Chapter Text
“Oh, and an absolute upset win for Jet the Hawk!”
The roar of the packed stadium nearly drowned out the announcer’s speaker-amplified voice, briefly deafening the victorious green Rogue. He didn’t mind, though; a little tinnitus was worth it for the look on that dork hedgehog’s face. Beautiful.
“I still can’t believe it, folks! What a stunning finish! And it looks like Sonic the Hedgehog can’t believe it, either. You can’t win them all, hero! Not on the track!”
Thunderous boos issued from the stands, none of which registered to the day’s victor. The long crest of feathers on Jet’s head rose, fluttering in the drag as he took his victory lap. He blew kisses to every verdant knot in the crowd, swooping in close to the guardrails to catch well-deserved tributes thrown by his most loyal fans: flowers, stuffed animals, lacy pan—
Jet dropped his gifts with a shrill squawk of a laugh. Thank Gaia his beak couldn’t go red, like all those mammals on the circuit. Please, please let the track cameras have been at the wrong angle....
Drifting in on his left, his prickly rival’s old blue-and-white car—hah! A car, against Extreme Gear? And one from the last Grand Prix? No wonder that loser would soon stand below him on the podium—edged up until Sonic rode alongside the grinning Babylon Rogue.
“Well, well,” Sonic said in that constantly amused, infuriatingly unbothered voice, “I guess sometimes you can take me in a race.”
Not that Jet wanted the blue hedgehog’s praise, but his chest feathers ruffled up just a smidge. He veered towards the coasting car, kicking into a tight aileron roll overtop of the clunky vehicle. The crowd’s volume ticked up at their true hero’s stunning acrobatic display.
Reaching out, Jet took hold of the Speed Star’s side panel. He leaned in, letting his Type-J keep his feet while his elbows settled upon the edge of the car’s fine black interior. “I’ll take you anytime, loser!”
Sonic’s ears had been pinned back all race to reduce drag, but at Jet’s challenge, they flipped forward. And back and forth, back and forth, flapping in the jetstream off his windshield. That cocky grin he’d worn even in spite of his humiliating defeat seemed to grow...sharp.
“Then how ‘bout you come around my bay after podium time?” Sonic asked, flashing Jet a wink. “Or is that moving too fast for you?”
In spite of himself, Jet smiled like an idiot. No. Like a damn fledgling! He was supposed to be chill, but a one-on-one race with his longterm rival? Hell yeah! He wanted to crow in excitement.
Calming himself, at least visually, Jet pushed against the Speed Star, his Extreme Gear taking his weight again. With practiced casualness—practiced in front of his bathroom mirror every morning, as he conducted a victory interview with his reflection—Jet crossed his arms and tossed his beak high, highlighting the curve of his crest. Kicking the back of his board so he rose a few feet above his rival, Jet answered, “Why not? Just me and you?” Please please please....
“Just me...and you,” Sonic echoed, voice going...weirdly deep. And he...licked his lips?
Jet stared at Sonic’s mouth and the long, pliant tongue tracing white teeth, and he wavered. Did Sonic...did Sonic plan to eat him or something?
But now the victory lap was ending, and he had to veer off from the hedgehog’s car as it slid into the second place parking spot in front of the podium, while Jet soared over the safety wall, straight up to the first place platform, to claim his prize.
“Hey!” Jet whined, looking about the messy parking bay. “Why is yours so much bigger?” Bigger perhaps being relative; with Sonic’s car inside, the maintenance and storage bay only had about six feet of clearance around each side of the vehicle. Not enough for the big repair and upgrade work, which took place in the Donpa Motors garages, but plenty for the tiny tune-ups each racer took on themselves. The Babylon Rogues had three bays, connected, but their combined space was barely larger than Sonic’s single. Utter bull!
From deep under his car’s hood, Sonic laughed. His tail snapped high, making an exclamation point of his rump. “Ask me that again in a half-hour,” he said, voice reverberating oddly around the engine.
Jet blinked. “Huh?”
Sonic stood straight, then leaned far back, several alarming cracks issuing from his spine. “Cars get bigger bays,” Sonic answered. He pushed the hood higher, returning the prop rod to its nook before letting the hood slam closed under its own weight. “It’s to, ya know, fit them?” Turning to face his best-ever rival, Sonic rested his ass on the bumper, tail beating a soft rhythm on the metal.
Rolling his eyes, Jet grumbled, “Whatever. You done fiddling with your gas guzzler? I’m ready when you are.”
“Oh, more than ready,” Sonic purred, hopping up to sit on the Speed Star’s hood. The heels of his red and white shoes nestled into the little dips beside the headlights, setting long, muscular legs wide. He pushed higher on the vehicle and leaned back until his quills splayed over the top edge of the windshield. The land-bound speedster began fiddling with his oil-smeared gloves.
Dropping his Type-J and stepping aboard, Jet taunted, “Then you’d better be ready to come second, again!”
The mammal laughed. Again, so oddly deep; the testosterone had really kicked in since the last big tourney. It had actually shocked Jet, hearing the change in person. He’d thought the TV interviews had skewed the blue hedgehog’s voice, but, no, it was just like that, now.
Sonic removed a glove and tossed it to the ground. Then the other. Tilting his head down, Sonic looked upon Jet, framed by strong runner’s legs. “How about you show some real skill and we come at the same time?”
“...what?”
Reaching between his legs with two very bare palms, Sonic settled his fingers into the dip between his thighs and his...er...well...you know.
Sonic pressed down.
Blue fur parted, revealing long pink folds, a prominent nub up top, and a deep hole in the center, which leaked a thick bead of white fluid towards a small, tan asshole.
Jet stared.
“Either way,” Sonic purred, index finger of one hand starting up slow circles around his bud, making it dance hypnotically, “just so long as you get me across the finish line.”
Jet...stared.
“...I believe there has been a miscommunication.”
Sonic scowled. “What?”
“Uh...I....” Jet swallowed. Painfully.
Leaning sharply forward on the Type-J, Jet shot past the Speed Star, straight into the parking bay’s back door, smashing his beak. He shrieked, high and entirely predatory, for sure, and yanked the door open. Pushing his Extreme Gear beyond safe limits, Jet rocketed down the long concrete hall, headed for the safety of the Babylon Rogues’ conjoined maintenance bays.
Laying atop his car, Sonic sighed. Keeping the hand working his clit in place, he patted the Speed Star’s hood with its match. “Just you and me, tonight,” he grumbled. Settling back, he closed his eyes and got to work easing the excitement he’d built up during the race. Alone. Again.
“YOU BELIEVE THERE’S BEEN A MISCOMMUNICATION!?”
Jet winced under Wave’s screeches. “I panicked,” he whimpered, trying to hide his head between his shoulders. It was not uncommon for Wave to give her boys a box around the ear slit when they made fools of themselves.
Jet was home, (relatively) safe, and huddled up on the Babylon Rogue’s saggy secondhand couch. Beside him, the large presence of his second-in-command, Storm the Albatross, failed to provide any feeling of protection as Wave stood before him, tearing in with a violence that really should have been the purview of Jet’s own predatory species.
“You PANICKED!?” Wave repeated again. She threw her hands in the air, tailfeathers rising and falling, quivering a warning.
“IT WAS WINKING AT ME!”
At his side, Storm’s body shook with deep laughter. “Oh, come on, bossman. Winking? It’s not that weird.”
“Well,” Wave sighed, pinching the ridge of her beak, “I guess if he’s only seen your setup, I can get why other models might be a shock.”
“My setup?” Storm echoed, deep voice more confused than usual. If that were possible.
Jet glanced sideways at Storm, then quickly away. His cranial crest pressed down and he forced out a thin laugh. “I mean, yeah, Storm. We do have the same, er...‘setup.’” Jet winced at the wording. How did it sound more obscene than the crassest slang, or even medical terminology? “I, uh. Assume.”
The little purple songbird flicked a dismissive hand between her teammates. “What,” she snickered, “you two do it through a sheet?”
“You know we don’t,” Storm grunted. “Do you two do it in the dark!? It’s your sort of bits that spooked him!”
Another wince. ‘Bits’ was, if anything, worse than ‘setup.’ “Shesh, guys! I haven’t ‘seen’ either of you!” He was not going to pick a new euphemism. He would not risk discovering a worse term for...all that.
Wave looked to Storm.
Storm looked to Wave.
‘Wait,” the albatross said. “I thought you two...”
“I thought you two!” the swallow shot back.
“Oh my Gaia!” Jet slumped back on the couch. “No one is thinking anyone!” He flinched. “I mean—oh, you know what I mean!” Maybe he should have just hid in his tiny bedroom, instead of looking to his team for reassurance. These two idiots were just making things worse, tossing about implications that he’d been intimate with either of them. They were a team! Lifelong friends! It wasn’t like that!
Once more, Wave looked to Storm and Storm to Wave. They smiled. Bashfully.
A flood of understanding left Jet gasping. His eyes ping-ponged between his teammates, whose feathers ruffled, revealing their downy under-layers . “No,” he denied, unsuccessfully. Several recent late-night encounters with his teammates after their own occasional first-place finishes—involving startled squawks, wobbly legs, and mussed feathers—were gaining new, awkward meaning. And, yet, it all brought further confusion.
‘My setup?’ ‘Other models?’
“But you thought I was...” Jet gestured between his comrades. “Was you two!” He shook his head violently, scrabbling his beleaguered brains, and babbled on. “But you two is you two! So why me, too?”
Resting a hand to a canted hip, Wave looked down on the leader of the Babylon Rogues. “Cause you’re my metamour?”
“Uh, no,” Storm said. “He’s my metamour.”
Jet’s head snapped between his crew. “Your what?”
Gently, Storm placed a hand on Jet’s shoulder. “Boss. We’re dating.” His brows furrowed. Slowly, working through customary befuddlement, he added, “Like, all of us? Right?”
“...no we aren’t?”
Storm’s eyes went wide. “Huh?”
“Ooookay.” Wave held her palms out. “Let’s put things in reverse.” She settled to the opposite end of the couch from Storm, nestling Jet between his teammates. Slowly, she extended an arm, wrapping it about Jet’s shoulders. She rubbed circles in his short feathers, starting soft, wary of setting him off. “Jet...Storm’s right,” she soothed. “We are dating.”
At hearing he was right—a truly rare occurrence—Storm preened. Leaning in, the albatross ran his long beak through Jet’s wilted crest, setting an out-of-place feather true. “All of us,” he affirmed.
Jet looked up, meeting his right-hand man’s eyes. He giggled shrilly, crest popping up again, ruining Storm’s grooming. “Uh...since when?”
Sonic’s ears flicked towards the sound of the opening, then closing, back door to his maintenance bay, and the lightly tapping footsteps that followed. He knew those steps. While the tread was light, almost dancing, the heat-dispersing ceramic soles clicked in a quick quartet with each rolling step.
Suppressing a growl (he would not let this asshole get a rise out of him!), Sonic burrowed deeper under the Speed Star’s hood. He cursed as another 10mm socket took its chance to pop off the loose head of his ratchet, dodging greasy fingers and plinking through the engine compartment to land on the concrete floor and roll down the gentle decline towards the roll-up doors.
The feet paused a moment at Sonic’s rear as the Mobian crouched. Then they approached again, slotting between Sonic’s braced, spread legs. A gloved hand brushed past Sonic’s left hip, sending a shiver up his spine, and came to rest on the car’s frame.
A densely muscled torso draped itself over Sonic’s back, hovering. None of the Mobian’s weight rested upon the blue hedgehog, but his lowest quills were tickled by a gloriously soft ruff.
Shadow extended his right hand, cupped, into Sonic’s line of sight.
A single 10mm socket shone traitorously in the hanging shop lights.
“Need this?”
“Thanks,” Sonic muttered, taking the metal and slotting it back on his racket. He got back to tightening up the final few bolts on tonight’s alteration.
Shadow’s right hand retreated, but it did not copy its brethren in respectful placement. Instead, it ran over Sonic’s shoulder and between his two back quills, pressing deep into tense muscles. Then down further, stroking the small of Sonic’s back, teasing the vertebrae where spine turned to tail, before coming to rest on the swell of Sonic’s hip. Shadow’s hand matched his rival’s curves perfectly. A fit formed from years of muscle memory.
Sonic struggled to keep his tail down and his breathing even. The remnants of his solo orgasms still had his cunt intermittently squeezing upon nothing, and the scent of his arousal, nearly dead to his acclimated nose, must be cloying to the black hedgehog.
“And do you need this, hedgehog?” Shadow murmured, pulling back on Sonic’s hip as he ground forward. The dark hedgehog rutted against Sonic’s protective tail, pressing the blue appendage into already satisfied, but eternally ready, wetness.
Sonic’s breaths stuttered. He tightened the grip on his wrench, fighting for self-control. And attaining it. “No,” he said, slipping out from under his rival. He stepped around the car’s headlight so he could continue his work from the vehicle’s side.
Now he could actually see Shadow, from the corner of his eye. The GUN agent—an especially pertinent descriptor, at that moment, as Shadow stood in a black, unbuttoned service jacket and pants—rested a hip on the Speed Star’s bumper. He crossed his arms, pushing his ruff up, wispy white tips tickling his chin. Wherever he’d been, beside the track, he’d come back fresh and fluffy and well aware of how scrumptious he looked.
“Really?” Shadow murmured. His dark red eyes trailed over Sonic’s prone and unintentionally presented body. He scowled at the blue hedgehog’s lowered tail. “Goodness. Did you not even place?”
Sonic’s head shot from under the hood. “No!” he snapped. “I got second! Which you’d know if you didn’t skip out and DQ yourself. Again.”
“Oh, pardon me for having a real job,” Shadow shot back. He flicked the colored bars on the jacket’s right breast. “The United Federation asked me to take care of some things.”
“Yeah?” Sonic returned his attention to the final loose bolts. “Well, while you ‘took care of some things’ for the United Federation, I took care of things myself.” He shot Shadow a glare. “Twice.”
“Twice? Really?” Shadow uncrossed his arms. Reaching into his service jacket’s left breast, he produced a vibrant green feather. He rolled it between two fingers, spinning the feather rapidly. “And may I presume to ask who came first?”
“Aw,” Sonic cooed, finally standing straight, greasy hands settling on his hips. “Is someone jealous?”
“Yes,” Shadow replied evenly.
“Yeah, well,” Sonic huffed, smacking the hood prop rod out of place, sending the heavy metal panel crashing down, “how about you show up at the starting line sometime, if you wanna be pissy?”
“Just because I wasn’t at the starting line doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a victory lap together,” Shadow purred. The bastard hadn’t so much as flinched as the hood slammed with enough force to pulverize smaller bones. Like his languidly swaying tail.
“Read the room,” Sonic spat. He vaulted into the Speed Star’s seat, flicking a few switches to to bring the car roaring to life. Before him, the garage door retracted, letting in the stadium’s track lights. “The mood is way over.”
“Mood?” Shadow snorted. “Please. When did you need a mood?”
Green eyes narrowed.
Sonic tapped the accelerator.
The Speed Star lurched, pushing Shadow forward a good six inches before the hybrid snapped out of view.
A split-second, and he was back, crouched on the car’s hood, assessing Sonic through the windshield.
A black ear twitched sideways. Shadow frowned at his rival. His mate.
Sonic had a most excellent look between Shadow’s bent, wide-spread legs. Thank goodness he’d taken his foot off the gas, or he might have absolutely floored it at the sight of Shadow’s wide, dark red cockhead peeking from its sheath and glistening with precum, and the snowy white, taut, brimming testicles descended behind. Fuck. It had been so long.
Shadow smirked. He extended a hand, index finger inscribing a circle in the air. “How about you shift into reverse?”
Heat bloomed up Sonic’s back. Not desire. That was already there, awakened by the arrival of his lover, turned scorching at Shadow’s light touches.
This? This was rage.
Shifting to neutral, Sonic rested one foot on the brakes and dug the other into the accelerator. The Speed Star roared a warning.
“How about you shift the Dark Reaper into first, tomorrow,” Sonic returned. He revved the engine higher. “Then we’ll see.”
Shadow had just enough time to roll his eyes before Sonic took his foot off the brake. The Speed Star leapt forward.
In a flash of energy, Shadow disappeared from the hood.
With no side or rear view mirrors, Sonic couldn’t look back to see if Shadow had reappeared on the asphalt behind him, but he really didn’t need to check. He felt those eyes.
“Okay. Our anniversary is October 15th,” Jet recited.
“Yep,” Storm agreed. “The Adabat heist.”
“You two do date night on Monday,” the hawk went on, tapping his thumb, “my night with Storm is Tuesday,” he tapped his index finger and, right after, ring finger, “Thursday is Wave and me, and Saturday we all go out after dinner for dessert and a movie. Is that right?”
“On the money,” Wave praised, leaning in to nuzzle her beak about her (former not-a-metamour, now actual) partner’s ear slit. She snickered at the hawk’s nervous squawk. Raptors were so high-strung. “Now, the next thing to figure out, of course....”
Jet was yanked away from her whispering beak as Storm pulled their boss onto his wide lap. Thick grey arms encircled the comparatively tiny hawk’s waist, squeezing tight, until Jet let out a second squawk. Less nerves, more squeak toy.
“Who,” Storm rumbled, trailing a hand through Jet’s white breast feathers, “are you going to enjoy first?”
Jet keened, eyes darting between his partners.
Wave smirked. She waited.
As did Storm, though his stroking hand remained quite active, no doubt trying to sway the results.
Jet’s feathers puffed until he more resembled a broody hen than a fierce hawk. He grinned.
Wave’s eyes narrowed. “Really?” She flopped back on the couch. “Really? The hedgehog?”
“He asked me first!”
“We’ve been dating for five years!”
“NOBODY TOLD ME THAT!”
Before his two smaller teammates could descend into beak-clacking squabbles, their large albatross partner ceased his fondling and lay both hands on Jet’s tense shoulders.
Despite his awkward position on Storm’s lap, the touch settled the hawk, his feathers smoothing. He looked up at his second in command. He fit rather well against the bruiser’s broad chest.
“Boss,” Storm said, “we are gonna get you laid. On Gaia.”
Jet smiled weakly. “Aw, Storm. That’s sweet—”
“And then we’re turning you into the meat of a Babylon Sandwich.”
It was a good thing Storm had his hands on Jet’s shoulders, providing stability. The silly hawk fainted dead away.