Torte Reform

Amy slowly carded her hand through blue quills. “Man,” Sonic commented as his head lay in her lap, “nice as it is and all, this is really weird, Ames. All things considered.” He tried to give his usual dismissive chuckle, but the sound was hindered by the remains of his recent weeping.

She’d never seen Sonic so distraught. She took advantage of his despair and made quick work of the confusing bundle of her own emotions. Anger at what Sonic had said at the festival, shame for lying to him for so long, fear that she was the cause of all his troubles, sadness knowing she’d likely upset him again. All bundled up neatly and left on the curb for the trashman. She dusted off her hands and took with her the one emotion that could actually solve all this mess: love.

“Yeah, I kinda agree.” Amy replied, her hand never stopping its rhythmic comforting. She’d carded Shadow’s quills like this just last night. She and Sonic had been so close for so long and yet hadn’t been in gentle physical contact like this in a decade. Even during her heats there was never any gentle touches or cuddling. Their unions had always been rushed and sterile, neither really wanting to think or talk about it afterwards.

He was facing away from her, mostly so he could hide the worst of his ugly crying. “This is, like, new, right? The being able to touch thing?” He tensed slightly. “You haven’t been, you know, like…holding out me or nothing, right?”

Amy frowned at how Sonic had come to suspect her like that…but, then again, she deserved the doubt. “No. Being able to touch others without feeling all…creepy crawly about it, yeah it’s pretty new for me.” She swallowed.

“Cool, cool, cool. That’s-“ He hiccupped quietly, “super great. Totally super great.”

She wasn’t sure if this was the best time, but holding back might be a step in the wrong direction in the lying department. “I really started making progress last Tuesday morning…with Shadow.” Amy braced herself for an outburst, for anger.

Sonic pushed himself up off her lap to sit straight on the couch beside her. He rubbed at his face, making his gloves pretty icky and damp in the process. “You really did go into heat last Monday, huh? And he, uh, helped?”

“Yes.” Amy didn’t look at Sonic. “It was…the nicest heat I’ve ever had.” No other heat ever came close.

“Oh.” Sonic sounded slightly hurt. Amy felt the impulse to try to save his feelings, to say something about their copulations being good too…but that would have been lying again. “I guess that’s good, at least.” His brow wrinkled. “So, like, when your phone was going off like crazy all the time…that was for him, right? He was…texting you, I guess, or whatever?”

“No!” Oh man, she’d almost forgotten about her Shadow Gaggle alert. “I mean…ugh, its so worse than that…” Amy cringed at how desperate she’d been to read every little thing about the reclusive CEO. “That was just for news alerts about him…” Her face heated with embarrassment. “It was stupid.”

“O-oh…uh, okay.” Sonic scratched his cheek.

Amy couldn’t handle the awkwardness between them. She needed them to be back where they had been before all this mess started. She wanted them to be bestest of friends again without any lies or secrets between them. She longed for life to be simple again…but maybe that was just an illusion of nostalgia.

Still, she could try and make the first move forward.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Shadow!” She confessed. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Even after my heat returned at his house, I thought it was just the one time and I’d never see him again, but then he was at that party, and I thought he was going to kill Barry!”

“Wait, what?”

“Ugh,” Amy plowed through Sonic’s startled demand for clarity, “and he was at the wedding, too, and he wanted to give me his number, and I was so happy because I thought he hadn’t been thinking about me at all, but he had and he wanted to get to know me better. But I wasn’t sure and I was so scared because of the party and then Geoffrey was there and I freaked out and my heat came early, again.” She slowly turned to face Sonic. “S-so, I called him last Monday when you were with Silver.”

His brows shot up in shock. “What, that means he-?”

“Yes!” Amy squeaked. “He was here.” She admitted, covering her face with her hands.

Sonic growled low in his chest. Amy chanced a glance and found a mix of emotions fighting across the battlefield of Sonic’s face. After a moment, he closed his eyes and took a breath. “You idiot, hold it together…” He mumbled to himself. “Sorry. Sorry. Ignore me.”

“Shadow’s actually a really nice guy.” Amy continued. “He took really good care of me. Then the next morning, he asked me out and…” Amy’s shoulders slumped. “I think I like him, Sonic. I think I like Shadow a lot. Like, like like him.” God, was she in high school? “I think I…Maybe I might…” Just say it. She knew it was true, she just hadn’t said it out loud yet.

Amy reached up and touched her shoulder above her Claim gland. “I think I love him.” She smiled softly.

But did she love Shadow or did she love Alpha…and could she ever know? Off her hormonal suppressants, who even was she? Where did her body end and Amy begin?

Sonic’s eyes went wide, but he remained uncharacteristically silent.

She couldn’t stand the silence and continued to spew her guts. “So, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. At first, I didn’t want to burden you anymore with how bad my heats were getting, but then after the wedding when you two fought, I-I don’t know. I didn’t know how to tell you I was kinda maybe dating the guy who gave you that black eye. I was afraid of how you’d react.”

Sonic didn’t say anything. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Amy was just going to keep spewing her guts out until he said something!

Her shoulders slumped, her words coming faster and faster. “And then you found out at the festival and everything just went so out of control. I’m sorry you got arrested and I’m sorry Silver broke up with you and I’m so sorry I was such a coward!”

“Can I say something?” Sonic asked.

Amy went silent. In all her life, she’d never known Sonic to ever ask permission to talk. In elementary school, he’d been in the counselor’s office weekly because he simply could not shut up in class. In middle school, he and other boys had been suspended on multiple occasions because of fights breaking out over Sonic’s smart mouth. The hedgehog simply did not know how or when to shut the fuck up.

“S-sure.” Amy answered, frankly terrified. He took her hands in his snot and tear covered ones (don’t think about that, he’s being sincere).

Sonic looked into Amy’s eyes and, though she felt the urge to divert her gaze, she returned the stare. “I hate being mad, like, in general, but especially at you, Ames. I hate it. At the festival I was so mad and surprised, I-I wasn’t thinking straight. After, I tried being mad at you, ‘cuz, like I thought that might feel better than just being all hurt, and I just felt terrible after awhile.”

It was Amy’s turn to sit silently and absorb confessions.

“And I wanted to say I’m sorry, Ames.” His gaze faltered and he looked down, but continued to hold her hands. “I’ve been a jerkwad and an asshat and just a bad friend. Just a really, really bad friend, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ames.” His eye pinched closed. “I’m so so, so, so fucking sorry for everything. So,” He opened his eyes and looked at her with glistening green eyes, “can you and me just be good again? Please?”

How could she ever deny her knight in shining armor? Amy nodded. “It’s okay. I guess we’ve both kinda sucked recently...”

Sonic gave her a lop-sided smile. “I’m fine with sucking.” Amy cocked a brow. “I just want us to suck together.”

“Okay, gross.” Amy pulled her hands away in mock disgust.

“Shit, I mean-“ Sonic grew flustered.

Amy laughed. “I know what you mean.” Sonic stuck his tongue out at her and she laughed harder. “I want to suck together with you, too.” Sonic smirked, clearly wanting to make a lewd joke. “Okay, let it out.”

“It’s a good thing I suck so bad, because your dick of a boyfriend was hitting on me hard.”

Amy exaggeratingly rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, that was terrible. How long have you been sitting on that one?”

Sonic rubbed the bottom of his nose. “I came up with it sitting in the holding cell with Silver after they gave me an ice pack for my eye. Damn, Shadow hits like a truck. Dude must work out more than he breathes.”

They both had a good laugh, which they both sorely needed.

“God, I’m such a bad friend.” Sonic sighed. “I should have been happy and all supportive of you like you were me with Silver, but then I went and just fucked it all up.”

“You haven’t messed anything up, Sonic. At least not with me.” Her thoughts were drug back to Shadow’s mumbled admission the previous night. She hoped it wasn’t really true that he hated Sonic. As severe as the older man seemed, Amy had seen enough softness to know he was capable of granting significant grace. Maybe Shadow just needed to get to know Sonic…Amy started to have the beginnings of an idea…

“Yeah, well your boyfriend certainly doesn’t care for me. I’ve spent two days watching him death glare me. Oh man, and way his people grovel around him? Holy shit, Ames, it’s all sir this and sir that!”

“I think people just respect him.” Amy offered. “Everyone I’ve met who works for Shadow seems to really think he’s a good boss.”

“Still feels like I’m having to watch some sort of humiliation ritual.”

“You call Dr. Prower doctor.”

“Yeah, well, that’s different. Dr. Prower earned it. He’s a literal genius.” Amy gave him a flat stare. Sonic blew a raspberry at her. “It’s totally different.” He declared, but then his face scrunched into an ugly grimace and he gripped his quills. “Oh god, why did I did I let Silver blow me?!”

Amy started. “W-what?”

“I’m such an idiot, Ames. I’m just the biggest idiot ever.” No contest…

“Hold on! Back up!”

“Then Dr. Prower might not have released the report early and then I wouldn’t have to be in the same room as that dude so much.”

“What was that about Silver blowing you?”

“Okay, wow, Amy. That’s really private, you know?”

“Sonic!” He gave her the biggest shit-eatting grin and she knew he’d gotten her. “You are such a jerkwad!” She smacked him with a throw pillow.

“No, but for real though…I did really mess up. Damn, I have been doing that a lot recently.” He clutched the pillow she’d hit him with tightly to his chest. “Silver and I were at the lab and we started fooling around and Silver wanted to kinda up the ante, I guess, so I let him hide in the knee well and-“

Amy’s mouth dropped open. “In your lab?”

“Yeah, okay, in the lab!” Sonic threw up his hands. “I know it was stupid, but he was horny and that made me horny and I get stupid when I’m horny, Ames! You know this! How was I supposed to turn down a spontaneous blow job, Ames? Riddle me that? It literally cannot be done!”

“Does Dr. Prower know?” Amy frowned. Forget Silver losing his job, Sonic was on the thinnest of ice TOO!

“God no! And I’m not going to tell him. It’d…” Sonic’s ears wilted at the idea. “It’d break his heart…God, why am I so fucking stupid? If I’d just told Silver to save it for later, we’d still be…together.” He frowned deeply and his gaze lowered. “I ruined everything.” He flopped back against the couch arm.

Amy fidgeted with her hands, trying to think of something encouraging to say. “Shadow didn’t let Silver quit, so he still has his job right? Doesn’t that mean you guys are okay to be dating?”

Sonic’s ears wilted further and he released a deep sigh, sinking further into the couch. “Apparently not.” He shrugged. “Silver said he wanted to be with me, but that he didn’t want to cause me any more trouble more. Said it was just best for everyone for us to just…move on.”

Okay, well that was something to work with, right? That was like a romance trope or something. “But you don’t care about trouble.”

“That’s what I said!” Sonic perked up. “If he wants to be together and I want to be together, then we’d figure it out, right? B-but he didn’t…” His face crumpled again. “He said the world doesn’t work that way. That we had to be adults about this. I’m not, you know, the most mature dude.”

“You don’t say.” Amy grinned. Sonic hit her with the throw pillow and she grunted performatively.

“What I mean is, I’m an adult. He’s an adult…and I guess part of loving him is accepting his decisions…even when it fucking tears me apart…” Sonic vacantly stared at the off-white-colored ceiling, his emerald eyes glistening once more. “So, like…if he doesn’t want to be with me…then it doesn’t really matter why because the end result is the same.”

Amy opened her arms and he shifted to slumped over into them. The weight of Sonic was still something she was getting used to (and he smelled distinctly not like Shadow!), but she managed to repress any shudders and to just hold her best friend in this dark moment. “Will you be okay?”

“Yeah. You know me, Ames…I’m always okay.” Sonic didn’t sound like he believed his own words.

“It’s okay to not be okay.”

“I know.”

They stayed for a long time. Amy had begun to suspect that Sonic had fallen asleep, but then he asked. “So, like, Silver’s a lost cause, I guess, but can you and I be cool at least?” He pulled away from her.

Amy nodded. “I’d like that. But,” She sighed, “I need you to do something for me, Sonic.”

His eyes glimmered and his jaw took a determined set. “Anything, Ames. I’ll do absolutely anything for you. All you’ve got to do is ask and I’ll have it done so fast all you’ll see is a blue blur.”

Amy took a deep breath. “I need you to apologize to Shadow.”

“Nu-uh.” He said flatly, shaking his head. “No, I’m not gonna do that.”

“Sonic!”

He sprung up from the couch and twirled to face her. “He punched me in the face, Ames!” Sonic spread his arms. “Twice!”

She planted her fists on her hips and gave him a withering glare. “Shadow apologized for the first time, and you really deserved it the second time, mister! You’re lucky I’m not pissed at you for what you said at the festival.“ Truth be told, her memories of that whole evening were a bit murky thanks to her super special surprise heat, but she’d discarded her negativity anyways. There was enough going on to be sore about the past.

Sonic puffed out his cheeks like he wanted to argue. They glared at each other for a moment, but there wasn’t any heat. “Okay, fine.” He relented. “I get it. Yeah. Okay, I’ll apologize to the jerk. But!” He held up a finger. “You have to do something for me, too!” He sank back into the couch cushions.

Amy nodded solemnly. Here it comes. Her punishment for her lies and deception and general tom-foolery. “Okay.”

Sonic smiled softly. “I need you to trust me.”

Amy was taken aback. She had trusted – still trusted – Sonic with her life…but not with Shadow.

Sonic’s brow pinched and he frowned. “I know it can be hard for you, Amy…but I think I’ve earned it, yeah?” He pled. “Just, you can tell me anything, even if you think I’ll be hurt or get mad, or whatever, just…just trust me to handle it, please? Can you do that for me, Ames?”

“Right. You’re right…” Amy gripped her arm. “Yes, I promise. No more lies.” But could she keep that promise? Amy was sure going to try.

Was there anything more she needed to confess? Probably, Amy was pretty sure, but nothing came to mind at the moment. She committed to texting Sonic immediately if she ever remembered anything.

“Soooo.” Sonic made a strange face, half pity and half fearful. “Rut riot?”

Amy sighed. “Y-yeah.”

Sonic frowned, pensive. “But if your heat was over a week ago, then-“

“Yeah, about that.” She ran a hand through her quills. “Apparently-“

His brows shot up. “It’s because of the estrigestrelix you take, right? Oh, my god, it has to be that, right?”

Amy squinted, confused. “What?”

“Your Omega hormonal blockers.” Sonic explained. “That’s the generic name. Estrigestrelix. It’s uh…well, how do I say this.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re no good. Or at least the Starline Pharmaceutical stuff is…” Sonic trailed off.

“It causes heats rather than suppresses them.” Amy stated. “At least, that’s what Dr. Quack told me.”

Sonic’s eyes grew wide. “So, you are Patient A, then?”

“Patient A?”

“The KLS guys told us that they’d gotten the cooperation of the inciting Omega from the rut riot” He shook his head. “I thought it couldn’t possibly be you, Ames, because that kind of scrutiny didn’t really feel like your scene, but then you were there on Sunday…So, I guess what I mean to say is thank you.” He smiled.

Amy’s brow pinched in confusion and she tilted her head. Why did people keep thanking her. She caused a rut riot. People were hurt because of her. All the trouble made the thanks feel insincere or that Amy was a fraud, stealing the gratitude of unsuspecting people trying to good in the world.

“I know it’s super not your thing, being around all those people and stuff. But you helping like this, it means we’ll have a real shot at making Starline pay for what they’ve done. It’s really brave, Ames.”

Amy blushed and felt the impulse to deny or discredit the complement. She wasn’t brave, she’d just agreed to let Shadow find her a better doctor, something that served her almost exclusively. Then she’d just signed the clipboard that was handed to her, and, sure, she had to go back for a bunch of more visits to give more samples of her fluids, Amy was really selfish, see? Any good was unintended and shouldn’t be attributed to her.

God, she really needed to stop lying to herself as well…

“It’s crazy how everything has fallen together, huh?”

“Yeah, crazy is right.” Sonic chuckled. “And, well, given we’re being all open and honest and also handing forgiveness around like a cold, I have an another thing to be really fucking sorry for.” He admitted.

Amy cocked her head and waited for his explanation.

Sonic sat up faced forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. He stared at the floor. “I knew the Starline hormonal suppressants were bad, like bad bad, a while ago and, this is the stupid part, I don’t know why and I’m sorry, but I just didn’t put two and two together. And, duh, I knew you took suppressants. Hell, that stupid colorful box is in bathroom cabinet. But I didn’t tell you to stop taking them.”

“You…didn’t realize…?” Amy was at a loss for words. The implications of Sonic’s confession whirled in her mind, a million disconnected thoughts fighting to put together a jig-saw puzzle in a tornado.

Sonic glared at the floor. “I don’t know, it’s like the lab is one world and home is another and they just didn’t overlap in my brain or something.” He finally turned to her. “And I know that’s no excuse so I’m sorry, Amy. None of this would have happened if I had just realized it sooner.”

“H-how long ago did you know?” Her heart provoked her to lose her temper but she refused. Love, she reminded herself. No more secrets. No more lies. Even if it hurts.

Sonic sighed and closed his eyes. “I wanna say the first time me and Dr. Prower really had data to back up our suspicions was about two months ago. But we’d first floated the notion of the stuff being wrong somehow even earlier. The tests results were just so strange.”

“Two months…So, if you’d told me then…” If you were a hot dog, would you eat yourself? Stop asking stupid questions!

He looked at her sadly, his ears limp against his skull. “That crazy day you needed help thrice- well, actually, I guess four times- then that day wouldn’t have happened. I’m so sorry, Ames. It’s all my fault.”

“And I wouldn’t have met Shadow…” The thought sobered her immediately. If it weren’t for his undiagnosed ADHD, she’d never would have met Shadow. She’d wouldn’t have all this trouble, but she would have all this happiness either. Amy would still be afraid to death of touching another person. Amy would still be trapped and looking around every corner for the St. John twins.

Amy wouldn’t have a chance at her Ten of Cups.

Sonic shouldn’t be sorry at all.

He leaned back and huffed. “I guess in a roundabout way, yeah. But I mean more I’m sorry about how much you suffered.”

“But if you’d told me and I’d have gotten off the Starline stuff, and I hadn’t met Shadow, then I wouldn’t have started a rut riot and you and Dr. Prower and everyone wouldn’t have the evidence to prove Starline is poisoning all the Omegas…”

Her suffering had a point. Her suffering had value. Her suffering was good for others.

She really was the Martyr of the River.

Sonic shook his head. “I’m sure we’d have figured it out eventually…I think.” He sighed deeply. “But I don’t know how long it would have taken us really. Like I said, the Starline stuff is weird. In the lab it looks almost right, but Dr. Prower had this, I dunno, intuitive feeling it wasn’t kosher. So he had me test it and test it. I was getting really sick and tried of it, but then I started seeing what he was seeing. So we did some different tests and boom. The shit was fucking inducers!”

He ran his hand through his quills, bringing a slight amount of order to the wild mess he’d made of them. “Then, get this, we had the lab test results, see, but the stuff seemed to be designed to avoid detection once it’s been ingested too. Whoever put that formulation together is an evil genius. We don’t even have a full understanding of the pharmacology of it. No matter how many Omegas we tested, we couldn’t find any trace of the stuff. Not until we got your blood work Ames. And that’s probably because you take it on the daily.”

Amy snorted. “Sometimes twice daily.”

“What?” Sonic sat up and squinted at her. “God, Ames, don’t do that. If this stuff was real, that could damage your heart.”

“I know, I know!” She hugged her legs to her chest. “It was just the one time…the day I met Shadow.” She realized. “I thought it would decrease the chance my heat would come back.” Holy shit, had she unwittingly caused her heat episode at Shadow’s house?

Sonic grimaced. “Damn. It’s a sick fuck whoever put this together. We’re going to make them pay, Amy.”

Amy smiled slyly. “I guess you and Shadow are on the same side then.”

Sonic groaned. “Well, I guess the enemy of my enemy and all that, Ames.”

“I think you and he would get along, you know,” she grinned, “if you could stop punching each other in the face.” Amy had a sudden flash of both men in tuxedos going at it in a very nicely decorated banquet hall, but it wasn’t the one from Blaze’s wedding. Amy was screaming at them to stop while she was wearing…white.

Amy shook her head, blushing fiercely. Being off those inducers should be settling her hormones, right?

“Agree to disagree, Ames.” Sonic shook his head, oblivious to her sudden bewildered expression, but he was grinning as well. “Agree to disagree.”

They lapsed in a soft silence. After a minute or two, Amy asked, “What are you going to do about Silver?”

Sonic shrugged. “Beg for him to take me back on my knees every time I see him no matter where we are or what he says. I’ll wear him down with embarrassment until he finally takes me back. Then I think a good forty or fifty years of marriage, give or take.”

Amy hit him with the throw pillow again. “Okay, but what are you really going to do?”

He sighed. “Give him space…at least for a bit. Then maybe try to talk to him about…the whole us thing. I hope we can figure it out and get back together. But if not…” Sonic looked pensively into the middle distance. “Well, I guess that’s what he wants and I’ll have to learn to live with it.”

“I must be dreaming, because I just heard something measured and mature coming out of your mouth, Sonic?” Amy made an attempt to lighten the mood.

Her efforts worked and Sonic laughed, though mutedly. “You’re right. I’m actually three sagely ten-year-olds in a trench coat.”

“I knew it!” Amy playfully stabbed a finger at him. They dissolved into a chorus of giggles. When Amy finally recovered, she asked, “Do you want to watch a movie?”

“Fuck me, yes!” Sonic pumped his fist into the air. “I need mindless explosions and ridiculous stunts like I need air right now, Ames!” He sprung to his feet and planted a dirty sneaker on the coffee table. “I want to replace my blood with motor oil and badly conceived dialogue!”

Amy retrieved the remote from where it had been lodged in the couch cushions. “We’ve got to get this hedgehog fifty ccs of Velocity, stat!”

The best friends laughed.