villainous thing

by cowboymanboy

Summary:

Robotnik doesn't trust humans, Stone included. That is, until a mission gone wrong forces him to acknowledge the extent of Stone's loyalty. Several revelations ensue.

Or, Stone is submissive like a guard dog and Robotnik finally sees him bare his teeth.

Chapter 1

Notes:

this is pre-sonic 1 but diverges from the canon ie 'what if robotnik crashed out and he and stone decided to become villains together before the events of the film.' thank u my bestie tom for the idea this was all you boss

<< also tw for suicidal ideation in this chapter >>

it's not explicitly stated but some of robotnik's internal dialogue can definitely be interpreted that way + the tone is pretty heavy in general (this will change in part 2)

Ivo Robotnik was born with a lingering sense of dread. 

From the moment his eyes opened to the world, it hung over him like a heavy cloud. He couldn’t describe it, exactly, but he had the intrinsic feeling that his life would be spent charging forward with reckless abandon until he inevitably crashed. It was an eventuality, a certainty. He was different; born into a world that felt inherently unsuitable to his existence. Like a fish out of water, every moment he spent pretending to be one with humanity was borrowed time. Eventually, it would run out. 

To his credit, Robotnik was a survivor. Unyielding perseverance was a necessary adaptation for someone born into misfortune and, like everything, he used it to its full potential. Ultimately, it took several decades of suffering amongst humanity’s ranks for him to finally hit the wall he had seen coming since birth. 

He had always imagined it to be a grand moment. A tangible break to his persona, the fault lines of his brain finally rupturing and exposing the inhuman thing that lay beneath his deceivingly anthropomorphic form. He hoped it was a bed of wires and circuitry– he had always felt more machine than man. He didn’t quite anticipate that when it finally happened, everything would be quiet. 

Robotnik was in the lab when he finally broke, because he was rarely anywhere else. 

It was late. He hadn’t been keeping the time because it held no relevance to him. He would know it was morning when Stone’s cheerful footsteps inevitably awoke him from a choppy slumber. In the meantime, he was alone with his herd of machines, suspended in time. Little red and blue lights flitted intermittently in his peripheral as a comforting reminder of their presence.

Robotnik flicked a finger and the overhead lights dimmed in response. He pulled his legs up to his chest, turning over a pair of pliers in his hand. They hadn’t been used for their intended purpose in a while, but he didn’t feel inclined to set them down. 

He wasn’t sure why it happened. 

There was nothing wrong, no inciting incident, but he nevertheless was struck by a wave of utter exhaustion. It nearly took the air from his lungs and his hand clenched around the tool. He blinked several times, but there was no heaviness behind his eyes.

He was tired. 

Not physically– not any more so than usual, at least– but he was tired all the same. Tired of the endless meetings, of the forced niceties, the constant expectation of compromise. Every pointless social construct he was forced to participate in as a means to an end. All that performance, that wasted time– it was all so draining, and for what? To be allowed to do the only thing that mattered to him, the only thing that could possibly justify his existence in a world that clearly didn’t want him in it. 

It was all so deeply unfair. 

Robotnik sucked in a sharp breath, exhaling shakily. His throat felt tight. He had spent decades enduring the same circumstances, but in that moment he couldn’t fathom how he’d done it. Whatever resolve he had subsisted on had finally run dry, leaving him empty. A switch had flipped in Robotnik and he knew at once that it could not be undone. 

His head raised subconsciously as he met his own eyes in the dim reflection of a blank console. He stared at the facsimile with utter detachment from its likeness, tilting his head and watching it mimic his movement with an unsettling certainty that whatever he truly was, it was not what was looking back at him.

He blinked slowly, his mind shifting.

Robotnik felt himself on the edge of a cliff, momentarily suspended in motion. He didn’t spare a glance over the side. It wouldn’t matter. He already knew what awaited him at the bottom, had pictured it a thousand times over. The longer he looked upon his own fleshy vessel, the very picture of humanity, the further his compulsion grew to take the final step.

He could finally collapse in on himself like a dying star and the world would say they saw it coming. It wouldn’t be a shame so much as only a matter of time as they held onto their precious sympathy, unwilling to spare it such an inevitability. 

For once, they would be right. 

The thought of their sick satisfaction stung, yet Robotnik merely absorbed the pain with the distinct feeling that he was already burning from the inside out. 

He sighed, then turned away. 

 

Still victim to the ever-moving tide of life, Robotnik found himself drifting through his daily routine much the same as he had before. His limbs seemed to move of their volition as he was carried throughout the lab, flipping switches and plucking away at projects without any real purpose. 

Just behind his eyes, he could still see himself teetering on the very edge of nothingness, unmoving. He wasn’t sure what kept him there. Still, he remained in stasis, unwilling to take the final step and equally unable to turn away and return to the life he once endured with ease.

Robotnik’s fingers clenched around a pair of wire cutters, idly snipping a metal coil into exponentially smaller fragments. When the minuscule pieces eventually fell away uselessly, he didn’t notice until the blade sliced into his finger. He watched with disinterest as blood welled from the small incision, just another cruel reminder of the vile humanity coursing through his veins. 

When it reached his knuckle, Robotnik became aware of a presence looming behind him. He spared a brief glance and easily located the figure in his peripheral. He didn’t turn around. 

“Doctor?” Agent Stone’s voice rang out several moments later. 

Robotnik remained silent, as if he hadn’t heard. If he didn’t respond, there was a chance the agent would simply sigh and wander off. A favorable outcome. 

Instead, Stone foolishly took it as his cue to move closer, forcing himself into the doctor’s line of sight. 

“The project board is requesting another follow-up at your earliest convenience. Should I go ahead and schedule that for later in the week?” he asked lightly, leaning around to catch Robotnik’s eye. 

Robotnik frowned, twisting away from him. “No need,” he said stiffly. 

“It’s quite important, sir. They want to discuss–”

“Don’t care!” Robotnik snapped, slamming a palm onto the workbench with a resounding metal clap. “I don’t care, Stone. Go make yourself useful elsewhere. Or don’t, because again– I don't care.” 

Though his gaze remained pointedly focused on the wall, he heard an audible inhale from beside him as Stone was clearly contemplating whether to heed the order. His obedience appeared to win in the end and he quietly retreated to another part of the lab without another word. 

Robotnik breathed out despite feeling little in the way of relief. Blood pooled in the palm of his hand. 

 

He didn’t go to the meeting.

As far as he was aware, Stone never scheduled it. Therefore, it shouldn’t have happened. Nothing should have been discussed, whatever banal and trivial matter being tabled for a later date. It was standard procedure; hardly the first time Robotnik wasn’t in the mood for a meeting. 

He thought very little of it after the fact. Stone, too, said nothing. 

When the screen on Robotnik’s glove lit up several days later, prompting him to take a call, he dismissed it.

It continued to light up in short bursts, vibrating incessantly against his wrist. He spared a bored and increasingly irritated glance at the number, unsurprised to see it contained a government extension, and promptly disabled the call feature entirely. 

Not long after, an electronic message came through. Robotnik’s hand caught in motion, finger extended and halfway to deleting the undoubtedly irrelevant correspondence, when his eyes locked onto a pair of words. He blinked, willing them away, but they remained imprinted on the small screen with all the stubborn pride of their sender.

Sean Lawrence. 

Some might call it a name, but Robotnik loathed the implications of the designation. Of the inherent importance. It suggested far too much respect for a man who deserved none. 

Robotnik felt himself seize up before he finished skimming the words. 

The email subject simply read EQUINOX V.4_Amendments with the inclusion of the present date. An innocuous title following the same format as countless others on the current project. And yet, the message made little sense–

Agreement to move forward with the amendments, as stated, he read, jumping around. Appreciate your cooperation. Several files were attached but Robotnik ignored them in favor of the notification that originally caught his eye.

A private reply to the email chain, addressed to Robotnik alone. 

[Sean Lawrence 

To You

I hope you know that my decisions have, and continue to be, in the best interest of the project. 

Nothing personal.]

Despite not knowing what it was referencing, the defense felt nonetheless outrageous and insulting. Nothing personal? Robotnik’s hand preemptively clenched into a fist as he quickly opened the attachments, enlarging a copy of what appeared to be meeting minutes and a document detailing a new plan of action. 

Scanning the files without so much as a breath, Robotnik felt his own outrage filling his throat like bile and promptly spilling out in a string of expletives. 

 

Apparently, there had been a meeting. 

One concerning the contested fate of his primary project of which Robotnik was, of course, not in attendance. Nothing should have been able to move forward without his explicit permission, and yet the board had taken it upon themselves to deliberate with ‘unanimous agreement from all present parties’ to deviate from their original plan of action. 

Equinox was, like all things, a passion project for the simple fact that Robotnik was fundamentally unable to operate under conditions of apathy. His investment in his machines ran as deep as his own sense of self, each meticulous creation imbued with the essence of his own life. They were his life. The only thing on the whole pitiful planet that meant anything at all to him. 

While a collaboration by technicality, Robotnik was the one that spent months drafting, designing, and assembling the final fleet of drones. They were extraordinarily advanced, practically pushing the boundaries of physics itself, and they were perfect. He had made sure of it.

Robotnik had never known a sense of the sublime until he set his gaze upon the rows of their sleek metallic panels and almost lifelike apertures. They were a reflection not only of his genius, but of Robotnik himself. They bore a likeness he had never experienced when looking into the eyes of a human, but he felt an inherent recognition every time he stared into the lens of his creations. 

The Equinox drones were the closest thing Robotnik had to kinship, his greatest pride, and–

They were going to be deployed across the globe and placed under the complete jurisdiction of seventy-two government nobodies. The very fate he had, for months, adamantly refused to entertain. 

Robotnik very nearly felt himself shatter. His voice pierced out in sharp bursts, painful even to his own ears. 

Nothing personal. 

What a load of utter bullshit. 

 

Still fuming, Robotnik barely registered when Stone entered the lab not an hour later. 

“Sir?” he called out from across a stretch of floor now separated by a barrier of scattered metal parts and an overturned chair. When there was no reply, he tried again. “Doctor?”

Robotnik, kneeling and elbow-deep into a console, emerged with a fistful of wires pulled taut where they were still connected to the source. He may as well have been holding a mess of intestines, the sight nearly as goreish. 

“What,” he snapped, the word punctuated with a final violent tug that promptly disconnected the wires. One dull hum dropped out of the chorus of machinery and a nearby screen faded to nothingness. He fixed Stone with a hard glare. “What could you possibly need to say right now?” 

Stone appeared unfazed, though he looked mildly alarmed at the state of disarray. Even as he attempted to keep his eyes trained on the doctor, Robotnik could see the minute movements of his pupils as they flickered over the shattered beakers and spread of tools across the floor. 

He cleared his throat. “I take it you read the email,” he started uneasily, to which Robotnik’s glare deepened. “I told them to push the meeting another week. But, uh–” Stone hesitated, breaking eye contact.

“Spit it out,” Robotnik demanded, tossing the wires onto a steadily growing pile of carnage. “Or get out of my sight.” 

“Lawrence went over your head, sir.” 

At that, he froze, turning to properly face Stone in one mechanical motion. 

“He what?” Robotnik hissed, voice reaching a startling pitch. He took several steps forward, ignoring the crunching metal beneath his boots as he trampled various debris. 

Eyes wide, Stone stood rooted in place as the doctor came to a halt in front of him. “He presented the issue to the General and was granted an exception. Permission to act in your absence. Supposedly, Lawrence claimed that you’re refusing to work with him and it’s stunting the project.” 

Robotnik heaved a humorless laugh. It was a ludicrous claim. Sure, he had neglected to answer a few emails, ditched a handful of irrelevant meetings, but the project was right on track, if not ahead of schedule. 

Most appalling, however, was the grossly personal connotation of it all– he had said Robotnik was refusing to not, not with the team, but with the singular him.

Lawrence had been the one to approach him with the project, back when it was nothing more than a fledgling thought. A few words of mouth. And, against all odds, the idea was a good one. Reasonably intelligent, well-constructed, and brimming with potential once Robotnik's genius was secured. 

They were colleagues, but they weren't friends.

Robotnik didn't have those. Even if he did, Lawrence certainly wouldn't qualify. But, for a time, he had almost been fooled into believing that their passion for the project mirrored one another. That the man had understood him– just a little. Admittedly, the delusion had almost felt...nice. A truly sickening thought, in retrospect. 

All too quickly, however, reality reared its ugly head and Lawrence became adamant on his grand, moronic idea of the project's fate as if it was no longer theirs, using their tentative camaraderie to goad Robotnik into agreement. When he refused to budge, things promptly devolved between them. Robotnik continued on as he always had, and Lawrence continued to prove himself a prime example of everything he believed humans to be– stupid, untrustworthy, and as manipulative as their feeble minds would allow them to be.

Nothing personal. Refusing to work with him. 

How disgustingly petty.

The jabs were certainly calculated. Purposeful. The awareness failed to make the outcome any less devastating, which in turn only perpetuated the cycle of Robotnik’s anger. Mad at Lawrence for doing it, mad at himself for feeling anything at all. 

He couldn’t win.

Before the swell of rancid emotion could eat away at him completely, Robotnik swiftly reprogrammed the calling feature on his glove and pulled up a lengthy list of contacts. The number for the General was dialed before he could blink. 

“Stone, get out.” Robotnik gestured dismissively when he noticed the agent was still posted across the lab. Stone hesitated, then made a quiet exit. 

Before the connection had finished processing, Robotnik launched into a tirade of nearly incomprehensible questions that were afforded no time for a response, littered with various insults and the occasional vague threat to the establishment as a whole. 

Once he had properly exhausted his lungs, Robotnik breathed heavily into the receiver but was otherwise silent. 

From the other end, the General sighed. “Ivo,” he began, stern but not unkind. “I understand that you’re upset and you’re well within your rights to be. I know the pride you take in your work.” 

He paused, and Robotnik held his breath. He already knew what would follow. 

“But what did you expect to happen?” 

There it was.

Robotnik felt something inside him wilt. He dug the heel of his palm into his eyes until it stung, overriding the distinct sensation of a part of himself dying. 

“You knew the parameters of the project as well as anybody. Maintenance and control was always going to be delegated to the on-site operators. Your job was only ever to build them,” the General continued firmly. “This was always how it was going to be, Ivo. You were only stalling the inevitable.” 

 

Stalling the inevitable. 

The words hung in Robotnik’s mind long after he disconnected the call, every argument left unheard. 

He was stalling. He always had been. Robotnik knew this as well as he knew that he was fundamentally unsuited to the life he led; he had stalled for years and now the inevitable was finally coming to a head. 

He would be denied this project the same way he had been denied a truly human life from the moment he was born into this selfish world. Not quite human and yet denied the comfort of a mechanical existence. Ever reliant on his flesh and blood yet treated as though he had none. 

Robotnik had a reputation for being selfish, but the greater truth was that he had been denied everything he ever wanted. 

Nothing was ever allowed to be his. The moment the world sensed he had latched onto something, no matter how minuscule, it was all too quickly wrenched from his grasp. It must know he didn’t belong, peering beneath his organic shell to where his mechanical core lay exposed, and deemed him unworthy of anything human. 

A rather cruel act of cosmic justice, he supposed. 

And yet, he had never asked to be an intruder upon the earth. He was unwillingly thrust into the role from birth and made to suffer the consequences every day since, punished for the audacity of simply existing. 

How was that just? How was that righteous? 

Robotnik may not be quite human, but he outperformed the species in nearly every regard and by a significant margin. Did that not make him deserving? He was different, but he was better than human. His creations more than proved that. 

It was then that Robotnik recalled with clarity one fundamental fact– the world was unforgiving in principle, but it was malleable. He bent its metal to his will everyday, shaping it in his image.

The decision came swiftly and with certainty. 

He didn’t have to continue down this stagnant path nor let himself waste away. If he wasn’t afforded a place in the world, he would carve one from the flesh of the earth. He would mold himself, too, until he could meet his own gaze without the uncanny feeling he was looking into the eyes of a stranger.

He would make himself greater than what he was, altering his very composition, prying into the very atoms of his being until he emerged on the other side, changed. At the end of it, Robotnik would start anew in his own corner of the world. He would be alone, but he would be free. 

Once the thought settled in his mind, Robotnik knew there was no going back. 

From now on, he would live only for himself. Whatever he wanted, he would have. If that meant he had to take, then so be it.

One way or another, Robotnik would have everything he ever wanted.

No one would dare to deny him again. 

 

The revelation eased a part of the heaviness inside him. Exhilaration replaced crushing dread, a manic energy overtaking him as the evening closed in. 

Rather than wallowing in his own sorrow, Robotnik opened the depths of his mind and plucked for information, rearranging the pieces until they slotted into place to form the blueprints of his perfect future. 

There was much to consider from a logistical standpoint, but as the mental image slowly came into focus, Robotnik knew that anything he could see in his mind could be transferred into reality. If he could conceive of it, he could create it. 

Once he deemed the blueprint sufficient, Robotnik hurried around the lab, adding the tools and devices to a quick internal inventory. Some were his, others government-provided; some necessary, some not. He sorted each into their proper category. 

A packing list.

He didn't know where he would go, exactly, but he certainly couldn't stay here.

As he swept aside a pile of hastily strewn papers, the back of his hand brushed against something cold and smooth and the unexpected sensation momentarily shocked his systems.

Robotnik whipped his head around to find an insulated travel mug sitting innocuously on the desk.

He studied it for a moment. It was impersonal; plain black with a small logo on the side from a brand he didn’t recognize. Robotnik knew at once that it wasn’t his. He didn’t own anything of the sort, yet it was here, which meant it had to be one of Stone’s personal effects. 

He gingerly picked it up, feeling the weight of a liquid sloshing around it. As he lifted it, his eyes caught on a note that had been secured underneath the cup. 

It was written on a piece of scrap paper, jagged around the edges from where it had clearly been torn from a larger sheet and repurposed. In a neat, almost machine-like script, it read: Thought you might need a pick-me-up. S. 

Each letter was impressively consistent in size and spacing, boasting no excessive curls or frills. Simple, yet executed with perfection. Were it not for a series of slight, almost imperceivable discrepancies in the letters, Robotnik would have thought it typed. 

He raised an eyebrow at it, oddly pleased by the practicality.  

Now that he was faced with it, Robotnik rooted around in his memory for another sample of Stone’s handwriting– it was surely his, initial aside– but his recollection came up mostly empty. 

He had seen Stone’s signature, of course, from the multitude of paperwork that required it, but Robotnik refused to believe any part of that could truly constitute letters. It was embellished to an absurd degree, all swooping lines and ornate swirls. 

Ridiculous, Robotnik had called it, scoffing. Illegible. 

Stone had only shot him a lopsided grin and flicked his wrist in one final, flowery stroke that underlined his previous work. Robotnik suspected he exaggerated it on purpose. 

Scanning the note once more, he now wondered if Stone’s signature was an exception or if he had catered his script to Robotnik’s liking. The thought caused something to stir in him. He promptly cast it aside. 

Robotnik raised the cup to his lips without further consideration, not needing to examine the contents. Stone knew his tastes. After a few hearty sips, he nodded to himself. 

The drink was, to no surprise, as perfectly executed as Stone’s penmanship. 

 

Robotnik continued to covertly pour over the logistics of his plans throughout the week. 

Emails went unsent, meetings unscheduled, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His motivation had thoroughly dissipated. The passion he once held for his work had been hollowed out, a caverourness hole left where his heart once was. 

Still, the sight of every half-finished project injected him with another burst of bitter, stinging pain that went ignored. Soon enough, they would be mere relics, destined to be scrapped for parts or left to collect dust. Robotnik didn’t know which was worse, only that they were undeserving of either fate. 

It couldn’t be helped, he told himself. He couldn’t take it all. Some things would have to be left behind.

 

Stone seemed quieter than usual, though Robotnik paid him little mind. He scurried about the lab, lingering at the edge of his sight with an uncharacteristic timidness. He often looked as though he was about to speak, but the words never came. 

Instead, he left silent offerings: steaming mugs of coffee, stacks of neatly primed and stapled paperwork, a tool Robotnik hadn’t asked for but nonetheless needed. 

On Wednesday, he brought food.

Admittedly, Robotnik hadn’t been paying much mind to his meals. Food was more or less sustenance to him, just another irritating bit of human maintenance, so it sometimes went forgotten. 

It was almost eight o’clock in the evening when Stone returned to the lab. Robotnik hadn’t noticed when he slipped out; he frequently announced his departure, but not always. Or maybe Robotnik just didn't listen. Truthfully, it was hard to say.   

“Doctor?” Stone called out. 

“Over here.” 

He didn’t specify where ‘here’ was, trusting in Stone’s ability to locate him from sound alone. He liked to keep the agent’s senses sharp. It was clearly working because Stone found him easily, sauntering over to the workbench with a sizable tupperware in hand. 

Robotnik eyed it suspiciously. He couldn’t quite discern the substance inside, nor why it was being presented to him.

“I thought you might like some dinner,” Stone said, lifting the container in explanation. “Have you eaten?”

Robotnik thought for a moment. He couldn’t remember when he last ate, which likely meant he hadn’t. Stone seemed to know this already; it wasn’t the first time Robotnik had noticed the agent had a strange interest in monitoring his various intakes– food, water, and rest were apparently of great importance to him. 

Leaning back in his seat, Robotnik made a noncommittal sound. 

“I didn’t think so,” Stone said with no particular intonation. He held out the container in offering but Robotnik made no attempt to grab it, still suspicious of its contents. 

He wrinkled nose. “What is it? And why is it so beige?” 

Stone shot him a funny look, peeling off the lid and holding it out for him to observe. “It’s just brown rice and chicken. I had leftovers.” 

Robotnik inspected it closely. Now exposed, the aroma wasn’t entirely unpleasant and the food itself looked rather unoffensive, if a little bland. He had characterized Stone as a more adventurous eater based on the colorful lunches he often brought to work– previous evidence showed he had a peculiar fondness for vegetables that Robotnik found disconcerting and a little untrustworthy. 

Normally, he would feel compelled to comment on the uncharacteristic meal choice, perhaps even pry into the reasoning behind it– unnecessary diet, new partner’s cooking, a laughable attempt to poison him – but Robotnik found he simply didn’t have the energy. 

“So you brought me your sloppy seconds?” he said instead, still eyeing the brown concoction. 

Stone’s face scrunched up and he was met with another weird look. “I don’t think that means what you think it means.” 

“On the contrary, you just don’t understand the nuances of the English language,” Robotnik said with a bored sigh. “Not everything is meant to be crass, Stone. Get your mind out of the gutter and into a book, why don't you? The dictionary is always a great start.” 

“I’ll add it to the itinerary,” Stone replied with a dutiful nod. Robotnik highly suspected it was sarcastic, despite his tone. “Now, would you like some dinner?”  

He was still holding out the container. 

“I'm perfectly capable of sustaining myself,” Robotnik stubbornly insisted, feeling a twinge in his chest at the gesture. He couldn’t quite place the feeling, but he disliked it all the same. “What kind of idiot do you take me for?” 

Stone didn’t dignify the question with a response, and Robotnik didn’t protest when the tupperware was shoved into his hands. 

The food was still warm, he noted immediately, its heat bleeding through the glass and into his palms. As the warmth spread throughout his hands, so too did the strange feeling inside him. 

Robotnik looked down at the food, then up at Stone, and felt as though he might throw up. 

 

He couldn’t bring himself to eat it.

Stone left and Robotnik set the container aside under the pretense that he would indulge once he finished working. Something about being provided a meal– the assumption of helpness, perhaps– struck an uncomfortable nerve with Rotbonik, but once it was in his possession, he found little reason to deny himself the convenience. 

At least, that was his initial thought. 

Instead, Robotnik found his eyes drawn to the little glass container as he worked. His attention split, mind unwillingly sifting information from the object– he unconsciously made note of the name-brand logo, of the colorful shade of the lid, of the slight scratches along the glass from years of frequent use. 

He couldn’t help but trace the line of logic until he visualized how the object fit into Stone’s life, too. He imagined its place in Stone’s kitchen, nestled into a cupboard of other things in a state of perfectly controlled chaos. 

His mind conjured the image of a comfortable but impersonal space, a little sparse but nonetheless tasteful; Stone spent an inordinate amount of time working, so it wasn’t difficult to assume that his living quarters might be lacking as a result. He pictured Stone in the center of the room, dressed down and consumed by some culinary task as he worked over the stove. 

Robotnik had never seen any of these things, but the image held the same familiarity as a memory. He decided that he clearly spent far too much time in the agent’s company. 

Something which was about to change.

Slowly, each glimpse of the food in his peripheral began to trigger a prickle of nauseous emotion in Robotnik. He knew little about guilt, executing everything with purpose and a certainty that eliminated the need for such a thing, and yet he felt the unfamiliar pull of its burden.

Robotnik determined that, on some level, he pitied Stone. 

The agent possessed a degree of sycophantic dedication that was admirable, if a little amusing at times, and had made it clear that he was more than content in his position. 

I’ll be here for as long as you’ll have me, Stone had said once, somewhat wistful, and he had made good on the promise thus far. 

Robotnik, too, had unwillingly slipped into a state of ease. Stone had grown to be a constant fixture in his life, settling into the lab beside the hum of machinery and dust clinging to the monitors; hardly a person so much as a part of the lab itself. 

At some point, Robotnik found he no longer minded this new reality. 

He had grown complacent. 

Comfortable, even. 

But now, their time together was reaching an inevitable end. They were simply at an impasse– Stone, while possibly the only human Robotnik could tolerate, was a human nonetheless. It was a layer of disconnect that all evidence showed couldn’t be breached, by him or anyone, and Robotnik had vowed to stop trying. 

He couldn’t waste any more time on someone who would never truly see him. Their connection to one another began and ended in this lab. It was a definitive conclusion, Robotnik told himself. A certain one.  

The home-cooked meal, a gesture he loathed to recognize the intimacy of, now seemed to taunt him. 

Robotnik stared at the food once more, then buried his head in his hands with a ragged sigh. 

 

He decided to afford Stone the decency of a warning. 

It only seemed fair, given his years of dedicated subservience– almost a parting gift, one could say. Rather than simply absconding into the night and leaving Stone in the dust, Robotnik vowed to clue him in to his imminent departure, if only so he could arrange for a position in a different branch. Perhaps he would even take the opportunity to retire from agent-life, though he couldn't quite picture Stone anywhere else. 

It was easy enough both to formulate the thought and deem it an acceptable one, but the execution proved more difficult. 

Robotnik rarely found himself without words, but now they seemed to evade him at every opportunity. He tried several times to force them from his throat, but his frustration only caused them to sink deeper out of his grasp.

Eventually, it was Stone who initiated the conversation. 

“The team has gone ahead and scheduled a meeting for next Monday to finalize some more details on the Equinox launch,” Stone read from his tablet, having caught Robotnik in one of his increasingly frequent idle moments. “Does nine o’clock work for you or would you like me to push it later, maybe eleven or so?” 

Robotnik ignored the ache in his chest at the mention of the project. His lips twitched into a frown anyway. 

“Let them have their atrociously early meeting,” he sighed, feigning apathy. “I won’t be attending.” 

Stone glanced up from his tablet, just the faintest flicker of his eyes towards the doctor, no doubt prying for information. Robotnik instinctively turned his head to the side to protect against the intrusion. 

Stone shuffled on his feet and cleared his throat. “Would you like me to go instead, sir? If it’s too much of a hassle, my schedule is open.” 

Robotnik shrugged, his apathy now genuine. 

“If you feel like torturing yourself with that crowd, be my guest. Your masochistic tendencies are hardly my business.” 

Stone ignored the remark and continued on as if he hadn’t heard. “Considering what they did last time you were gone, I just think one of us should be there. I don’t have much sway but I might be able to stall any final decisions,” he said pointedly. “Or at least notify you of their plans.” 

Finally, Robotnik spun in his chair and planted his feet firmly on the floor. He inhaled deeply, staring up at the wired ceiling as he released a ragged breath. 

“What does it matter? They’re going to do what they want regardless, Stone. That was always their intention.” Robotnik hadn’t spoken it aloud before and the words soured on his tongue. He felt sick to his stomach. “I’m just their lab rat. Now that they've gotten what they want from me, it's over.” 

The admission hung heavy in the air between them. Somewhere in the distance, a mechanical metronome ticked in a steady loop, counting the seconds as they passed. Robotnik felt his life wasting away with it, a tangible measure of every year he spent in the service of people who openly exploited his inhumanity, treating him as nothing more than a prized lab rat. 

Robotnik was made to perform, stuck in a tireless loop of invention and surmounting his own genius time and time again, but beyond that his fate was never his own. Choice was only an illusion, and a poor one at that.

He had been so foolish to believe their respect for his genius extended to the man behind it, but it never had. He saw that now. 

Stone broke the silence with an admission of his own.

“They don’t deserve what you do for them,” he said with a quiet seriousness, as if voicing Robotnik’s own thoughts. “I’ve always thought so, Doctor. They claim to be geniuses, but they’re so far beneath you it’s absurd. One day they’ll realize that.”   

With any luck, that day was quickly approaching. 

“Nothing to do now but await their eventual reckoning,” Robotnik replied with an uncharacteristic resignation. Though affirming in some manner, Stone’s words meant little to him. He’d heard them a thousand times before, spoken a thousand different ways. Repetition didn’t equal sincerity. 

Stone shifted, his brows creased and eyes sharper than before. Robotnik could practically see the gears turning in his mind. 

“Technically, there’s still time to reverse their plan,” Stone said slowly, meeting his eyes with a weighted stare. Robotnik raised an eyebrow. “If you removed them from the project.” 

Robotnik momentarily balked at him. 

“What could you possibly be suggesting, Stone?” The words burst from him before he could conceal his astonishment. He found his filter had severely degraded. “Did you hit your head? Do you even know what you’re saying?” 

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” was Stone’s immediate and level response. “All of the information is yours– the data, the schematics, the manuals. You created everything. In that way, you’re the only one who truly knows anything about the project. So– if you remove their access to that, they’ll have nothing. The drones will be inoperable to anyone but their creator.” 

Stone said it simply and with a confidence that betrayed the fact that he was suggesting a felony. A complete and active betrayal of their entire operation. It was incredibly irrational and every bit as foolish; absolutely nonsensical, ludicrous, and–

“Isn’t that what you want?” Stone prompted, his unblinking gaze piercing into Robotnik’s retinas. “What you deserve?” 

It was. More than anything. 

But Stone seemed to know that already.

“All the information is stored on a series of physical drives,” Robotnik supplied automatically, though he didn’t know who he was trying to convince, “in confidential locations. One for each director, which makes nine total, including mine.” 

Stone shrugged in a manner that was far too casual for the circumstance. He didn’t break their gaze. “Okay. So we locate the eight additional drives and we destroy them. Hardly a day’s work.” 

The proposition barely registered with Robotnik as he found himself momentarily staggering over a singular choice word.

We? 

That…wasn’t right. For a multitude of reasons, none of which he felt prepared to voice.

Robotnik blinked furiously, attempting to straighten his thoughts. “Stone, I should make it clear that your duties begin and end in this lab. Surely you realize that this is…” He wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. “Far beyond your call,” he settled for.

Stone’s eyes seemed to soften around the edges, overtaken by some feeble bit of emotion. Robotnik hardened his own to compensate. 

“On the contrary, I’ve always been at your beck and call, Doctor. Whatever you need me for, I’m here,” he said resolutely. “I want nothing more than to do right by you.” 

Robotnik felt the words seeping into the cracks of his human shell, now fractured and splintering, and for a fleeting second, he almost let himself believe them. 

“Tomorrow, then,” he said stiffly, casting the sentiment aside. 

“Tomorrow,” Stone agreed.

He wasn't sure why he was allowing this– any of this– but the thought of tomorrow no longer sat heavy in his stomach; for a moment, he felt lighter. 

In the end, Robotnik looked away first.

Notes:

you gotta trust the process w this one ok i have Plans. that random guy i made up is not important but he is a plot device so you will have to live with him for now

this was all the exposition so it will be mostly action going forward. if the chapter count changes just pretend u didn't see that

Chapter 2

Summary:

they stealin

Notes:

a lot of Plot in this one but fear not the day of stob is upon us

Robotnik felt suspended within his own mind as he awaited their day of reckoning. 

Their.

What a foolish word. A foolish sentiment. 

And there was Robotnik, a fool himself for even allowing his mind to utter the phrase without another thought. 

He rapped his knuckles against the desk, one hand frozen in motion where it held a screwdriver angled towards a small metal sphere. His eyes unfocused, staring into the blank wall. 

Robotnik’s life had always been devoid of plurality. It was simply a condition of his inhuman nature, the singular member of a species caught in evolution between man and machine. 

He had a reputation for paying little mind to humans– he was careless, selfish, and disinterested in others– but, behind his arrogant veneer, he was as detached from his own fleshy vessel as he was everyone else's. 

Robotnik approached the maintenance of his body with the same apathy as he did everything non-machine. He ate only when food was presented to him or he was struck with a sudden, dizzying ache in his stomach, and sleep took him unwillingly more often than not. He put effort into his appearance only when the consequences were inconvenient– his body was nothing more than a prison. The architecture wouldn’t change that fact.  

Even now, Robotnik was only absentmindedly aware of the redness of his knuckles where they beat against the hard, metal surface. A stinging pain erupted from each repetition, yet he continued on unperturbed. 

Keeping his body alive and running was nothing more than a means to an end. He lived to create. That was his purpose, the single redeeming fact of his existence. And so, he would begrudgingly keep his vessel operable, if only for that reason alone.   

Everything beyond that was unnecessary. 

Hobbies were for the purposeless. Socialization was pointless outside of necessary communication. Worst of all was the notion of connection; friends, family, and partners fell into the same category– trite and unappealing. 

Everyone spoke of these things as if they were what made someone human and since Robotnik was decidedly not, he wasted no time on them. 

If that made him empty inside, devoid of whatever soul everyone else seemed to be imbued with, so be it. 

Robotnik existed as a singularity for decades and he was content. At least in the ways that mattered. 

And then, without warning, Stone was there. 

He appeared suddenly and without much introduction, sticking himself to the lab like a barnacle and stubbornly remaining in the periphery of Robotnik’s life despite numerous attempts to remove him. 

Thankfully, his obedience was predictable. If he called, Stone would be there; when he inevitably told him to leave, he would. Granted, not forever, but long enough for Robotnik to catch his breath. He wasn’t used to existing in the same space as another, to walk the same paths and breathe the same air. For a while, it was exhausting. 

Eventually, they both learned to adapt to one another and Stone’s residence in the lab proved a stable one. There was something to be said about the way he operated so reliably. Even when everything felt in chaos, Stone would be there just as he always had, ready to heed every order. 

Sometimes, Robotnik almost felt more in control of Stone than himself. His mind and body went rogue on him from time to time, but Stone never did. It was all so streamlined with him, so unquestionable. 

Perhaps that was why Robotnik failed to prevent the subtle slips in his own persona. 

At some point, their conversations had begun to extend past their expiration, drawn out just beyond what was necessary. On occasion, it could even be considered casual. Not friendly, but casual. They exchanged annoyed looks from across the conference table, shared in banal office gossip and what amounted to shit-talking their superiors. 

It wasn’t friendship, but they had grown to know each other beyond what Robotnik’s mind insisted was required. 

He let out a ragged noise, not quite a sigh, and forced his hand to still. 

Obedience didn’t equal loyalty. Casual conversation didn’t amount to connection. Just because something appeared to be one thing didn’t mean that it was. 

Robotnik knew that better than anyone.

Stone was a sycophant. He clung to Robotnik’s side like a barnacle because he was one– opportunistic and self-serving. Stone’s obedience was simply his own means to an end in securing a taste of power and the chance to witness greatness unfold. 

Robotnik wasn’t sure why he needed to remind himself of that.

 

The next day, Stone arrived early to the lab. 

Robotnik’s consciousness felt almost translucent– he was awake, in some sense, and yet the time passed with little regard to that fact. He simply opened his eyes– or perhaps they were already open– and Stone was there, a cup of coffee in each hand. 

“Morning, Doctor.” 

The cup was suddenly in Robotnik’s face. He reached out and took it on instinct, blinking the world into focus. 

“Barely,” Robotnik grumbled. His throat was raw, presumably from lack of hydration, and he quickly took to the warm beverage. “You’re early.” 

Stone gently set down his things and perched himself against the edge of the table, idly sipping his own coffee. He shrugged. “I thought it might be worthwhile to run through the details one last time before we get to work. You know, just in case.” 

Robotnik made a vaguely apathetic gesture, finding it difficult to muster any enthusiasm at the early hour. Behind his eyes, some quiet alarm rang out incessantly– Critical energy depletion. Beep. Prepare for system failure. He screwed his eyes shut and attempted to bury the noise beneath more present sensations. 

“Go on, then,” Robotnik ordered. His voice wavered slightly. “Test your memory by reciting it back to me.” 

Stone immediately launched into a rehearsed plan of action, reading off from his memory in an even, practiced script. 

As he did, Robotnik closed his eyes once more and breathed out, reaching for the sound of Stone’s voice within the blackness. He focused on the slight gravely undertones of his otherwise smooth, even tone, plucking out each uptick in pitch and cadence. 

Replicate access card. Loop cameras. Bypass biometric locks. Locate drive. Quick digital sweep. Repeat.

Slowly, the noise quieted to a dull ringing as reality was replaced by the singularity of Stone’s voice. Robotnik allowed another moment to pass before he opened his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s quite enough,” he said, feeling far more grounded in the present. “Steal it and get out. Practically child’s play.”

“And don’t get caught,” Stone added, apparently feeling the need to state the obvious.

Robotnik rolled his eyes, throwing back the rest of his coffee. “Duh.” 

As much as it sounded like the set-up to a B-rated action film, he truly didn’t think there was much to it. They were both used to delicate missions and stakes far beyond that of petty theft. 

After all, Stone was still an agent– at least by technicality. And Robotnik was himself. 

There was hardly a better pair for the job. 

 

For the sake of efficiency, they began their hunt within the government complex. 

The majority of the other directors resided there with the exception of a few who had temporarily relocated for the duration of the project. While they weren’t all in constant use, each of the eight other members had at least been assigned an office for when they were in town. 

In theory, the project drives were meant to be kept on-site, aside from the one backup drive designated as a fail-safe and kept in a secondary location in the event that the entire complex was compromised. That one wasn’t an issue– Robotnik happened to know its confidential location because he had planted it there. 

The others, however, were intended to be kept highly secured within individual offices. Conveniently accessible to the owner but well-fortified when not in use. 

They stalked through the winding hallways together, moving swiftly and with a determination meant to dissuade any passersby from flagging them down. Any conversation or acknowledgement of someone else in the vicinity would only lend credibility to the fact they had been there, if questioned. 

Shuffled footsteps permeated the silent atmosphere. As usual, they didn’t speak much. 

Stone always adopted a quiet professionalism outside of the lab– he didn’t speak unless spoken to, content to act as a mere accessory to Robotnik’s image. The ever-obedient dog at his heels. 

It was as if a switch flipped the moment they stepped into the public light; it was only when there was no audience to be had that Stone would reanimate as familiarity crept into the space between them. 

Robotnik chalked it up to a side-effect of their prolonged exposure to one another. 

Still, they both maintained the facade. The thought of some ignoble mouth-breather catching the comments they slipped to one another or the secretive looks they exchanged made Robotnik’s stomach turn and his skin prickle. He wasn’t sure why. It simply felt…private. 

Robotnik rounded a corner, slipping down another pristine and painfully drab corridor. As they walked, he held his hand by his side, palm curled into itself as he tapped a sequence into his glove. 

“East wing cameras are looping,” he spoke under his breath, just loud enough for Stone to hear. 

He nodded once in acknowledgement, not breaking stride. 

After several more turns and a few swipes of Robotnik’s high-clearance keycard, they reached the first office.

Stopping just short of the doorway, Robotnik paused to do a cursory sweep. He let his eyes flit across the yellowed walls of the hallway, everything drowned under the maddening fluorescent lights extending the width of the ceiling. It was still early and therefore devoid of life, as far as Robotnik could tell. 

“I’ll stay posted out here,” Stone affirmed, taking up residence near a printed schedule hung by the door. 

Robotnik nodded, not taking his eyes off the surroundings.

“Ping me immediately if anyone comes by. And you better have the codes memorized. A few seconds of hesitation is all it takes for someone to burst in here and create a whole new mess for us.” 

“Understood, sir.” Stone gave a curt, soldierly nod before his expression shifted into something much more relaxed. “But even if someone does show up, I’m confident I’ll be able to buy you some time. It shouldn't be a problem.” 

Robotnik only rolled his eyes, passively activating a quarter-sized badnik concealed within his jacket. It blinked several times, then drew closer to the electronic latch on the door. Two thin metal appendages emerged from its body with a click and took to the lock in precise, mechanical motions.  

“And how do you intend to do that? Pull them aside to shoot the breeze a little? Tell them they look like they’ve caught some sun and end up hearing all about their amazing trip to Barcelona?” Robotnik scoffed, forever in disbelief of the mundanity of the population and the trivial little things they deemed important. If the words held a note of bitterness buried beneath the annoyance, he refused to admit to it. 

Stone, in contrast, appeared mildly amused by the suggestion. “Something like that, yeah. I’ve had a fair bit of practice over the years.” 

“Ugh. Spare me.” 

The miniature badnik continued to twist the metal rods inside the manual key lock until it triggered a final click. At once, the arms pulled away and retracted back into the shell with a short trill. 

Stone shrugged, knocking his fist against the wall a couple times. “Let’s hope this is soundproof, then.” 

“Bzzt. Wrong.” Robotnik spun around to face him. “Let’s hope no one shows up in the first place, idiot. God forbid I have to hear about that and whatever painfully mundane weekend plans you have.”

His unimpressed look was met with infuriating amusement once more. 

“God forbid,” Stone agreed lightly. 

Robotnik reached out and jiggled the door handle, not surprised to feel it turn a full rotation. He carefully pulled the door open, still mindful of any unnecessary noise, and slipped inside without a second glance. 

The office was rather small and impersonal, making it easy to locate the unobtrusive lockbox beneath the desk. Robotnik summoned the badnik once more to fiddle with the latch while he stared with disinterest at a framed photo of two little boys resting at the center of the desk, just below the monitor– a signifier of their importance. Humans made it so easy to tell where their weakness lay, he thought. 

The lock clicked open easily and Robotnik shoved a hand inside, rooting around until his fingers brushed the smooth rectangular drive. He knew it from feel alone, having held an identical one thousands of times.

Robotnik pocketed the drive immediately and switched on the PC, performing a quick sweep of its contents for any confidential files that may have slipped through the cracks. They weren’t meant to leave a digital trace of the project as government data breaches had become far too commonplace– as was the rationale for physical information drives. 

After sifting through the digital contents, he deleted a few suspicious files but otherwise found little of value. 

In less than five minutes, Robotnik emerged victorious from their first act of espionage. 

When Stone turned around, Robotnik patted his pocket with a satisfied grin. 

Stone returned it immediately. “Nice work, Doctor.”

“As if I can do anything but,” he replied, turning on his heel and beckoning his agent along. 

 

They continued down the line of directors, navigating the bland halls with ease and a growing sense of accomplishment. 

As luck would have it, most gave shocking little regard to the security of their projects drives. More often than not, they relied on small safes or compartments within their offices that wouldn’t be noticed by most, but were incredibly obvious to anyone actually looking. 

Robotnik felt a residual anger at their carelessness despite the fact that it now aided him. His triumph was dampened by the knowledge of how easily they could’ve been compromised, how far down the roster of importance the project seemed to everyone else when it was practically half of Robotnik’s self. He’d always known it was true, but the confirmation still felt crushing. 

Perhaps some small, stupid part of himself had hoped he was wrong about them– that his pessimistic musings of humanity were just that. Pessimistic. That reality bore a slightly different shape to what Robotnik saw, convincingly distorted by his expectations of it. 

What a ridiculous thought. 

Robotnik deleted it at once, forcing his mind to zero in on their goal, the one that would bring him closer to freedom. With every drive he pocketed, every rogue file wiped from existence, another tie was severed between his creations and their undeserving captors. 

Their carelessness only proved they were unworthy, that they were every bit the useless, underhanded cretins he thought them to be. Robotnik didn’t need justification for his actions, but it presented itself to him anyway. 

There were but a few stumbles; when a biometric lock couldn’t be bypassed, Robotnik instead fried the entire system and allowed the badnik to carve its way inside. When one director’s files were too jumbled to efficiently process, he wiped the entire hard drive without a second thought. 

He didn’t worry about leaving evidence. The security cameras were easily disarmed and his gloves concealed any fingerprints. He didn’t bother covering his literal tracks– the office floors were carpeted anyway. 

And, really, Robotnik cared little if they knew what he’d done. They would realize quickly and come to their own– likely correct– conclusions within a few hours, he reckoned. 

It wouldn’t matter by then. 

He only needed enough time to ensure he wasn’t prematurely interrupted before every drive could be retrieved. That was all that mattered. He’d deal with the future if it arrived.

 

Despite their preparation, only once did anyone show up. 

Stone had cross-referenced everyone’s schedules and planned a route based on when each director was known to be at lunch, in a meeting, or otherwise preoccupied elsewhere. By the fifth office they hit without any sign of its resident, Robotnik was beginning to suspect he had done a rather explemery job of it. 

It was only when they arrived at the sixth that Robotnik knew something had gone awry when he heard a light, feminine voice from behind the door. 

His wrist vibrated twice in warning almost simultaneously– clearly she had taken Stone by surprise as well, which he knew from experience was rather difficult to do– before another three short bursts signalled that the agent ‘had it under control.’ 

Robotnik’s hands stuttered over the surface of the desk, still attempting to locate the drive. His pulse briefly spiked despite the assurance. He looked dumbly towards the door, as if he would somehow be able to discern anything through it. Something objective, seen through his own eyes.

Stone said it was under control, but what did that mean? Robotnik’s mind raced with possibilities, of probabilities– what were the odds Stone’s assessment was accurate? Or was his stupid, emotional brain simply flooding him with chemical confidence? 

He didn’t know. He hated not knowing.

He wanted to leave. To do something– anything within his own control.

But– Robotnik’s palm grazed over a subtle indented ridge in the underside of the desk– he still didn’t have the drive. 

He could feel himself splintering once more, nauseating panic threatening to burst from his chest and undo him completely. He briefly entertained the thought of waiting just behind the door, riffling through his mind for the knowledge of the precise spot to strike to knock her unconscious when she entered.

It would require extreme precision. Even a slight deviation of force or change in the angle– if she so much as turned her head– could be enough to kill. 

Robotnik’s eyes burned into his trembling hands. He didn’t have to run the numbers to know the probability of error was far too high. Just another deficiency of his useless, faulty humanity. 

His hands continued to shake as he slid them along the underside of the desk and he wished, not for the first time, that he could sever them completely. 

He was wasting time and he knew it. 

Robotnik cursed under his breath. A stupid, directionless grievance. 

The window of opportunity had almost certainly passed. There was only one logical option to turn to. So, with no other choice, Robotnik swallowed down the mass in his throat and, with effort, forced his hands to steady. 

He shouldn’t trust Stone, but he would. He had nothing else, so he would. 

Sliding his finger over a promising section of distinct texture– a biometric fingerprint identifier, he suspected– Robotnik braced himself to be caught. For the door to open with an accompanying, scandalized gasp, as if they couldn’t believe their lab rat of a colleague was finally acting the part. 

The seconds passed, Robotnik bearing them with bated breath, but nothing happened. When he focused, he realized both voices had faded into the distance. 

Robotnik’s wrist pinged once more, the punctuated vibrations signifying he was safe to exit. He exhaled, then sucked the air back into his lungs as if filling them for the first time as he all but panted out his relief. 

The badnik made quick work of the compartment, tricking the biometric lock and allowing Robotnik to slip a hand inside and weasel the drive into his palm. 

He didn’t bother with a digital sweep, simply wiping another hard drive with a couple flicks of his gloved finger.

When he finally slipped out of the office after what felt like a lifetime, Robotnik immediately became aware of the fact that Stone was no longer there. 

He glanced around the hallway, peering into a few nooks and doorways, but the surroundings were empty. After putting distance between himself and the office he’d just defaced, Robotnik sent a quick ping to Stone: Location?  

The prompt went unanswered for several long, disconcerting moments before he received a response. Hold on, it translated . Robotnik squinted, displeased by the non-answer, but before he could formulate another, more urgent message, Stone rounded the corner. 

Robotnik was on him immediately. “Where were you? You agreed to stay posted, Stone, not to take a stroll around the block.” 

“Sorry, sir. Melissa was on her way to lunch but she forgot her drink in the office,” Stone said, as if it was any explanation.

“And?” Robotnik prompted. “That doesn’t explain why you deviated from the plan.” 

He started down the hallway without pretense, not bothering to wait for Stone to catch up. 

“I adapted to the circumstances,” Stone countered, jogging a few paces until he fell into step beside him. Once he began to match speed, Robotnik purposefully slowed down. “Which was part of the plan. I obviously couldn’t let her go into her office, so I pretended I’d been looking for her. You know, some last minute project talk. She agreed to do me a favor so I bought her another soda from the vending machine down the hall as thanks.” 

At that, Robotnik came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the hallway. He faced Stone with an incredulous look. 

“You diverted her attention by buying her a drink?” he said in disbelief. 

Stone shifted on his feet, a strange look on his face. “Well, I wouldn’t put it like that, but yeah, technically.” He shrugged, then flashed a distinctly smug grin. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Robotnik looked away and shook his head. He resumed walking as quickly as he’d stopped, taking several long strides forward. “You're far too satisfied with yourself for such lowly, mediocre manipulation. Your ego is truly appalling,” he muttered, head low. 

He heard Stone chuckle lightly from behind him, sounding no less smug than he was before. “You’re right, Doctor,” he agreed. “I had a feeling she’s always been into me, anyway. Distracting her was really nothing.” 

Robotnik nearly tripped. 

For a moment, he no longer felt equipped for bipedality as one foot caught under the other and he stumbled forward, thankfully managing to avoid an intimate occasion with the floor. 

His face burned, and when Robotnik couldn’t think of anything clever to say, he said nothing at all.

 

By mid-afternoon, victory felt on the precipice. 

Robotnik’s mood had lightened considerably with each small triumph. Stone, too, seemed to match his energy. He became more animated, moving in stride beside Robotnik rather than trailing his heels, and throwing the occasional optimistic remark his way. 

Robotnik refused to indulge them, but he didn’t feel inclined to tell Stone to stop either. 

 

Their last stop was to Lawrence’s office. 

It wasn’t intentional that the man remained the last barrier that stood between Robotnik and complete dominion over everything they’d created, but the symbolism felt fitting nonetheless. 

Everything would end in the same place in the same place it began. How poetic, Robotnik thought sourly, feeling no satisfaction at the symmetry. 

Stone wordlessly took up his post next to a chair and small coffee table, reaching for one of several magazines and idly turning it over in his hands. Robotnik rolled his eyes at the miniature waiting room, internally scoffing at the idea of Lawrence anticipating a queue outside of his office. One so long it required supplemental entertainment, nonetheless. 

Arrogant bastard.

Robotnik waited a few seconds for the badnik to finish with the lock, then brushed it aside and threw the door open without decorum. It fell closed behind him with a rather audible noise, but he couldn’t bring himself to afford the space any decency even in Lawrence’s absence. 

Once inside, he scanned the area quickly and methodologically, eyes ticking over each segment as he drew in information and promptly threw it out when it revealed nothing. 

Lawrence’s office was noticeably larger than the rest. He supposed it made sense given the cultish hierarchy the government subscribed to; Lawrence held a high position within a specialized unit of the Department of Defense and used it to its full advantage. He rarely took no for an answer.

In retrospect, Robotnik should have seen his betrayal coming from the moment their opinions fell out of alignment. 

Despite its size, however, Lawrence’s office was every bit as impersonal as the rest. The walls were sleek and spotless, a jarring white, and his desk was clear. Unlike the others, he possessed no mementos of family or friends, though Robotnik knew he had both. 

The climate-controlled atmosphere felt stifling synthetic and he sucked in a breath, searching more rapidly for what he had yet to find.

It wasn’t the first time Robotnik had been in here. For a time, he had spent numerous occasions pouring over details of the project, often after hours, standing within this very room. He refused to sit, of course, so as not to give the impression he intended to stay long. He often had anyway. 

Back then, the atmosphere was alight with the energy of their shared optimism. They talked as if everything was within reach, as if the stars could be pulled from the sky should they have it that way, and Robotnik found himself infected by belief. By hope. Both for himself and his creations. 

He had always known what he was capable of, but to have someone else not only indulge his genius but to return his passion with the same intensity was wholly unfamiliar.  Robotnik quickly characterized the feeling as excitement.

Lawrence was well-respected, capable of opening doors Robotnik hadn’t known existed, and he did so without pretense or even request. It was the first time Robotnik had given credence to the benefits of collaboration. For a time, everything felt limitless. 

Looking upon the room once more, it felt as if it had been several lifetimes since then, the feeling now unfathomable. Robotnik felt as hollow as the memories he possessed. 

And he still couldn’t find the drive.

Becoming frantic, he took to rooting around what little furniture littered the space, feeling under the desk and hastily pulling open the drawers to a filing cabinet. Everything was annoyingly, perfectly in place. No sign of anything secretive. 

Briefly diverting from the search, Robotnik leaned over the desk and powered on the computer. For the sake of efficiency, he would at least run the digital processes in tandem with the mental. 

Unsurprisingly, Lawrence’s desktop was as clean as his office, every file neatly ordered and still boasting a default screensaver, to top it off. 

Robotnik plugged in one of his own drives, activating a script to search the contents for him and pull out anything potentially relevant. It began returning results almost instantaneously. He looked them over manually, finding each one to be well-encrypted– though that meant little to Robotnik– and relatively inconsequential. 

At the very least, one of them had the sense to cover their tracks. 

He opted for a quick manual sweep of his email as well to err on the side of caution given Lawrence’s substantial investment. Almost immediately, his eyes instead caught on a series of what appeared to be personal correspondence. 

Robotnik wasn’t sure what compelled him to open them, but his finger was pressing the key before he could rationalize it.

At once, the screen switched and he was greeted with a collection of photos, all depicting Lawrence and presumably his wife, if the arm around her waist was anything to go by. It appeared to be nothing more than a mundane vacation album, yet Robotnik continued to stare at their wide, exaggerated smiles, practically counting their teeth. 

He had seen that look countless times. It was picturesque, but fake. An empty performance of happiness. From the moment they met, Robotnik had the acute sense that Lawrence was always performing– he recognized it in them both– his person-hood just happened to be convincing to most.

Robotnik was never fooled, yet he allowed himself to be strung along anyway.

It was intriguing in some way, to indulge in his falsified performance, to get a glimpse of what everyone else saw in him– intelligent, charismatic, and driven. A real every-man. It almost made Robotnik wonder what the world saw when they looked upon him, but he feared it was the same strange creature he saw when he met his own eyes. 

He had long since taken to avoiding mirrors. 

With a grimace, Robotnik clicked off the image. 

After deleting a smattering of emails– some relevant, some just for the hell of it– and conducting a secondary sweep of the room, there was no trace of the drive.

Something clearly wasn’t adding up. 

Lawrence was smart, but he was still a bumbling idiot compared to Robotnik. The probability of the drive still being hidden was negligible, almost nonexistent. 

That left only one logical conclusion. 

Robotnik felt the suspicion curling in his gut, a sickening sense of dread that confirmed what he hoped wasn’t true–

The drive wasn’t here at all. 

Lawrence had almost certainly broken protocol and taken it from the premises. As soon as he allowed the thought to take root in his mind, Robotnik knew it was true. He knew it was true because he had done the very same thing. 

He could almost laugh, were his lungs not straining against the heavy weight of panic now rising in his throat. It felt just another cruel reminder of the ways in which they mirrored one another. And, if Robotnik’s own motives were anything to go by, Lawrence was more than likely storing the drive at his personal residence. 

They had once spoken of their shared tendency to take work home, Robotnik recalled wryly– at the time, he hated both the commonality and the near-friendly conversation it brought. His annoyance in the moment paled in comparison to the dread he felt upon reflection. 

It may as well have been foreshadowing. 

Before his thoughts could sour further, Robotnik’s wrist pinged in warning. 

He bolted upright, heart now thrumming against his chest, and waited for a follow-up. Three seconds later, another pulse came: Leave. Now. 

Leaving the monitor on, Robotnik hastily slipped out the door and immediately spied Stone waiting with wide-eyes. He subtly nodded down the hallway and Robotnik followed his gaze to find Lawrence at the end of it, caught in conversation with another agent. 

Thankfully, he wasn’t paying attention, but the sight alone was enough to incite a fresh wave of sickness in Robotnik. 

“Come on,” he mumbled to Stone just as Lawrence began to shift away, throwing a friendly wave to the agent before stuffing his hands in his pockets and turning down the hallway once more. 

Without much thought, Robotnik seized Stone by the arm and yanked him along. Together, they stumbled to the side, Stone clipping the corner of the wall, until they were partially concealed within a recessed doorway. 

Truly, it didn’t matter whether Lawrence saw them. They had every right to be there. It was hardly even out of the ordinary. 

And yet– the sight of him made Robotnik’s insides turn and a horrible sickness rise until it reached his head and threatened to knock him from his feet. Even in the safety of the alcove, the inside of his skin burned hot with a potent blend of anger and something dreadfully, disgustingly tender. 

It was then Robotnik became aware of another warmth seeping into his side, this one distinctly more real. 

His head whipped to the side where Stone’s shoulders were pressed against his, likely as a result of his haphazard maneuvering of the agent. Robotnik stared blankly at the point of contact, every nerve suddenly erupting with a buzz of strange, uncomfortable energy, and his body went rigid. 

“Sir?” Stone said in a whisper, peering over his shoulder. 

Robotnik barely registered the sound over the screech of his own internal systems. He was certain his own throat had closed. 

“I heard him go inside,” Stone said a little louder. “We should be good.” 

Another pause. 

“Okay,” Robotnik managed, the word strange to his own ears. 

Stone stepped away and the sensation diminished at once, finally granting him respite, but Robotnik remained in place, unmoving. The compound of inputs was too much, systems overloaded and unable to execute their normal functions. There was simply too much and he found himself equally unable to process anything as he was to expel it.

“Come on, Doctor. Let’s go.” 

From his peripheral, he watched as Stone moved to leave. Robotnik merely shook his head and the agent stopped, concern immediately overtaking his features. 

It took several moments for Robotnik to find his voice again, but eventually he spoke.

“I didn’t get it,” he said rigidly, his cadence stitled. “It’s not here.” 

At that, Stone’s wide eyes blinked several times. 

“What? Where else would it be?” he asked, clearly puzzled. He spent very little time with Lawrence outside of meetings or company events. He didn’t really know him. Not like Robotnik.

He sighed, shaking his head once more. “If my assumptions of him are correct, the drive is most likely…” he trailed into silence, grimacing, “at his house. One of them, at least.” 

Stone’s brow drew together, his confusion tangible. “One of his drives?” 

“No, one of his houses,” Robotnik corrected, making no attempt to conceal his disgust. “He’s a millionaire, Stone, and clearly you’re not in the same tax bracket. Statistics show he’s bound to have at least three, and even that’s low-balling it.” 

Robotnik’s fingers clenched and unclenched around the empty air, as if looking for something to grasp onto. He leaned his weight against the doorway and closed his eyes. 

“Oh. Right,” came Stone’s reply. “I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Obviously. Anyway, it’s not as if we have any way of knowing which residence he’s keeping it in, or where. It’s just not feasible to…” Robotnik trailed, the resigned explanation fading into his internal dialogue as he struggled to truly comprehend the circumstance of his defeat. Saying it aloud did little to quell the numbness threatening to overtake him. 

He had barely begun and already he had hit a wall. What was that, if not another sign he was unbefitting of this life? That the universe would bend reality against him, just to be certain he never got what he wanted? 

Robotnik didn’t know what it all meant, didn’t care; he hated it all the same. 

From in front of him, Stone made a pensive sound, as if he had come to some grand conclusion. Robotnik preemptively braced himself for the stupidity. 

“Well, we know where he’s staying right now. Run the numbers for me, Doc, what’s the probability he’s keeping it there?” 

Robotnik’s eyes snapped open, finding Stone’s easily.

“Elaborate.” 

Stone only blinked at him. “He offered to hold the launch party at his lake house a while back. The one for the stakeholders. It’s this Friday, so I assume he’s staying there for now.” 

Ah. 

The details came back to him at once, some encrypted file within the depths of his mental repertoire now torn open. The contents filled his mind with an accompanying bitterness.

Robotnik had never intended to go to the launch party. Even if the project was perfectly executed in his vision, he had no interest in what was just an excuse for another frivolous social event. As soon as it was brought to the table– not as a suggestion, but rather an eventuality that simply needed planning– Robotnik tuned out while promptly discarding any details he happened to retain.

Unfortunately, nothing was ever truly lost to his mind. 

“He’s almost certainly moving the drive with him and keeping it somewhere easily accessible, say a home office,” Robotnik said automatically. He couldn’t bring himself to finish the statement, to acknowledge what Stone had said of the party. “He had a tendency to work after hours.” 

He beckoned for them to start walking once more, guiding Stone around another few corners until it felt safe to speak more on the subject. 

“So it works out perfectly then,” Stone said simply. Robotnik turned and caught his eye, frowning slightly, but Stone only looked to him in suggestion.

It certainly didn’t feel perfect. Nothing did. Though Robotnik could feel the weight of the other seven drives against him, tucked carefully into his jacket and close to his heart, they may as well have been scrap metal. 

Seven meant nothing when there was supposed to be eight. 

When he didn’t have the energy to vocalize that fact, Stone continued on. “We’re already invited to the event, so that eliminates any need for breaking and entering, the place will be packed, and Lawrence will be busy hosting. So long as we’re discreet, no one will notice if we slip away,” he said as if there was not a more obvious thing in the world. 

And, worst of all, Stone was right. 

As soon as the words registered, Robotnik didn’t have to spare another thought to see the obvious logic behind them. The idea presented itself so simply that the lingering parts of himself still capable of humor threatened to break through the cracks. 

Had this happened a year ago, Robotnik would have laughed in Stone’s face for the needless explanation. He would have been halfway to calling a car that very moment. 

Now, he met Stone’s awaiting gaze with a silent hesitation. His mouth opened mechanically, achieving the motions of speech but helpless to conjure the sounds. 

Robotnik tore his eyes away, shifting his body until his face was properly guarded. Until Stone was no longer visible in his peripheral, shielded from his expectation of a persona Robotnik didn’t feel capable of maintaining. 

Only then, facing another bland, colorless wall did he find it in himself to respond. “I wasn’t planning to attend,” Robotnik said stiffly.

I won’t go, was far more accurate. I can’t go. 

Stone was silent for several moments. 

“Then allow me to go instead,” he said eventually, a calculated suggestion. “There’s no need for you to waste any more of your time on this, Doctor. It’s practically my job anyway. Allow me to take care of it.” 

Robotnik sighed. 

He saw the suggestion for what it was– an obvious out. One that was being granted to him purposefully, under the guise of logic. He cringed at the realization that Stone had sensed his discomfort and had gone out of his way to construct his words in such a way that seemed so very logical. Just another extension of his duties as an agent, as a perfectly subservient assistant. 

He felt hopelessly, devastatingly pathetic. Yet, even the knowledge of his own miserable state stirred little emotion in him. 

Robotnik shook his head. He hadn’t sunk quite low enough to accept the generosity of what Stone was suggesting. 

“No,” he said with a resoluteness he didn’t feel. “This is far too sensitive a mission for someone of your clearance.” Lie. “I wouldn’t be a genius if I just handed over this kind of information to anyone, would I?”  

Stone, of course, wasn’t just anyone, but the distinction felt trivial. It hardly mattered anyway. Robotnik knew he could get away with the biting words without argument. 

It wasn’t as if there was no truth to it– obedient as Stone was, he couldn’t afford the chance that he might take the opportunity to seize the drive and use it to leverage himself a better position. If he were to reveal Robotnik’s plan to their superiors while presenting them with their last hope of reclaiming the project, he would surely be rewarded rather handsomely for his betrayal.

It would be a tactical move and an intelligent one at that. Robotnik himself would do the same, which meant he couldn’t expect Stone to behave any differently.

He spared a glance over his shoulder, finding Stone’s lips pulled into a slight frown on his otherwise impassive face. His displeasure was evident to a trained eye, which Robotnik apparently had.

“No, sir. It was a foolish idea. Forgive me for asking.” A beat passed between them. “Would you allow me to assist, then?” 

Robotnik paused, unable to formulate an adequate response as his mind struggled to contend with the conflicting logic. He needed the drive. He couldn’t go to the party. He couldn’t send anyone else. There was no solution that wouldn’t reduce his chance of success unless he compromised one of those facts.

Straining, Robotnik closed himself off to the various emotional responses prying into his mental faculties and leaned into the numbness, focusing only on logic. 

If compromise was inevitable– and, in this world, it always was– the only intelligent course of action was to carry out Stone’s initial plan. The odds of another chance of retrieving Lawrence’s drive presenting itself to him were slim. More than likely, it was now or never. 

With an increasingly familiar sense of resignation, Robotnik sighed and turned around. 

“Fine,” he conceded, praying his expression remained impenetrable to Stone’s prying eyes. “We’ll make an appearance, find the drive, then take an early exit. No dawdling, no socializing.” 

Every minute would surely be torturous and Robotnik had no interest in needlessly prolonging their stay in his personal hell.

Stone nodded dutifully, unsurprisingly amenable to his stipulations. “Yes, sir. We’ll be in and out. Would you like me to go ahead and book a hotel?” 

Robotnik’s face scrunched up. He swiped his keycard once more, pushing open the door to the final hallway before the exit. Freedom couldn’t come fast enough.

“Hotel? Is that really necessary?”

Stone shrugged beside him. “I checked the address and it’s pretty remote. A few hours outside of the city, at least.”

Ugh. That certainly wasn’t ideal, but…

Robotnik paused, a different plan already formulating. “No need for a hotel,” he decided. “I was thinking we could take the mobile lab instead.” 

It was unlikely either of them would be returning to the government lab when everything was said and done, but that eventuality went unsaid. The implication was clear enough. 

Stone only grinned as if they were planning a weekend getaway rather than defecting from their government, and Robotnik had to wonder if he truly understood the stakes or if he really was just blindly following orders. In the end, he supposed it was none of his concern.

“A road trip,” Stone supplied, his smile disconcertingly bright, “I like it.” 

Robotnik looked away before it threatened to burn him, throwing open the doors to the building and stepping into the blissfully cool air of the outdoors. He breathed in deeply before taking another step.

“Something like that,” he muttered to the empty air, though it was really nothing like that at all. For once, it simply felt easier to agree. 

A dastardly thought crept into his mind that perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to pretend– just for a little while.

After all, that was all they had left. 

 

Notes:

next chapter will be an interlude before the party aka robotnik trapped in a vehicle with his yearning and existential dread. it was meant to be part of this one (rip) but thats ok bc now i get to do a whole chapter of stob yearning in close quarters yippeeee

also thank you to everyone who left comments on the first chapter i was so delighted genuinely <333 i love hearing interpretations of robotnik's character they give me life

Chapter 3

Notes:

brief interlude before the action to sit with robotnik's thoughts and everything he's previously neglected to think about and therefore mention in his narration. let's here it for subjective and unreliable narrators wahooo

PLEASE NOTE!!!
<< TW // very mild sexual content in this chap (not described) but its somewhat uncomfortable/could be seen as dubious consent or non-violent assault by some so please feel free to skip if necessary: the scene starts when lawrence calls robotnik and ends at the next double-spaced paragraph break. summary is provided in end notes. >>

Robotnik gazed upon what remained of his lab through blank, emotionless eyes.

They trailed across the mess of wires winding and dipping around the various blinking devices, the loose stacks of blueprints, the neat rows of drones in their charging ports. He didn’t truly need to look; the image was already imprinted in his mind, replacing the blackness behind his eyes with its memory. Every time he closed them, it was there. 

Robotnik’s gaze slid onto an indent on the corner of the hallway– the result of a slight miscalculation hauling a large metal frame. He had berated Stone for days after the fact, but not before shoving him into the very same wall and demanding he answer for his carelessness. 

It hadn’t even been his fault. 

Robotnik was the one who insisted the dimensions were correct and ordered him to keep pulling– quit lollygagging and put your back into it, he had said– but Stone apologized anyway, practically begging for the forgiveness he didn’t actually need. Robotnik suspected he would have gotten on his knees and pleaded for salvation if asked. 

He berated Stone for that, too. 

Truly, it was a wonder Stone had stayed.

No matter where he looked, the lab was littered with invisible memories of their shared dysfunction. Robotnik had shoved Stone into damn near every available wall and surface, blown every minuscule grievance into something larger than either of them– he was skilled at finding problems wherever he looked and when there weren't any, he created them just as easily. 

And yet, Stone stood stalwart against his every storm. He simply allowed the insults to buffet him, composure never slipping. 

Robotnik used to hate it. Hate that his bursts of emotion fell flat against the wall of Stone’s imperturbability. That he was unable to incite the same loss of control in Stone, seeking to force the same miserable feelings onto him and failing spectacularly every time. 

That, at times, Stone seemed far more machine in that right than Robotnik ever had. 

He wasn’t, though. Neither of them were. Whatever wires had been crossed in Stone’s mind were certainly organic in nature. And Robotnik was…something else entirely. 

Something unclassified, still to be determined. 

Something worse.

“Doctor, what about these?” 

Stone’s voice shook him from his trance and Robotnik lifted his gaze to where the agent was holding up a fistful of screwdrivers. 

“In case the badniks need maintenance while we’re away,” Stone clarified, shaking them slightly in question.

Robotnik blinked a few times. “They won’t,” he said decisively, “but bring ‘em.” 

Stone nodded and set them atop a growing pile of supplies he’d scavenged, finally deeming it large enough to warrant a trip to the mobile lab. 

They had spent most of the morning packing, though Robotnik wasn’t finding himself particularly useful. 

He mainly wandered in circles around the space with an uncharacteristic idleness, pulled into his own mind by every memento that drew his eye. 

It was a strange feeling to bear witness to the life he’d built for himself being gutted from the inside. With each object carefully plucked from where it belonged, Robotnik was struck with the uncanny feeling that he was watching his own autopsy unfold. 

Contributing to that paradox felt exponentially worse than simply observing, so Robotnik stood to the side while Stone carefully dismantled everything that ever mattered to him. 

Stone was careful and methodical as he worked, his hands moving with a surgical steadiness and confidence as he sorted though parts and blueprints, but Robotnik couldn’t shake the feeling of those same hands breaking through his rib cage and slipping into his fleshy gore, plucking and pulling at him in a violent dissection. 

His stomach clenched around the imagined sensation and his head spun. He felt sick.

He often felt sick now. 

“Grab some extra cables, too,” Robotnik added when Stone returned, finding some distraction in barking orders.

“Will do.”

Stone continued to collect items per his demands along with the occasional suggestion of his own. They started small at first, various tools and supplies that were all very practical, until Robotnik’s demands subtly grew. Entire spools of unused wire, computer consoles, and a bulky centrifuge got packed away without question. 

Stone seemed to catch on after that, never vocalizing his realization but approaching the task with the same subtlety as he wordlessly added items to the mobile lab that were in no way justifiable to their current mission. 

It was breaching the afternoon by the time they finished.

Robotnik nodded firmly at the contents of the mobile lab, double and triple checking each item from a mental list, while Stone attempted to rearrange them into something resembling order. 

Before departing, they opted for one final sweep of the lab, though not much of value remained there. 

“Looks like we’re set,” Stone said with a satisfied nod, looking across the empty expanse with triumph. Both hands were on his hips and his brow was still slick with sweat from the exertion of moving an entire lab worth of equipment by himself.

Robotnik nodded too, but when Stone moved to leave, his feet remained firmly planted. 

He wasn’t quite ready. 

Stone must have sensed his hesitation because he instead walked quietly until they stood side by side. Wordlessly, he rested a hand on Robotnik’s shoulder. It was a gentle touch, the faint sensation almost imperceivable were he not looking. 

“I’m going to go move a few more things around before we take off,” Stone said softly and then the pressure was gone, replaced by cold, synthetic air. 

Robotnik didn’t respond. 

He continued to stare at the gutted remnants of his life until Stone’s footsteps receded. Breathing into the silence left in his wake, Robotnik wondered how he had ever gotten to this point in time. 

From where he stood, the future seemed impossible. The entirety of himself was contained within these barren rooms–outside of this, what of him remained? Was he not the sting of the fluorescent lights, the particles of dust in the air? He hardly remembered a time before this and imagining an after felt as inconceivable as visualizing a new color, of comprehending the true scale of the universe.

For all his genius, Robotnik just…couldn’t. 

Perhaps he had finally reached the edges of his mind. A limit that couldn’t be surpassed. 

He didn’t know what the future would hold, whether he would simply cease to exist the moment he breached his own containment– and he truly feared he might– but he knew it was pointless to wait. He’d spent his whole life waiting. 

And so, Robotnik turned and walked away. 

When he caught sight of Stone in the distance, throwing him a wayward glance, he didn’t look back. 

 

They drove in relative silence. 

Stone insisted on taking the wheel and Robotnik, for once, didn’t object. His focus was waning, slipping out the window as he watched the city streets morph into suburbia, and then into the inbetween– long, straight roads with scattered, indiscernible buildings and little else. 

“I’ll need to fill up the tank at the next stop,” Stone said after an equally indiscernible amount of time.

Robotnik lifted his head from where it rested on the window with a small, indifferent noise. “Do what you must.” 

Another few miles passed by uneventfully before they came upon a small, unassuming gas station. Stone climbed out and took to filling the tank while Robotnik waited, already bored with the unchanging scenery. 

A knock on the window briefly startled him and he turned towards the offender with a prepared glare, though it was only Stone. He made a beckoning gesture, clearly mouthing ‘come on.’

Robotnik pretended not to understand and glared harder. 

Evidently, Stone wasn’t deterred and yanked open the door. “Come on, Doctor. Let’s get some snacks while we’re here,” he said, voice now annoyingly audible. 

Robotnik wrinkled his nose at the thought, immediately finding it an unfavorable one. He wasn't hungry. And even if he was, he had no interest in shopping for some sugary, synthetic junk in the middle of nowhere. 

He said as much.

Stone titled his head, fixing him with a look that bordered on unimpressed. “At least get some water, then. We didn’t bring much.” 

When Stone made it clear he wasn’t going to move from the door frame, Robotnik relented with a purposeful eye roll. 

“Funny, I don’t recall putting you in charge,” he grumbled, unfastening his seatbelt and tossing it aside with far more force than was necessary. 

Stone shrugged, finally stepping back to allow Robotnik space. “I’m the one in the driver’s seat.” 

“And if you don’t quit it with the attitude, you’re going to be hitch-hiking. See how far that gets you.” 

Stone, apparently having left his survival instincts back at the lab, only laughed. The sound incited a spark of frustration in him, but Robotnik couldn’t fan the flame into his usual anger as it instead fizzled into something warm and painless. Somehow, that felt worse. 

“Come on,” Stone said again, already making for the door, and Robotnik considered it an act of benevolence that he followed without further argument. 

It felt unnatural to be the one trailing his assistant’s heel in an absurd bastardization of their usual dynamic as Robotnik wandered through the rows of processed foods and scratch tickets. 

Stone grabbed a few things here and there, holding up the occasional item in question to which Robotnik would make a show of his disgust.

“Absolutely not,” he said, entirely scandalized by a bag of ketchup flavored potato chips Stone was eyeing. “Not in my lab. Don’t even think about it.” 

“I was just looking,” Stone insisted, holding up his hands in defense, but Robotnik saw through his act. 

“Well, don’t. Avert your eyes from that abomination before you get any ideas.” 

Stone shook his head and continued on, picking out a few different flavors of protein bars and several bottles of water instead. A much more practical purchase. When Stone glanced at him through the corner of his eye, Robotnik didn’t provide any commentary, which was to say that he approved. 

He couldn’t quite pin the feeling, but there was something disquieting about the whole ordeal. He attributed it to being so glaringly out of place; everything felt misaligned, like pieces of their reality had been cut and stitched together to form the scene. 

It was not unlike a dream, Robotnik determined. The sort that manifested coworkers into situations they were normally removed from, combining two separate elements of one life. How strange was it to be in a shabby gas station outside the city with none other than his assistant, still dressed in his suit and tie and harboring a handful of cheap snacks. 

It wouldn’t be the first dream he’d had of that nature. At least in those he lacked the awareness of the absurdity. Now, it was all Robotnik could think about.

Fortunately, their excursion was a brief one and he followed Stone to the counter once they had done a proper lap of the store. The cashier offered them a blank stare as he scanned each item, looking as if he was barely on the same plane as the rest of them, and Robotnik eyed him with a casual amount of suspicion. 

Once the total had been rung up, Robotnik tossed his company card onto the counter before Stone could procure his own. 

“Might as well do it on Uncle Sam’s nickel while we still can,” he offered with a dry humor. “I think they owe us that much.” 

Stone shot an uneasy glance at the cashier, but he hardly seemed to register what they were saying. “Can’t argue with that,” he conceded.

Perhaps he should have been more worried about the implications of their paper trail, but Robotnik truly couldn’t bring himself to care. As far as he could tell– having blocked all calls and messages– they were still in the clear. Acts of espionage aside, this was technically a business trip. 

When they returned to the vehicle, Stone slid back into the driver’s seat without hesitation and crudely tossed several items his way.

Robotnik scrambled to catch them with an undignified sound, staring down at the protein bar and package of gummy worms as if they were a personal offense to everything he stood for. He decided to let the accompanying bottle of water slide in lieu of more pressing matters. 

“What is this?” Robotnik demanded despite it being abundantly clear.

“Snacks,” Stone replied, feigning innocence.  

“Indeed, and I quite clearly recall saying I didn’t want any of this junk, Stone. Do you ever listen?” 

“I heard you, Doctor,” Stone replied, one hand on the gear stick and both eyes on the road as he shifted into drive once more. “But I elected to make a judgement call. You can write me up for it later if you’d like. I’ll accept my indiscretion.” 

As if a mark on his permanent record would mean anything now. 

Robotnik exhaled loudly before sinking back into his seat. “Your judgement is as poor as your taste,” he muttered, still clutching the packages in his fist. 

“I also got Skittles.” Stone spared him a discreet glance, gauging his reaction. “We could trade if you’d like.” 

It took several moments for Robotnik to reply, though not because he was considering the offer. 

He stared out the window once more.

“No.” 

 

They pulled into a small, road-side diner in the late evening. 

Stone had spotted it while driving, immediately brightening at the sight of the frankly antiquated looking red and white building. Robotnik only squinted at it. He reckoned the exterior was much more suited to a rundown autoshop than somewhere claiming to serve food. 

Stone clearly disagreed, and apparently he held the authority on food, because he pulled a rather questionable maneuver to swing the vehicle into the parking lot before Robotnik could protest. The place appeared mostly empty– an omen to its quality, he suspected– allowing them ample space to park the mobile lab.

“Really?” was all Robotnik could manage as Stone began unfastening his seat belt. 

“It looks charming,” Stone countered, already sounding affronted, “and I’m starving, Doctor. Plus, it doesn’t look too busy here so we can be in and out quickly.” 

Robotnik craned his neck to examine the chipped paint and sprouts of yellowed grass breaking through the equally worn-down pavement with contempt. 

“It doesn’t look busy at all, Stone. If anything, it looks like it was abandoned in the 80s,” he scoffed. A flickering open sign on the front window was the only indication of its operation, and not a particularly reassuring one. 

Undeterred, Stone hopped onto the pavement. “I liked the 80s,” he said simply, as if that meant anything at all, then paused expectantly.

After several moments at a standstill, Robotnik finally shook his head, eyeing the agent with mild disbelief. “You’ve really let being behind the wheel go to your head,” he muttered, reluctantly climbing out of his seat. “Unbelievable.” 

“I think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.” 

Robotnik only shook his head once more, vaguely aware that he should put an immediate stop to this sudden, casual attitude Stone had adopted, but lacking the energy to do so. 

Some combination of lack of both sleep and sustenance was clearly catching up to him and his limbs felt heavy as he dragged himself along, begrudgingly sliding into one side of a stiff, cushioned booth once inside. 

Stone immediately took to the menu, flipping through the various pages with a familiar focus. Robotnik stared at him, observing the slight crease to his brows and pull of lips that was indicative of his concentration. It was a look he had seen many times in the lab, but the context was so far removed from where they stood now that the familiarity felt uncanny. 

Stone was meant to wear that expression when pouring over the logistics of a project, when pinching a wire between a pair of pliers, when adding his signature artistic flair to the top of a latte– he wasn’t meant to be here, sat across from Robotnik in some nowhere restaurant, deciding what to have for dinner.  

Robotnik smoothed over the fraying edge of his own menu, worrying the material between his fingers as he felt unable to look away from the impossibility that was, by all accounts, his reality.

It was illogical. It was unnatural. It was–

Normal. 

Robotnik wasn’t meant to have normal. He wasn’t meant to have car rides and restaurants and parties. He wasn’t meant to have Stone– not here, puzzling over a menu and throwing quips that Robotnik would have sent him packing for a year ago. 

He was peering through the cracks into a life that was never his, could never be his, and, as pieces of the wall between himself and the rest of the world seemed to crumble, so too did the fortress of his resilience. The one he had spent years fortifying until anything resembling want had been suffocated, buried beneath a hungry, reckless ambition. 

And it hurt. 

He felt his own humanity rejecting him like a virus– it hurt in every dip and ridge of his disgusting, tender body. His flesh stung. His bones ached. His blood felt like acid in his veins, burning him from the inside. 

Robotnik wasn’t meant for this. For any of it. 

And yet, in that quiet moment, he wanted. 

Robotnik’s stomach churned, a viscous wave of nausea sending his head spinning. Through the haze, he grappled for the self-preservation he knew he still possessed. He clenched his fingers tightly around the menu, forcing himself back into reality before he slipped away completely. 

He couldn’t collapse in on himself now. He wouldn’t allow it. Not here, not yet.

When Robotnik came back into his own eyes, still aching, he found himself staring into Stone’s.

Stone only looked at him in question. He didn’t ask. He knew better than to ever ask. 

“Do you know what you’d like, Doctor?” he said instead. Though it wore the guise of a question, they both knew it was a redirect. 

Robotnik spared a glance at his forgotten menu. He hadn’t looked, but Stone knew as much. Though he doubted he’d be able to stomach anything, Robotnik flipped the menu open and skimmed across the cloudy laminated text until he found something that seemed marginally less atrocious than the rest. 

“I suppose,” Robotnik managed, a little stilted but otherwise even. “Though like is a tad generous in this case.”

Stone brushed off the remark. “If it’s truly inedible, I’ll take you somewhere else.” 

He instantly wished Stone had said anything else.

Robotnik only grunted in response as his eyes threatened to bore a hole in the menu. 

When their food eventually came– and Stone was right about the service being quick– Robotnik picked at his plate with disinterest. It was objectively edible, but he had no appetite. 

Instead, he watched Stone cut away bits of his own food while glancing around the interior, seemingly examining the decor, or perhaps the few other people. Robotnik watched him chew and swallow, observing the way his throat contracted around each bite and the parting of his lips as the cycle repeated. 

He was so human.

Stone had his quirks and inexplicable tendencies that certainly fell outside the range of normal, but he was so human all the same. 

He was social, expressive, and so willing to indulge his every want and need. Perhaps he simply understood that it was what he deserved, intrinsically aware of his place in the world and the privilege his own humanity afforded him. Unlike Robotnik, he was allowed to want and to need and to have.

Or perhaps it only appeared that way. He supposed it was possible that Stone wanted other things, things he even denied himself. 

And, if he thought about it, what greater evidence was there than this very moment– Stone could be anywhere else and yet he was here. What was that, if not denial of some other, far more reasonable desire?

To some extent, Robotnik understood why, despite everything, he stayed. He suspected he understood it better than most, even. Stone was simply chasing his own ambitions, securing his own favorable place in the world by whatever means necessary– in this case, attaching himself to someone greater like a parasite. A tried and true survival tactic for the lowly and vulnerable. 

And it had worked– Stone had secured a generous salary and all the perks that came with being the right-hand of a genius. 

Truly, this didn’t bother Robotnik. 

It was perfectly logical behavior. Intelligent, even. At times, he might even go as far as to say he respected Stone’s commitment to debasing himself. He knew his place and how to get the most out of his situation, which was more than could be said for most.

So of course Stone was using him. Robotnik understood this as well as anything else. They were using each other. That was the center of their dynamic, the unspoken weight that hung over their every interaction. While unorthodox, they both understood where they stood with one another and the mutual benefit of their arrangement. 

It therefore went without saying that whatever this was, it was cut of the same, unalterable cloth.

No amount of long drives and mediocre diner food could change that. 

No amount of want could either. 

 

When it was approaching nightfall, they drove off an access road until the pavement turned to dirt and a thick canopy of leaves shrouded the sky. 

Stone eventually pulled onto a dug-out area of grass wedged firmly within the forest. They remained deceptively close to the main road, but Robotnik thought it wise they camp out of sight. The mobile lab wasn’t exactly unassuming and he didn’t want to needlessly raise any suspicions. 

“I’m going to see what else I can organize and then turn in for the night, sir,” Stone announced once they had properly parked. “Unless you need anything, of course.” 

Robotnik shook his head, stretching out his tired limbs. He didn’t have any plans, let alone ones that would require assistance. “You’re dismissed for the day. Try not to make a mess of my lab.” 

“I won’t,” Stone assured before disappearing into the bowels of the lab, leaving him alone. 

It took several minutes for the quiet to reach him, but when it did, Robotnik felt like the air had left his lungs. 

He wasn’t sure when he started to feel unnerved by his own presence, but the feeling now crept over him like a shadow. 

Still, Robotnik refused to follow Stone in the lab even as he longed for some escape from the deafening silence in his absence. It would be far too humiliating. Clingy. Unease was surely more tolerable; he already existed in a perpetual state of it. What was a little more?

So instead, with nowhere left to go, Robontik wandered outside.

He leaned against the exterior and let his gaze drift into the forest, finding some solace in the way the wind rustled the leaves, of the dampened sounds of vehicles in the distance. It was no replacement for Stone’s presence, he found, but it would do. 

It would do.

That was the best he could ever manage, it seemed. 

Even surrounded by tranquility, Robotnik’s mind continued to replay the events of the day with increasing bitterness. Some internal wound had been torn open, a steady stream of emotion now gushing from its source as he failed to cauterize it. 

It was just unfair.

How cruel, Robotnik thought, for the world to once again afford him a taste of something he would never experience in its entirety. He could have lived entire lifetimes without ever knowing how it felt to sit across from another at dinner in comfortable silence, to doze against the window of a car while someone else took the wheel. He would have surely been better for it.

More than that, he never needed to know Stone like this. 

Stone, who had already gotten far too close; done too much, learned too much. Both of the lab and the doctor. Robotnik never needed this. Not again. Not now, at his very lowest.

He had barely made it out alive the first time.

It was months ago now, but the memory remained burned in his mind like a fresh wound. 

He had been so hopeful at the start– so stupidly, devastatingly hopeful. There was too much excitement surrounding the Equinox project and, for months, Robotnik was all but swept up in the heat of it. 

For once, everything was working in his favor; Lawrence reflected his passion for the project with the same intensity, pushing his way through every infuriating bureaucratic roadblock with ease and alleviating Robotnik of the need to do anything but design, and design he did. He had never seldom experienced such ease and fulfillment in everyday life.

Stone was there, too, because he was always there. And Robotnik let him be there, infecting every aspect of his life because some small, desperate part of himself wanted Stone there. 

For a time, everything felt okay. His life held a creeping sense of normalcy previously unknown to him, but strangely not unwelcome. 

It left just as quickly as it came. 

It was evening when Robotnik got the fateful call; after months of drafting, planning, and endless meetings, the project finally got the green light. The budget was approved and funding secured– all they had to do now was build it. 

Robotnik was ecstatic. He called out for Stone without thinking, like it was second nature, and Stone came bounding over as if it was his. That was his first mistake.

Robotnik let the words tumble from his mouth in a manner that was surely incomprehensible to anyone else, but Stone understood immediately. His face broke into a wide, almost manic smile that was surely a mirror of his own, and Robotnik, compelled by some unseen magnetism, reached out to seize him by the shoulders. 

They had been in the same position countless times, but this time, Stone reached back. His hands came up to grasp Robotnik’s elbows, holding him tightly in an abstract embrace– certainly the closest they had ever managed– and Robotnik felt every overworked fuse in his mind burst at once. 

His stream of consciousness fell silent and they simply stared at one another, chests still heaving with adrenaline and lips parted. He should have looked away. He couldn’t look away. 

“Doctor,” Stone started, breathless and uncertain, and the utterance felt like the drop of a cliff. In that moment, Robotnik feared he might throw himself from it.

He swallowed. The warmth of Stone’s bare palms bled into his skin. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt the heat of another’s flesh. 

For the briefest moment, Robotnik almost thought–

He didn’t know what he thought would happen. 

He didn’t know what he wanted to happen.

Robotnik quickly realized that he could withstand the uncertainty of others, but not his own. He didn’t bother considering what Stone might do because it was unthinkable he’d do anything at all. Robotnik didn’t fear for that uncertainty, no–

He feared for himself. What he might do. 

And it terrified him. 

Robotnik lurched back at once, eyes wide with what was surely a visible terror, and Stone stumbled away from him with matching surprise. 

“Doctor,” Stone said again, this time alarmed, but Robotnik shook him off.

“Don’t,” he choked out, harsher than intended. He turned away, squeezing his eyes shut. “Get out.” 

Stone obeyed in silence and Robotnik didn’t turn around until he was certain he was alone. 

The second call Robotnik received was from Lawrence. It was an invitation. Celebratory drinks, he proposed, with the rest of the team. Of course, it was nothing more than a courtesy to invite him. Robotnik didn’t bother with trivial social gatherings and everyone knew as much. 

Were it any other night, he would have hung up without so much as a word in favor of basking in the familiar evening solitude. But, Robotnik’s heart still raced, his thoughts caught in a useless loop replaying the near-catastrophe.

For once, he didn’t want to be alone with himself. 

That was how Robotnik found himself in an empty conference room after hours with the rest of their cohort and several bottles of overly expensive champagne and scotch. 

Stone was absent from their private gathering; he was typically an implied plus-one to the doctor, and either hadn’t been invited on his own or had no interest in going. Both options were equally likely. Robotnik didn’t ask. 

Without Stone as his buffer, Robotnik didn’t quite know what to do with himself until Lawrence decided to do the charity work of pouring him a drink and easing him into their conversations. There was plenty to talk about with everyone’s spirits so high, but Robotnik still felt his mind drifting in the moments in between, conjuring up the image of Stone with wide eyes and parted lips. 

He drank until the picture began to blur around the edges. 

At some point, the crowd slowly started to dissipate as the night drew on. It was late and they had work in the morning; something which mattered little to Robotnik, so he stayed.

Eventually, he and Lawrence were alone, still caught up in conversation as Robotnik excitedly rambled about the next phase of the project. Over time, Lawrence seemed to drift closer while his replies, in turn, grew shorter. Robotnik continued on unperturbed.

Head still a mess of tangled wires, he almost didn’t notice when Lawrence’s hand came to rest on his knee. Only when his fingers began to trail upward did Robotnik finally pause to properly regard him. The look he received in return left no room for interpretation– a clear, uninhibited hunger. 

It was unfamiliar. Robotnik wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked at him like that. He didn’t understand why anyone would.

Robotnik stared down at the hand just above his knee with a detached sort of fascination, uncomprehending of what had drawn Lawrence to him. Why him? Why now, in this moment? Robotnik was certain he hadn’t communicated a desire for this in his words or actions. At least not intentionally. 

Sure, he harbored some curiosities about Lawrence, an interest that could perhaps be categorized as infatuation, but– the development felt startling and unprecedented. The progression of events didn’t quite align, the logic blurry. 

Still, the touch briefly quieted Robotnik’s racing mind. For a moment, still trying to puzzle out the situation, he didn’t think of Stone.

When Lawrence’s hand caressed his leg more firmly, with intent, Robotnik didn’t push him away. 

He needed a distraction and he had found one. Perhaps this was what he needed all along– he didn’t know, but he was tired of thinking. 

So, Robotnik let his mind slow as Lawrence’s palms trailed over him, not quite favorable but not entirely unpleasant. His breath carried a faint scent of scotch that assaulted Robotnik’s senses– he didn’t much care for the stuff– but the weight of his body provided a comfortable pressure. His hands moved with confidence, seeming to know exactly what to do in a way that was lost on Robotnik. It was rare for him to be bested by anyone– just another in a growing list of unfamiliarities. 

Lawrence spoke to him, but Robotnik struggled to hear the words over the noise of his own brain. It was strange to be so present in his body, so aware of every touch and his body’s subsequent, almost subconscious responses to it. 

He tried not to be overly aware of Lawrence’s. His features likely registered as attractive to most– certainly not an eyesore– but Robotnik could hardly manage the stimuli of his own body, let alone another. 

Rather, he forced himself to lay back, already on the verge of overwhelm, and closed his eyes. Robotnik tried to quiet his mind once more, to allow the present sensations to clog his never-ending stream of thought, but his mind only took to filling in the darkness behind his eyes with a new set of stimuli. 

Without his sight, every touch and audible breath became detached from the source, concealed by the veil of darkness and twisted into something new. 

There was no uniqueness to the sound of the average human breathing, no way to separate one person’s breath from another– a fact which Robotnik became acutely aware of. As he listened for each punctuated breath, each strain of the other man’s lungs in the darkness, he could only picture them being exhaled between Stone’s perfect teeth. 

It was a dangerously convincing illusion. 

Robotnik attempted to blink the image away, but in the heat and haze of unfamiliar intimacy, he felt his inhibitions weaken. 

He could hear his own breaths coming in short pants, jarring to his own ears, as his mind expertly filled in the blanks of his missing vision. It was easy to deduce Lawrence’s exertion from the speed of his breathing and to further extrapolate an accompanying visual. 

Robotnik’s mind assaulted him with flashes of smooth, tanned skin streaked with a dark flush; of the sweat collecting along his brow and eyes half-lidded in pleasure. Stone’s lips were parted, just as they were before, from which he drew sharp breaths broken by small, wanting sounds. 

He imagined it was Stone’s fingers pressing into the ridge of his hip, along his thigh, and Robotnik felt himself shudder at his own contrived fantasy. He was careening down a reckless path, held at the mercy of his own imagination. 

It was too much, far too much, and yet he didn’t stop, because Robotnik knew, with devastating certainty, that it was all he would ever get. 

It was all he would ever allow himself. Just a delusion, a facsimile every bit as inhuman as he was. 

It was pathetic. But, on some level, perhaps he was too. 

 

When it was over, it was Lawrence who left first.

He dressed hurriedly and with little to say, muttering something about getting back to his wife– a factor Robotnik had failed to consider in the moment– and bid him a simple goodnight. Then, he was gone and Robotnik was alone once more.

He blinked numbly, finally registering what had happened, and was struck by an aftershock of disbelief. Both at himself and Lawrence. The subsequent dread fell over him at once and Robotnik keeled over, folding in on himself as if it would in any way minimize what he had allowed himself to do. To think.

Looking back, Robotnik supposed that was the beginning of the end– the moment he crested the peak and began the steady descent downward.

Neither him nor Stone acknowledged what happened that night and their dynamic quickly returned to status-quo. They both possessed a rigidity in their roles that neither seemed keen to give up; changes weren’t easily implemented in their lives. In this case, it was their saving grace. 

Lawrence, too, appeared to employ a similar tactic. He said nothing of their late-night escapade, apparently deeming it a once-off trial with no need of replication. 

Perhaps Robotnik’s lack of expertise was too prevalent, his drifting focus impolite. Or perhaps he had simply seen too much, finally recognizing the humanlike husk Robotnik inhabited for what it was. He no longer pretended to know what Lawrence was thinking. He made his stance clear through his silence.

The only change to his behavior came in the form of subtle, wayward glances cast to Robotnik’s side. He quickly realized that Lawrence wasn’t looking at him at all, but at Stone, which was infinitely more unnerving. 

After some time, it began to feel almost incriminating. 

Robotnik had halfway convinced himself that Lawrence knew, as if his salacious thoughts had been that loud, until he recognized the absurdity of it all. 

He promptly decided not to spare another thought on the matter, lest his mind degrade further. 

And so, Robotnik cast them both aside as he cocooned himself in his work. He doubled-down his efforts on the preparation and prototyping, confining himself to the lab until the days slipped into nights and bled into subsequent mornings. Then, he did it all again. 

It worked for a while. He was an expert at biding time, after all. 

Now, there was nowhere and everywhere left to run. Robotnik sighed into the cool air as nighttime slowly seeped between the trees. He pushed himself into a standing position, still feeling the residual hammering of his pulse left by the memory, and knew he needed to busy himself somehow.

Stone had thankfully retired to one of the small side rooms by the time Robotnik entered the lab. Internally relieved, he nodded to himself, then took to scouring through the boxes of parts and pieces in preparation for the coming day. 

Even as he performed unneeded maintenance on the fleet of badniks, running diagnostics and assessing hardware, Robotnik’s nerves continued to feel frayed. He was caught between the past and future, each harboring their own stressors with no viable escape. Not knowing what else to do, Robotnik simply continued to work even as the hours dragged on.

Sometime in the morning– at least, he presumed it to be– a shuffling noise from the other end of the lab took him by surprise. 

“Doctor?” came the faraway sound of Stone’s voice. It was drenched in sleep, an octave lower than usual, but unmistakably his. 

Robotnik jumped, his shoulders tensing as he bit back a yelp, and whipped around to confront the source of the voice.

He quickly located Stone’s form amongst the organized chaos, stepping out from around a box, and Robotnik’s mouth immediately went dry at the sight– Stone’s hair fell limply over his forehead, loose and unstyled, and his usual black ensemble was notably absent. In fact, he had seemingly forgone a shirt completely. 

Robotnik sucked in a sharp breath, eyes tracing the dim outline of his bare chest as he automatically scanned for information before snapping back into himself and tearing his gaze away completely. 

His pulse jumped to his throat.

“What?”

Stone shifted on his feet, drawing closer. “Is everything okay with the badniks?” 

Robotnik glanced at where one of their ports lay open, exposing the neat circuitry inside. “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It’s late,” he said simply, “and you’re still up working. I figured it was urgent.” 

Robotnik blinked, still shirking Stone’s gaze. He hadn’t considered the noise element of his late-night work, given he was typically alone at this hour. It was most definitely inconsiderate of Stone’s rest. He didn’t quite know what to say– an apology felt in order, but the territory was unfamiliar to them both.

“Genius never sleeps, Stone,” he said instead, the flat deliverance not quite humorous. 

A long pause followed.

“I guess so,” Stone said eventually. He stayed rooted in place, seemingly hesitating. 

The air between them had grown thick with tension. It was clear neither quite knew what to say. Robotnik shifted uncomfortably, grateful for the distance between them, and readied himself to apologize for the noise, to do anything to alleviate the current situation. 

Before he could open his mouth, Stone spoke instead.

“I– do you want to get some air?” 

Robotnik paused at the unexpected suggestion. He wasn’t sure what compelled him to answer.

“Okay,” he said, uncertain. 

Not knowing what else to say, he simply made way for the door. Stone mumbled something unintelligible before briefly disappearing into the back and re-emerging a second later with his discarded shirt in hand. Robotnik held the door open as Stone hastily pulled the fabric over his head, taking the lead.

They didn’t go far, making just outside before Stone took the initiative to sit down on the bottom rung of the steps leading up to the door. The staircase was small and narrow, not quite suited to two adults, but Robotnik lowered himself down next to Stone without much thought other than a distaste towards the idea of sitting on the dirty ground. 

Their shoulders brushed together and Robotnik shuffled to the side until there was a gap between them. It wasn’t much, but the difference felt substantial for reasons he still couldn’t quite grasp. 

For some time, they simply sat.

The night air carried a slight chill as it washed over them and Robotnik watched as it caught in Stone’s hair, blowing the strands across his forehead. He had never seen it without copious upkeep before. It felt like something he wasn’t meant to see. 

Robotnik turned his gaze back towards the line of trees in front of them. He took in shallow breaths through his nose, exhaling them back into the wilderness. Were it not for the rustle of the wind and gentle noise of the forest, Robotnik would have thought time was at a standstill. 

He felt suspended in the moment, yet the future loomed just on the horizon of his mind. It was still in the distance, several miles to cross until it inevitably reached him, but what did that matter when he could see its approach all the same? 

Robotnik could smell the faint scent Stone carried with him, could feel the brush of his clothing against his own, indisputably real, but what did that matter when tomorrow he would be gone? 

As far as Robotnik was concerned, he already was. 

Stone’s presence was but a reflection of the past, the residual light from a star that had already died. They were already living in a memory.

Robotnik squeezed his eyes shut. His chest clenched, but he felt numb to the sensation. In a momentary lapse of judgment, he shifted until his shoulder met Stone’s once more, this time intentional. He needed to feel his presence, some sort of tangible reassurance he was truly still there.

Stone released a quiet breath beside him, just audible in the silence. Warmth kindled at the point of contact and Robotnik leaned into it ever so slightly to stave off the chill. 

In the distance, something skittered across the forest, turning up the bed of leaves. Robotnik held himself still, as if any movement threatened to shatter the fragile atmosphere between them, and Stone did the same.

They continued to sit, closer than Robotnik had ever allowed and yet separated by a distance that felt insurmountable. They sat until his arms prickled under the cold air and the wind licked at them both, now sharp and biting.

Again, it was Stone who eventually spoke. 

“Are you cold?” he asked quietly. 

Robotnik pulled his knees in closer. “No.”

He was, but the thought of walking away from the quiet, timeless moment felt worse than anything nature could manage. He wasn’t ready to face the morning; out here, it felt like the night would never end.

“It’s late,” Stone said again. “Don’t you want to go to bed?” 

“No,” Robotnik answered despite his exhaustion. “I want to be out here.” 

With you, he didn’t say. 

“Okay.”

He felt Stone’s hesitation even through the darkness. His body shifted subtly where their shoulders were connected. 

Robotnik felt, too, when he turned to look at him. One knee pressed into the side of his leg. Robotnik held his breath; he didn’t pull away.

It took several moments for Stone to speak again. 

“Do you want me to stay?” he said eventually, voice small and careful. He released a shaky breath, suddenly sounding far less composed. The words that followed were rushed, falling out of him at once. “Just tell me to stay and I will.” A pause. “I will, Doctor.” 

The admission fractured the air between them as Robotnik’s mind ground to an abrupt halt. Stone’s words echoed, replaying the edge of what he dared to call desperation in his voice. 

It sounded like a plea. 

He had never heard Stone plead before. 

Robotnik’s heart beat loudly, nerves suddenly alight with flighty energy that travelled to the very tips of his fingers. He had the sense that Stone wasn’t just referring to this moment. It didn’t take a genius to realize that. 

All it would take was one word. One single word to alter the timeline, to rewire the framework of his entire solitary existence.

Yes was a single syllable, but to Robotnik, it remained the hardest word in any language. 

He couldn’t do it. Not when there were a thousand reasons not to and but one single reason in his favor– the stupid, shameful fact that he wanted to. Robotnik had an entire lifetime of loss to prove that wanting something wasn’t enough. That it would never be enough. 

Robotnik sighed. Even in the darkness, he couldn’t meet Stone’s eyes. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he did. 

“It’s late, Stone,” he said with a quiet resignation, borrowing the words from earlier. “You should get some rest. I’ll need you at your best tomorrow.”

Robotnik’s stomach dropped as he spoke, knowing he had finally cemented his fate. Stone was silent beside him. Robotnik didn’t dare to look over, to know what expression he wore. 

“Yes, sir,” Stone replied after an inordinate pause. His voice lacked any emotion. 

He then stood without warning, one hand brushing against Robotnik’s shoulder as he did, and retreated inside without another word. The ghost of his touch lingered against Robotnik's skin as if he'd been branded. 

Robotnik released a long breath. 

He stayed in place until his body was wracked by the cold, until his limbs went stiff and the numbness washed away the imprint of Stone's touch. Until he was certain he wouldn’t follow.  

Once when he began to convulse with shivers did Robotnik finally make his way inside. 

Completely and utterly drained, he all but stumbled throughout the lab to where his sleeping cot had been set, tripping over several poorly placed items in the process.

When he passed by the room Stone had taken as his own, Robotnik stopped. 

It was foolish, but he peered inside anyway. 

Just beyond the doorway, he identified Stone’s murky form curled in his own cot, seemingly asleep. His chest rose and fell with slow, even breaths. 

Robotnik’s hand lingered on the doorway. His foot raised almost subconsciously. 

He didn’t know what would happen if he took another step. He only knew that he would never find out. 

“Goodnight, Stone,” he spoke into the empty air, a whisper. A goodbye. 

Without waiting, Robotnik turned and walked away. 

 

Notes:

yeah they explored each other's bodies sorry. it had to be done.
(SUMMARY: if you skipped the scene, the brief explanation is that lawrence made advances towards robotnik the same night he and stone almost kissed and robotnik, desperate for a distraction, accepts this and they hook up. they were both drinking earlier that evening. in the moment, robotnik imagines stone was there instead and is mad at himself after the fact.)

i hope you guys enjoyed this one despite all the time spent in robotnik's sad and pathetic mind im curious to hear what you all think :]

i swear there is a happy ending in here somewhere...anyway i will see you all next week with more! next chapter we lock tf in

Chapter 4

Notes:

this chapter was impossible to write but somehow turned out excessively long...anyway i've had to split this one again so chapter count is now at 6 and im cutting it there

For once, Robotnik slept through the night.

A monumental feat only to infants, he was well aware, but it had been somewhere between weeks and decades since he had accomplished such a thing. It was a sure testament to his recent exhaustion, having finally pushed his body to its limits.

Now, Robotnik found himself emerging from the other side of it as his eyes blinked open– slowly, consciously– still clouded with the haze of sleep. He rolled onto his back and clasped his hands over his stomach, exhaling deeply.

The dread of the previous night still lingered, wrapping around his insides, but his head felt lighter. His thoughts felt sharper, no longer muddled around the edges as his consciousness was tossed between reality and imagination. Thumbs brushing against the fabric of his shirt, pressing into his chest, Robotnik knew that he was firmly within the present. 

He felt awake. Alive. 

He blinked once more, reacquainting himself with the feeling. Then, without further contemplation, he got up. 

Always an opportunist, Robotnik rode the wave of this sudden burst of energy into the morning. He emerged from his corner of the lab finding it to be much later than expected and briefly startled at the sight of Stone, already awake and dressed, resuming the maintenance he’d abandoned the previous night. 

A rush of nausea suddenly stirred in him at the sight, but Robotnik quickly swallowed it down.

“Oh. Morning, Doctor,” Stone greeted as he approached. He didn’t stop what he was doing, gently guiding a loose wire back inside the shell of a badnik. 

Robotnik leaned over, careful to maintain a distance between them, and observed his work; perhaps he should’ve been displeased Stone had taken the task upon himself, potentially tampering with his progress, but his work appeared perfectly neat and methodical. 

Admittedly, Stone always took great care with his machines. His hands were human and therefore flawed, nor quite the tools of creation that Robotnik’s were, but they were gentle all the same. 

“Careful with that,” Robotnik chastised anyway, as if to discredit the thought.

Stone’s hands didn’t falter in his steady movement. “Of course, Doctor.” 

Robotnik stood over him for another moment, watching. He waited for a barrage of morning small talk that didn’t come as Stone continued to work, seemingly disregarding his presence. Robotnik shifted on his feet, the silence suddenly disconcerting. 

He loathed small talk, deeming it a necessary evil of the social contract, but the diversion of their standard routine was unnerving. 

“Coffee?” Robotnik prompted after a short time, needing to say something.

Finally, Stone’s hands stilled and he glanced up from his work. 

“Right,” he said simply. “Instant okay?” 

Robotnik shrugged; it wasn’t, really, but the threat of another mundane outing was enough to loosen his usual standards. It would do. 

Stone accepted the half-hearted gesture for what it was and hurried away. Robotnik, not knowing what to do with himself, waited in place. Stone returned several minutes later with a paper cup and swiftly handed it off to him, seemingly taking care to avoid any unnecessary contact.

Good, Robotnik thought, the word spoken with too much force even within his mind. He held the cup tightly. 

When it appeared as though Stone was about to get back on task, screwdriver already in hand, Robotnik took the cue to wordlessly drift to another part of the lab. 

As he sipped the beverage– a little gritty with a burnt aftertaste– watching from afar as Stone ran diagnostics and reapplied panels to his creations, Robotnik was struck with the uncanny feeling that he was watching himself from another’s eyes.

Stone moved without hesitation, a distinct picture of expertise and efficiency, and Robotnik saw himself reflected in every movement– he was there in the subtle flick of Stone’s fingers against a switch, in the idle spin of the wire cutters in his left hand, in the way he cradled the metal shell of the drone in his palm. 

Robotnik realized, not abruptly but with a detached curiosity, that he didn’t know when that happened. When Stone had become more himself than he was. 

As he swirled the cup of coffee, watching as the foam dissipated into the depths, Robotnik came to the subsequent realization that perhaps Stone wasn’t the only one who had changed. Five years ago, he was every bit as cold and uncaring as he appeared from the outside. There was no persona to break; hollow apathy ran straight to his core. There was nothing else.

Robotnik continued to present himself to the world as much the same, but it was a mere facsimile of what once was. Slowly, something had crept inside the shell of his personhood and taken root in the emptiness – he began to tolerate trivial conversation, took the time to appreciate the scent of a finely roasted coffee, strung together the occasional pun for no other reason than to watch his assistant smother a grin. It was absurd. Robotnik was irrefutably altered on a molecular level and the only possible factor to blame was Stone himself. 

It appeared as though they had both molded to the shape of one another after years spent filling the same space, breathing the same air. 

Robotnik wasn’t sure what that made them. 

An amalgamation of two lives, he considered, or two parasites leeching off one another, trapped in a doomed ritual as they took turns tearing pieces from each other’s flesh to replace their own. It was grotesque either way, the manner in which they’d become intertwined. Altogether unnatural. 

He dared to wonder, too, what would happen when they finally separated. Would he have to peel away what remained of himself, unsticking it from Stone’s personhood? Robotnik imagined cutting himself away with a gaping hole left in his chest in the aftermath. How many ribs would he come away with, how many organs were still his own? 

Robotnik brought the drink to his lips once more, a slight tremor running through his fingers. There was no way to know – he’d simply have to cauterize that wound when it appeared. 

And what of the aftermath? 

Robotnik didn’t suspect he could dissect himself apart so easily, picking away the parts that once lived only in Stone, but he could reconstruct what remained. He was good at that; creating something new, something impossible. Was this truly so different? 

Really, it was a grand opportunity to fortify himself. Necessary upgrades, one could say. This time, when he built himself anew, Robotnik wouldn’t allow such tender parts to remain. Flesh could be infected, scarred, torn away at any moment, but metal was far different. It was resilient. Unforgiving, just as he should’ve been all these years. 

His body may be confined to the organic, but he could rewire himself from the inside, every want and need buried beneath lines of codes, a hollow metronome welded into the cavern where his heart once was. 

If Robotnik succeeded, it would be a painless existence. Unencumbered and befitting a machine. 

Was that not what he wanted? What he was meant for?

He lifted his eyes once more to catch a glimpse of Stone, knowing that someday he would never again feel the tortuous, stinging pain that accompanied his image. 

That he wouldn’t feel anything at all. 

Robotnik sighed. The thought was almost relieving. For once, he decided to welcome the change.

 

The relief granted by his imagined future was enough to spur Robotnik on, finally reclaiming some semblance of control over himself.

That, and the events of the previous night. 

While the weight of their conversation still festered in his stomach, Robotnik felt his chest unclench slightly having finally voiced his rejection. Not only to Stone, but to himself. There was something alleviating about the knowledge that he had properly sealed his fate; it removed all uncertainty and therefore all hope. 

There was nothing either of them could do now.

Stone seemed to think so too, if his lack of usual energy was any indication. Unfamiliar guilt prodded at Robotnik with every clipped word and broken eye contact between them, but he expertly pushed it away. 

It didn’t matter; they would both be better for in the end. Stone would see that one day, too. 

 

They worked in relative silence throughout the day, a tense anticipation hanging over the lab. 

Robotnik could practically see the electricity coursing through the atmosphere between them, feel the sharp licks of energy against his skin every time Stone passed by and their eyes caught. They looked at one another far more than they spoke, but it seemed that each glance communicated more than their words ever had.

Stone, too, wore a variety of expressions despite his silence. 

Some proved too difficult for Robotnik to properly decipher, as they didn’t appear to fall into any one category– sometimes Stone’s eyes were dull, almost emotionless, and other times brimming with something soft and pleading. Other times they were sharp. Most often, however, he simply looked sad. 

It was a juvenile deduction, Robotnik realized, but there seemed no other word as befitting of his condition. 

Stone was just sad. Maybe they both were – Robotnik refused to look anywhere he might meet his own eyes, wholly unaware of what they reflected back at Stone. For once, he delighted in ignorance. 

Still, Stone’s work ethic never slipped. He was every bit as efficient and determined as usual – perhaps even more so, the way he moved almost mechanically, unconcerned with everything but his present task. 

Robotnik, of course, knew that wasn’t the case; he recognized that much from himself and the manner in which he threw himself into his work to distract from the noise of his mind.

He wondered if Stone had always been that way or if was another unfortunate symptom of their closeness, another behavior leached. Had Stone ever been normal? Robotnik confessed he didn’t know, his recollection of the past coming up short. He hadn’t paid Stone much mind in the beginning.  

Some part of Robotnik hoped that doe-eyed, fresh from the press agent was still in there somewhere. That Stone wasn’t too far gone. 

That, with time, every facet of their shared behavior could be reversed, his humanity reset to factory settings. He hoped that Stone could walk out the proverbial door of his life as the same agent who had walked in that very first day. Otherwise...the thought of Stone succumbing to the same, wretched fate tasted bitter – for all his ego, Robotnik found that he didn’t want that for Stone. It wasn’t deserved. Not in the way his inevitable crash had been.

It was perhaps the most generous sentiment Robotnik could manage, and it still wasn't enough. That was what Stone deserved – something better. Something Robotnik knew he could never provide.

Instead, he took to helping the process of their separation along with various attempts to restore Stone’s usual optimism. 

“Stone,” Robotnik summoned from across the room, noting the way Stone’s head instantly perked up at the sound. “Hold this end of the cable, would you? I’m in need of a third hand.” 

“Of course,” Stone replied instantly, setting down his own materials in favor of the task. He didn’t so much as hesitate. 

Stone came to stand beside him with an awkward little shuffle and he dutifully held one end of the cable while Robotnik finely clipped the other. He had the sense they were both overly aware of the proximity – or lack thereof – between them. Stone stood carefully, leaning to one side to avoid breaching the neutral space while Robotnik convinced himself he was pleased by the discretion. 

When it became clear Stone wasn’t going to say anything, Robotnik heaved a breath and steeled himself to initiate conversation instead. 

Glancing at Stone, he cleared his throat. “I imagine you’re looking forward to the events later?” 

The question was intended as small talk but instead landed like a bomb. 

Robotnik could pinpoint with startling accuracy the exact moment the words registered, because Stone’s face instantly fell. His brows drew together and his lips straightened into a stiff line, as if fortifying them to prevent any words of his own escaping. 

For a moment, they both remained frozen; Robotnik, having realized the topic was inherently tethered to their inevitable departure, and Stone, seemingly deciding how to respond.  

Robotnik actually considered apologizing before he could. 

He had never done so before, but the urge to withdraw the words back into his mouth was suddenly all-consuming and an apology seemed like the only viable damage control. He considered it, then immediately feared that if he started, he might never stop apologizing–

For the inconsiderate remark. For making Stone witness to the proverbial car crash that was the state of his mind. For dragging him down to the same depths. 

For everything, just a little bit.

But Robotnik knew that was beyond them both. So instead, he said nothing. 

“I suppose it’s been a while since we’ve had the privilege of another impassioned speech by Lawrence,” Stone said after a lengthy pause, his tone dry. “He really knows how to slow down time with those.” 

At that, Robotnik snorted, relieved by the subtle avoidance of his original question. Stone was good at that – shifting the lines of conversation into easier territory when things became tense. 

Robotnik snipped another few incisions into the cable. He didn’t actually require assistance for the task, but Stone was likely to slink away the second it was complete. For that reason, he opted to draw it out, taking unnecessary time to consider the angle and measurement of each cut. 

“Might be to our advantage,” Robotnik mused with a matching humor. “I’m sure he’ll keep a captive audience tonight. It’ll be much easier to slip away in that case.” 

Stone made a noise beside him. “I think hostage is a more accurate descriptor,” he muttered.

They’d never much cared for one another. 

From the very first prospective meeting, Stone had always looked to Lawrence with contempt while Lawrence, in turn, didn’t look at Stone at all. He never seemed to notice those below his station and didn’t seem to understand why Robotnik insisted on dragging his assistant to every function. 

Whenever it was brought up, Robotnik simply defaulted to his usual defensive honesty – Stone was useful. That was all. And Robotnik, being the smartest in any given room, wasn’t to be questioned on his methodology. He didn’t need to explain himself.

Now, several months down the line and several transgressions later, Robotnik found himself happy to indulge Stone’s distaste of the man.  

“I’ll accept the amendment. All the more motivation to be efficient, then. Otherwise we might get stuck in a toast to our ingenuity and sharing our gratitude to each generous benefactor,” Robotnik threw back with a quick glance to the side. He turned away just after catching the slight curve of Stone’s lips at the remark.

Rather than laughing, however, Stone inhaled audibly as the humor suddenly drained from his voice. “Trust me, Doctor, I’m more than motivated to finish this, agonizing speeches aside. We’re going to get that drive tonight. I’ll see to that.” 

It was a simple statement, but something about the way it was delivered – the sharp, steady determination – made Robotnik pause. Between the flourished lattes and stacks of paperwork, it was easy to forget Stone’s true designation. Not as his personal assistant, but as an agent. 

Robotnik shifted to regard him properly and Stone met his gaze with hardened eyes, like a soldier standing at attention.

“Good,” Robotnik replied with none of the usual preamble, “because I’m not leaving until I reclaim what’s mine. And you aren’t either.” 

At that, a slight grin broke through Stone’s militaristic composure. It wasn’t soft or awe-inspired, as Robotnik had come to know, but something different. Stone’s lips were pulled wide, exposing the faces of his teeth, but his eyes were devoid of any accompanying warmth. 

Robotnik felt his skin prickle with something akin to unease, or perhaps intrigue. 

“Of course, Doctor,” Stone spoke through his teeth. “This has been a long time coming.” 

Robotnik merely hummed, still regarding him with wary fascination. 

“Indeed.” 

It was almost a minute later when Stone finally spoke again, his voice startling Robotnik from his focus. 

“Yeah,” Stone decided, “I guess I am looking forward to tonight.” 

 

Robotnik finally dropped the pair of wire cutters and waved Stone away after that, though the tension between them slowly diluted as they morning drew into afternoon. 

Robotnik continued trying. 

“I’m hungry,” he declared shortly after noon. A sharp ache deep in his stomach had made him cognizant of a returning appetite, and all at once he felt ravenous. 

Stone, who was still consumed in meaningless little tasks, seemed pleased by the development.

“Yeah?” he prompted, both eyebrows raised. “Up for lunch?”

“Well, I’d rather not starve,” Robotnik drawled with a roll of his eyes, already in motion to the front of the vehicle. “So, yes, I would like to alleviate my uncomfortable condition as soon as possible.”  

Stone knew that as soon as possible was code for immediately, regardless of circumstance and stripped off his heavy work gloves, setting them neatly atop a container of screws, and followed behind.

They opted for takeout this time, per Stone’s suggestion. Robotnik happily accepted the idea and waited like a dog in the car while Stone picked up the order. There was still a disconnect in his mind – the inability to fathom the casual domesticity they found themselves in – but Robotnik no longer felt detached from reality as a whole, so it became easier to stomach that facet of it. 

It wouldn’t be much longer, he told himself, and Stone’s mood did appear to improve the further their dynamic was restored. 

Robotnik had half a mind to consider that perhaps this was the opposite of progress. He wanted Stone to return to normalcy after this; not their normalcy, but that of the rest of humankind. He even briefly debated switching tactics and withdrawing completely, or increasing the number of cold remarks and pointed insults thrown his way, but he didn’t want to jeopardize Stone’s cooperation later that night. 

In the end, he decided to continue employing proven tactics. A casual comment here, a boast to his own intelligence there, and Stone seemed to once again warm to their plans. It didn’t take much – the status quo was practically hardwired into both their heads. 

Either way, things were certainly looking up, all while Robotnik tried not to remind himself that any view constituted up when he was already on the ground.

 

“I’m going to start getting ready for the event,” Stone declared in the afternoon. 

Robotnik stole a glance at the time and frowned. “No need. Everything’s already in order.” 

They had spent the better part of last night and the later morning meticulously reviewing the action plan and prepping an entire fleet of badniks, despite said plan only necessitating one. 

Stone paused in the doorway, one hand held against the wall, and craned his neck to look at Robotnik. The crease of his brows was betrayed by the slight smile on his lips; Robotnik didn’t know how to categorize the expression outside of odd, which ultimately seemed to encompass it well enough.

“I meant I’m going to get myself ready,” Stone clarified, eyes dipping to catch his own. He appeared fond of something. Robotnik only narrowed his eyes, failing to see anything worthy of his fondness. “I can’t just show up like this.”  

Stone flourished the word with an airy humor, as if it was laughable to even suggest, and Robotnik’s eyes narrowed further. He allowed them to flicker across Stone’s form, though he was still turned away, scanning across every crease of black fabric that clung to him. Clean, sophisticated, and devoid of any wrinkles – Robotnik failed to see an issue.

The further truth, the one tucked away in a corner of his mind, was that Stone wore everything well. 

Of course, he was rarely seen in anything other than his standard black ensemble, but he looked picturesque even drenched in sweat or smeared in streaky black grease. The fabric seemed to intuitively conform to his body, so politely controlled, hanging in just the right manner to appear purposefully disheveled. 

A condition of Stone’s humanity, Robotnik reckoned. Things like that came easy to humans, reality seeming to bend to their will as if aware of some cosmic importance they held, though he didn’t believe they had any.

Robotnik never experienced such ease. He fussed and pulled at his clothes, which had a dreadful habit of bunching and twisting as they tried to rid themselves from his body. He didn’t blame them. They never looked quite right on him. 

Humanity never had, either, so it made sense in his mind.

Robotnik politely returned his gaze to Stone’s face and shook his head. “You’re already dressed for a black tie event, Stone. Quite literally. I’d argue what you have on is more than appropriate, though I wouldn’t fault you for wearing sweatpants at this point, given the crowd. Those insufferable oaf don’t deserve the effort.” 

“True enough, but we still have an image to uphold, Doctor,” Stone reminded, and it was the most ridiculous notion Robotnik had heard since learning his project had been compromised. “Of course we’re above them. But we should look the part too, don’t you think?”  

There was trace amounts of logic to the idea, but it was all so very societal that Robotnik couldn’t help but groan. 

“Whatever. Get all dressed up and pampered for them if that’s what you want, but don’t expect me to do the same.” 

For some reason, that coaxed another smile from Stone. 

“I would never,” he replied in earnest. “You’re a force I know I can’t reckon with, Doctor. It would be foolish to try.”

Robotnik offered a vague noise of approval.

“Smart man, Agent Stone. If only the rest of the world possessed your instinct,” he sighed, and he meant every word of it. 

It was clear that, despite his reputation as another erratic, unstable scientist, the world didn’t fear him. None of this would have happened if they feared him. Stone didn’t either, but he revered Robotnik and that afforded a different, more exploitative influence. 

But these people didn’t revere him. They didn’t even respect him. 

Oh, well. Robotnik attempted to placate his mind with grandiose visions of his ascension above the common man, of his disregard for society as a whole. It’ll be their funeral to show for it. 

Stone’s voice shook him from his thoughts, rupturing the image.

“It wouldn’t make a difference if they did. They would still be undeserving of your genius, sir.” 

Robotnik huffed, unimpressed by the regurgitated praise. “At least they would recognize it.” 

"Your genius is undeniable, Doctor. Anyone who claims not to see that is either spiteful or beyond all help,” Stone argued, then hesitated, the rest of the sentence clipped from its whole.

Though it went unspoken, the words echoed in Robotnik’s ears all the same. They know, and they still don’t respect you for it. 

Stone cleared his throat, perhaps in preparation to backtrack on his previous statement and its insubordinate implications, but Robotnik cut in before he could manage.

“Perhaps.” He shrugged, waving a hand in suggestion. “But they haven’t seen the extent of my wit. Tonight, of course, is to be the unveiling of my grandiose intellect.” 

The words tasted stale on his tongue, but Robotnik spit them from his mouth all the same. It felt like the right thing to say. The right thing to want. He was making an effort to salvage himself, even if he had to tear the sentiment from his throat. 

Stone smiled again, for what felt like the millionth time, and Robotnik wanted to scream, or perhaps never make a sound again. 

“Of course, Doctor,” he replied smoothly, coated in sickening reverence. “It will be grand.” 

Something about his tone made Robotnik want to believe it. 

 

While Stone finally dismissed himself to dress, Robotnik settled for doing the same. 

Despite his own words, and perhaps principles, he shrugged on a button-up and blazer to accompany his usual slacks. The outfit wasn’t particularly elevated, but it felt sharp and put-together in a way that betrayed how Robotnik felt. 

If he looked that way to the world, it was all the better – he wasn’t about to hand them the scalpel in his own dissection, granting them invitation to what lay beneath such deceivingly human skin. They didn’t need to know he was rotting from the inside out. 

Robotnik neglected a mirror, but he stared down at himself from above and nodded, just once. 

It would do.

“Alright, Doctor–” Stone called from around a corner, a disembodied voice, “I’m ready to head out when you are. We’re not too far now, but we should account for traffic.” 

Robotnik didn’t make a conscious effort to look when Stone manifested in front of him, but his eyes lifted of their own volition. 

The breath he’d been taking caught in his throat, and, for a moment, he couldn’t look away.

Velvety fabric adorned Stone in elegant drapes, cinched around his waist and buttons clasped in a neat line down his chest. The most immediate detail was the color – the blazer and slacks were a dark shade of purple that reflected almost black where the lines of fabric contorted in motion. Robotnik was struck with the notion that he had never seen Stone in any color, save for black. 

He looked different. More alive, perhaps, as the reddish undertones drew out the color in his face. 

Robotnik squinted at his features, the dark contrast of his eyes against their colorful backdrop, the loose style of his hair, and felt his retinas burning. 

“What do you think, sir?” Stone tried again, almost certainly a reference to the aforementioned traffic situation, but the context eluded Robotnik. 

“Are you wearing eyeliner?” he blurted instead, unsure of where the question came from. The pigment was quite obvious, even to an untrained eye. Tragically, his tone failed to sound incredulous as the cadence titled into curiosity. 

Stone’s eyebrows shot up briefly before he blinked away his surprise. “I am,” he answered, a simple statement of fact, before adding, “Just a little bit.” 

Robotnik only nodded, slow and controlled. The air suddenly felt striped of its oxygen. He cleared his throat.

“I think we’ve wasted enough time in this pathetic rest stop of a town, if you can even call it that. Come on.” Robotnik stood, willing the rest of his body to behave, and made for the door. “I’ll drive.” 

Truthfully, he wasn’t keen on driving that evening, but it provided an inherent task to direct his focus towards and a reason to look anywhere except his assistant. Stone didn’t protest, likely grateful for the reprieve.

A fraught quietness permeated the air between them as they drove the final stretch to the venue. It was as if every molecule of nitrogen and oxygen could sense the solemn shift as they approached the hour of reckoning and sat almost suffocatingly still in the air. 

Robotnik exhaled in slow, shallow breaths, keeping his eyes firmly trained on the road. He could sense Stone looking at him intermittently, though never for more than a few seconds, while Robotnik pointedly refused to meet his gaze. 

Every time Stone’s eyes prickled against his skin in a telltale sign of his staring, Robotnik only clenched the steering wheel harder. He tightened his fingers around the smooth leather until the color bled from his knuckles, painting his cheeks instead. 

Only once did he acknowledge it.

It had been several seconds – six, as his internal clock revealed – and Stone still hadn’t looked away. With each subsequent tick, Robotnik’s pulse jumped in time until eventually, he snapped.

“Stop that,” Robotnik hissed, the sound of his voice impossibly sharp against the damp silence. They both winced.

“Stop what?” Stone had the gall to ask, as if he knew it wouldn’t matter soon. As if daring him to say it.

“Stop looking at me.”  

“Oh,” Stone said, a little quieter and far less brazen. He shifted in his seat, expensive fabric rustling against the leather. “Sorry.” 

No argument, no denial, just sorry. 

Feeling a sharp spike of nausea rise in him, Robotnik steeled his gaze towards the straight stretch of pavement in front of them, counting the dashed yellow lines as they flitted by. 

The time continued to pass. Stone didn’t look at him again and Robotik ignored the cruel twinge of disappointment at his surrender, though he’d expected nothing less.

 

Lawrence’s lake house came into view quickly, cresting above the trees like the summit of a mountain. 

It was all sleek white siding and rustic accents, adorned with tall windows and cupolas atop each end of the pointed roof. Robotnik’s first thought upon seeing it was that it was, in fact, as big as Lawnrence’s ego. 

“How fitting,” he muttered aloud, pausing at a distance to take in the full expanse of the structure. 

Stone slowed beside him. “I wonder how often he even gets up here between work. A weekend trip at the end of each quarter?” He shook his head. “It’s a waste.” 

“It’s wasted on him either way,” Robotnik replied, his disgust evident. “As is the rest of his miraculous wealth.” 

“He’s probably a nepo-baby.”

“Would certainly explain the entitlement, though he exhibits several patterns of behavior more commonly associated with a fatherless upbringing.” Robotnik pulled at the cuffs of his gloves, forcing them further up his wrists with no real purpose. The pads of his fingers pressed against the fabric, the familiarity of the sensation reassuring. He sighed. “Well, Agent, I suppose it’s time to light this tire fire.” 

Robotnik began to move but Stone’s hand grazed over his elbow and he stopped once more, turning to face him.

“Are you ready, Doctor?” Stone asked. Suddenly, the weight of the words was palpable. 

“Of course I am,” Robotnik answered on impulse. Then, before he could think better of it, “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Stone blinked a few times before resigning to the question with a shrug. Through his parted lips, Robotnik could practically see the words hanging on the tip of his tongue. Some part of him dared Stone to vocalize them, but a much larger and more intelligent part knew he wouldn’t. 

“Your collar is twisted,” Stone said instead. Robotnik reached up to trace along the fabric but Stone hurriedly shook his head. “Allow me, sir–” 

Robotnik startled when he reached out with both arms to shuffle and smooth the lapels of his jacket in one swift, practiced movement. Stone stepped back a second later, tilting his head at a slight angle to consider his work before flashing a satisfied smile.

“There. You look ready to conquer the world, Doctor.”

Their eyes met involuntarily, Stone’s still creased by his smile, and Robotnik was nearly knocked off kilter by the wave of emotion they reflected. 

He looked oddly proud. 

What could he possibly see?

Robotnik shook his head, dismissing the thought. Rather than attempting to assign logic to the nonsensical, he tore his eyes away and began walking towards the entrance in long strides.

“Save it. You can sing my praises once we’ve gotten what we came here for.” 

They moved in swift silence until they reached the open gate, sounds of the event already trickling into the outdoors and tainting the air with incessant chatter. With little fanfare, they shared one final glance, as if steeling themselves for the beginning of the end, and stepped through the main door. 

Robotnik felt a rush as soon as he crossed the threshold into Lawrence’s world. 

The air was stiflingly warm with the heat of too many bodies in one space, stale from being exchanged between too many mouths. The lights were dim, set to a soft evening glow, and the masses of black-clad bodies shifted together and formed new shapes in the darkness. There was a disturbing quality to the motion as they writhed around one another like eels, slipping into the meager gaps of space while they did the greeting rounds.

Robotnik resisted the urge to back away, forcing his legs forward in a stilted, mechanical motion as he delved into the sea of people with no clear destination. 

Despite the sounds of incessant chatter, Robotnik could hear his pulse echoing in his ears. He sucked in a deep breath, filling his lungs with dry air, and pushed on.

Stone trailed at his heels as they navigated the crowd. He helped to part the waters, politely excusing Robotnik’s reckless charge forward and offering easy smiles to those they passed. 

They were stopped several times before making it halfway to the other wall. 

Tragically, Robotnik was easily recognized by the crowd, with most being members of the board or part of other departments involved throughout the process. He had met the majority of them on some occasion or another, though he often pretended he hadn’t or otherwise couldn’t recall. 

His visual memory was, of course, almost perfect, but they didn’t deserve the satisfaction of being remembered. Humans had an annoying tendency to develop an undeserved ego over those sorts of things, Robotnik noticed. He was thus determined not to contribute to the epidemic. 

Unsurprisingly, the brief conversations that ensued proved as unmemorable as their initiators, Robotnik quickly found.

“I’m glad to see you’ve made it this time around,” a contractor said with a polite, forgiving smile. 

“Congratulations. The project was a great success thanks to the efforts of you and your team,” a commander offered with a firm handshake. Robotnik cringed as their palms slid together.

“You must be thrilled with the end product here,” someone whose name had been scrubbed from his mind said while sipping an embellished cocktail. “It’s incredible.” 

Outwardly, they were all so tortuously proper and polite. 

And yet, Robotnik didn’t miss the subtle expressions that flitted across their smiling faces – the firm line of their lips, the way their smiles didn’t reach their eyes, the slight, pitying tilt of their heads as they spoke. This wasn’t respect. No – they were placating him like a child, each word calculated to avoid another tantrum. 

They were waiting for him to explode, he realized. They expected it. 

It wasn't the least bit funny, but Robotnik almost wanted to laugh regardless. 

It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. He contorted his features into something resembling a smile, though he bared his teeth in more the way of a chimpanzee than a human, and shook every hand extended his way. 

Agonizing, he thought. The tenth circle of hell is a high-society work social. But he wouldn’t cause a scene. Not here, when their plan necessitated flying under the radar. 

Robotnik had never been one to exist in the background, but he had spent enough time in the presence of loathsome government affiliates to breeze past their small talk with minimal words exchanged, shrugging off one pretentious nobody for another as they circled the main floor. 

“This isn’t so bad,” Stone mumbled beside him as they paused by a long banquet table for refreshments. “You know, as far as these things go.”

“Mm. The best of the worst,” Robotnik supplied, knowing exactly what he meant. And it was true, all things considered; they’d certainly had their share of dreadful conferences and outings disguised as business meetings. 

Stone held out a glass of champagne and Robotnik grabbed the stem of the glass on impulse, a pavlovian response to the familiar action. 

“Hey, I’ll cheers to that,” Stone said, raising his own glass. 

He glanced around the periphery, confirming their brief moment of isolation before meeting Robotnik’s eyes with a small smile. Not the bright, practiced grin he flashed intermittently throughout conversation, inherently aware of when and how to react, but something softer. Something just for them. 

Robotnik felt the gesture like a knife in his chest, but he raised his glass all the same. 

“Cheers,” he replied, “to our commendable tolerance of pompous assholes and the otherwise insufferable.” 

“And to full catering,” Stone added, a reference to a truly disastrous conference that offered nothing more than lukewarm coffee and packets of chips. Many hunger-induced arguments were had that day. 

Robotnik shuddered at the memory, recalling the creative, albeit vulgar, insults he had unloaded on a chancellor. 

“And that,” he agreed, gently clinking their glasses together before taking a hearty sip. “Though the open bar is certainly a choice. A bunch of high-strung officials who don’t know their ass from their elbow sober and several bottles of Macallan – what could go wrong?” 

At that, Stone laughed. “Now there’s a match made in heaven.” He gestured with his glass towards the space at large. “Frankly, I doubt Lawrence is capable of hosting a dry event. I mean, how else would he boast his incredibly refined taste in spirits? I’d bet that scotch is nearly as old as I am.” 

Robotnik had a tendency to tune out any non-work related chatter; if Lawrence had a penchant for expensive spirits and sharing his palate, he wasn’t aware of it. 

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

Don’t tell me you’ve been fraternizing, he wanted to add, but immediately thought better of it. 

The statement wasn’t accusatory, but Stone shrugged almost defensively. 

“Not by choice.” He paused, taking a sip. “He talks about himself constantly. I’m just forced to listen.” 

Robotnik nodded in understanding. Lawrence did have a tendency to direct all conversation towards himself, even in a professional context. In retrospect, an explosive reaction of their personalities seemed inevitable. Mutual passion could only go so far when they rivaled one another in ego. 

“An arrogant bastard with a psychological compulsion to hear himself talk. Where have I heard that one before?” Robotnik said dryly, surprising even himself. 

“Sir–”

Robotnik cut him off with a wave of his hand. “It’s rudimentary pattern recognition, Stone. Even you’re capable of that. Though it certainly raises the question of why you’ve now chosen to come here,” he continued, unable to contain the train of thought as it poured off his tongue, “given you’ve been off the clock for the last twenty-four hours. Could've been a lovely reprieve from the sort.” 

Stone was looking at him quizzically, as if in disbelief of where the sudden outburst came from. Truthfully, the words weren’t particularly charged. Robotnik long since resigned to the facts of the matter – so what if he and Lawrence were cut of the same, tainted cloth? At least they possessed the know-how to make a living out of it. 

As it turned out, an inherent sense of superiority and a touch of mania had its advantages in politics. Now, who would’ve guessed?

He didn’t mean anything by it. He didn’t even expect an answer. 

Before Robotnik could perceive the motion, Stone reached out, fingers grazing the cuff of his jacket. He jerked back on impulse but his elbow collided with the edge of the table, unable to move further. Undeterred, Stone’s hand ghosted just above his wrist, close enough that Robotnik could feel a phantom heat of the nonexistent touch. 

He tensed as Stone’s fingers brushed against the fabric. It took another second for him to speak. 

“You’re nothing like him, Doctor,” Stone replied, low and serious. “Not at all.” 

A subtle, almost imperceivable anger laced his tone and Robotnik blinked in surprise at both the sudden forwardness and conviction with which he spoke. 

It’s not that serious, he wanted to chastise, perhaps with a flippant insult that would slice through the heaviness that settled over them, forcing them back into neutral territory–

–But, then again, it was that serious, wasn’t it?

Robotnik’s mouth clamped shut as his resolve suddenly shriveled. 

Stone had seen through him once again and Robotnik felt the immediate, humiliating aftershocks of the realization at once. He began to believe that, for all his aforementioned compulsion to speak, he was fundamentally incapable of saying the right things. It was always too much or too little with him, the ratios perpetually askew.

Robotnik could perform a perfect titration in his sleep, both hands behind his back, yet he couldn’t measure his words with anywhere near the same proficiency. 

This time, he opted not to try. 

For a moment, they simply regarded one another in silence. It felt like an odd sort of stalemate, both equally unwilling to speak or stand down. 

Finally, after what felt like several lifetimes, Stone opened his mouth and Robotnik braced himself internally–

“I knew I’d be in for a surprise tonight.” 

–But it wasn’t Stone’s voice that rang out. 

Robotnik whipped his head around while Stone lurched away from him, hand automatically retracting from where it once dared to touch him. 

His eyes locked onto the offender with the precision of a military drone identifying its target and Robotnik resisted the urge to snarl. He settled for clutching the stem of his glass tightly between two fingers, internally hoping the pressure might cause it to shatter. 

It didn’t, of course, and Robotnik knew he would have to finally face the music. Mustering his poorest attempt at a polite smile, he raised his gaze to where none other than Sean Lawrence stood several feet away, having successfully cornered them both. 

“I nearly laughed in some poor agent’s face when she told me the infamous Dr. Robotnik was in attendance,” Lawrence continued, flashing both rows of blinding teeth, “and even now I have to wonder if my eyes deceive me.”  

“In the flesh,” Robotnik affirmed, gesturing to himself in a mock curtsey, before tacking on, “Unfortunately.” 

Lawrence let out a hollow laugh at the remark – a trademark of the rich and insincere – and dipped his head slightly. Robotnik could feel his eyes racking over his form, likely judging his attitude and attire in equal measure. 

“So you do get my emails,” he said, somewhere between amusement and poorly concealed irritation. “I was beginning to suspect you had my address marked as spam.” 

Robotnik rolled his eyes. “Your account is verified within the same organization. It doesn’t work like that.” Believe me, I’ve tried, went unspoken.

“Maybe. But those sorts of restrictions have never stopped you before.” 

“Of course not. I could wipe your entire account from existence in less time than it’s taken me to vocalize my ability to do so. And what better way to send a hint. Subtle, right?” Robotnik drawled, instinctually straightening his posture in a mimicry of Lawrence’s own. “But I’ve been rather busy these past few months – some sort of high-priority military commission, I’m sure you wouldn’t know a thing about it – so I’ve kindly neglected to do so.” 

“Damn,” Lawrence laughed, leaning back on his heels. He brought his own glass of amber liquid to his lips, taking a swig rather than a sip. “Tell me how you really feel, Doctor.” 

“Tempting, but I’d hate to spoil all the fun here.” 

“Is that why you’ve come?” 

Robotnik hesitated, studying Lawrence through narrowed eyes. They flickered across the clean trim of his beard and the stubble trailing along his jugular. Looking at his generic navy suit and speckled tie, Robotnik had to wonder what he ever saw in him. 

Nothing, was the answer his mind provided. A distraction, was the truth he preferred to leave buried. 

Robotnik lifted his gaze to Lawrence’s eyes once more. 

“No,” he decided, turning his nose at the man. “I don’t do fun.” 

Lawrence regarded him for a moment, a small grin playing on his lips as if sealing their history behind it. Robotnik had the acute sense that he reveled in the secret, in the satisfaction of knowing better. It lended a certain underlying dominance to the situation that a control freak might get off on.  

And Lawrence was nothing if not a control freak. The empty weight of the final flash drive in Robotnik’s pocket was certainly proof of that. 

“No,” Lawrence agreed, gracefully holding the unspoken under his tongue, just out of sight. He paused, gaze flickering off to Robonik’s side. “Of course not.” 

In his periphery, Stone tensed beside him. When Robotnik shifted to steal a further glance at the agent, he was met with a hard, uninhibited glare. Not directed at him, but rather – at Lawrence. 

Lawrence continued to smile, his lips pulled tight and high with visible effort, but he wasn’t looking at Robotnik anymore.

Robotnik’s eyes flicked rapidly between the two, feeling strangely invisible. Had they always looked at one another like that? 

“How rude of me to not extend my greeting,” Lawrence said after a prolonged moment of tense silence, their staring contest having reached a draw. He offered Stone a hand. “Nice to see you again, Agent…?” 

“Stone,” he finished for him, grabbing the other man’s hand in a visibly firm grip. Lawrence’s lip twitched, but he waited another second before wrenching his own hand away. 

“Stone,” Lawrence echoed strangely. “Right. Thanks for coming.” 

Stone offered a tight smile of his own. “Of course. I’m delighted to be here for the celebration.” He made a show of looking around in admiration of the space. “And what a beautiful home you have. Do you get up here often?” 

At that, Robotnik found himself briefly stifling a laugh. 

Lawrence’s jaw tightened. He appeared distinctly annoyed in spite of the rather pedestrian conversation. “You know, when I can. It’s not always easy to make time, what with managing my new department and all.” 

Stone nodded along with a sympathetic noise. His eyes, which remained sharp and slightly amused, betrayed any such sympathy for the matter. 

Robotnik simply stood to the side, observing the interaction with a slight degree of awe. It was a rare but delightful sight, he found, to watch Lawrence twitch and shift on his feet, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. It felt satisfyingly deserved.

“Oh, I’m sure they keep you busy,” Stone agreed. “Not to mention your wife.” A pause. “Where is she, by the way? I’d love to extend my compliments on the decor. That armoire is just gorgeous – French Country, I presume?” 

“We worked with an interior designer,” Lawrence said flatly, a pointed disregard of the question. It was an answer all the same.

Robotnik couldn’t say he was surprised, given…well, everything. 

Before Stone would continue with his barrage of small-talk, Lawrence cleared his throat and turned towards Robotnik once more. 

“Well, like I said, I’m glad you found the time to show up here, if nowhere else.” Lawrence shot him another blinding smile that was all teeth. “It’s been great to see you again, Ivo. Truly. We'll have to catch up later, yeah?” 

Ivo. 

Lawrence tossed his name – his first name – like a grenade and promptly spun around before either of them could react. 

Robotnik, to his credit, didn’t. He stood unmoving; every muscle tensed, limbs hanging stiffly at his sides with a rigidity that betrayed the fact he was still alive as the sound rolled around in the forefront of his mind. 

Lawrence had never called him that before. Not even in the heat of their intimacy. He had decorum, to some extent – he knew better. 

So why now? Just to rile him up? Hadn’t he done enough? 

Or maybe he’d just done it to confuse him. For the sheer satisfaction of the puzzled look he now wore, every internal system temporarily stalled as he struggled to process the information. 

Ah. How utterly humiliating. 

Robotnik gripped his glass tightly, the familiar heat of his anger licking at his throat, urging him to release it.

Before he could, Stone lurched forward without warning and Robotnik, operating on reflex more than anything, seized him by the elbow. Stone could’ve easily broken the loose grip, but he merely fell back beside Robotnik. He stared up at him with an expression Robotnik didn’t see, as his gaze remained firmly trained on the back of Lawrence’s head.

Lawrence, perhaps aware of the movement, threw a passing glance over his shoulder as if to survey the damage.

“Enjoy the evening, you two,” he said simply, then turned and left them alone once more.

Robotnik continued to watch until Lawrence’s figure melded into the amalgamation of expensive suits and crystalline glasses. It was only once he was firmly out of sight that Robotnik blinked, eyes now drawn to where his hand still held Stone in place. He quickly dropped it. 

“What an insufferable–” he started, but Stone quickly interjected.

“–fucking prick?” 

Robotnik was prepared to deliver a variety of colorful turns of phrase, but found Stone’s deduction to be much more concise and somehow still perfectly accurate.

He nodded. “Yes, that.” 

He expected Stone to say more, to continue ragging on him or perhaps delight in the confirmation that Lawrence did, in fact, spend minimal time in his multi-million dollar lake house. But he didn’t. Stone merely shook his head and, in one swift motion, downed the rest of his drink. 

“A little early in the evening for that behavior, don’t you think? I know you’re unaccustomed to high society, but–” Robotnik started, an amused exasperation that held no real weight as he sought a new topic of conversation. 

Then, for what was very possibly the first time ever, Stone interrupted him. 

“Come on, Doctor,” he said tersely, each word clipped and spoken over Robotnik’s own as if he hadn’t heard him at all. 

Robotnik sputtered as he felt himself being pulled along by a hand around his bicep.

“Agent–” he snapped, stumbling forward. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” 

Only then did Stone pause. He exhaled in one short, ragged breath, and turned to meet Robotnik’s eyes. 

“If I have to listen to one more worthless government scumbag like Lawrence publicly disrespect you, there’s a very real possibility I’ll be court-martialed in the near future. So–” he paused, releasing a short, humorless laugh, “I figure the productive alternative would be to direct that energy towards the actual reason we're here. And now– if that's amenable to you, sir." 

Robotnik blinked in surprise. He wasn’t used to hearing Stone speak that way. He studied the agent for a moment, scanning the slight flush to his cheeks and the visible tense of his muscles, and was met with a rather intimidating image. 

Stone didn’t harbor the same hot-headed anger of their pretentious colleagues – all red-faced and sputtering, fists slammed on the table – but instead appeared deceivingly calm. Despite his words, he wasn’t about to fly off the handle. He was too focused. Too determined.

Robotnik glanced at him again, then looked away, his own pulse thrumming instinctively in the face of this unfamiliar threat.

Somehow, that felt riskier for everyone involved. 

“Well then,” Robotnik relented, his own face now warm, “lead the way, Agent.”

 

Notes:

i think stone is a petty bitch at heart just like robotnik. tell me im wrong.

next chapter will be mostly Action as the heist is perfectly executed and nothing goes wrong at all <3 trust (more specific tags will be added for violence etc so be sure to check those out next time)

thanks for reading! (and to those of you who comment, you have my heart and soul i would die for u)

Chapter 5

Notes:

hi. this is 11k words uhhh...whoops?

<< PLEASE NOTE >>

CW// be advised that this chapter contains violence, mild interrogation/torture, and gun violence. nothing is super graphic or gorey but it is described. (the rating change to explicit is particularly for the next chapter in regards to sexual content, not violence)

Robotnik never thought much of dogs.

He’d never had one. Never particularly wanted one – not when he already had a fleet of badniks that demanded his attention. 

If anything, Robotnik pitied their domestication. 

What was it, if not another gross display of humanity’s collective ego to reprogram the minds of a species to worship at their heel? Even a kicked dog seemed to relish in the space between its master’s feet, lapping at the toe of the very same boot soon to strike its muzzle.

Loyalty was a curse crafted by humanity’s hands. 

Robotnik never thought much of dogs, but as he observed Stone – several feet ahead, weaving and stepping through leisurely gathered crowds, chin lowered in focus – the comparison dawned on him without pretense. 

His mind conjured images of a hound, tail pointed to the sky and nose to the ground, seeking in a singular focus. 

Seeking what, even Robotnik couldn’t be sure. His eyes weren’t privy to whatever trail Stone seemed to follow. 

He wondered if that was the agent in him or something else entirely. 

It took a few strides at a near-jog to finally close the distance between them. Robotnik resorted to hastily grappling Stone by the shoulder before he threatened to weave around another corner, yanking him back. 

“Slow down, Stone,” he growled, forcing his voice into a harsh whisper. “I would highly advise against going rogue on me now, all things considered.” 

“I’m not,” Stone snapped, looking over his shoulder, but there was no bite to the words. 

“Then act like it and fall back, for god’s sake.” 

Stone shook his head in a moment of brief exasperation that quickly devolved into contrived apology as they bumped into a woman sporting a rather hazardous pair of heels. One hand went to Robotnik’s bicep as Stone gently guided them both out of oncoming foot traffic. 

“Doctor, you told me to lead the way. That’s what I’m doing,” he defended, fixing Robotnik with a stare as unrelenting as his tone. 

Robotnik, in turn, glared at the hand still loitering on his person and made a show of stepping out of his grasp. He couldn’t contend with the distraction. 

“Yes, I said lead the way, not leave me in the dust. Note the clear distinction there. Or would you prefer a demonstration?” 

Stone balked at him, eyes sharp and mouth slightly ajar. His throat bobbed as if to conjure a reply, vocal cords already engaged, but his mouth snapped shut before any sound could emerge. Instead, his eyes found the floor. 

That wouldn’t do. 

“Well?” Robotnik prompted, impatient. 

The steady, metronomic beat of his heart pulsed in the tips of his fingers which were much too warm. Robotnik swallowed thickly. The acute reminder of his own blood pumping through his veins and fleshy heart ticking away was utterly nauseating. 

He clenched his fingers in a pathetic attempt to stifle the sickly sensation. It didn’t work and they continued to throb in a viscous defiance of his will. 

Robotnik’s heart beat faster. 

Stone released an almost imperceivable sigh, then lifted his head. “I apologize, sir,” he said, lacking inflection, “I wasn’t thinking. It won’t happen again.” 

He blinked up at Robotnik without any expression, but the neutrality was contrived. Stone’s facial muscles were relaxed but the slight tick of his jaw revealed them to be held there at the point of convincing passivity. 

He was pretending. 

Robotnik’s eyes narrowed, suddenly affronted by the obedient display. Stone’s head tilted ever so slightly in return, as if to challenge him. As if he wanted to be called out on the act. 

The words burst from him before Robotnik could think to contain it. “What do you think you’re doing here? Playing the good little government soldier? Really, Stone?” 

Stone only shrugged, and without missing a beat replied, “Is that not what I am?” 

He was. But that wasn’t the point. 

“Don’t be coy. You know what I mean.” 

“I don’t, sir.” 

Robotnik groaned, head thrown back in frustration. People continued to move around them, reduced to a blur of neutral color in his periphery as he attempted to blot them out. Every clink of glass and tap of a shoe heel against the waxy tile floors rang in his ears and muffled his already fragmented thoughts. 

Stone was, by all accounts, the perfect federally-funded punching bag. At least, his behavior historically conformed to the pattern. This was unprecedented – a glitch in his code, a primal trigger breaking through his domestic programming, something different.

Robotnik lowered his eyes once more, only to be struck by the familiarity of Stone’s steely gaze. The conclusion slotted into place at once. 

Stone wasn’t playing the dutiful agent. Not this time. He was playing the stubborn doctor. 

How very clever. 

Robotnik fought the urge to laugh at the tactic – of the absurdity of his own unwieldy attitude now employed like a weapon at the hands of his agent. 

Perhaps his loyalty was finally breaking down as they approached the end, revealing whatever spite festered underneath that obedient persona from years of abuse in the doctor’s charge.

Look what you’ve made me into, his eyes seemed to say. I can do it too. 

Robotnik searched them, then the rest of Stone’s face for any sign of hidden satisfaction at the just desserts, but found nothing. Whatever emotion he truly harbored was safely locked away. 

Stone continued to stare at him, unwilling or unable to look away.

“Are you being intentionally ignorant right now, Stone? Making this difficult and– and for what? What are you possibly hoping to accomplish here?” Robotnik sputtered, throwing his arms around in a chaotic, unintelligible gesture.

Stone’s gaze briefly flickered to the side when his arm brushed against the fabric of a passerby’s suit during the turbulent motion. Fortunately, the victim didn’t seem to notice or otherwise pardoned the gesture without comment. Robotnik paid it no mind; the sensation barely registered. 

He expected Stone to push back, to continue the charade of stubbornness, but his shoulders dropped when he looked back. Stone shook his head. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted, slightly strained. A beat of hesitance passed. “I don’t know what you want from me, Doctor.” 

And wasn’t that a question.

Robotnik’s mouth opened and closed mechanically, as if on hinges, as each locked and loaded insult fell from the chamber of his resolve.  

Any answer would be a partial truth and yet he couldn’t manage any of them; the full truth was beyond language. It existed somewhere in the space between nothing and everything . 

Somewhere between never seeing him again and knowing every inch of his skin. Between forgetting his name and ascribing it to every password and launch code, a one-word mantra. Between pushing him away and sinking his teeth down to the bone. 

There was nothing to be said of that. There existed no word in any language capable of encompassing its entirety. 

Robotnik’s brain had been asked to divide by zero; he could feel himself slipping further into the territory of imminent system failure, but the universe seemed determined to stall his undoing as long as possible. 

Without warning, a sharp electronic noise rang out across the room. The crowd collectively flinched at the distinct sound of someone fiddling with a microphone before it was replaced by a far more grating one.

“Good evening, everyone,” Lawrence’s voice rang out over the crowd. Robotnik’s stomach dropped. “I’d like to start off by saying what a pleasure it is to host you folks tonight in celebration of one of the greatest feats of science and engineering in the 21st century.”

Lawrence’s voice dipped, awaiting the round of polite but enthusiastic applause that quickly followed. Meanwhile, Robotnik’s gaze trailed along the heads in the crowd until he located Lawrence at the head of it, his practiced smile visible despite the distance. 

“I could not be more proud of the work done by the esteemed members of our team and the many distinguished affiliates here tonight that made Equinox possible. I’d like to extend my deepest gratitude to…” 

“Doctor,” Stone’s voice interjected, suddenly closer than before, and Robotnik turned to look at him. 

Lawrence’s amplified voice continued to prattle on. 

“Doctor,” Stone said again, more urgent. “It’s time. We should go now while they’re distracted.” 

At that, Robotnik nodded, the stringency of his plan temporarily overriding all other thoughts. Stone was right. It was time. 

“Fine,” he replied, clipped. “We’ll make for the back wall. And do stay quiet and close this time, or I’ll leave you right where you’re standing. Do you recall what I said about hitch-hiking, Stone?” 

Perhaps it was too far, given the circumstances, but Stone only nodded. The switch had been flipped to reactivate his soldierly demeanor, it seemed. The dog had been fed the command. 

“Yes, Doctor. I remember.” 

“Good,” Robotnik said, no longer focused on Stone as he scanned the area. “Hold that thought. I don’t feel like repeating myself.” 

Stone didn’t reply. 

It proved easy enough to slip through the crowd; most guests had paused to listen to Lawrence’s opening remarks and stood relatively motionless, no longer the writhing mass of bodies they once were. Robotnik darted to the right, moving perpendicular to the lines of onlookers while Stone followed behind.

A few scattered pairs remained in motion, leaning in to whisper to one another while the other smiled in turn, as if something was so very funny – Robotnik rolled his eyes at the camaraderie and pushed through them despite having a clear path around. Stone offered a hushed apology as he did.

As they swiftly approached the far wall, a woman Robotnik recognized from a set of particularly soul-draining meetings side-stepped in front of them on her way to the refreshments. 

Robotnik barely had time to react, already internally braced for collision, before he felt an open palm on the small of his back quickly guiding him out of her thoughtless path. 

He said nothing. Stone’s hand disappeared shortly after.

“Restrooms are this way.” Stone nodded towards an archway. 

Robotnik squinted at the large blocky sign that read as much, then directed the same unimpressed look towards the agent. 

“I happen to be literate,” he muttered offhandedly, beckoning Stone into the hallway, “So you can save the read-aloud for the rest of these imbeciles. A whole two-syllables might prove to be quite the challenge for this particular breed of mouth-breathers.” 

“You’re not wrong, Doctor. On either account.” 

They ducked into the hallway, now side by side, and paused to analyze the new stretch of space. A few scattered guests lingered around the narrow walls, but it was otherwise unpopulated. 

“Of course I’m not,” Robotnik replied, too focused to truly sound affronted. “Why would you even say that?”

“Because I enjoy stating the obvious?” Stone suggested offhandedly.

“Obviously,” Robotnik muttered, a familiar humor unintentionally slipping through the tension. Off to the side, they both eyed a set of velvet ropes barring entry to a fork in the hallway.

Robotnik scoffed at the laziness. As if that was going to stop anybody. After a moment’s contemplation, he opted to ignore the fact that the rigid social etiquette of the rest of the crowd likely would stop them from crossing the clear barrier. 

Oh well. 

Stone must have had a similar train of thought, because he pulled back the rope without hesitation and held one end to the side. 

“After you, Doctor,” he said with a slight nod accompanied by a sweeping gesture. 

Robotnik made a show of rolling his eyes, but stepped through all the same. “What a gentleman,” he said with a dull sarcasm. “Going to compliment my exquisite lock-picking abilities, too? Hold the door to the getaway car?” 

Stone stepped in after him and carefully returned the rope to a neutral position. “If that’s what you want,” he said simply, as if it was obvious. 

Something prickled at Robotnik, crawling up his arms. He shook out his limbs to rid himself of it. 

“It’s not. I was joking. It’s called sarcasm.” 

“Then I won’t,” Stone replied just as easily. 

Something about the ease with which he spoke made Robotnik’s stomach clench, but when he turned to glare at him, he found that Stone had already disengaged; he looked away, pupils flitted quickly and methodically down the hallway as they scanned for information. 

Stone was clearly operating on high alert, acutely attuned to the environment in a way that Robotnik most certainly wasn’t. Though he was more rested than he’d been in years, his attention was still flighty and difficult to harness. 

There was simply too much, everywhere and all at once. Not for the first time, he longed to catch a break. 

It’s almost over, Robotnik had to remind himself. This is nearly it. Just a little bit more. 

Tragically, the thought failed to deliver the relief he anticipated. Instead, a damp heaviness settled in his chest. Robotnik sucked in a deep breath, filling his lungs to rid himself of it.

The barred hallway led into a kitchen with an excessive amount of black panelling and far too little natural light for both of their tastes. On top of the questionable color palette, it was oddly pristine – the sort of manicured look that only existed in magazines and property listings. The marble counters were polished and spotless, the knife block titled at just the right angle to create a contrast with the cabinet. 

A drip coffee machine was the only visible kitchen device, perched in solitude in the middle of the counter. Stone eyed it with moderate interest, seemingly investigating the make and model in the same way one would a car. 

The conclusion to his examination was a small noise. It was unclear whether it passed the test or not.

“Looks expensive,” Robotnik noted, though he cared very little about those things. 

The remark was rewarded with another vague noise. “It is,” Stone confirmed. “A built-in grinder and automatic milk frother, the whole nine-yards. Practically no work necessary.” 

Robotnik nodded at the practicality. “Efficient.” 

Stone’s face scrunched in disdain. “And soulless.” He brushed off the device as if it were a personal offense and weaved back around to the main path. “It removes any skill from the process. The machine might be expensive, but it cheapens the whole experience.” 

Robotnik eyed the device once more, then raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t known Stone to be so passionate about such things, but he supposed it made sense. 

They continued on without comment, turning down another short hallway which opened into a short landing. The staircase seemed promising, so they trekked upstairs without disagreement. 

The second floor was much more confined than the first; several closed doors lined a narrow yet tall hallway with a few mundane pieces of art dispersed in between. 

Robotnik and Stone glanced at one another. 

“Should we just start opening doors or…?” Stone asked, running his fingers along the neat trim of the doorframe. 

“As opposed to doing what? Just staring at them?” 

“Yeah, okay,” Stone relented. An expert at navigating their roundabout communication, no further instruction was necessary. 

Together, they naturally took up stations on opposing sides of the hallway and began trying the doorknobs of each room. 

Most opened easily, revealing what appeared to be guest bedrooms. Perhaps they were assigned to various family members, but the sparse and impersonal decor didn’t lend itself to that conclusion. Truthfully, Robotnik wasn’t sure if Lawrence had any family outside of his wife. He didn’t strike him as a father, but, well – Robotnik, for once, was no expert on that matter. 

Shuffling aside to the next door, Robotnik tried the handle only to be met with firm resistance as the knob jiggled uselessly. Locked. He made a mental note and moved down the line, then further into the catacombs of Lawrence’s home.

When they eventually reconvened, they had identified numerous bedrooms, an entertainment center, two empty rooms, and three locked doors. 

Neither had encountered anything resembling a home office, which seemed the most likely location for Lawrence’s missing flash drive. 

Stone sighed, leaning against the wall. “A workaholic like him…there’s no way Lawrence doesn’t have an office or a study of some sort, right? So what’s the chance he’s got it locked up?”

Robotnik ran the numbers in his mind, assigning the odds. “Actually, pretty high,” he determined after a moment. “It would make sense, given the sensitivity of his work. I’m sure the sticklers at HQ have drilled the security procedure into his head from day one. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was second nature to him at this point, even in his own home.” 

Lawrence was many things, most of which were unfortunate, but he wasn’t careless. Cunning and careless couldn’t coexist, and Lawrence had evidently chosen cunning. It was arguably the single respectable quality he possessed. 

Stone seemed to disagree, if the poorly concealed eye-roll was any indication. “Right, of course,” he muttered. “I’ll keep watch.” 

Without waiting for a reply, Stone sauntered down the hallway, towards the top of the stairs. He leaned on the other side of the wall, just out of sight to anyone approaching from below.

Reaching into his jacket, Robotnik closed his palm around the smooth exterior of a mini-nik. It was the smallest of his arsenal, measuring up around the size of a quarter – the perfect travel-size companion for corporate espionage, he thought with a hint of amusement.

Robotnik tapped a quick sequence into his glove and the mini-nik whirred to life, hovering just over his palm. As he approached the first of the locked doors, however, Robotnik paused. 

At the top of the doorframe, a small white box was adhered to the upper wall along with a thin wire connecting the device to the hinge. 

“What the-” Robotnik muttered aloud, shaking his head at what was very clearly a home-security alarm. “Seriously? This is ridiculous.” 

He beckoned Stone over to the door without comment.

“What is it, sir?”

Robotnik, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose, made an accusatory gesture towards the offending device. 

Stone’s eyes trailed the length of his pointed arm. “Oh,” he said after a moment. “Well, I guess we know which one is the office.” 

“Yeah, clearly,” Robotnik scoffed, flicking his wrist in a motion that sent the mini-nik buzzing towards the alarm. “Either that, or he’s got some other tantalizing secrets he doesn’t want us to know about.” 

Stone made a weird face. “Ugh. I don’t think I want to know.” 

The mini-nik hummed as two long instruments protruded from its shell. It began to drill into the alarm box, then swiftly severed the wire connecting it to the hinge. 

Robotnik hummed alongside it. “Wise choice.” 

The mini-nik hung in the air once its task was complete, awaiting further instruction. 

“The alarm has been disabled– fried from the inside out, really– but just in case Lawrence thought to add any more funny business, we’ll leave the lock intact.” 

With a few taps, Robotnik accessed the mini-nik’s live feed through the small screen on his left glove. He toggled it into manual flight, effectively piloting the device, and sent it accelerating down the hallway.  

“Rather, this little guy will create an opening from the outside and unlock the door from the other side,” he explained, virtually guiding it throughout the house until he spotted a cracked window in the empty lounge. “Bingo.” 

Stone shifted in closer, leaning over to catch a glimpse of the screen. “Doctor, isn’t that kind of incriminating? I mean, I’m pretty sure even Lawrence will notice a hole in his wall.” 

“Not if you choose the right spot,” Robotnik supplied, throwing him a bored glance. “How often do you check for mechanical incisions behind your furniture, Stone?”

“Not often, sir,” he admitted. 

“Is that so? Well, you should really consider making it a habit. There’s a lot of weirdos in the world nowadays–” Robotnik squinted at the camera feed in an attempt to identify the correct window based on their current position, “–And some of them happen to have drones equipped with precision drill-bits.” 

The comment was made in jest, but Robotnik sincerely hoped that Stone’s residence was outfitted with the proper security. The slim but not unreasonable chance that someone would seek unjustified vengeance on the agent, or possibly exploit him for intel, always lurked in the back of Robotnik’s mind. 

Stone could surely handle himself in a fair fight, but there was no telling what might happen when the odds were tilted in another’s favor. The element of surprise was a dastardly thing, even to a trained agent. And if Stone was caught asleep …Robotnik swallowed, dispelling what his mind told him was the route to a quick kill, should his enemy be so inclined.

His enemy, of course, wouldn’t even be his own. Stone didn’t have those, as far as Robotnik was aware. No – the doctor had enough for the both of them, and possibly a solid half of the country as well. 

It had never bothered him before. He had long since accepted them as an inevitability and laughed in the face of their every threat – after all, they weren’t the genius specializing in defense. They weren’t the ones with nothing to lose and everything to gain. What could they possibly do?

As far as Robotnik was concerned, the answer was still nothing. But– 

He spared another glance at Stone, who was still looking at the screen with a focused intrigue, and knew that wasn’t quite true. 

Robotnik made a note to send one of his men to Stone’s house for a security detail after everything was said and done. Locks were far too pickable nowadays, even without state-of-the-art tech. 

Turning his attention back to the task at hand, Robotnik swiftly executed a command to carve a small hole in line with where he determined the desk to be. It would be relatively innocuous, given the concealed and floor-level position, while the open area underneath the desk prevented the mini-nik from becoming trapped behind the furniture. 

Wasting no time, he maneuvered the mini-nik to the door and flicked open the lock. When no alarms sounded, Robotnik nodded both in satisfaction and relief.

“There,” he declared, stepping back. “What did I tell you, Stone?” 

Stone offered a tight smile in return. “Magnificent, Doctor. You never cease to amaze.” 

“I know,” Robotnik sighed, finally twisting the handle and granting them passage into the proverbial promised land. 

Just as had been revealed through the eyes of the mini-nik, Lawrence’s study was rather small and practical compared to the extravagance of the rest of the house. Robotnik neglected to call it his house, even in the confines of his mind, for the simple fact that Lawrence didn’t actually live there. Pedantic, yes, but he strived for accuracy in all regards. It wasn’t petty.  

Floor to ceiling shelves lined one side of the room, each one host to its own pile of books that were clearly aligned according to aesthetic rather than anything useful. Beside that sat a simple desk with filing storage underneath. The surface was clear of anything other than a singular trinket next to the computer– sporting dual-monitors, of course, because Lawrence could never settle for just one of anything. 

Nothing immediately stuck out as odd or otherwise out of place, which Robotnik supposed was the whole point. 

Stone returned to his post by the stairs, leaving him alone to search the space. Robotnik did much the same as he had the other offices; he opened drawers, searched shelves, and ran his palm along the underside of the desk.

The initial results were the same as before: nothing.

Robotnik swallowed. He took a deep breath, then plunged both hands into the filing cabinet drawers. It was relatively sparse, holding only some forgotten office supplies, but Robotnik plucked each one from where it lay before dropping them once deemed insignificant. 

Nothing.

He moved down a drawer, combing his fingers through the neatly filed papers and searching for anything slipped between them. Property information, home insurance, laminated copy of the deed– Robotnik’s eyes flitted across the words before dumping them from his brain. Useless. Irrelevant. Nothing.

Still. Nothing.

“What the hell?” he muttered to himself, staring down in dismay at Lawrence’s mess of stupid, innocuous belongings. The papers were standing up at various angles, their edges no longer aligned, but he didn’t care.

Robotnik could feel a familiar sense of unease rising in him. It felt like the silence before a tsunami; the moment when the sea recedes and all that’s left is a disconcerting nothingness, the confusing absence of what should be. 

He swore he could hear his own pulse accelerating, ticking like the very same clock they were running against, and Robotnik cursed as he braced both himself against the desk.

Without further consideration, he threw open each drawer to the desk and knocked his fist against the wooden panels inside. A false bottom would be rather juvenile, but effective. When nothing let up, he did the same to the desk itself. Then the bookshelf. Then the wall. 

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Robotnik stumbled into the center of the room, surrounded by open drawers and hastily scattered items, and heaved a humorless laugh. He ran a hand through his hair, fingers clenched almost painfully around the strands, and scanned the area once more. 

It didn’t seem possible. 

They couldn’t have been wrong. They couldn’t have come all this way, suffered through gas stations and diners and pompous federal assholes only to be wrong.  

Robotnik’s chest clenched. His throat felt tight, as if the air had been sucked straight from his lungs. 

“No, no– Shit!”  

He paced in a small circle, moving as if unable to contain the surge of energy gathering as the gravity of the situation fell over him. 

Without thinking, Robotnik called out, “Stone!” 

The agent came all but barreling into the room several moments later. He looked around wildly, clearly in a state of alarm, before his eyes settled on Robotnik. At once, his expression shifted.

“The flash drive isn’t here, Stone,” Robotnik started, managing his tone as carefully as he could, though his labored breathing betrayed any calmness. “It isn’t here. We came all this way and that stupid little drive is somewhere else. It was pointless. All of it.” 

Stone blinked, then inhaled. “It has to be here,” was the idiotic conclusion he settled for. 

If Robotnik had any sense, he would’ve made them the last words Stone ever said. Unfortunately, all remaining rationality and semblance of intelligence was rapidly spilling from his lips with every sharp breath he choked out. He felt dizzy. 

“No, it doesn’t have to be here just because you and your puny, lackluster critical thinking skills told you it would be, or because you had a feeling, or whatever ignorant, delusional bullshit led you to this false conclusion.” Robotnik took a step closer. “Do you understand, Stone? Are you capable of that, or has your mental capacity degraded past language recognition?” 

It was harsh. He knew it was, but the sentiment welled up inside his throat like a disgusting bile. He couldn’t keep it down.

Stone only swallowed, expressionless, and shifted to the side as he scanned the torn apart room. 

“Did you check the drawers for false backs? Or– What about the books? Like, hollowed out pages.”

Robotnik gauffed at him. “Are you stupid? Do you think I’m stupid? Of course I checked the fucking drawers, Stone, any idiot who can turn on a TV knows to check the goddamn drawers.” 

He hadn’t stopped pacing. 

“And the books?” Stone asked again, undeterred by the outburst. “Doctor, did you check the books?” 

At that, Robotnik paused, shaking his head and arms in a jumble of uncoordinated motions. “What? No– I didn’t check the stupid books, but the probability of Lawrence doing arts and crafts to hide highly classified information is- it’s negligible–”

“Let me just check them.” Stone cut him off, already heading for the bookshelf. “I’ll check them.” 

Robotnik’s head snapped up from where it was bowed, a tumultuous anger seizing him as he struggled against his own poisonous thoughts. At its core was unmistakable, bitter dread– it felt like an end. They had failed. There was nowhere to go from here. Why couldn’t Stone see that?

His fingers clenched rigidly, almost mechanical in their clamp against his sweaty palm. 

“No, no– NO!” Robotnik shouted, the volume piercing the quiet of the space and startling them both. “It’s not here, Stone. I looked. I checked. Why won’t you just listen?” 

Stone’s hands dropped from the spine of a book. It fell flat against the shelf with a quiet thud, the fore-edge splayed open and pages bending against its own weight. Robotnik couldn’t decipher the expression he wore, but he felt its charged energy all the same. 

“Why won’t you just let me do this for you?” Stone spit in a rush of words, his eyes wide. 

“I didn’t ask you to, Stone.” 

“This one, last thing for you, Doctor. That’s all I ask. Just let me do this.” He hesitated, then quieter, “Please.” 

It was at precisely that moment that Robotnik felt something inside of him snap. 

He shook his head uselessly. “No,” Robotnik said again, like it was the only word he knew. It may as well have been. “No, I– I’m not asking you to do this. I don’t want you to, Stone. I didn’t want you to do any of this. Why can’t you understand that?” 

It wasn’t true, but Robotnik felt it as deeply and certainly as he had anything that was. It felt true in the parts of himself that strained and ached under the weight of his every desire– for a different life, a different world. For something to be anything other than what it was. He didn’t care what. He just didn’t want this. 

This wretched, irredeemable version of his reality was too much in every conceivable way. Or maybe he just wasn’t enough. Robotnik couldn’t be bothered to search in himself for a distinction. He didn’t want to know what he might find. 

Stone’s eyes narrowed. A slight frown pulled at his lips. Still, he never broke eye contact. 

“If you want me gone that badly,” he started, each word careful, “then why haven’t you told me to leave?”

Silence fell over them both as the question– the accusation – hung in the air. 

Robotnik didn’t have an answer to that. It was both so terribly complicated and dreadfully, insultingly simple, and it was unspeakable either way. That level of vulnerability, of honesty, was far beyond his reach. 

“Go on, Doctor. Dismiss me. Say the word and I’ll go,” Stone said, bolder this time. 

From across the room, he squared his shoulders as if bracing for the impact of the inevitable. As if he’d been waiting for it. 

Robotnik swallowed thickly, feeling the weight of his challenge. 

This is what was always going to happen, wasn’t it? 

Everything had led to this one, inevitable moment. He had prepared for this. Robotnik opened his mouth. His tongue felt dry. He took a second to wet his lips while he summoned the will to speak, to pull the irrevocable words from within himself.

It was one second too long. Neither of them noticed the footsteps quickly approaching until it was too late. 

“What the hell are you two doing?” 

Robotnik’s stomach dropped immediately. He whipped around, nearly knocking himself off balance, to where Lawrence was standing in the doorway. Every thought of Stone quickly melted away as panic seized his chest.

Fuck. 

The moment seemed to draw on as neither spoke, a heavy, incriminating silence settling over the room. 

At once, Robotnik’s mind reactivated and he revved into motion once more. 

“Took a wrong turn,” he supplied, scrambling to say anything at all, “and ended up on a little detour, it would seem. Really, can you blame me? The layout here is terribly unintuitive, all these hallways and alcoves to nowhere,” he scoffed, gesturing vaguely towards the staircase.

It was an obvious lie, but the conversation would bide them time. Time to do what, he wasn’t exactly sure yet. 

Lawrence titled his head, a tick in his jaw. “Oh, really?” 

His irritation was palpable. Across the room, Stone remained silent. 

“Ask any self-respecting interior designer,” Robotnik doubled-down. “You should really consider opening up the space. They say it does wonders for Feng Shui.” 

“You broke into my office.” 

“Like I said before, a wrong turn. How was I to know this was your office?”

Lawrence’s fist balled at his side. He took a step into the room, eyes flitting wildly around the state of disarray. It was terribly obvious what they were doing prior to his arrival. The open drawers and scattered personal effects made certain of that fact.

Robotnik followed his gaze, attempting to formulate some sort of plan in his mind that didn’t involve knocking Lawrence out cold. As his eyes trailed across the bookshelves, they caught on Stone, already fixing him with a knowing look. 

Just wait, Robotnik tried to say with his eyes. Stone remained in a rigid stance, looking halfway ready to pounce, but he didn’t move. 

Having surveyed the damage, Lawrence’s attention finally shifted back to him. “I’d ask how stupid you think I am, but clearly I know the answer,” he said with clear disdain. “God, I shouldn’t need to explain to you that you weren’t supposed to leave the guest space at all.”

“I’ll have you know that I was looking for the restroom,” Robotnik tried, knowing it was a useless effort, “and any further inquiries on the matter would be horribly inappropriate.”

Lawrence seemed in disbelief at the display. Slowly, a look of bitter amusement took hold of his features. He cocked one leg out, leaning on his hip. 

“Ah, of course. You were just looking for the bathroom.” He nodded thoughtfully. “The clearly labelled restroom that you walked by in order to sneak off into my house. No, that makes perfect sense. Happens to the best of us,” he said with a sharp sarcasm. 

The clever response already loaded onto the tip of his tongue dissipated at once as Robotnik registered the words. 

Lawrence saw them leave. 

“You were watching me,” Robotnik said; not a question, but a statement. 

There were several access points to the rest of the house. They had deemed the hallway leading to the restrooms to be the most innocuous, being it was still part of the designated event space. Lawrence wouldn’t know that– not unless he was watching. 

The retrospective knowledge curdled in Robotnik, sour and nauseating. He couldn’t pinpoint his unease. 

Lawrence only rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not exactly easy to miss, especially with your little lackey tagging along.” His gaze briefly flickered towards Stone. “I saw you two headed for the bathroom– together, might I add– and assumed you were running off to get a quickie in,” he scoffed, letting out a short, exasperated laugh.

Robotnik’s mouth snapped shut, suddenly unable to form a proper retort. Something warm and humiliating flared in him and his muscles tensed, fending off the assault of internal sensations. 

Lawrence continued on unperturbed. “Distasteful, obviously, but that’s kind of your whole thing, huh?” His eyes narrowed into a sharp stare before he relaxed, leaning back on his heels and crossing his arms. “Honestly, Ivo, I was going to let you have it. Figured it might make the evening more bearable for us all if you worked out those pissy frustrations of yours.” 

Stone’s voice cut through the tense atmosphere before Robotnik could think to respond to the blatant disrespect. 

“Shut the fuck up,” he snapped in one quick, biting breath. 

Lawrence and Robotnik broke eye contact as their attention was drawn across the room. Stone’s eyes were wide despite his otherwise carefully controlled expression, the only indication of anger. 

“Oh, so he speaks,” Lawrence finally replied, eyeing him with poorly concealed irritation. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were allowed to talk out of turn.” 

He didn’t afford Stone an opportunity to reply, turning away from him with a dismissive wave.

“Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when I found you two in here snooping instead. I suppose I should’ve connected the dots from the beginning. There was no way you actually showed up to, I don’t know, support the project you claim to care about so much about.” He held up both hands in mock surrender. “Really, that’s my bad.” 

Robotnik bristled in response, panic quickly giving way to bitter anger. His chest heaved with the strength of each short, sharp breath as he struggled to maintain some semblance of control over his emotions. Lawrence was doing it on purpose, poking and prodding at every pressure point, but the awareness failed to truly dull the impact. 

If anything, the realization that Lawrence had effectively seen through him, calculating eyes plucking him apart and revealing his tender, human vulnerabilities, struck Robotnik with an equal weight. He felt sick at the thought of being so exposed, so effectively disarmed by his own emotions.

Robotnik saw the bait for what it was, but once again swallowed the hook anyway. 

“The project I spent months designing, drafting, prototyping, and building– alone, might I add– because you ignorant fucks are hopelessly incapable of amounting to anything other than your role as a bunch of incompetent, glorified pencil-pushers? That project? The one that you imbeciles couldn’t even conceive of without my intellect?” he said in a rush, barely registering the words as they tumbled from his lips.

Lawrence merely blinked at him, unimpressed. “Actually, if you got your head out of your ass for once in your life, you would recall that Equinox was my idea. I’m the one that recruited you, Doctor, and constantly defended your involvement to everyone who thought to warn me.” 

Robotnik sputtered, throwing his hands in the air. “Nobody gives a flying fuck that you had an idea once upon a time. Your puny, insignificant idea meant nothing before me. It would’ve sat and rotted inside that pathetic, decrepit thing you call a brain without my genius to cultivate it,” he spat, unconsciously drifting closer. “I’m the one that creates actuality from the imagined. Me. I’m the only one who can.”  

“And how unfortunate that is,” Lawrence said with a sigh. “Your abilities barely manage to justify the cost of your cooperation. And that says a lot.” He eyed Robotnik, then added, “Again– breaking and entering? Really? That’s low, even for you.” 

The sentiment hardly stung; the disdain from his colleagues was often palpable. Robotnik shrugged it off easily, though the swell of his anger remained. 

“I think you’ll find the locks are perfectly intact,” he retorted flatly. 

Lawrence threw his head back with a soundless laugh, or perhaps a scoff, and jabbed an accusatory finger at the door. “You brute-forced the alarm.” 

Robotnik found himself shrugging– like he said, fried from the inside out– but Stone interjected before he could reply. 

“It must still work,” he reasoned, stepping away from the bookshelf and towards Robotnik’s side, “or you wouldn’t have known to follow us here in the first place.” 

Lawrence exhaled loudly, pulling back his cuff and flashing the screen of an expensive-looking smart watch. “Cameras pinged me as soon as they registered motion here.” He pulled his sleeve down once more. “So, yeah, I followed you. You’re lucky I didn’t send security up, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. Look where that’s gotten me.” 

Stone didn’t respond, but his gaze remained firmly trained on the now concealed watch, seemingly calculating. Robotnik, in turn, hastily scanned the room, searching for the aforementioned cameras to no avail. It was a factor he had failed to consider in the moment, unable to fathom the rationality of the drastic security measures.

“Isn’t that a tad excessive for your clearance level?” he muttered, mostly under his breath. 

“You know, I thought it might be, but I’d say your little stunt just justified every penny,” Lawrence replied. “God knows what would’ve happened if I didn’t take some precautions.” 

Robotnik was still attempting to wrack his overrun mind for an out, but it was proving increasingly difficult. His wires felt crossed, frayed around the edges. Maybe this was the end he’d been barreling towards – How anticlimactic, he thought with a morbid touch of amusement. 

At the very least, Robotnik would attempt to get them out of the room unscathed and without a looming threat of their arrest. It couldn’t begin to make up for everything Stone had to endure, but it was possibly the last thing he had to offer. 

He discreetly flicked a finger, sending the mini-nik scouring the room to disable the aforementioned cameras, and crossed his arms. 

“Oh, please. Give me a break. I didn’t even do anything.” 

The casual air to the comment did little to shift the tension. Lawrence’s eyes narrowed knowingly, his demeanor suddenly cold.

“But you were going to,” he said seriously. “I know you think I’m as stupid as the rest of them, but I’m not. I’ve dealt with your kind before, Ivo. You’re hardly the first lab rat snagged from the grips of the psych-ward.” 

Robotnik felt the air beside him shift with the haste Stone moved. He lunged forward, a tight fist at his side, and swung at Lawrence with a dizzying speed. The contact was abrupt, a loud, audible thud erupting as his fist connected with Lawrence’s cheek. 

“Holy- shit, ” Lawrence cried out as he stumbled to the side, cradling the side of his jaw. His mouth hung open loosely. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Stone responded by slipping behind him and snaking one arm around his neck in one swift motion. The other grasped blindly for Lawrence’s wrists, which he located with startling precision, holding them tightly behind his back. 

Robotnik simply watched it unfold, still rooted in place. Before he truly had a chance to comprehend what had just happened, Stone was speaking. 

“Would you like to find out?” he finally replied, head tilted towards Lawrence’s ear. “Or, if you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll be nice and tell me what I want to hear. Your choice.” 

Lawrence struggled against his grasp, but his efforts were in vain. He was a businessman – a lifetime of desk chairs and weekend golf rendered him unequipped to escape the militaristic hold Stone had placed him in.

“What makes you think I know what you want to hear?” Lawrence rasped, still trying to wrench an arm free. “I barely know who you are.” 

Stone clenched his teeth, looking somehow on the verge of rage and yet impossibly bored. “You know why we’re here.” He ignored the petty jab. “Just give us what we want and we’ll call it a draw, how’s that?”

“Again – I don’t know what you want.” 

At that, Stone sighed. 

“Fine. Be that way.” For the first time since he struck Lawrence, Stone turned towards Robotnik. “Doctor, would you get the door?” 

Robotnik only gaped at him. His thoughts were rapid-fire, cycling through the chain of events that had led them to this point. The only thing that surfaced with any clarity was the fact that something had gone horribly, terribly wrong – when, exactly, Robotnik couldn’t be sure. 

“Doctor. The door,” Stone said again. 

Robotnik’s gaze finally clicked into focus once more, reality shifting around them. He was met with a steely look in return. Stone’s eyes didn’t look his own; something unrecognizable swirling just behind the lens. 

“Stone, what the hell are you doing?” Robotnik asked, the intended sternness twisting into a sharp panic as the words left his mouth. 

This rogue tactic was unprecedented. Stone wasn’t meant to behave this way. It fell far out of the scope of his reliable obedience, his predictable set of behaviors. Robotnik couldn’t make sense of the strange input of information.

“Fixing our problem,” was Stone’s terse reply. “The door. Please.” 

They stared at each other once more, communicating wordlessly through eyes alone, before Robotnik broke first. With an exhale, he moved to the other side of the room and clicked the door shut. He didn’t need to ask whether to lock it; Stone’s look said enough.

As Robotnik moved to face the two once more, Lawrence met his eyes in a desperate gaze.

“You can’t seriously be doing this,” Lawrence said, choking out a disbelieving laugh. “What, are you going to interrogate me? Come on, Ivo. Let’s be rational here.” 

Robotnik unconsciously flinched at the use of his name. Something about the way Lawrence’s lips formed the syllable, sharp and layered in unmistakable contempt, made it sound like something terrible. Something that should be left unspoken. A strange mass of disgust coiled deep in Robotnik’s gut. It felt far too much like shame.

“Stop calling me that,” he gritted through clenched teeth. 

“You mean your name?” Lawrence shot back at once, his pleading look shifting into something insultingly pitying. “This is your problem. You like to pretend that you’re so far removed from the rest of the world, putting yourself up on this great pedestal to distract from–”

The arm around Lawrence’s throat tightened without warning, his words quickly devolving into a strangled gasp as the air was wrenched from his throat. 

“The Doctor told you to stop,” Stone said, punctuating the remark with another pulse of force. 

Lawrence writhed against him, grasping and clawing at Stone’s arm through the fabric of his suit. Robotnik watched with wide eyes as Stone knocked the back of Lawrence’s legs, sending him crumpling to his knees where he was finally able to suck in a pained breath.

Perhaps Robotnik should’ve felt bad, but he didn’t. 

Extending his leg, Stone hooked his foot around the leg of the desk chair and wheeled it towards him. In one swift movement that appeared almost suspiciously practiced, Stone leveraged his hold on Lawrence to maneuver him into the chair. 

“Stay still,” Stone ordered. 

Robotnik raised an eyebrow as Stone pressed his knee onto Lawrence’s thighs, one arm braced against his throat, as he held him down. With the other, he quickly unbuckled his belt and slipped it free. It made sense a moment later when Stone wrapped it tightly around Lawrence’s wrists, binding him to the chair.

Some part of him registered the extreme, almost absurd measures Stone was taking, but a larger part of Robotnik wondered where he had learned the maneuver – agent training, presumably, but it must have been years ago at this point. Did he find time to practice, to keep his skills sharp even as a glorified personal assistant? 

In spite of the absurdity, Robotnik felt a strange swell of pride at the ease and efficiency of his motions. It was then he recognized that dreadful curiosity was setting in. The question ticked in his mind – What else was Stone capable of after all these years? 

Robotnik didn’t know, but he wanted to see more.  

Stone’s head perked up as he scanned the room. After a second, he reached behind the monitor and began detaching cables from the PC, re-emerging with a fistful of HDMI and power cords. Without further consideration, he wrapped them around each of Lawrence’s ankles. 

“You’re deranged,” Lawrence spat as Stone finished fastening his makeshift bind.

Stone only stepped back, tilting his head in what appeared to be admiration of his handiwork. From what Robotnik could see, it was rather impressive, the wires amusingly on-brand. Stone looked down at Lawrence with a level stare, folding his hands in front of him in an absurdly well-mannered gesture, given the present situation. 

“Now, let’s try this again,” he said smoothly. “I’ll give it to you straight and keep it easy for both of us. Seeing that you possess some semblance of a brain, I’m sure you can figure that we’re here for the project dive. So- where is it?” 

Lawrence’s face shifted as several microexpression flickered across his features. He settled on a look of distinct stubbornness, which was almost certainly the wrong choice.

“Why the hell would I tell you that?” 

“Because I’m asking,” Stone retorted quickly, “and at some point, I’ll stop asking.” His gaze slipped downward. “Based on the location of your watch, I take it you’re right-handed?” 

Robotnik glanced at Lawrence’s wrist, expecting to see said evidence, but found that Stone must’ve removed his smartwatch – certainly an intelligent choice. There was a decent chance it was custom-designed and far more capable than the average piece of tech. For once, Robotnik didn’t want to find out. 

“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Lawrence asked, still far too brash for the position he was in. 

Stone only shrugged. “Not particularly.” 

“Well, I’m not particularly inclined to answer. Let me go.” 

At that, Stone sighed once more. Robotnik watched with fascination as the agent reached into his jacket, revealing a pair of nitrile gloves that he slid on with a quick snap. 

Lawrence, too, followed the movement with his eyes. He swallowed, breathing a little quicker. Robotnik recognized his fear immediately. As he turned his gaze back to the agent, he understood why – Stone stood with his shoulders squared, looking down upon Lawrence with a steely contempt, as if he was no greater than an insect awaiting a cruel end at the toe of his boot. There was no sign of hesitance, none of the meek obedience he normally carried himself with.

Stone looked confident, but – it was greater than that. He looked powerful, commanding the tense atmosphere as if every molecule was bending to his will. Robotnik had the distinct impression that this strange version of Stone was, in fact, in his element, operating on a familiarity unknown to the doctor.

Robotnik was slowly coming to realize that there was a lot he didn’t know about Stone. 

Just as Lawrence’s meager survival instincts looked like they might kick in – eyes wide, a strangled noise in his throat as he began to thrash against the binds – Stone yanked his head back and forced a wad of fabric between his parted lips, effectively gagging him. 

“If you really were as smart as you say,” Stone said lightly, tying off the ends around the nape of his neck, “you would’ve started screaming ages ago.” 

Lawrence’s eyes narrowed, his voice satisfyingly muffled in the fabric as he attempted to speak. It felt nice for him to shut up for once, Robotnik thought. The sentiment then quickly soured as he realized it was almost certainly the same one the rest of the world carried for him.

Stone stepped behind Lawrence, leaning over to catch his ear as he added, “Not that anyone would’ve heard you, of course.” 

The tactic became clear at once.

Stone was teasing him. Playing with his captive like an animal with its prey. Something flared in Robotnik at the sight, his stomach twisting. 

“This is only temporary, of course,” Stone continued. “As soon as you’re ready to cooperate, I’ll let you speak. Now, where to begin…” 

Stone trailed off pensively, as if pondering the question, but in actuality seemed to know exactly where to begin. He made an immediate move for Lawrence’s wrist where he slowly began twisting it counter-clockwise. After several ticks past normal resting position, Lawrence’s face contorted painfully, but he made no sound. 

“No?” Stone prompted, unsatisfied with the response. “Hmm. I never think to expect much from your sort. So…delicate. Pampered.” His lips curled at the phrase, a mark of disgust. 

Stone reached for one of his fingers instead. He twisted, then pulled, contorting the appendage. When Lawrence failed to react, Stone wrenched it backwards in one sudden motion, an audible fracture of bone permeating the otherwise silent air. Lawrence cried out at once, straining against the hold and pulling his head back to fix the agent with a wild, disbelieving stare. 

Robotnik startled along with him, unconsciously taking a step back. 

“Well?” Stone prompted. He hadn’t released Lawrence’s hand – an unspoken threat. “Ready to talk?” 

Lawrence seemed to contemplate the offer, still breathing hard through the bunched up fabric. His head sagged forward slightly. It seemed akin to a surrender. 

Robotnik supposed it made sense; Lawrence was never one for field work. He didn’t get his hands dirty. True pain was little more than a concept to someone like him. 

Stone studied him a moment, then dropped his hand. Carefully, he eased the fabric out of his mouth. Lawrence’s relief was immediate; he threw his head back, sucking down deep, shaky gulps of air. Salvia pooled at the corners of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. 

He coughed a couple times, then raised his chin. “You’re a fucking freak,” Lawrence choked out, voice raw, as he met Stone’s cold stare. 

Stone ignored him. “The drive. It’s not at Headquarters. Do you keep it here?” 

Lawrence shook his head, muttering something to himself.

“Speak up,” Stone demanded, tangling a hand into Lawrence’s hair and wrenching his head back. “Do you keep it here or not?” 

“No,” Lawrence replied, obnoxiously over-enunciating the syllable. “I don’t. So if that’s what you’re after, you’re shit out of luck. Sorry.” 

“Do you have other homes in the area?” 

Lawrence shook his head once more. “This is my only property in-state.” 

Stone’s lip twitched in irritation. His fingers drummed against his thigh as he studied Lawrence; perhaps watching for subtle ticks or tells, attempting to extract any truth from him. Lawrence was an excellent liar, after all.

“Office spaces?” Stone asked eventually. His voice was growing wrought with tension. 

“No. Let me go,” Lawrence repeated with a matching tension. He pulled his wrists against the bind before a flash of pain crossed his face. He fixed Stone with a dark, accusatory look, teeth bared slightly. “You broke my fucking finger, you maniac.” 

“Quit whining,” Stone snapped, exasperated. “It was only the one.”

Robotnik, were he not stuck at a standstill, internally buffering, could have laughed. It sounded like something he would say. There was something so terribly absurd about the whole situation, and he was once again struck by the strangely parallel behavior he and Stone seemed to possess. 

Was Stone trying to sound like him, to carry himself in a mimicry of the doctor’s form? Or had he simply lost himself to Robotnik’s all-consuming presence?

Robotnik was well aware that he sucked the air from a room, that his otherworldly persona took and took until there was nothing left free from his gravitational pull. He tried, for years, to have everything and to be everything – what remained for anyone else? For Stone?

Was this what he had become in the absence of anything else? 

Robotnik felt a little sick at the thought. He knew he should step in and relieve Stone of this duty so far out of his calling – none of this was ever Stone’s battle – but Robotnik found himself hopelessly, pathetically stuck. 

Things clearly weren’t going to plan on Stone’s end either. He and Lawrence appeared to have reached a standstill. Lawrence refused more information, still clinging to his audacity like a lifeline, while Stone grew increasingly restless as the minutes dragged on.

Someone might realize they were missing soon, Robotnik vaguely registered in the back of his mind, but the alarm was a distant one. Everything seemed distant, as if he was viewing the scene through a grainy lens; reality had become nothing more than poor resolution security footage. 

Robotnik’s attention snapped back into focus when Stone raised a palm and struck Lawrence across the cheek with a resounding noise. He hadn’t heard what comment provoked the response, but Stone clearly deemed it unfavorable. 

Lawrence produced a gross, choked sound from the back of his throat as his head lolled to the side. Stone continued to loom over him. 

From behind him, Lawrence managed to catch Robotnik’s eye. “Call off your goddamn dog or I swear I’ll have you stripped of every cent of funding by Monday morning,” he gritted through clenched teeth, a desperate threat. “I’ll make sure you never see the inside of a lab again.”

Perhaps the threat would’ve compelled Robotnik at some point. Perhaps the thought of everything that mattered to him being torn from his grasp would’ve had him throw Stone to the wolves, left to suffer whatever punishment the feds saw fit for his crimes. 

In fact, Robotnik suspected he would’ve betrayed Stone without a second thought in every other conceivable reality. It was the logical thing to do. The intelligent thing. But he wouldn’t. Not in this world or this life. 

Robotnik was already halfway to losing everything, including himself, and he refused Stone the same fate. So instead, the threat fell satisfyingly flat against his resigned apathy. 

“Do your worst.” Robotnik shrugged. “See if I care.” 

Stone struck Lawrence again before he could reply, this time into the jaw. Lawrence cried out, the sound devolving into a pained groan, but he recomposed himself quicker than before. 

“I’ll have you both incarcerated then. Yeah? I have connections, you know. And with your track record, it wouldn’t exactly be difficult,” Lawrence tried. He then paused to spit onto the floor, stringy bits of blood and salvia clinging to his beard. Robotnik grimaced. 

Stone looked as though he might speak, but Robotnik cut him off. “You imbeciles have been saying that for years. You know how many times I’ve been under threat of investigation on a federal level? I’ll give you a hint – it’s greater than the amount of unbroken fingers you currently have and less than the number of numbskulls currently mingling in your foyer. Puzzle that out.”

Lawrence attempted a chuckle, but it came out airy and broken. “They didn’t know what you’ve done, Ivo,” he said. “Not really. Not like I do. I know you and what you’re capable of. I don’t have to guess.”  

“Shut up,” Stone growled, crowding into Lawrence’s space as he leaned over him, effectively blocking Robotnik’s line of sight to the man. “Stop stalling.” 

“Jealous, are we?” Lawrence taunted. He strained against his binds to lean forward, stopping just inches from Stone’s face. “I bet you like that nobody else can stand your nightmare of a boss, don’t you? I’m sure it makes you feel awful special being the only one he keeps around, but the reality is that you’re the only one who’s willing. He couldn’t care less about you.”

Stone didn’t reply, already in motion as one hand shot to Lawrence’s neck and closed around his jugular. Lawrence made a strangled sound as Stone’s fingers pressed into his windpipe, squeezing. 

“Stone,” Robotnik uttered uselessly before he could process it, stunned. It wasn’t quite a warning. 

Stone didn’t hear him or otherwise didn’t care to reply. His chest heaved with the exertion, or perhaps the deadly combination of anger and adrenaline. Before he could properly choke him out, however, Lawrence swung his head forward into Stone’s. Sitting slightly lower, his forehead collided with Stone’s nose and jaw with a loud thud.

Robotnik flinched, certain it was painful. Stone let off after that, hands falling to his sides as he reached up to touch his nose. His finger came away with a smear of blood which he looked at for a moment with a detached fascination before dropping his hand once more. 

“Stone,” Robotnik said again, unsure of what he was asking for.

This clearly wasn’t working. The tension in the air was stiflingly thick and they still hadn’t gotten anywhere. 

This was bad. Life-altering bad.

Stone didn’t look at him. His head cocked slightly at the noise, not unlike an animal, while his fingers clenched into fists at his side. He didn’t respond.

“I’m not going to keep asking,” Stone said to Lawrence. It was clear he was attempting to keep his voice controlled, but a subtle waver fractured the even tone with a loosely concealed anger. Or perhaps rage was a more apt descriptor. 

Lawrence only doubled-down. “And yet you keep making me repeat myself.” Robotnik couldn’t fathom why. “I’m not telling you shit.” 

“Goddamnit!” Stone shouted, any semblance of his previous composure suddenly unraveling in one sharp exhale, some sort of breaking point reached. “Give me something – anything – useful before I break every bone in your weak, pathetic body, starting with the rest of your precious little fingers.” 

The calm, collected act was slipping. Stone was becoming as frantic as Robotnik felt just minutes ago– though that time now felt impossibly far away. 

Lawrence turned up his chin defiantly, though he looked visibly weaker than before. The blood on his face was beginning to dry and his shoulders slumped as he struggled to maintain the effort of holding himself up. 

“You really are a dog,” Lawrence muttered, voice dripping with malice. He said it as if there was no greater disgust than to be the one treading at Robotnik’s heel. 

And maybe he was right. But even painted under the dim, rustic lighting, Robotnik couldn’t deny that Stone looked radiant even with his teeth bared and chest heaving with the strength of his anger and emotion. 

More invigorating, perhaps, was the knowledge that it was all for him.  

Robotnik felt himself being pulled in two directions like a wire about to snap. Against every rational particle of his being, he felt himself becoming victim to the thrill of the scene. He knew he should yell at Stone to stop, should pull him back, but some dastardly curiosity needed to see how it might unfold. To know just how far Stone might go.

It was fucked. Evidently, they both were. 

Stone crossed behind Lawrence once more, seemingly intending to make good on his threat. 

It was then Robotnik finally found it in himself to issue a warning. “Stone, we’re running out of time,” he said simply. He didn’t tell him to stop. “People will notice his absence.” 

For what seemed like the first time in ages, Stone met his gaze. His eyes were hard and unforgiving– soldierly, some might say– but his pupils were blown wide with frantic adrenaline. 

“I can do this,” Stone insisted firmly. Robotik wondered for only a moment which one of them he was trying to convince. “I will do this. Just give me a few more minutes, Doctor. I can crack him.” 

Most absurd of all, Robotnik wanted to believe him.  He didn't know why he would, but it seemed to be all that was left.

He held Stone’s gaze carefully, relinquishing a wordless admission of trust between them, until Lawrence spoke up once more. 

“Uh oh, looks like your master is losing faith in you,” he said with mock pity, frowning at the agent. Lawrence immediately dropped the expression as he turned his focus to Robotnik. “Really, Ivo, I can’t fathom why you keep this little lowlife around. He’s useless. More trouble than he’s worth. Are you really so desperate?” 

Before he could respond, the telltale snap of a phalanx pierced the air, accompanied by a subsequent cry. 

“Watch your fucking tongue,” Stone warned. 

Lawrence stupidly ignored him. “I suppose I already know the answer to that,” he said lowly, catching Robotnik’s eye as if sharing an inside joke. “I can only assume he makes it worth your while after hours. You must really have your work cut out for you, putting a mutt like him in his place, huh? What’s it take to get him on his knees?” 

Stone visibly tensed, fingers still clenched against Lawrence’s wrists. Robotnik, in turn, felt his stomach turn, unable to conjure a reply quick enough to evade Lawrence’s notice. 

Their combined shock must have been as incriminating as it felt, because Lawrence’s eyes suddenly widened with intrigue. He laughed a bit, but it came out more like a wheeze.

“Oh, not even?” Sagging against the chair, Lawrence found it in himself to eye them both with a smug amusement. “Wow. Well, isn’t that just sad. You just keep him panting at your feet like a goddamn dog begging for a scrap of your attention, all while you go home and jack off to the way he sings your praises. Yeah…and I bet I know why.” His pupils flitted carefully across them both, scanning for a reaction.

Some stupid part of Robotnik burned at the accusation– the part that knew the truth of it all. The cowardly way he denied them both, perpetually confined to a state of wanting and never having. Heart racing, Robotnik pulled his lips into a firm line, fortifying himself against any further intrusion. He refused to give Lawrence the satisfaction. 

“Because you clearly wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t a miserable piece of shit,” Lawrence answered for him. “So you make it your mission to drag everyone else down to your pathetic level because god forbid someone has what you don’t.”  

Lawrence punctuated each word with an insistence that Robotnik felt deep in his bones, nearly wracking him to the core. 

It was true, wasn’t it? 

Robotnik had never spoken such things aloud. Not even in the confines of his mind did he allow himself such brutal honesty, but he knew the truth of it all the same. Though momentarily shaken by his frankness, Robotnik found the sentiment washing over him with a numb, faraway ache – the same one he had harbored for decades. It settled into him quickly, a familiarity akin to muscle memory. It was already a part of him. 

Robotnik’s mind drifted as he met Lawrence’s cruel gaze, finding traces of the same familiarity in his eyes. He studied the creases of Lawrence’s, the darkened skin that sat heavy beneath the dull lens of his eyes, and saw the same desperate hunger reflected in them. The same dissatisfaction and detachment from the world. 

Like recognizes like. Robotnik knew that the man in front of him was not so different. He’d known it from the moment they met, an unspoken understanding passed between them like two predators hidden amongst a herd of sheep. 

Lawrence was no better than him. He was every bit as cold and uncaring, as selfishly determined–

Oh.

The thought struck Robotnik at once, not dawning on him so much as slamming into him with a force that nearly knocked the wind from his chest. He blinked, unable to fathom how he had failed to consider it before. In his fervor, he hadn’t thought of it, but–

Robotnik reached a shaky hand to thumb at the inside of his jacket, running his fingers along the outline of his own flash drive, safely tucked away just over his heart. It was there, just as it had always been, never leaving his person. 

Lawrence wasn’t keeping the drive in his office or his house. He was keeping it on him. 

Robotnik felt the manic urge to laugh, to tear his own hair from his head. Instead, he tried to meet Stone’s gaze.

“Stone,” he said urgently, but the agent was distracted. He stood oddly still, hands withdrawn from Lawrence as their movement was concealed behind his back. “Stone, he–” Robotnik tried again, louder this time, but his voice was quickly drowned out.

“You’re sad,” Lawrence spit, cutting him off. Robotnik felt the heavy weight of his stare, suddenly devoid of any humor. “And you’re lonely. But you won’t do a goddamn thing about it, because you know, deep down, that you can’t stand yourself either. That you deserve to feel every bit as sad and pathetic as–” 

Over the next fraction of a second, Robotnik registered several things at once, each input simultaneously as his mind struggled to comprehend it all– Lawrence’s voice cut out. Robotnik’s own died in his throat, or perhaps in the air around them. His heart beat thudded loudly in his ears, a physical pulsing. 

Over it all, Robotnik heard the unmistakable, piercing sound of a bullet dislodging from its chamber. 

Then, for another second, he heard nothing at all. 

 

Notes:

woww kind of a cliffhanger but not really. i truly appreciate everyone who reads this and has put up with their gross tension for this long lmao. it WILL be resolved i promise.

tell me your thoughts if you so feel so inclined, i love to hear them! otherwise i hope you enjoyed this one! :]

Chapter 6

Notes:

this took foreverrrr but we're so back. fair warning this chapter is basically a double feature in length and picks up right where chapter 5 left off

<< PLEASE NOTE >>
CW// the first half of this chapter contains blood, death, and (past) suicidal thoughts. the second half contains explicit sexual content.

For a moment, Robotnik was suspended in time.

A burst of simultaneous sound echoed in the air around them. Robotnik heard his own voice for only a fraction of a second before it was pulled into the cacophony.

Hold on, was what he meant to say, the words already primed on his tongue. Lawrence has the drive on him. 

Maybe he did say it. He hoped he did, if only for the sake of it. 

More likely, the pivotal information died on his lips as the words were whisked away by the unmistakable sound of a bullet.

Robotnik never saw the gun. Even as he replayed the events in quick succession, the memory of what he saw reversing and slowing within his mind’s eye, he registered only a brief flicker of motion concealed behind Lawrence’s back. He never saw the gun.

The shot itself wasn’t deafening – dampened by a silencer, Robotnik’s mind unconsciously supplied – but nevertheless assaulted his senses. The sound triggered a reflective turn of his head as the rest of his body went painfully rigid.

In that moment, the only thought that flashed through Robotnik’s brilliant mind was that he was finally meeting his end.

He had always seen the inevitable wall looming in the distance, always known with inexplicable certainty that he would, one day, crash through it. Truthfully, the present scenario wasn’t far off from what Robotnik had envisioned; he had always pictured going out with a bang in a reckless explosion of energy, not unlike a star collapsing under its own gravity. 

He’d expected to feel something akin to relief in the fateful moment – hoped for one eventual taste of the peace he’d craved his entire life – but, as the shot echoed in his ears, Robotnik felt none. He didn’t relax. There was no surrender. His muscles instinctually tensed in fear while his mind suddenly revved into overdrive as an unfamiliar current of primal terror shot through his nerves. His mind clung to its consciousness, suddenly desperate for the life and person he had tried so hard to escape. 

The only coherent thought that rang out above the noise was that Robotnik didn’t want this. Not yet. Not like this. 

But it wasn’t the end. Not for him, anyway.

Robotnik watched through distant, hazy eyes as Lawrence’s body jolted once and fell limply to the side as Stone delivered a clean shot to the side of his head. 

Compelled by instinct alone, Robotnik didn’t yell, didn’t react. He merely blinked. He half-expected the image to dispel along with his vision, but when his eyes opened again the scene remained intact. 

Slowly, Robotnik’s wide eyes drifted upwards to where Stone still stood, braced behind Lawrence – behind the body – with a handgun held tightly in his grasp. His mouth was open, teeth slightly bared, though his eyes were unnervingly quiet of any emotion. A dark, wet streak of blood painted the side of his face, slowly trickling down his beard.

Robotnik felt the air leave his lungs at precisely the same moment Stone released a long, shaky exhale, finally coming down from the precipice of his anger.

Neither spoke. 

“Stone,” Robotnik eventually started, needing to say something. His voice didn’t sound like his own – uncharacteristically shaky, a tangible effort required to wrangle each sound into place. “Stone. What the fuck have you done?” 

Stone didn’t respond immediately; his eyes remained locked on the visceral display he created, unmoving. 

Without warning, he lifted them to meet Robotnik’s gaze. They were the same eyes that creased when Stone smiled, the same ones that seemed to follow Robotnik’s every move. There was no remorse to be found, no indication of regret. They were just brown, the same as they’d always been.

“He was disrespecting you,” Stone said simply, unnervingly controlled. “He deserved to be put down.” 

Robotnik continued to breathe in short bursts, uncomprehending of the sentiment. He swore he could taste a faint metallic tinge to the air. Stone’s was an illogical reaction. Reckless and far beyond proportion. 

Robotnik stared at the blood pooling in the crook of Lawrence’s neck. 

It was deranged. 

“There’s evidence of us everywhere, Stone. Your fingerprints are all over him- it’s indisputable- you can’t just–” Robotnik rambled, interrupting himself with each subsequent thought. He took a deep breath. “He had it on him.”  

At that, Stone’s exterior appeared to crack. “He– what?” 

“The drive,” Robotnik strained, gesturing frantically. 

Stone’s gaze flickered knowingly to the corpse beneath him. “Oh,” was all he said.

Before Robotnik could chastise him further, Stone circled around and began reaching for Lawrence’s body. 

“God– What are you doing?!” Robotnik nearly screeched.

Stone glanced back at him, apparently unbothered by the scandalized look he wore. He pointed at the body. “Getting the drive. I’m going to search his pockets.” 

Robotnik could only gape at him. 

His disbelief grew as Stone threw one of Lawrence’s arms aside and began patting down his torso. Lawrence’s head lolled forward, limp body straining against the binds that held him in a grotesque, puppet-like display of the man he was once. Stone peeled away Lawrence’s blazer and felt around the inside fabric.

Robotnik, still reeling, watched him pick and prod at the body like a vulture until Stone eventually emerged with a closed fist. 

“Here,” Stone said as he finally stepped away from the corpse. He opened his palm to reveal a small, metallic device. 

Robotnik was right. After all this time, it had been right there. 

And yet, he blinked at the drive – the final drive – with a numbness he couldn’t quite place. 

He couldn’t grasp the satisfaction from within himself; his eyes strayed to the wet sheen of blood reflecting off Stone’s gloves. A tiny splotch painted the corner of the drive. Robotnik stared helplessly at it.

“They’re going to know we killed him,” he said, insistent in spite of his unsteady tone. “The party’s still going, for fuck’s sake. And, god – the blood – ” Robotnik jabbed a finger at the trickle of blood that had begun to fall in thick drops, splattering against the wooden floors.

Stone didn’t look. Instead, he glanced down at the drive still resting in his open palm. His brow creased as he extended it a little further in offering.

“But we have the drive.” 

Robotnik’s attention snapped forward. “That was only half of the equation, Stone. We were never meant to– you were never supposed to– what were you thinking?” he said, fighting the compulsion to flinch at his own volume. 

“Lawrence was a waste of space,” Stone retorted quickly, “who couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He lost the privilege to live a long time ago.” 

Robotnik scoffed, running a hand through his hair. There was no time to dwell on the ideology there.

“So you decide to go rogue and execute him in his own house? Have you lost your goddamn mind, Stone? Should I check your cognitive function, make sure your brain isn’t hemorrhaging any semblance of rational thought?” Robotnik prattled on, each rapid-fire word spit from his mouth without so much as a breath. 

He was still too stunned to feel the true extent of the anger he knew he should have – Not for the loss of a meaningless life, but for the needless risk of it all. For the target Stone had planted on both their backs.

As Robotnik continued on, a victim to his own stream of consciousnesses, Stone merely stood there and took his anger face-on, just as he always had. Robotnik almost wondered if he was listening at all. Stone’s expression remained solid and unchanging, a contrived neutrality he knew all too well. 

“–On top of everything else – because god knows the things we’ve already done – this could easily be a life sentence in some federal prison with the right conviction. That miscreant Richmond will testify against us, I know he will–” 

Stone only shook his head, cutting Robotnik off. 

“They’ll never catch you. How could they? You’ll be twenty steps ahead of those idiots before they even think to look in your direction,” Stone reasoned, still holding his gaze.

Robotnik pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes, darkening himself to the world. He couldn’t contend with the overload of senses. Realistically, Stone was right. Robotnik had already been evading their grasp for years and found it laughably easy to do so. But–

“And what about you?” Robotnik snapped as he dropped his hands, blinking away the assault brought on by the light. “Huh? Did you think about that? Because, by my recollection, I’m fairly certain I’m not the one that put a bullet in his head.” He gestured pointedly at the body. 

“What about me?” Stone shot back without hesitation, almost exasperated. “What about it? It doesn’t matter.” 

At that, Robotnik faltered, glancing around as if searching for answers in the air around them. He found none.

“That’s– You’re not making any sense.”

Stone shook his head once more. Robotnik flinched, jerking his hand back a few centimeters as he felt Stone’s fingers suddenly wrap around his wrist. Without warning, the drive was pushed into his palm. Its metal casing was warm from how long it had been held. Stone closed Robotnik’s fingers around it, securing it within his grasp.

Stone dropped his hands almost immediately, though he continued to stare at Robotnik’s closed fist. 

“This was never about me,” he said quietly, nodding towards the device.

The certainty with which Stone spoke, the easy acceptance of his supposed fate, struck Robotnik with a weight that threatened to stagger him. A collection of hundreds of moments with Stone hung in his mind, each containing its own information gathered over the years. They sat like puzzle pieces, a jumbled mess of color yet to be pieced together. He couldn’t slot them together, couldn’t arrange them in a way that revealed the true image. 

You can’t mean that, Robotnik wanted to say. Why? Why would you dismiss your own life for this? 

More than that was the simple, devastating fact that it was always about Stone. 

Not entirely. Not without exception. But he was always there, lingering in the periphery of Robotnik’s mind, pressed against his every thought. It was Stone who had planted the idea of espionage, who had devised their plan, who led them straight to Lawrence. And it was Stone who had killed him. 

Stone, who would pay with his freedom. Possibly with his life. 

Robotnik didn’t know what to say, failing to organize his thoughts into anything coherent. The enormity of it all was, for a moment, beyond him.

Stone didn’t seem keen on waiting; after several prolonged beats of silence, he turned away. Instead, he made a swift path for Lawrence’s PC, clicking on the monitor and proceeding to type at a relentless pace, pausing every few seconds to contemplate his next input. 

Robotnik watched, shaking his head uselessly. “Stone, we don’t have time for this.” He didn’t truly know what this entailed, only that it was out of the realm of their new mission: escape. 

Stone brushed him off, groaning in frustration when he failed another password attempt. He slammed a fist against the desk before pulling himself upright again. 

“This is how we’re going to buy ourselves time,” Stone retorted. 

Before Robotnik could process the movement – every sense steadily succumbing to exhaustion – Stone reached into his jacket pocket for a small flash drive. Not the one designated for the Equinox project, but a simple system override device.

Robotnik could only wonder how he had known exactly where he kept it, watching in slight awe as Stone plugged the device into the PC without hesitation. 

“We need to leave a trail for them to follow,” Stone spoke without prompting. His eyes remained trained on the screen as he typed with deft fingers. “Something digital. Some reason for Lawrence to leave unexpectedly…Did he have any other enemies, anybody who openly took issue with him?” 

“He was an unapologetic asshole,” Robotnik replied automatically, “he made enemies in every room. But as far as projects go, his record is spotless.” 

Robotnik had checked, of course, over a series of rage-induced online scavenging quests in an attempt to gain some leverage. He’d always hoped said leverage would eventually entail a federal investigation and subsequent SWAT team, but Lawrence kept everything disappointingly above board, as far as he could tell. 

Stone’s hands momentarily stilled, suspended over the keyboard as he appeared to digest the information. 

“Okay, what about personal affairs? Drugs, gambling, anything that might’ve left him with debts to settle?” Stone asked instead.

Robotnik once again wracked his mind, flitting through every moment they’d spent together, every tidbit of personal information involuntarily retained. He shook his head uselessly as he failed to recall anything of importance. He hadn’t listened nearly as often as Lawrence had spoken. 

Though – Robotnik supposed there was one thing. 

Part of him suspected Stone already knew, somehow. There was no real reason to ever mention it. After the temporary lapse in judgement, Robotnik had quickly confined the memory to the very bottom of his cavernous mind, but it would undoubtedly aid in absolving their crime. 

“Lawrence had an affair. There’s a high probability he was a serial adulterer,” Robotnik relayed in a flat, objective tone before he could think better of it.

Stone raised his eyebrows slightly. “A string of messy affairs and a scorned wife,” he contemplated aloud, seemingly to himself. “That could work, especially if he was involved with a subordinate. Someone on the project. Lawrence's professional reputation would take a slight hit, but the scandal would overshadow the Equinox launch more than anything. That's what would get him. Someone made the threat, things got out of hand from there...” 

Robotnik silently considered this. He promptly determined several glaring holes in the story before Stone had finished speaking it into existence. 

“We just have to plant some messages suggesting someone was blackmailing Lawrence,” Stone continued on. 

He turned to stare at Robotnik expectantly. 

When Robotnik failed to react beyond holding his gaze, Stone quickly prompted, “It would help to know who it was, Doctor. Did he have any assistants he was particularly close to? Someone he spent a lot of time with at work?” 

Robotnik chose not to dwell on the immediate assumption of an affair between Lawrence and one of his assistants, nor the implication as a whole. Instead, he screwed his eyes shut, attempting to access the backlogs of his memories in search of an answer. Truthfully, Robotnik had no real evidence that Lawrence had multiple affairs outside of his seemingly practiced indifference towards his own adultery. 

“Lawrence has multiple assistants,” he recalled, conjuring the blurry images of each face in his mind’s eye, “but he never appeared to favor any one over the others. He…was rather dismissive of the whole idea. Thought they were juvenile and bothersome,” he recited from memory.

Robotnik fought the urge to cringe as he remembered the particulars of the conversation and the way Lawrence had attempted to bond with him over the shared plight of their government-assigned agents. At the time, Robotnik rolled his eyes at the lame attempt at camaraderie and dismissively remarked that Lawrence’s troubles were entirely his own. 

He’d received only a curious look in return; though, upon reflection, perhaps calculating was more appropriate. 

“That doesn’t get us anywhere.” Stone shook his head, then paused. “How did you find out he was having an affair?” 

At that, Robotnik involuntarily tensed. His heart ticked a few beats faster. For perhaps the first time, he was too shaken to resort to half-truths and misdirective insults. His mind had been stripped bare, rendered pathetically honest.

“I was there,” Robotnik said dumbly, before quickly clarifying, “The day we got the call that Equinox was a go. Later that night, Lawrence and I…” he trailed, finding the words difficult. 

The vague admission was enough. 

Stone didn’t react immediately. A heavy silence hung in the air between them. Robotnik, growing increasingly unnerved, risked a glance in Stone’s direction and was met with a blank stare as Stone looked past him, expressionless. 

Robotnik followed his line of sight. It led squarely to Lawrence’s limp body.

Slowly, Stone’s hand was suddenly in motion again as he reached inside his jacket, face unchanged. This time, there was no mistaking his intent.

“Don’t!” Robotnik hissed, lurching forward to seize both of Stone’s wrists before he could fully procure the gun he knew the agent was reaching for. “Stand down. ” 

Stone seemed to instinctively struggle against his hold and easily wrestled one arm free before coming into himself once more. His eyes locked on Robotnik’s, wide and imbued with a potent energy he didn’t quite recognize, and Stone promptly relaxed under his grasp.

Robotnik only stared at him, searching his face for answers he couldn’t seem to find. Stone held his gaze in an unspoken stalemate. 

“We’ll toss the body in the lake,” Stone said after what felt like a lifetime, still holding his gaze. “Leave everything on him, let it sink.” 

He left it at that, providing no further remarks. 

Robotnik swallowed, somewhat jarred by the sudden starkness. By the calm brutality of it all. Another part of him felt aflame with something unidentifiable. “Even if we weigh it down, it’ll resurface eventually.” 

“Eventually,” Stone agreed, “But it won’t matter then.”

“The logistics of moving the body lend to a high probability of witnesses. There’s close to a hundred people here, Stone. Some straggler on a smoke break is bound to see. You think they’ll keep their mouth shut?” 

Stone nodded towards Lawrence once more. “The badniks have a carrying capacity of three hundred pounds. That’ll be enough for him. I’ll keep a high altitude over the house until it’s past the tree-line.” 

“But–” Robotnik began to argue, his overworked mind already pouring over the faulty logistics of the plan, but Stone quickly cut him off.

“It’ll work, Doctor. Trust me,” he said with a certainty Robotnik doubted was contrived. It was firm, resolute. Whether it was true or not, Stone clearly believed it.

Without warning, Robotnik jerked back as he felt Stone’s cold fingers wrapping around his wrist. His gaze snapped up. 

“May I?” Stone asked, pointer finger ghosting above the buttons on his control glove. 

Robotnik hesitated. 

Even a flawless execution would only buy so much time – years, possibly, but more likely a matter of weeks or months. Days, even. Robotnik rarely thought of his own future – it felt impossibly distant, little more than a vague concept – but the notion of Stone’s uncertain fate now clawed at him from deep within his chest. 

Lawrence wasn’t someone who could disappear without a trace. He was important. He had a family; one with money and connections. One who wouldn’t let his disappearance go. 

A heavy dread curled in his stomach, electrifying every nerve, as Robotnik struggled to pull himself from its grasp. His thoughts swirled relentlessly into an incoherent jumble, of which the only thing he could pull from it was the simple question of why?

Why have you done this, Stone? Any of this?

They didn't have government strings to pull anymore and once they parted ways, Stone wouldn't be under his protection either. 

“Sir?” Stone prompted, squeezing his wrist slightly. 

The pressure against his veins briefly jolted Robotnik back into reality where he failed to do anything but shake his head in a mimicry of his disorderly thoughts.

Stone appeared to study him a moment, lips a hard line, before he opted to make an executive decision. Without waiting for Robotnik to gather the pieces of his mind, Stone began plucking away at the buttons on his glove in a manner that felt almost practiced despite never having done so. As if years of intent observation had imprinted the motions into Stone’s brain like they were his own. 

Robotnik wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or horrified. 

Stone quickly summoned a badnik from the nearby lab before switching to the small screen to begin programming a flight path. Robotnik vaguely registered what he was doing out of the corner of his eye, could see as a bullseye was dropped squarely above a deep section of the lake, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Stone. 

Stone’s dark eyes were narrowed in concentration, almost unblinking, while several strands of hair fell just above them. Robotnik resisted the urge to comb them back from his forehead where they had fallen loose. Instead, his gaze drifted to the sticky blood almost hidden in the neat trim of Stone’s beard, little bits of crimson speckled below his nose and trickling into the creases of his lips. 

When said lip curled, revealing a sliver of teeth, Robotnik noticed that those, too, carried a distinctly red smear. It was unclear who it once belonged to; a slow stream of Stone’s own blood still trickled from his nose where he’d been headbutted, mingling with Lawrence’s. The uncertainty had Robotnik swallowing hard as he willed his racing pulse to slow, a flicker of heat growing low in his stomach. He forced himself to look away.

Thankfully, Stone straightened himself a moment later and stepped away in favor of briefly returning to the computer. He appeared to be searching through Lawrence’s private correspondence. 

Robotnik steadied himself against the desk. He pressed his fingers firmly against the smooth surface, feeling along the wooden grain in a weak attempt to draw himself back into the present through familiar touch. 

He couldn’t look at Lawrence. He couldn’t look at Stone. Robotnik stared blankly through the window panes, though there was little to see in the darkness. The nothingness was a favorable alternative to anything that lay inside.

Robotnik wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Stone abruptly stood, both palms flat against the desk.

“The badnik should be here in a few seconds. I’ve fabricated some messages between Lawrence and an old colleague that should direct the suspicion onto him, at least for the initial stages of investigation,” Stone hastily explained, setting his sight to the body once more. “They’ll come off that theory pretty quickly, but the colleague in question has had his fair share of corporate misconduct anyway. Doesn’t exactly hurt to surface a few files along the way while buying us some time.”

“Engineering collateral damage?” Robotnik replied, half-intending the thought to remain in his own head. 

Stone made a dismissive gesture. “He was always an asshole. You met him at a conference a few years back and suggested he donate his cerebral cortex to science since he ‘wasn’t using it anyway,’” the agent recited, though Robotnik had little recollection of the fact. He was sure he said it regardless and even more certain he had meant it.

“Regardless, uncovering that should keep the feds busy for a bit,” Stone continued. “Be sure to recall the badnik before you leave tonight, sir. I’ll take care of Lawrence’s car myself.” 

At that, Robotnik blinked, turning away from the window in one quick, unsteady movement. He made a conscious effort to square his feet on the floor once more. 

“So that’s it?” Robotnik asked plainly, attempting a flat deliverance but instead sounding affronted by the notion. “Lawrence is dead and…that’s it?”

Stone had his hands in Lawrence’s jacket again, presumably searching for his keys. For a moment, they stilled. A slight, almost imperceivable confusion etched across his features before it was promptly wiped clean.

“I’ll take care of everything, Doctor.” 

The attempt at reassurance did little to quell the dread. There were too many variables to consider. 

“But what about-?” 

“You should get back to the party. Be sure to mingle, or at least make your presence known. You’ll want people to remember you were here.” Stone angled his face away as he resumed digging through the layers of fabric, shielding his expression. “Don’t worry about the rest, Doctor. Focus on yourself. On your alibi.” 

Don’t worry about me, Stone didn’t say, but the sentiment was there in the silence that followed. 

So much had been condensed into the brief period of time since they entered Lawrence’s office that Robotnik had almost put it out of his mind entirely. Now, the reality of their departure descended on him in full force. There was no more stalling, no room for empty threats or even emptier hopes. 

Even from his guarded position, the streak of blood across Stone’s cheek and neck stood out against his dark clothing, drawing in Robotnik’s eyes. Was this how he was to remember Stone? Painted with the blood of the doctor’s own enemy? 

He stared down at his own gloved hands. They were impossibly clean. 

What was to be said of that?

“Stone, I…” Robotnik began, but he couldn’t find the words. 

A glimpse of metal and the telltale flash of red light reflected against the windowpane as the badnik hovered patiently outside. Stone quickly unlatched the window to let it in before making his way over to Robotnik. 

Stone turned over his wrist to tap another few buttons, sending the badnik whirring into action, but he didn’t back away immediately. Instead, he carefully closed his hand over Robotnik’s, sliding their palms together.

Stone looked up at him through large eyes, suddenly softer than before but no less determined. 

“It’s been an honor to work for you, Doctor,” he said softly, the words heavy with earnestness, as if holding the very weight of their relationship within each syllable. “My greatest pleasure has been in knowing you, sir. So…thank you.” 

Stone’s hand tightened around his, thumb interlocking his own. It wasn’t the right configuration for a handshake. Robotnik wasn’t sure what it was. He felt its warmth all the same, the insistent pressure of Stone’s hand and words wrapping around his mind.

It felt like loyalty. Like devotion. 

Robotnik’s pulse quickened. He didn’t know what to do with the thought, with whatever Stone was conveying through the firm words clashed against his gentle touch; he was struck only with the overwhelming urge to swallow it down, to sink his nails into the hand pressed to his own.

Stone lingered for only a fleeting second before his hand shifted and the pressure lightened, preparing to pull away. 

Robotnik didn’t think before he reached back. As quickly as the trigger had been pulled on Lawrence and with the same certainty, he closed his fingers around Stone’s hand and stopped him.

He felt as Stone seized up under his grasp, suddenly going still and quiet. 

“Not yet.” Robotnik held a little tighter. “I haven’t dismissed you, have I? Until I say the word, you’ll stay right here, Agent. And so will I,” he ordered, borrowing the Stone’s own words.

Despite Robotnik’s insistent tone, a subtle tremor betrayed his composure. The desperation in his grasp felt sickeningly palpable. He looked away.

Stone, in turn, seemed to automatically wrap his fingers around Robotnik’s palm. He was silent for another second before relenting with a nod. 

“Understood, sir.” 

“Good,” Robotnik managed, a shaky breath punching itself from his throat. He hadn’t realized he was holding it. 

On some level, he cursed himself for stalling. For the desperate plea disguised as an order. But, this time, Robotnik was too shaken to deny himself. He’d been pushed to the brink, unable fathom the strain of emotion. 

Anything else and he would surely topple. 

He gently released Stone’s hand, letting his own fall loosely to his side as he properly regarded the room. Robotnik breathed in deeply once more, ignoring the faint metallic scent still lingering in the air, and attempted to collect himself. 

They could still fix this. Together. 

“I’ll tidy the space,” he decided, knowing the clearly ravaged appearance of the room would incite suspicions. Robotnik’s eyes fell to the specks of blood dotting the floors. “Stone, take care of the blood and wipe for fingerprints. It goes without saying that you’ll need to be thorough. A partial print is all it takes these days.” 

Stone nodded once more and immediately set to work without question. 

While he left in search of a disinfectant, Robotnik tapped a sequence into his glove and watched as several long, sturdy arms unfurled from the badnik’s shell and clamped onto Lawrence’s body. He should have spared himself the grotesque scene, but he felt himself compelled by a morbid fascination, unable to look away.

Metal pincers closed around Lawrence’s arms and legs, digging into the expensive fabric of his suit. As the badnik began a steady descent upward, pulling him against gravity, Lawrence’s head fell limply to the side and his blazer began to slide off one shoulder. His hair and face were sticky with a layer of blood, a thin stream running across his forehead and dripping onto the floor. 

It was strange.

He looked so different from the man who had once beamed at Robotnik’s blueprints, who had listened to his drawn-out technical spiels without interruption. Different from the man who looked at him with a hunger for more than his ideas. And different, still, from the man who grew to roll his eyes at Robotnik’s every remark, who knowingly denied him his life’s work without a second thought. 

This man, the one hanging limp and bloodied, looked powerless. 

More than that, he simply looked…dead.  

Robotnik couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad. As he stared blankly at the suspended corpse, he felt no trace of disgust at the viscera. No – he felt relieved. He felt vindicated.  

A morbid sense of satisfaction prickled across his skin at the sight of Lawrence’s helplessness and the realization finally clicked into place: Robotnik had won. 

After all this time, he’d finally won.

Subsequently was the realization that victory had been delivered at none other than his agent’s hands. His agent, who had beaten Lawrence, tied him up, delivered the killing blow – a chain of violent reactions not incited by Robotnik’s own command. Stone had done so of his own violation. And he had done so…for him. 

Robotnik watched as Lawrence’s body was carefully lifted through the window and into the open air, disappearing above his line of sight, and adjusted his mind to the scene. 

For him.

Something inside Robotnik burned dangerously at the thought. 

Somewhat shaky, he turned back to the much more urgent matter at hand and began restoring the room to its unaltered state. It was easy enough to do; Robotnik had retained the initial scan of the space in perfect clarity. 

Stone returned soon after, having scavenged the upstairs for cleaning supplies.

“Found some bleach and peroxide under the sink,” he said without further elaboration.

Robotnik only nodded. He noted the still-prominent blood on Stone’s face, curiously untouched. 

They didn’t speak as they methodically erased the scene of their joint crimes. The quiet scuffle of feet and hands punctuated the otherwise silent room while Robotnik’s mind continued to whirr. He was still fighting off the rational sense of panic and trepidation, but, slowly, another emotion began to intertwine in the spiral of his dread. 

He didn’t know what to call it – Robotnik’s stomach twisted, his heart raced with something deadlier than fear. He tried his best to control his line of sight, keeping it carefully trained on his task, but each glimpse of Stone in his periphery triggered another current to electrify his nerves.

It wasn’t long before Lawrence’s files had been put away and each surface scrubbed clean of any lingering fingerprints. Robotnik merely glanced over Stone’s work, implicitly trusting in his abilities. 

“We should get back to the party,” Stone said as he stood up, carefully pulling off his nitrile gloves.

He was right. It would be the logical thing to do, to make another appearance and lend credence to their alibi. Yet, the thought of returning to the stifling atmosphere of cologne and the heat of too many bodies turned Robotnik’s stomach. 

He shook his head. “No,” Robotnik said simply. Resolutely. He lifted his gaze to meet Stone’s, then squinted at him. “You still have blood on your face.” 

Stone wiped a tentative hand across his cheek, smearing it slightly. He looked down at his red-stained finger as if noticing it for the first time. As if he’d somehow forgotten what he’d done. 

“I’ll clean up quickly. You go ahead.” 

Robotnik shook his head again. “No sense. Let’s just go,” he settled for after failing to conjure any logical reasoning to bolster the order. It sounded painfully stupid, even to his own ears. 

Stone only blinked at him. “Go?” 

“Yes, go. As in, get out of here and as far away as possible.” Robotnik made for the door, not waiting for a reply. “Haven’t you heard of fleeing the scene of the crime?” he added on impulse. 

Stone didn’t hesitate further. “Let’s go, then,” he agreed. “But we’ll take the back exit and follow the shoreline before cutting across to the lab, not the road. Safer that way.” 

Robotnik didn’t know when he started taking orders from his subordinate, but he found himself nodding along without argument. His thoughts felt hazy and indiscernible and he desperately wanted to get out, to get away from the noise so he could attempt to process the enormity of what just occurred. Of the quiet thrill still thrumming beneath his skin. 

 

Together, they quietly slipped down the staircase and easily located the back door they’d previously identified for a contingency plan. Stone held it open as Robotnik rushed through, the first gust of cool, clean air against his face nothing short of catharsis. He breathed it in deeply, allowing his lungs to fill for a brief moment before they were off again.

“Stay close,” Robotnik muttered, but Stone was already at his heel.

Moving with relative haste, they circled the perimeter of the house until they were out of the line of sight of any guests and made their way across the yard. It was neatly trimmed with stone paths carved into the grass and lined with a row of perfectly even hedges. Robotnik made the immediate decision to disregard them, instead opting to cut across diagonally until they reached the edge of the lake.

Ahead of them, the water was still and calm. It rippled ever so slightly as the light breeze caught on its surface, but was otherwise a picture of serenity so completely at odds with their present situation that Robotnik almost felt the urge to laugh.

Instead, he simply stared at it in some sort of bewilderment. 

Stone was quiet behind him, but Robotnik could hear the huffs of labored breaths that betrayed his calm exterior. They continued a few paces before something, perhaps the stillness of it all, compelled Robotnik to acknowledge it. 

“Stone,” he started, then paused.

“Doctor?” 

Robotnik hesitated. He didn’t break stride. “Are you…alright?” he asked, stilted. 

The question was unfamiliar territory for the two of them, falling starkly outside of their dynamic, but so was the current circumstance. It seemed only appropriate. 

An immediate silence followed, indicating Stone had stopped. After a second, the sound of his footsteps picked up once more.

“I’m sorry,” was Stone’s eventual reply. 

“I asked you a question. That’s not an answer. Try again.”

Stone disregarded him. “I just want to do right by you, Doctor, but I can never seem to– it’s never enough,” he strained, emotion unexpectedly spilling from him in a sudden, forceful wave. He heaved an unsteady breath before continuing. “It’s never right. I just– I’m sorry, okay? That I could never do it.” 

It was Robotnik’s turn to stop. 

“Stone. What are you even talking about?” 

For once, he genuinely didn’t understand.

Stone inhaled audibly before releasing it with a breathy, humorless laugh. “I’m talking about all of it, Doctor. Everything,” he replied, once again failing to provide any clarity.

“Entirely unhelpful–”

“I mean, that’s why you want to leave me behind, isn’t it?” Stone blurted, effectively silencing him.

Stunned, Robotnik said nothing at all. It took several, uncomfortable seconds for Stone to continue. 

“I understand, Doctor. I do. It’s only practical. I just thought that if I could do this one last thing for you– if I could get the final drive– that it could make up for all of the times when I couldn’t do anything, and now…” Stone trailed, seemingly losing momentum. 

Despite the rushed clarification, Robotnik found himself at something of a loss as he grappled with the sentiment. The logic didn’t appear to connect. The only thing Robotnik understood with any certainty was that Stone felt like he had failed, continuously. 

It took several seconds of careful review for Robotnik to even identify opportunities for inadequacy, nevertheless said failure. The only viable hypothesis he returned with was that Stone believed himself in some way responsible for preventing Lawrence’s actions. Which, of course, he had– eventually and entirely.

But perhaps it ran deeper than that. 

He was then struck with the horrible, shameful thought that perhaps, on some level, Stone blamed himself for Robotnik’s own fall from grace. For the very root of their current circumstance. 

He thought back to each minute act of generosity Stone had displayed, each careful offer– bringing him food, packing the lab, offering to stay. He had done so much. The very fact that Stone had tried at all was nothing short of an anomaly. And yet, every action was only met with Robotnik’s own callous resistance. 

Stone had done it all, but he failed to prevent the inevitable. 

Did he truly blame himself for that?

It was an absurd thought. There was no stopping what had been coded into the very fabric of Robotnik’s existence, what had been so very obvious to him since birth. He was always going to end up here, one way or another. To stop this would be to attempt to stop the eventual heat death of the universe – it was so far beyond any of them that the notion was nothing but laughable.  

Robotnik, however, didn’t feel the urge to laugh. He felt the weight of Stone’s guilt like a hand around his heart, squeezing the life from him. 

He turned around suddenly, nearly causing Stone to collide with his chest. Robotnik shot out a hand to steady him. 

“Stone,” he said seriously, and with a gravity he hoped would squander any doubts, “Let me be perfectly clear. You don’t owe me any debts. You have done more than what was ever required of you as an agent and more than I could ask.” And I never had to ask. “This isn’t a dishonorable discharge, so get that foolish idea out of your head at once.”  

At that, Stone’s expression contorted into something caught between pain and relief, between shock and understanding. Like he didn’t know what to make of the admission. 

Robotnik didn’t know what else to say, still pulsing with a renewed adrenaline. He didn’t know how to bridge the gap. To make them understand one another. It felt like an unsolvable equation, an answer that existed firmly in the imaginary. 

More than anything, he just wanted Stone to stop looking at him like that. 

“We need to keep moving,” Robotnik said instead. 

“Okay,” was Stone’s simple, distant reply. 

He turned back around, forcing his legs to move in a steady motion – one foot in front of the other – but Robotnik couldn’t shake the sour feeling in his gut. He continued to turn over Stone’s words in his mind, examining them from every angle, searching for whatever fundamental knowledge he seemed to lack that would finally slot everything into place.

In the absence of anything else, Robotnik found himself unwillingly returning to the image of Lawrence’s crumpled form, still fresh in his mind, and of the rush he’d felt upon seeing what his enemy had been reduced to: a pathetic, powerless corpse. 

He thought, too, of Stone and how he’d looked towering over his kill, gun still raised and teeth bared. It was a fearsome image. A powerful one. That seemingly familiar stance, the clean, practiced shot – Robotnik was certain it wasn’t the first time Stone had killed. 

All that deadly ability, and yet the agent now trailed behind him, impossibly docile despite all he had endured at the doctor’s hand. Despite every perceived failure and tangible rejection. 

Robotnik had seen such behavior before. He’d seen it in the way dogs heeled at their master’s sides, snarling with canines bared, yet unfailingly obedient to the command. In the way they stayed, even through loss, through neglect– 

It was loyalty. Utterly unfathomable loyalty. 

The revelation – previously suspected, now all but unequivocal – sat like a weight in Robotnik’s mind. 

He couldn’t understand it. 

He needed to understand it.

Grass crunched softly under their feet as they walked, weaving in between trees and the occasional rock. The water remained still. Robotnik’s mind continued to churn in silence.  

Up ahead, a structure came into view between the trees, tucked along the shore. It was somewhat difficult to discern in the dim light, but upon further inspection Robotnik quickly identified it as a boat house. By his calculations, they had nearly reached the edge of Lawrence’s property and would need to adjust their angle by ninety degrees to reach the street where the mobile lab remained parked. 

Robotnik knew this, but an alternate decision had already been cemented in the half-second he took to consider it.

“This way,” he said to Stone, ignoring the agent’s quizzical noise.

Robotnik veered towards the boat house as he quickly examined it from the outside. It was relatively small but consisted of two stories, with the same dark wood paneling and tall windows extending much the length of the wall as the main house. 

He could feel Stone’s eyes on him as he picked the lock with impressive efficiency, finding the security comparatively rather flimsy, and slipped inside without a word. 

A polished bowrider boat swayed gently in the open water on the first level; not terribly imposing in size, but clearly expensive. The second level, however, was host to a small, somewhat sparse lounge overlooking the lake. Robotnik made an immediate trek for the stairs while Stone followed behind, silent but observational. 

Robotnik didn’t quite know why he felt compelled to halt their journey here, in a quiet cabin that smelt of mildew and disuse. Perhaps he understood that anything left unsaid would remain that way once they returned to the familiarity of the lab. 

It felt like their last chance.

“Doctor,” Stone called out eventually.

Robotnik was running his palms along the wall in search of a light switch but stopped when Stone flicked on a nearby lamp. He blinked as the space became weakly illuminated, suddenly met with Stone’s shadowy face.

Robotnik’s pulse briefly spiked in response as endless questions manifested in his mind, tangling together as they were produced faster than even he could sort them out. There was no methodology for this, no experimental design. 

He screwed his eyes shut.

“You killed Lawrence,” Robotnik started after a beat. Not a question, but an objective statement. 

Stone didn’t falter. “I did.” 

He seemed to implicitly understand the line of questioning that was unfolding, a familiar method Robotnik employed when he needed to consider something completely. 

“Lawrence was weak. You went easy on him. A pair of pliers or a few electrical shocks and he would’ve been putty in your hands,” Robotnik continued. “You weren’t in any real danger. That bullet you put in his head wasn’t self-defense.” 

“No. It wasn’t,” Stone agreed, though he didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the brutal admission.

“So why did you do it?” 

At that, Stone’s brow furrowed. “We were running out of time, and–”

“No.” Robotnik shook his head. “The real reason. Don’t lie.” 

Stone shifted ever so slightly on his feet. 

“Doctor, I meant what I said before. He was disrespecting you. He’d been disrespecting you for months. I couldn’t listen to it anymore.” Even recalling the events, Stone’s expression shifted as residual anger seemed to momentarily take hold, not unlike the sight beholden at the slaughter. 

Robotnik ignored the dangerous flutter in his chest at the conviction with which the agent spoke. At the very notion of outrage on his behalf. So familiar was he with being the cause of anger, but anger for him was an entirely foreign concept. 

Though his very earliest memories were stained with the injustice of the world, a solemn promise of what was to come, it was a cruelty he faced alone. He was afforded nothing but passing sympathies and unchanged circumstances. No one had ever shared in his anger. And certainly not to the degree of… this.

The sentiment was too risky to pick apart. It wasn’t important right now. 

“It was reckless. Foolish. An incalculable risk to your own life,” he said instead, clinging to the objective. The rational. “All that over a little disrespect? Do you suddenly not believe me capable of defending myself against the schoolyard insults of some paramilitary miscreant?”

Stone shook his head immediately, looking affronted by the very notion. 

“Not at all, Doctor,” he said with a swift sincerity. “You’re more than capable. But you shouldn’t have to.” 

Robotnik scoffed at the notion. 

“I regret acting on impulse, yes, but I don’t regret killing Lawrence for what he did,” Stone continued, level and firm. “I’ll never regret that.” 

“Even if it costs you your freedom? The agency isn’t about to pull any strings for you now, Stone. Your burnt bridges with Uncle Sam the minute you walked away from the lab. You’re a civilian now. If this is discovered, it won’t be pushed under the rug like before. You’ll be on your own.” 

Once again, Stone’s expression didn’t change. 

“I’m well aware, Doctor, and I made my peace with that fact long before I pulled the trigger,” Stone replied seriously. 

Robotnik scoffed again. He broke eye contact to glance off to the side in disbelief, both of Stone’s statement and the idiotic nature behind it. He had always known the agent to be lacking in basic survival instincts purely by the way he conducted himself around the lab – always pushing further, inching closer to the explosive catalyst that was Ivo Robotnik – but this felt like an unprecedented degree of stupidity. 

But Stone wasn’t stupid. They both knew that much.

This wasn’t ignorance, but something else entirely. Something familiar. Something worse.

Robotnik turned his attention back towards Stone. This time, he looked at him not in disbelief but something akin to an accusation. He couldn’t help it.

“How can you possibly dismiss your own life so readily?” 

Stone wasn’t like him. He wasn’t born into a world so terribly unsuited to him that he found himself exhausted by the sheer willpower of maintaining his existence in it. Stone wore his humanity with a practiced ease, an expertise Robotnik had never managed. 

Unlike Robotnik, Stone belonged in this world. 

The air felt thick as it held the weight of the accusation around them. For several seconds, Stone appeared frozen in place. The gears of his mind were clearly turning, but Robotnik couldn’t make sense of the scene behind his dark eyes. 

At once, the careful atmosphere between them shattered. 

“What life do I have?” Stone shot back, suddenly charged with an unexpected energy. He reared back as the distance between them grew. “You keep saying that, but I was nobody before I found you, Doctor. I did what I had to do to get ahead, became who I needed to, but I wasn’t truly anyone. Everything I am was in that lab. I had nothing before you and I’ll be nothing after. So be it.” 

Robotnik heard the words. They entered his ears and reached his auditory complex where each sound was translated into recognizable speech. Everything functioned as it should have, but it didn’t matter. Robotnik couldn’t contend with what he knew he heard. 

He shook his head vehemently, arms thrown to the side. “So, what, that’s it? You’re just going to throw yourself away like some sort of martyr? I hate to break it to you, but there’s no greater good here. You’re not going to earn any points towards those pearly gates by playing the righteous executioner.” 

“I doubt I’d make the cut either way,” Stone replied, uncaringly grim. “I did what had to be done. That’s all that matters.” 

That’s all that matters.

There were signs. Little threads upon which Robotnik had often dismissed in lieu of logic, but the truth was now glaring. The conclusion all but slipped from his mind and through his lips. 

“You don’t think you matter.” 

The hard mask of Stone’s face softened. It bent and contorted, revealing something below the surface. It looked ever so slightly like pain. 

Stone only sighed – a deep, ragged thing pulled from his lungs. It carried no relief. “I’ve only ever wanted to be useful to you, sir,” he said. It was an answer all the same.

Robotnik’s chest clenched. Sharp little licks of vitriol and something he couldn’t quite place flared under his skin.

“That’s not the same thing and you know it,” he snapped.

“Maybe not, but it’s what I needed to be.” Stone’s voice cut off abruptly as he glanced away, frowning. “What I should’ve been,” he corrected.

Robotnik stared at him through unblinking eyes, taking in the entirety of his splintering form. He could see it now – the cracks in Stone’s hardened exterior that spread like faultlines with each accusation, through every subtle slip in his expression. 

When he concentrated on the gaps, straining for a glimpse of what lay beneath, what he found was painfully familiar: an all-consuming drive coupled with the crushing weight of failure, of rejection. Someone desperately trying to hold together the fragmented pieces of a self. 

And Robotnik knew with unequivocal certainty that he was the cause. 

The subsequent wave of guilt hit hard and fast as it rose in his throat like bile. He could taste its bitterness on the back of his tongue. He swallowed with difficulty. 

“I never asked you to be like this,” Robotnik said unsteadily, though he knew the relative truth wouldn’t shift the blame. “You’re not one of my machines, Stone. I didn’t design you to be a mere vessel of my will, or whatever it is you see yourself as,” he continued, grappling uselessly for the words. 

I didn’t mean to do this to you, is what he meant. 

Truly, he hadn’t. 

Stone was never meant to get this close. Robotnik’s very presence had proved inhospitable, only serving to strip Stone of whatever humanity he once had as they slowly became entangled. It was corruption in its purest form – severance, decomposition, rot. 

It was the very reason Robotnik had turned away the second he felt the deadly urge to draw Stone closer – the urge to feel and to taste and to have – but it hadn’t mattered, had it? It was already too late for them both.

He felt sick.

Suddenly plunged into a depth of guilt Robotnik hadn’t known himself capable of, he hardly registered when Stone started speaking. A cold hand on his shoulder shook him from it.

“You’re not listening to me,” Stone repeated with a bite he’d only heard directed towards others. Stone seemed to realize this as he paused to take a breath, recalibrating. “Please, Doctor, just listen to me.” 

Robotnik held himself still under Stone’s grasp.

“Everything I’ve ever done for you has been of my own volition," Stone said, low and serious. “I chose to kill Lawrence. I wanted to see him die and I wanted it to be at my hand. My actions are my own and I wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to the rest of the degenerate scum stupid enough to disrespect you. That’s the truth.” 

“You’re insane,” Robotnik choked out, too stunned to say anything else. 

“I mean it,” Stone reaffirmed, managing a force behind his words that Robotnik couldn’t. His eyes bore into the doctor’s, wide and unrelenting. “I would kill for you, Doctor, and I’d die for you just as willingly. Maybe that makes me reckless or stupid or pathetic, but I don't care. This is what I choose.”

The hand gripping Robotnik’s shoulder slowly slid down the length of his arm until it carefully encircled his wrist. Without warning, Stone guided Robotnik’s hand higher until it rested lightly around his own neck. Robotnik flexed his fingers on impulse, feeling the muscles of his throat tense under the pressure. 

Stone breathed in deeply and met his gaze once more. 

“My life is yours, Doctor. It always has been.” 

Robotnik could feel Stone’s pulse, the very center of his life-force, thrumming beneath his fingers and knew at once that he meant it. He pressed in lightly to feel each beat.

“Even after everything I’ve done to you?” he said numbly. Robotnik shook his head. “Why?” 

He felt Stone swallow under his grasp. 

“Because you deserve it.” 

Robotnik only shook his head again, more adamant this time. “I’ve disregarded you at every turn. Rejected you.” His fingers tightened around Stone’s neck. “Each input has yielded the same result. You’re wasting your time, wasting away your life, in the hopes that a fixed value might finally change. How can you justify that to yourself?”  

Stone blinked at him. A slight frown tugged at the otherwise stiff line of his lips. 

“I don’t need to justify it to myself. I know that you’re worth it, Doctor. You’re worth every effort I could possibly make. Even if it doesn’t change anything, I would do all of this over again,” Stone said, quiet against the silent backdrop of the room. One hand came to graze Robotnik’s elbow in a gentle, almost hesitant touch. “I don’t care if it doesn’t make a difference. Until you tell me to go, I’ll always be here and I’ll choose to try every time.” 

Robotnik’s throat tightened. He unconsciously sucked in a breath to dull the sting. It didn’t go away. 

He opened his mouth once more before quickly closing it again as whatever he intended to say stuck in the back of his throat. He tried again. 

“What could you possibly get out of this?” 

Robotnik had nothing to offer but his genius. His ingenuity, his power, his wealth – that was all he could give to this world, and Stone didn’t seem to want any of it.

Though it was left unspoken, Stone seemed to hear him all the same.

“You,” he said simply.

Stone locked their eyes together, imbuing into the singular word a magnitude of emotion that felt beyond the scope of human comprehension. His fingers squeezed Robotnik’s elbow gently in an insistent motion, as if attempting to transfer the sentiment into him. 

Robotnik’s hand, the one Stone had guided to his own neck, now rested there limply, cradling his jaw. 

A single question clawed at his chest, one that felt utterly unspeakable. One that he’d held within himself for years. He voiced it anyway. 

“That’s enough?” 

A beat passed between them and Robotnik feared the silence might shatter him completely. 

“That’s everything," Stone breathed before he could, the words soft on his lips. “You’re everything. I’ve never needed anything in return.” 

Robotnik inhaled. His head was spinning impossibly fast, thoughts jumbled beyond repair. He couldn’t decipher them. There was no insistent logic and rationale pressing at the forefront of his mind – for the first time in recent memory, Robotnik was thoroughly disarmed, left with only the ball of unfamiliar emotion welling in his chest.

He didn’t know what to do with it. Helpless, he continued speaking – the only faculty that still seemed to function. 

“Never needed,” Robotnik echoed. The question spilled from him without the capacity to stop it, “But did you want?”

Stone’s jaw tensed beneath the pad of his finger as his breath hitched. Robotnik watched as several emotions flicked across his face as their eyes remained locked together. 

“Yes.” Stone swallowed. “Of course I- of course I do. More than anything. But I don’t need-”  

The rest was never spoken. 

Robotnik made his choice in the pause between Stone’s breaths and that was enough. Driven by nothing but instinct and emotion, Robotnik pressed forward in a surge of energy sudden enough to startle even the highly trained agent, and all but shoved him against the nearest wall.

The impact produced an audible thud and several pieces of decor rattled against the wall. They could shatter for all Robotnik cared. He caught Stone’s eye for a fleeting second, wide and wanting, and all subsequent thought promptly dissipated as he crushed their mouths together. 

Stone’s words broke into a sharp little gasp and Robotnik swallowed the sound as their teeth collided, lips still searching for one another in an unruly act of desperation. 

When they finally connected, Robotnik feared he might shatter.

Stone’s mouth was warm and wet, but the simple fact that it was his had every synapse firing in a delicious overwhelm of sensation.   

It was rushed and fervid and everything Robotnik had wanted and everything he knew he should never have.

But that didn’t matter right now.

For once, he couldn’t be bothered to grapple with any sort of logic. Robotnik couldn’t pull away if he wanted to, lost to the feeling of Stone’s lips against his, of their chests pressed together. One hand gripped the back of Stone’s neck as Robotnik tried to draw him closer still.

Stone made a small noise in his throat and the sound reverberated between their joint lips. Both of the agent’s hands came to clutch at Robotnik’s arms, fingers tangled in the closest fabric he could reach, unable to contend with anything other than immediate contact. 

At once, the sudden heat between them was almost unbearable. 

Stone’s head titled just enough to break contact and temporarily restore cognitive function. “Doctor,” he breathed, eyes still closed. 

It wasn't a question by technicality, but the familiar wonderment of his tone registered with Robotnik immediately. 

“What do you want, Stone?” he prompted, sounding just as breathless. “Tell me.” 

“More,” Stone responded quickly.

Robotnik brought one gloved hand to the side of Stone’s face, though he was hardly able to look at him. “More what?” 

He needed to know, unequivocally, that Stone wanted this too. That, separate from all loyalty, he possessed the same gnawing hunger slowly eating away at Robotnik. 

“Anything,” Stone answered, a slight edge of desperation seeping into his once controlled voice. “Whatever you’ll give me.” His eyes then fluttered open, finding Robotnik’s easily. “Will you?”

His pupils were blown wide, nearly eclipsing the iris. Robotnik stared into his pleading gaze. He’d seen it before, in each gentle offering that went refused. In the moment not so different from this one when they’d gotten so close and Robotnik had pushed him away and smothered his desire beneath the touch of another. 

The touch of a man who was dead at the bottom of a lake because he dared to disrespect him in front of Stone. 

Robotnik was stripped bare. He had nothing left but his honesty. It caught in his throat, clawing its way out of him. “Yes,” he uttered helplessly, “I– anything, Stone. Just tell me and I’ll give it to you.” 

Stone’s eyes squeezed shut as he choked out a shaky breath. It sounded as if he’d been holding it for years, or perhaps a lifetime, and Robotnik almost suspected, against all logic, that he had. Stone’s hands, still holding tight to his arms, trembled ever so slightly. Robotnik wanted to ask if he was alright, but Stone’s next words erased any trace of coherent thought.

“Just kiss me again,” he said, “Please.”  

Robotnik acquiesced immediately. 

He cupped Stone’s jaw and returned their lips to one another, more coordinated this time but no less rushed. Stone instantly sighed into his mouth and Robotnik drank it in hungrily as he parted his lips. 

His hands traveled from the nape of Stone’s neck upwards into the short crop of his hair, palm splayed wide to cover the back of his head. He couldn’t feel the soft texture through the fabric of his gloves but the noise garnered from Stone in response was just as enthralling. 

Their lips slid together easily as a familiar synergy emerged in the absence of any real thought. It was as if they were compelled by the same instinct they both possessed in the lab; the wordless passing of a tool, the synchronized nods across a meeting room took a new form in the push and pull of a feverish kiss. 

Robotnik’s head felt fuzzy as he pressed harder against Stone’s mouth. Just one taste and he’d grown insatiable – suddenly, it wasn’t enough. 

His fingers dug into Stone’s jaw, utilizing the grip to tilt the agent’s head back. Stone allowed himself to be manhandled as his head rolled back and his lips parted in invitation. Robotnik wasted no time licking into the warmth of his mouth, savoring the taste of his spit

He ran his tongue along the smooth, straight ridges of Stone’s teeth, instinctively seeking to map the topography of his mouth. To Robotnik’s dismay, his brain struggled to keep up with the overwhelm of sensation. He tried anyway, determined to commit each detail to memory. 

Even if he was never again afforded the opportunity, he wanted to retain the memory of this moment in nothing less than absolute clarity.  

Robotnik continued to lap hungrily into his mouth before pulling back to press another firm kiss to the crease of Stone’s lips with enough force to push his head flush against the wall. 

Without warning, both of Stone’s arms snaked around the back of his neck and Robotnik was suddenly enveloped in a tight, nearly crushing embrace. 

“Oh my god,” Stone mumbled against his mouth, sounding strained. He’d pulled away to breathe, leaving Robotnik with the feeling of each hot breath against his lips. “Doctor.”  

“Stone,” he replied, voice rough. 

“You’re incredible,” Stone went on. It seemed like he wanted to say more, but his gaze caught on the doctor and he went silent, looking up at him with something akin to awe. 

Robotnik was certain that nobody had ever looked at him like that. Nobody except for Stone. 

He was beginning to realize that could be said of most things. 

“An absolute anomaly,” Robotnik let slip under his breath, equally in awe at the sight in front of him. 

His eyes lingered on the image of Stone, flush with something other than the adrenaline of a slaughter and rendered completely pliant under his grasp. Stone’s lips were reddened and slick with their combined spit. Robotnik titled his head to admire the slight sheen as it caught on the light, feeling something sharp twist in his gut in response. 

It didn’t take long for his gaze to shift again, once again caught on the blood that had nearly dried against Stone’s flush skin. Unable to resist, Robotnik reached out and smeared it with his thumb, effectively painting it across Stone’s cheek like a brush stroke. 

Beautiful. 

It was practically picturesque. 

“Look at you,” Robotnik breathed, utterly transfixed. “Do you have any idea what a sight you are?” 

Stone made a vague noise of surprise that promptly devolved into a quiet groan at the praise. He responded by leaning forward to press a kiss against the corner of Robotnik’s mouth, a wordless plea for more. Though Robotnik burned for the taste of him, he couldn’t pull his eyes away. 

How many times had he imagined this image? How many times had he exploited his own remarkable mind just to synthesize the feeling of Stone’s body pressed against his own, of a flushed and wanting expression he never expected to actually see.  

The reality of it was almost too much. 

The depth of Robotnik’s want suddenly felt like the drop off a cliff, like air beneath his feet. He was plunging from above all while he felt himself burning from the inside out. He didn’t know what awaited him at the bottom.

Needing to catch his breath, Robotnik pulled back to widen his view. 

He slid both hands onto Stone’s shoulders to hold him in place. He could feel the prominent muscle even through several layers of fabric.

“Look at you,” Robotnik said again, pitch shifting down an octave. The intent was different this time as the weight of Stone's actions finally hit him in a much different way. “All this strength…you must’ve really been holding back with Lawrence.”

Stone swallowed and nodded slowly. “I was,” he admitted. 

“Of course, you still took care of him in the end. Or, what was it you said–” Robotnik paused for effect despite the words being permanently imprinted in his mind,“–Put down, as I recall?” 

Stone nodded again. His eyes didn’t leave Robotnik’s lips.

“Like an animal. A lame bit of livestock taken to the slaughterhouse to be put out of its misery.” Robotnik smoothed his hands over Stone’s shoulders, digging his fingers in ever so slightly just to feel him shudder. 

“Yes,” Stone agreed, though he looked to be hardly paying attention. “They’re all livestock compared to you. Every last one of them. No one can compare.” 

Ah. 

“And you see death as a fitting punishment for inferiority?” Robotnik inquired. It was a pointed tactic, an attempt to goad him on.

Stone generously took the bait as his expression shifted into something more serious.

“Lawrence was more than just inferior. He relied on fake niceties and manipulation to make up for what he lacked in intelligence. Under that perfectly tailored persona, he was nothing but a pathetic waste of space,” Stone said slowly, emphasizing each word. “I did the world a favor by killing him.”

There it was. 

A grin pulled at Robotnik’s lips while he felt another rush of heat at the agent’s low, assertive tone. It took a tangible effort to keep himself from pulling Stone into him once more. Robotnik resisted; he wanted to see how far this could go. Briefly, the image of Stone reaching for his gun with unmistakable anger resurfaced and Robotnik felt his stomach tighten in reaction to the memory alone.

Maybe it was too far, but–

"Did the world a favor? Or did yourself a favor?" One finger traced the line of Stone's waist, catching on the holster strapped above his belt. "I seem to recall you nearly trying to shoot him again when I informed you of our...involvement. He was nothing but a corpse at that point." 

Stone stiffened. "I would've done a lot worse to him than that." 

"Talk about a mercy kill. All this time, I never knew you were so..." Robotnik drew out the syllable as he caressed a finger along Stone's jaw, "territorial," he settled on. 

He didn't linger on the implications or acknowledge the   

Stone shuddered under the touch. "I am. I always have been," he admitted easily. "But that's not why I killed Lawrence. I already had plenty of justification for that."  

“Is that so?” Robotnik asked. One hand slid down to grasp at his bicep instead, noting the unmistakable firmness. “And yet, you made it so easy for him. Just a few broken fingers before a nice, clean shot to the head to send him off. He was dead before he knew what hit him.” 

Stone’s eyes briefly flickered downward, watching Robotnik squeeze the muscle of his arms. “Are you saying I should’ve dragged it out?” he asked.

Robotnik made a show of shrugging before he leaned in once more. Stone’s eyes fluttered shut automatically and he jutted his chin forward, but Robotnik gently angled him away in favor of hovering over the shell of his ear.

“Didn’t you want to?” he prodded, just above a whisper. “Didn’t he deserve to suffer for the crime of his existence? Wouldn’t it have felt so… gratifying?” 

Against him, Stone shivered and released a hard, shaky breath. When he failed to answer immediately, Robotnik pulled back to observe him. Stone’s eyes remained squeezed shut, lips parted.

“Come on, Agent,” he chided, gripping Stone’s chin between his thumb and pointer finger. “Use your words. You can be honest with me. You enjoyed that little power trip, didn’t you? Watching him struggle helplessly against you, seeing the fear in his eyes – didn't it thrill you?” 

Stone made an incoherent sound that was decidedly not a part of any known lexicon while his fingers grappled at Robotnik’s jacket, trying to pull him closer. Robotnik resisted the weak pull and instead used his hold to shake Stone’s head back and forth. 

“Don’t tell me you need a little encouragement,” he admonished, sounding almost pitying. Internally, he was almost dizzy with need. “Gracious as I am–”

Robotnik carefully eased himself forward until his lips were suspended teasingly over Stone’s. “Let's try this again. Tell me, Stone,” he started, low and breathy, before pausing to brush their lips together fleetingly, “–did you like hearing him scream?”

Stone broke with a strangled groan as he strained his neck for more contact. Robotnik braced his forearm against the agent’s chest to stop him – the gesture didn’t hold any real weight, as established by the ease at which Stone could break free. 

He didn’t, of course. 

“Yes,” Stone finally managed, “I did. It felt like retribution for all the times Lawrence never shut up. But…it was more than that.”

“Oh?”

“I knew you were watching me and I…I liked that. I wanted you to see me hurt him,” Stone whispered seriously, spoken like a sinful confession. “To see what I’d do for you.” 

It may as well have been. Robotnik felt a surge of electricity at the revelation, of the thrilling new angle given to the scene. He was briefly stunned once again, simply by the sheer overload of information still yet to be processed. 

Rather than feeling his heart clench or the gears of his mind grinding to a halt, this time, the knowledge only signaled a dizzying rush of arousal. Robotnik’s muscles tensed as he fought the sudden urge to tear every bit of expensive fabric from Stone’s body. 

“I can’t deny that you put on quite the show,” he said instead, distinctly more strained, “even if you did go easy on him. Of course, a gun was the logical choice. Reliably efficient and effective. Very practical indeed, but I suspect you would’ve managed without any implements. Isn’t that right?” 

This time, Stone didn’t hesitate. “I could’ve killed him with my bare hands. If I was thinking straight, I would’ve snapped his neck. Quick, no cleanup necessary.” 

If it were anyone else, Robotnik would’ve considered the practicality of it with a subdued approval. But it wasn’t anyone else, it never had been, and hearing the casual, cold brutality from Stone’s own mouth was enough to burn Robotnik alive. 

A single thought stood out amongst the noise, a revelation long overdue:

“You’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?” Robotnik said quietly. Awed. Adoring. 

Stone held his gaze through half-lidded eyes. 

“Only for you.”

There was no mistaking his sincerity. 

It sounded like a promise. A vow. 

Like something Robotnik had always wanted and never had. Like something that was finally his. 

Someone who wanted to be his. 

The thought dawned with all the weight of a lifetime spent hopelessly wanting, and it was then that Robotnik broke for a second time. 

The unfortunate truth was that Robotnik could understand being revered for his creations, being respected, even worshiped – but he couldn’t understand being wanted. It was perhaps the singular thing beyond his comprehension. 

He’d been fed a prompt for which there was no script, no method of computing. He was entirely out of his depth – Robotnik had reached the bottom of his descent and found nothing but an ocean of his own neglected desire. Now, he was being made to drown in it. 

Robotnik reached for Stone without thinking, both hands splayed over the sides of his face, and kissed him hard. 

Stone all but melted against him as their lips slid together messily; fast and with a bruising force. His hands clutched at Robotnik’s sides as if it was the only thing keeping him upright. If Robotnik was capable of any coherent thought, he would’ve wondered how he was still standing, but his mind was too far gone.

Stone gasped into his open mouth, filling the empty space with delightful little noises, and Robotnik drank in each sound with a growing hunger. His hands began to roam the expanse of the agent’s body, smoothing the creases of the rumpled fabric and trailing along the exposed skin of his wrists and hands just to feel the heat of his flesh.

When Robotnik’s fingers reached his throat, tugging teasingly at his collar, Stone began to writhe against him. Their lips broke apart for a fleeting moment. 

“Please,” Stone said breathlessly, “Doctor, I want-” 

The rest of the plea devolved into a quiet gasp as Robotnik dipped his head to press a biting kiss to the column of Stone’s throat. Meanwhile, he thumbed the top button of his shirt in a wordless suggestion. When Stone didn’t bat his hand away and instead titled his head back, exposing his neck, Robotnik began undoing each button with deft fingers. 

Subsequent was the realization that he didn’t possess nearly the patience for the task and quickly switched to what would more aptly be described as tearing it open.

“Oh,” Stone gasped as Robotnik’s hands were suddenly on his exposed chest. 

His once pristine dress shirt hung open on either side along with his suit jacket, which Robotnik swiftly tugged from his shoulders and discarded into a pile on the floor. He opened his eyes only briefly to take in the sight before returning his mouth to the new expanse of skin, licking a strip along his prominent collarbone to feel the outline of the bone underneath.

No hardware. No sturdy metal frames, no wires. Just soft, warm skin and muscles that tensed and loosened as he mouthed at them. He felt no trace of disgust. 

“Doctor,” Stone urged, the word choked, “Touch me, please.” 

Robotnik was already touching him, but he was in no position to deny the neediness of his request. Not when Stone had been so good, so beyond his imaginings in every conceivable way. 

He pressed one last kiss to the dip in Stone’s jugular before pulling back. Assessing him from a distance, Stone’s bare chest was the picture of human perfection – something Robotnik once believed to be an inherent oxymoron – with smooth skin and the visible suggestion of muscle sculpting his form. 

“God,” Robotnik muttered aloud, once again in disbelief. He’d seen Stone shirtless before, but only as a result of circumstance. He didn’t allow himself to look. This was different. This was for him. There wasn’t a single other thing worth looking at. “You’re indescribable. You’re…”

Robotnik was lost for words, but it didn’t matter. Stone let out a low whine at the mere sound of his voice and bucked forward to press their hips flush against one another. Through the layers of fabric, Robotnik could feel the insistent heat of Stone’s own arousal. 

Remembering the agent’s request, Robotnik used what little brainpower he still possessed and shifted to grind against him properly. Stone reacted immediately; he threw his head back with a quiet moan and grappled for the collar of Robotnik’s jacket. 

“Off,” Stone mumbled, somewhat unintelligible. 

“Hmm?” 

Stone inhaled and straightened himself, lifting the hem of the jacket. “Will you take it off?” he asked quietly. “I’d like– I want to touch you. If you’ll let me.” 

The memory of every time he shook Stone off, every deliberate step taken to distance them threatened to resurface at once. Robotnik smothered them down. 

“Touch me,” he said in defiance of himself, burying the past beneath this new moment. “Whatever you’d like.”  

He meant it.

The present was stronger than his past. Alarm bells still blared inside his skull, but what did those matter when the call of Stone’s wanting eyes far overpowered every instinct telling him to pull away? 

Those eyes softened in front of him and Stone was leaning in again, kissing him with a sudden gentleness. He pulled back to press their foreheads together. 

“Thank you,” Stone whispered into the space between their lips. 

Robotnik wanted to pretend he didn’t know why, but he suspected he knew very well. They wouldn’t talk about it. Stone’s words were carefully chosen in that way. 

Unable to respond verbally, Robotnik simply began shrugging the jacket over his shoulders. He stopped when Stone’s hands came to cover his, gently pushing them aside as he took over. He eased the jacket off carefully but with relative haste, then did the same to the blazer underneath.

Hands on the collar of his shirt, Stone paused. 

“I’ve dreamed of this so many times,” he said, “but I never imagined actually having the chance.”

Robotnik had closed his eyes when Stone began undressing him, but he opened them again at once. 

“You have?” he asked, trying to keep any betraying notes of surprise from his voice. 

Stone responded by pressing his lower half harder against Robotnik. “Of course I have. I think about you all the time, Doctor. Sometimes, you’re all I think about.”

Slowly, his fingers started to work at the buttons of his shirt with far more care and precision than Robotnik had managed. Each brush of his fingers against the bare skin of his chest felt like an electrical shock. 

He closed his eyes again. “I’ve thought about this, too,” Robotnik admitted, barely above a whisper. 

Stone’s hands faltered for a brief second before he appeared to compose himself once more. Robotnik allowed his undone shirt to slide off his arms and onto the floor, feeling the distinctly cool air against his unshielded skin. 

Two warm hands gripped his waist, pulling them flush together. 

“Really?” Stone asked, a little tentative. Like he didn’t dare to believe it. “About me?”

Robotnik picked up his pace, now grinding against Stone in earnest. The contact was beginning to feel insufficient. He could hear his breath hitching and stuttering with each bit of pleasure derived from the friction.

“Yes, you,” Robotnik hissed as he was struck by a particularly pleasurable movement. “Who else? Who else is worthy of my attention? You said it yourself, Stone, the rest of these mouthbreathers are nothing but livestock. Worthless drones to society. But you’re not like them–” 

Stone had never been like them. He wasn’t sure why he’d never seen it before. 

Robotnik paused to angle his head into the crook of Stone’s neck. Without warning, he sunk his teeth through the resistance of the soft skin. Stone let out a gasping sort of groan while his fingers dug into Robotnik’s side almost painfully. He didn’t mind – it only brought them closer together. His teeth in Stone’s skin, Stone’s fingers piercing into his own. 

Robotnik loosened his jaw and brandished his tongue over the bite, soothing him. 

“No one else can do the things you do,” he continued between sharp kisses. “No one else is smart enough, capable enough – but you’re exemplary. You always have been. That’s why you were assigned to me, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Stone gasped. “It was.”

Robotnik hummed against his skin. “You were at the top of your regime. The best of the best, they said. An outstanding soldier. I was skeptical, of course, but you proved yourself every time.” 

It felt like a lifetime ago now, but Robotnik still recalled the first time he set his gaze upon Agent Stone. He was younger then, his hair tightly buzzed with evidence he routinely maintained a clean shave to his face, and Robotnik extrapolated every bit of information he needed from the sight of him alone.

Another mindless government bootlicker, he determined, a dime-a-dozen soldier.  

It was, upon reflection, possibly the greatest miscalculation of his career. 

“Your determination, your persistence, it’s–” Robotnik grappled for what he was still coming to understand, “–practically inconceivable.”

He was no longer talking in generalizations, but of Stone’s ungodly patience for him. The only one who had ever truly put up with him, who had given him any evidence that his existence was a welcome one. 

“Not to me,” Stone interjected, breathing heavily. “I would do anything for you. Anything at all.” 

“You’re out of your mind, Stone,” Robotnik admonished, but the words were coated in blatant adoration. His teeth scraped along Stone’s shoulder. “Perfectly deranged.” 

Robotnik wedged one hand between them, hesitating only slightly before he pressed the heel of his palm to Stone’s clothed erection. 

“Oh, fuck–” Stone keened. His head bowed forward into the crook of Robotnik’s neck. “Doctor.”  

“You’re perfect, Stone,” he said again, just for the sake of it. He wanted to scream the sentiment into the universe simply so it might exist outside of himself. He couldn’t contain the magnitude of his affection. 

Stone merely whimpered, clearly overcome, and there had never been a more delightful sound.

He had barely touched Stone and already he was squirming against him, trying to grind into his palm. Robotnik briefly considered denying him just to hear more of those pitiful, wanting noises – perhaps Stone would even beg – but he had spent more than enough time denying them both. 

Now, Robotnik wanted to give him everything. 

“Come on,” he crooned as his fingers settled at Stone’s belt. “Off with these nice clothes.” 

Stone let out a shallow groan and nodded against his shoulder. “Yes, Doctor. Anything you want.” 

Robotnik undid the belt buckle easily but paused as his gaze caught on the gun holster sitting just above his waist. It was the same one that ended Lawrence’s life. He caressed the grip with his free hand. 

“No need for this anymore,” he said. “Right, Agent?” 

There was a certain allure to seeing Stone armed, though Robotnik had always known he was. Knowing, of course, was different than seeing. A different thing entirely. 

“No,” Stone agreed easily, “Take it. I don’t need it.” 

Robotnik pulled the gun free of its holster. He turned it over in his hands, examining it from several angles, feeling its weight. It was cold and heavy. He imagined what Stone must have felt, holding the muzzle to Lawrence’s head. 

The gun carried no trace of its slaughter, however; the barrel was spotless and smelled of disinfectant. Stone had clearly elected to clean it before himself. The immersion wasn’t there. It felt far too strange in the doctor’s hands, an unfamiliar tool to someone like him, but Stone simply allowed him to pretend without comment. 

When Robotnik finally lifted his gaze, he found Stone looking not at the gun, but at him like he was somehow cherishing the sight of his bloodshot eyes and tousled, unkept hair. He didn’t see what could possibly be worth remembering there, but Robotnik found he wasn’t compelled to question it. There were far more pressing matters at hand. 

Namely, he needed to touch Stone, and he needed to do it now. 

In a fleeting instance of rationality, Robotnik discreetly slid the gun onto the nearby coffee table rather than tossing to the floor. He looked at Stone once more, taking in his flushed face and desperate eyes, and inelegantly reached into his open pants to finally take hold of him. 

“Yes, Doctor,” Stone urged in a high, tight voice Robotnik had never heard. “Yes–”

Admittedly, his grip was verging on too tight, too fast, but Robotnik was beginning to lose focus through the haze of his own arousal. Stone didn’t seem to mind his lack of technique and immediately took to shifting his hips forward to meet each stroke, though it appeared almost involuntary. 

With both hands now free, Robotnik unhooked the strap of the holster and finally tugged Stone’s pants down to his ankles along with his boxers. Stone stepped out of them with shaky legs before hastily kicking off his shoes, as well.

Robotnik let his eyes roam the agent’s body, now fully exposed, with no shortage of awe. 

“Beautiful,” he said quietly, a genuine expression of admiration. 

Stone’s hips stuttered at the praise and he let out a breathy whine, clutching at Robotnik’s bare hip with a force that threatened to bruise. His mouth opened and closed futilely as he struggled to say anything coherent.

“Please– can I touch you like this?” Stone managed after a few tries, still panting. His open palm hovered over Robotnik’s still-clothed erection. “Is that okay?”

Robotnik swallowed with difficulty and nodded. “I want you to,” he added for the sake of absolute clarity. 

The rhythm of his hand faltered the second Stone began undoing his belt and he felt the first touch of warm, rough skin against his straining cock. Stone gripped him gently at first, as if waiting for Robotnik to pull away; when he let out a choked gasp, instinctively tightening the grip of his own hand, Stone’s fingers wrapped around him fully.

Robotnik felt himself swaying on his feet with the new overwhelm of sensation and reached out to brace himself against the wall. His face landed next to Stone’s, making him privy to each quiet, shuddering breath and involuntary sound. 

Robotnik could feel the pull on his vocal cords, the tightness in his throat, and knew that the evidence of what he tried for so long to hide was threatening to erupt from him. He exhaled hard through his nose to avoid gasping with each new point of contact between them. 

He’d been touched before; recently, even, by his solitary standards. Nothing about this was inherently novel, yet Robotnik was certain he’d never felt like this before. 

It didn’t take a genius to figure out why.

Fighting the urge to devolve into incoherence, Robotnik continued to run his tongue along Stone’s neck. He scraped his canines along the glands and bit down on his shoulders, hard, before pulling back to press his tongue against the indentation left by his own teeth. 

Robotnik managed to choke back what was sure to be an embarrassing noise as Stone tightened his fist, thumb swiping at the gathering wetness, but not before letting slip an utterance of his name.

“S-Stone,” he gasped, face buried in the agent’s neck. It sounded pitiful to his own ears. He clamped down hard on Stone’s shoulder in retaliation, teeth digging in sharply. 

Stone lurched at the sensation and Robotnik pulled back at once, an apology primed on his lips, but the loud groan that followed silenced him.

“Doctor,” Stone started before quickly pausing for a breath. His eyes squeezed shut, then opened once more. “I need you, please. I want to feel you.” 

Robotnik focused on maintaining his pace despite his immediate confusion following the request. 

“I don’t–” He shook his head against Stone’s neck, not bothering to raise it. “Clarify.” 

“I need you closer.” Stone gripped his hip tightly. “I – ah– want to feel you inside of me. Please, Doctor.” 

Robotnik’s muscles tensed as a wave of pleasure slammed into him, a new depth of want previously unknown to him. They were words he’d only ever expected to hear from his own contrived imaginings of Stone, the version tucked secretively in the back of his mind – the one he knew was falsified, distorted by his own lurid desires. Not Stone at all.

Now, spoken by the genuine article, the words sounded different. There was an emotion behind them Robotnik could never quite manage in his fantasies. One he deliberately held back from. He wouldn’t let himself go that far, even in the privacy of his mind. 

“Oh,” Robotnik breathed. His hand subconsciously stilled. A moment of rationality bled through, “We don’t have anything to – I don’t want to hurt you.” 

One of Stone’s hands crept unseen to the back of Robotnik’s head, threading through the messy strands. 

“Hurt me,” Stone whispered against his ear, “I can take it.” 

Robotnik groaned in spite of himself and the way Stone’s words felt a touch too real in the context of it all.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Trust me, Doctor, I know what I want,” Stone said, slowing his strokes. “Will you let me have it?” 

“Yes,” Robotnik replied honestly, already breathless.

Stone hummed and Robotnik could practically hear the accompanying smile through the noise alone. Without further discussion, Stone grabbed him by the wrist and led him to the foot of a spacious, comfortable-looking sofa chair. He lowered himself into the seat carefully and pulled both legs up at the knees. 

“Kiss me,” Stone demanded, though Robotnik knew it to be more akin to a plea. 

Insubordination aside – it was up for debate whether Stone was truly still in his charge – Robotnik leaned forward, both hands braced against the plush arms of the chair, and captured his lips without question.

Hesitance gone in the face of what was now on the horizon, they kissed without thought. 

Stone licked eagerly into his mouth and groaned softly, each little sound buzzing against their lips, and Robotnik’s nerves pulsed in anticipation. Far too quickly, however, Stone eased away from him again. He watched as the agent raised a tentative finger to his own bottom lip, slick with spit, before slipping it inside his mouth.

Robotnik was tempted to ask what he was doing, or perhaps demand to resume their previous activity, but his brain quickly caught up when Stone pulled away a now-wet finger and guided it between his bent knees.

He was denied the view when Stone’s unoccupied arm snaked around his neck and pulled him into another kiss, this one slow and firm. Robotnik didn’t protest. Instead, he reached blindly until his fingers grazed Stone’s shaft, stroking him at the same pace.

“Not too fast, please,” Stone mumbled into the kiss, not breaking away fully to speak, “I won’t last.” 

Robotnik shifted his head in something resembling a nod despite both their eyes being closed. He neglected to touch himself at all for the same reason. He’d subsisted off fantasies for too long – the mental image of what Stone was doing was nearly enough to get him off without any added stimulation. 

It was the very real feeling of Stone’s lips moving against his, the scruff of his beard, fingernails lightly scraping his neck, that kept Robotnik tethered to reality. They continued to kiss until Stone’s lips, partially open, pressed limply against his while the agent released short, punctuated breaths into his mouth. 

Robotnik pulled back just enough to speak.

“Stone,” he said, something of a warning.

With his free hand, Robotnik reached between them to grab hold of Stone’s wrist. The agent made an inquisitive little sound that drew into a low whine as Robotnik used his hold to press Stone’s fingers into himself, effectively controlling the speed and depth.  

“Oh- that’s good,” Stone groaned, immediately relenting control of his own arm. “So good.” 

Robotnik grunted in reply. He maintained a slow, even pace with relative ease, but found he couldn’t effectively utilize both of his hands at once without ruining the rhythm of one set of strokes. 

“Touch yourself for me,” Robotnik instructed. He shivered as the fingers in his hair disappeared and he felt them brush against his own as Stone took over stroking himself.  “Very good.”

He made his approval known in a hard, fast thrust of Stone’s wrist that had the agent straining forward with a sharp cry. 

“Doctor,” Stone gasped in return. 

Though he didn’t take back control, Robotnik didn’t miss the way his hips started to shift forward to meet his own fingers.

“Impatient,” he observed, somewhat teasingly, “but still good.” 

Stone shook his head, eyes screwed shut. “I’m ready.” 

Robotnik’s hand automatically stilled, but he didn’t let go. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Stone insisted with a low groan that could’ve been born of frustration or pleasure, “I’ve waited years for this and I need you now, Doctor.” 

Robotnik startled when two muscular legs wrapped around his waist and yanked him closer before the force of Stone’s words could truly hit him. One hand shot out to brace himself, ensuring he didn’t fall completely forward, while he attempted to regain his footing against Stone’s forceful hold.

“Okay,” Robotnik relented dumbly, arousal heightened to the point of affecting his cognitive function. “Yes, alright.” 

He fumbled with his own belt and slacks that had yet to be fully removed, all but forcing them down his thighs in a manner that was sure to wrinkle later. He didn’t care about that or the fact that he was completely exposed in front of another for the first time in decades. 

Not when the most exquisite man in the world was looking at him with stars in his eyes. 

Stone smoothed both palms over Robotnik’s lean thighs – he didn’t possess nearly the same sculpted form – in a way that felt almost revering. “You’re stunning, Doctor,” Stone breathed quietly, “I want you so badly. Oh my God.” 

Robotnik’s face flushed deeply and his skin prickled under the intensity of Stone’s gaze. He turned to the side, instinctively shielding his face from observation, but Stone was just as quick to reach out. 

He didn’t grab Robotnik, didn’t force him to look – one hand softly grazed his cheek, nothing more than the suggestion of a touch. 

“I won’t stare,” Stone promised. “Please, just let me look at you.” 

“Evidence suggests otherwise,” Robotnik grumbled, but slowly returned his head to its neutral position. 

“I’ll close my eyes if you’d like. Or we can turn off the lights.”

Robotnik immediately detested the idea with a shake of his head. “No. I want to see you.”

The legs around his waist tightened. Robotnik hissed at the sensation of a spit-slick hand wrapping around him, spreading the wetness along his length. 

Stone gazed up at him from below. “Watch while you fuck me, then.” 

“Stone–”

Robotnik’s hips pitched forward of their own volition as his eyes squeezed shut, dizzy with want. 

Gripping himself around the base with shaking fingers, Robonik’s hands had never felt more and less like his own. He was being compelled by a desire more human than himself; the once-mechanical precision of his fingers was gone, degraded into a set of trembling, imperfect hands that shook with the magnitude of his want. 

When those same hands suddenly reached for the hem of one glove and carefully eased it down his knuckles, exposing his skin to the air, Robotnik didn’t fight himself. 

He dug into Stone’s thigh with the still-gloved hand, making room for himself, and carefully aligned himself with the other. Easing in slowly, the enveloping heat was immediately overwhelming and Robotnik groaned, low and unrestrained and desperate.

Sweat was beading along his hairline. His other hand landed on Stone’s hip, palm sticky against the smooth skin. He could hear both of their breaths coming in quick, short pants. 

It was visceral, grotesquely intimate, and Robotnik once again wondered if this was where he would die. 

It was an infinitely better fate than a bullet, he decided just as quickly. 

“Hey,” Stone said, perhaps sensing his overwhelm, “Come here.” 

Robotnik was beckoned forward into what he implicitly understood to be a kiss; this one soft and heated. Stone grunted a little as the position brought them closer while Robotnik channelled his focus into anticipating the movement of their lips, relaxing into the kiss.

When he experimentally rolled his hips a few moments later, Stone whined from the back of his throat and tangled his fingers into Robotnik’s messy hair, urging him on. 

Robotnik obliged, picking up a gentle pace. His nerves crackled with instant pleasure. 

“That feels so good, Doctor,” Stone encouraged. “Ah– You look so good like this.” 

“You said you wouldn’t stare,” Robotnik recalled with effort. Any bite to the words was dampened by the distinct strain to his voice.

“Sorry,” Stone said, despite not sounding remorseful in the slightest.

Robotnik folded himself over until his head curled into the crook of Stone’s neck, denying him any glimpse of his face. He wouldn’t leave him completely wanting, though – No, Robotnik generously grazed his teeth over Stone’s neck, nipping at the taunt skin. 

“Fuck,” Stone breathed as he mouthed at his jaw. The agent’s fingers tugged at his hair. “Bite me, Doctor. Fuck. Do it hard.” 

It didn’t feel like something he should do, but Stone sounded so captivatingly good that Robotnik couldn’t think to deny him. He drove a hard thrust forward at the same time his teeth sunk into the sensitive skin of Stone’s neck, just below his jaw. 

Stone’s thighs tensed as he cried out in some blend of pain and bliss, squeezing Robotnik’s waist. 

“Yes, yes,” he panted, “I want you to bruise me, or– scar me, make me bleed–”

Robotnik bit back a growl and sucked at the tender mark, ensuring it would be visible when he pulled away. He wouldn’t bite hard enough to pierce the skin; the risk of infection was still greater than the lust to see Stone’s flushed skin painted with another color. 

“I don’t–” Robotnik paused, hips stuttering slightly as he continued to grind into him in long, deep motions, “I don’t know how I resisted you for so long,” he confessed without thinking. 

“I don’t know how I ever resisted you,” Stone retorted with a short, airy laugh interspersed with sharp little breaths. 

Robotnik merely groaned and pushed himself further until he was flush with Stone’s chest and blanketed by the heat of his damp skin. Normally, the texture of skin alone was enough to trigger a wave of repulsion in Robotnik – there were too many markers of life carried in the mere flesh of a being – but even sticky with sweat and the slick evidence of Stone’s arousal trapped between their bodies, he found none. 

The feeling of Stone’s body was intoxicatingly human. Every dip and curve and hard line of muscle felt like something to be explored, to be cataloged. Robnotnik relished the steady beat of his heart pulsing in his neck, the knowledge that they were still alive and together and their enemy was not.

He pressed his nose into the crook of Stone’s neck and inhaled deeply. His skin carried a faint scent of bleach that mingled with his cologne and something far more organic. Robotnik hoped the scent would linger in his nose long after he pulled away.

“Harder, please,” Stone begged as he held him close, fingernails teasing along Robotnik’s shoulders and back. “Be rough with me. Whatever you like, I can take it, Doctor, just-”

“I know you can,” Robotnik interjected. “Oh– You’ve been so good. Beyond all expectations.”

A sharp whine pierced the atmosphere as Robotnik shifted on knee onto the chair for leverage, briefly driving him deeper before he began rocking his hips in earnest. His own punctuated breaths grew audibly labored as Robotnik repeatedly pulled back almost completely before slamming into him once more.

“Yes, please, please, please,” Stone begged incoherently in between broken moans, the pleasure evident in the elevated pitch of his voice. “Doctor–”

Robotnik didn’t know what he was asking for, if anything, so he continued to drive into Stone with long, hard thrusts that pressed him further into the plush seat. He tried to steady his own breathing to no avail, unsure of how much longer he could last.

At some point, Robotnik’s eyes had squeezed shut without his notice and one hand pressed into the space beside Stone’s head to support his body weight. He only became aware of the fact when one of Stone’s hands suddenly brushed against the heel of his palm. Robotnik’s eyes snapped open in time to witness Stone wiggle his hand underneath and tangle their fingers together.

He stared at the sight of their intertwined hands, feeling the insistent pressure of Stone’s fingers between his own, and felt his chest clench almost painfully. 

It was so shockingly intimate, so very normal, that Robotnik’s mind nearly stopped. 

It didn’t matter that Stone had confessed to an undying loyalty, that they were currently engaged in undeniably emotional intercourse. Somehow, the sight of his bare hand held tightly by another, fingers intertwined and blending into one another in a mix of appendages was infinitely more difficult to fathom. 

Robotnik didn’t feel any more human than he did before. His body still wasn’t quite his own, the sight of his thin, knobby fingers just as uncanny as they’d always been. He certainly didn’t feel normal. 

And yet – Stone’s fingers appeared to slot perfectly between his own. They were different, yes – Stone’s hands were slightly smaller, his skin darker and less prominently aged – but there was no blatant distinction otherwise. One didn’t appear human where the other did not. 

Whatever Robotnik was, they were the same. 

Unsure what to do with the revelation, the seismic shift to his fundamental perception of himself, Robotnik simply blinked at the image once more, then surged forward to capture Stone’s lips in a desperate, messy kiss. 

Though Stone was unaware of what he’d done, he returned the kiss just as eagerly. Robotnik groaned softly, hips faltering slightly as their tongues slid against one another in a mess of teeth and spit. 

Stone broke away with a moan all too quickly when Robotnik shifted to resume stroking him in short, quick drags of his wrist. 

“You feel so good, Stone, I–” Robotnik choked back a groan and swallowed to reign himself back from the edge, “I won’t last much longer.” 

“Me neither,” Stone confessed. “I’m so close, Doctor.”

It was all the confirmation Robotnik needed to leverage what strength and energy he had to fuck Stone without compunction, his movements hard and fast. Desperation curled hotly in his stomach, muscles tensing and releasing with each new current of pleasure. 

Robotnik forced his eyes open as he sought out the object of his desire. Stone’s eyelids fluttered shut on the impact of each thrust, though the agent appeared to be looking at him through a half-lidded gaze. 

“Yes, Doctor, yes,” Stone continued to babble, lost to the throes of pleasure. “You’re incredible, you’re…”

Something glistened against his skin. Tears were collecting in the corners of Stone’s eyes. As he squeezed them shut, one bead was severed from the gathering pool and began to slide down his cheek. 

Robnotnik leaned forward and licked it from Stone’s skin before it reached his chin. It was wet and salty and tasted a little of Stone himself. Robotnik wondered what the rest of him tasted like.

“Doctor,” Stone chanted again, higher in pitch.

He squeezed Stone’s hand a little tighter.

“Say my name.” 

Robotnik didn’t know where the sudden desire came from, but it was there all the same. 

“Rob–” Stone started, uncertain, but Robotnik quickly cut him off.

“No.” 

“Oh,” Stone breathed as the realization dawned on him. “Ivo.”

There it was.

A broken groan wracked Robotnik’s shaky form as he was overtaken by a wave of unfamiliar gratification. He pressed his sweaty forehead to Stone’s. 

“Again. Please,” Robotnik gasped in a stilted plea. 

Stone was never one to deny him. “Ivo, Ivo…” he continued in an endless loop, rushed but with care to each sound.

On Stone’s tongue, the name was barely recognizable as his own. It wasn’t spit from his mouth like bitter medicine or whispered like some great, terrible thing. It wasn’t weaponized for his discomfort. 

No – Stone spoke it softly, let it spill from his kiss-bitten lips like a prayer. 

Robotnik felt it in his chest, in the part of him that was still young, still wanting. The part that was small and foolish and still hungered for any reason to believe he was not what he knew himself to be. With age he had grown exhausted, become something else entirely, and perhaps it was too late to unbury that soft little thing he once was, but it felt nice anyway. 

It felt nice. He couldn’t quite describe it. Robotnik suddenly wasn’t sure he’d ever felt nice. 

His hips stuttered forward, thrusts becoming erratic and losing rhythm. “Yes, that’s– fuck, Stone. You’re so good, please–” 

Stone’s thighs clenched his waist while his upper body writhed beneath Robotnik. He stroked the agent a little faster, feeling him approaching release. Eyes closed, Stone came with a shuddering cry into his fist, Robotnik’s name still on his lips.

Robotnik kept his open only to witness Stone coming undone, knowing he would resent himself if he didn’t look, and what a sight it was – damp strands of both of their hair, no long slicked back, stuck to his forehead in a partial obstruction of the view of Stone’s cloudy eyes and reddened face. Evidence of tears stained his cheeks. Below that, Lawrence’s blood was dry and finally flaking away.

The visual and all it stood for was too much. Robotnik knew it would be. He knew it would be the end. 

His fingers tightened around Stone’s in a painful grip as Robontik was pushed over the edge with a strangled, pitiful sound entirely unlike himself. His hips were driven flush against Stone as he rode out the complete overwhelm of pleasure and intimacy erupting through every nerve.

Robotnik was still panting when he came back into himself several moments later. He blinked to reacquaint himself with reality, then promptly collapsed forward onto Stone. 

Stone made a small noise at the impact and gently shifted until Robotnik’s limp form slotted into place next to him, still partially draped across his chest but no longer crushing. A pair of familiar arms encircled his back and held him tightly. Robotnik stuck his nose into Stone’s neck and inhaled deeply against the damp skin. His mind was oddly quiet. 

It was unclear how much time passed before Robotnik caught his breath. The sky was still dark, the water still calm. Nobody had come for them. 

“Doctor,” Stone said eventually, shattering the stillness. Robotnik waited for him to go on but he never did.

Stone’s arms had loosened around him and Robotnik could sense the hesitancy in the way the agent’s fingers hovered over his bare skin, not quite touching but refusing to pull away completely. He didn’t want to let go, but perhaps he felt he should. 

Robotnik merely shifted his weight. He was becoming increasingly aware of the damp stickiness between them and the fact that his palm was all but adhered to Stone’s waist with sweat. Carefully peeling it away, he silently flexed his fingers a few times. 

“What?” Robotnik mumbled when it was clear Stone wanted to say something. 

Stone sighed and Robotnik felt the air leave his lungs. 

“Permission to ask something foolish?” 

Robotnik tensed above him. “Just say it, Stone.” 

Stone hesitated for several uneasy seconds before gathering himself. 

"Does this actually change anything?" he asked quietly. Blatant, no embellishments. Like he already knew the answer. “Will you stay?”

“Oh,” was Robotnik’s immediate response, followed by a silence devoid of all previous comfort. 

It wasn't the right thing to say.

The arms holding him in place disappeared at once as Stone rushed to clarify. “I know I can’t ask that of you, or I shouldn’t, but I just…need to know that I did. I won’t beg you not to leave so, please, just be honest with me.” 

Robotnik didn’t have to look Stone in the eyes to know the expression he wore. He could hear it in his voice alone. It was the same one that begged Robotnik to hurt him – I can take it, he’d said. This was far removed from the original context, however, and the implication churned Robotnik’s stomach.

It was ironic, really, to be offered an easy out whilst clinging to the culmination of his desire, the evidence of him marking every inch of their still-nude bodies. The only thing more absurd was the idea that this could be, in any way, undone. Robotnik could still choose to turn and leave and the bruises on his hips would eventually fade, but the memory of Stone's fingers pressing into his skin as he cried never would. Even if he left, Robotnik would never be able to forget what it was like, in that moment, to have everything he wanted. 

To have or to be haunted; those were his options.

There was no going back. Robotnik had already been fundamentally altered. Rewired. Truthfully, the barricades he steeled himself behind had been softened and weathered from the moment Stone first looked upon him with a familiar, calculating eye and Robotnik understood that, for once, he was being observed in return. That someone was trying to understand him. And now, what was left between them?

Robotnik had made his choice. He made it the moment their lips collided, or the bullet dislodged its chamber, or perhaps something else entirely. Truthfully, it didn’t matter. There was no strength in him left to resist. 

“I’ll stay,” Robotnik said. The words came out muffled against the skin of Stone’s shoulder, a little hard to hear, but still there and still honest. 

It was still unjustifiable in his mind. Everything about them was a web of uncertainties and points of contention that Robotnik couldn’t fathom putting to rest, but he wasn't the only one who wanted this. The desire lived in both of them.

Robotnik still couldn’t surrender to himself – and maybe he never would – but he could give in to Stone. He already had.

In spite of everything, a cool sense of relief trickled into his limbs, like a coil slowly unwinding. 

Robotnik considered the feeling and, for the second time, determined that it was nice. 

Meanwhile, Stone didn’t respond in words; he simply cradled the back of Robotnik’s head and held it under his chin. Robotnik recognized the distinct sensation of Stone breathing in the scent of his hair, but he elected not to mention it. For now. 

“That doesn’t mean we should stay here, though,” Robotnik said after several moments, feeling the need to clarify. “The point about fleeing still stands.” 

At that, Stone finally moved to pull himself upright and Robotnik graciously rolled over to allow him mobility. “Right – yeah,” Stone said, rubbing his eyes. 

Stone stood and dressed remarkably quickly despite seeming thoroughly wrecked just minutes ago, while Robotnik didn’t feel nearly as equipped for movement. His arm ached from supporting himself and his legs felt terribly unsteady. He didn’t protest when Stone helpfully gathered his scattered clothing and returned them to him in a heap. 

Robotnik didn’t thank him, but he allowed their fingers to brush during the exchange without flinching. 

Once redressed, Stone waited patiently at the foot of the door. Despite his now unstyled hair and the series of angry marks visible above his collar, he looked infuriating put together. Robotnik made a show of smoothing down a few wayward strands of Stone’s hair, albeit unsuccessfully, before donning both control gloves once more. His fingers still trembled ever so slightly 

“No time to waste,” Robotnik said, as if he hadn’t just taken a prolonged detour for the sake of ravaging his agent. “I seem to recall something about taking care of Lawrence’s car?” 

In turn, Stone nodded as if he hadn’t just been ravaged to the point of tears. “Yes, sir. I devised a plan to plant it off a highway route near the residence of his collegeue.” 

Just like that, they were back. Somehow, everything and nothing had changed.

“Go on, then.” Robotnik gently prodded at the small of his back, urging Stone out the door. “Lead the way, Agent.” 

“You’re coming?” Stone asked, still a little surprised. 

Robotnik nodded and picked up his pace, resuming in the direction of their vehicles. Stone’s footsteps crunched behind him. “Damage control,” he said simply. “Someone needs to ensure you don’t get trigger-happy again. Satisfying as it was, let’s save that little trick for another day. Perhaps when we’re in some actual danger.”   

“Satisfying?” Stone echoed, and Robotnik knew exactly what he was alluding to.

He ignored both the comment and the sudden warmth of his face. “Of course, I have several improvements to make to your plan, as well, so it would be best to discuss those in a timely manner, starting with…” he continued.

Robotnik wasn’t sure where the sudden burst of energy came from. He felt strangely reinvigorated despite his exhaustion. Perhaps it was nothing more than the residual adrenaline crackling in his veins, but Robotnik no longer felt as though he was dangling in the void of his own consciousness, just waiting for the inevitable. 

When Stone didn’t respond to his proposed amendments, Robotnik threw a glance over his shoulder to check that he was actually listening. Rather than an acknowledgement, he was met with only a soft, stupid look and a sudden urge to smother it in a kiss before the rest of the world had any chance to see it. 

“Pay attention,” Robotnik said instead, “and wipe that stupid look off your face.” 

He turned away before Stone could see the infectious grin now tugging at his own lips. He traced a finger along his bottom lip just to feel the way the corner curved upwards ever so slightly. His lips felt warm, a little wet, and perhaps even a little human. 

Whatever he was, Robotnik knew he was alive. 

He was alive and so was Stone, and maybe they were both human, or something else entirely. 

Robotnik decided that just for now, it didn’t matter. Not when they’d found belonging in each other. Not when there was an entire lifetime just beyond the woods. 

They were alive and together, and maybe that was all that would ever matter. 

 

Notes:

and now they're off to do whatever they want forever <3

anywayy thank you all so much for reading <3 your comments have been amazing, i appreciate it SO much. and esp the friends & mutuals that really hyped me up while writing this. hopefully this was a somewhat fulfilling resolution to five chapters of angst and miscommunication lmao

i'll be back one day with more stob content im sure. might be next week, might be 2027, who really knows

Notes:

my tumblr is @yeehaw-bot come talk stob w me :]

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 8 of stobotnik nonsense