards in the middle of the playing field. "We'll go for pairs of the same number, different suits. The first one to run out of cards is the winner."

Shadow had been observing the cards in his hand the whole time. "Let me guess. This isn't poker, but there are still stakes, right?"

Sonic just replied with a grin. "If I win, you have to kiss me."

"And if I win, you have to kiss Amy," Shadow said, unfazed.

"You're on."

five minutes later

"What?! You won?!"

"I have played Go Fish with Honest many times in the past."

"Bu-But how?" Sonic asked, unbelieving.

"Hm. I wonder where Amy is-" Shadow began.

"Wha, wha.. how about we just keep this to ourselves? No one has to know!"

"Nope. I'm sorry, faker, but you lost. You agreed to this." Shadow smiled inwardly, on the outside still sporting his forever disapproving frown. He smiled knowing that he had a little control over Sonic- even if it was just a little.

Sonic sulked off to the kitchen where Amy was. "Amy?" The pink hedgehog girl turned around when she heard him.

"Hm?" Sonic moved close to her quietly.

"It was- really nice of you to bake for us.."

Amy was going to open her mouth and say something, but was stopped by Sonic kissing her.

Sonic broke away quickly, wiping his mouth and walking in the opposite direction, out of the kitchen and towards Shadow. Amy was speechless, but she didn't freak out or anything. She just walked off towards the bathroom awful stiffly.

"I really feel bad," Sonic said, approaching Shadow.

"Since when have you ever felt bad about anything?" Shadow said, crossing his arms.

"It's all your fault if Amy is crying and upset now," Sonic told him.

"You could've easily refused to do the dare," Shadow said in response.

"What? But you said-"

"You're Sonic the Hedgehog. You can easily refuse anything. Why should I get to tell you what to do?"

Sonic growled in response.

Just then, the bathroom door opened and Amy came flying out, latching onto Sonic's back. "Oh, Sonic! I love you sooo much! Let's get married!"

Shadow began to regret doing that as he watched Sonic try desperately to pry Amy off of himself. All that did was make Amy even more madly in love with him. Maybe he should've made him have to kiss Scourge. He was sure Honest would've loved seeing that. In fact, where was Honest? Shadow looked around the room. A loud sigh came from nearby. He turned to see Honest and Scourge sitting next to each other on the floor, their backs against the couch. "Straight Sonic couples are overrated. I would've liked it better if Sonic had won." Well, she was Honest after all. She was just being Honest.

(I don't know when I originally typed this chapter, but I can tell that at this point, I was finally beginning to understand how I felt about Sonic's and Shadow's rivalry.)