Legal Disclaimer: I do not own Sonic the Hedgehog or any of its associated characters, I do not claim ownership of Sonic the Hedgehog or any of its associated characters, nor am I monetizing this story or profiting from its publication on feliciarondo.com or Archive of Our Own. The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is created and owned by SEGA Sammy Holdings Inc. All rights of Sonic the Hedgehog belong to SEGA Sammy Holdings Inc.
In Your Eyes - Chapter 3
Written by Felicia Rondo, Published: 9/21/2020
Summary: Rouge continues to have the one thing she didn’t account for in her plot to ruin Sonic’s day - fun! But when the grand finale of their first day comes sooner than expected, a romance flick to bore the ages, will Rouge have the heart to put Sonic through that after all the fun they’ve had?
Contains: Jewelry-Shopping, Upsettingly-Pleasant Conversation, Sarcasm, and Dudebros (unfortunately.)
Proudly, the bat passed by countless westopolitans, who all marveled at her stunning emerald necklace that looked as though it was made for her. Little details such as “it wasn’t lawfully purchased” were perfectly irrelevant to the blissfully-ignorant public—for a certain heroic hedgehog who had witnessed the crime, however, that was not the case. Curious when Sonic didn’t rejoin her momentarily, she looked behind herself, only to find that he had left the sidewalk and disappeared from her sight since she had left the bland gift shop. “Did I scare him off already?” Rouge thought to herself, “Oh well, it was worth it. I knew that precious act couldn’t last forever, anyway…”
With another distraction spent, the bat began to wonder what exactly she would be doing for the next few days before her next mission assignment… that is, until she glanced beside her and found the blue hedgehog walking alongside her again. “Y-you!” Rouge gasped, startled by his sudden reappearance. “Who do you think you are, sneaking up on a lady like that? Shame on you!” she scolded. Her investment in the game had dissolved to the point she couldn’t quite contain her frustration.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Sonic, smiling nervously with his hands up, “I would’ve been with you sooner but I had to go back into the gift shop to pay for the necklace we stole,” The hedgehog assured her, which raised even more questions than she had before. “I mean, I didn’t mean to steal it, you tricked me, but that’s beside the point - my point is I was busy paying for that necklace you’ve got on, and I’m sorry I took as long as I did,” the hedgehog rambled out apologetically.
Still, she had to admit, she was… intrigued, by this development.
“Sonic… did you just buy me jewelry?” she inquired, a smirk growing on her face. That was when the blue hedgehog’s eyes widened and his face flushed. The game was back on.
“U-uh, well—I mean technically, sure, I kinda had to.” he awkwardly admitted, his gaze frantically shifting from object to object, not daring to meet the curious bat’s eyes.
“No you didn’t, you could have just taken the necklace back from me - you just wanted to buy me a gift,” she ‘accused’ him as she placed her finger on his chest, her impeccable logic stunning Sonic into silence without a word to say in his ‘defense.’ “What do you think we’re doing here, hm? Having a date?” giggled Rouge. She didn’t even necessarily believe that was his intention, but she seized the opportunity to give the hedgehog a hard time after startling her so awfully.
For a moment, Sonic cryptically remained silent with his nose pointed to the ground, until his gaze shifted back up to the sky. “… You got me, I couldn’t take it back from ya,” he simply said, with a smile, as his calm returned to him, “the way you looked at that necklace, I couldn’t help myself. You’re my friend after all, ain’t ya?” Sonic’s emerald gaze at last met hers once again.
“This… this motherfucker…” Rouge thought to herself, on the cusp of outrage at how charming he could be. She wasn’t about to fall for it, but this player had game, she had to admit.
“‘Friend’ is pushing it a little bit - we’re more like acquaintances, which is why we’re here, isn’t it?” she countered.
“Right, right, I’m getting ahead of myself,” Sonic laughed and nodded as they resumed their walk. “If it’s all the same to you, though, I think you’re pretty rad and I’m glad I could get that necklace for ya.”
“Why, big blue,” Rouge smiled and rolled her eyes, “I feel the same way - I am ‘pretty rad’ and I’m glad you got that necklace for me too.” That line earned her another laugh from the blue hedgehog, and if they had gone out for lunch beforehand she could have blamed that fluttering feeling in her chest upon hearing that laugh again on whatever they would have eaten. Probably chili dogs. Yuck.
In spite of herself, she had to admit that it was turning out to be an uncharacteristically-beautiful day for Westopolis. The breeze was cool, the ambient song of the city’s populace—traffic, chatter and all—was rather pleasant, and… it was pretty nice to have someone beside her, rather than going it alone for as long as she wasn’t assigned another mission by G.U.N.
“So,” Sonic began, “do you usually go for walks on days like this? Or are you going out of your way just to keep me excited?”
“Ooh, getting a little sarcastic there, are we? I thought I was supposed to be getting to know you, here,” smirked Rouge, who didn’t actually care too badly about the pretense of this little game as she did about the game itself. “And no, I’m usually off doing fiendish things like making an obscenely-wealthy old man slightly less obscenely-wealthy. I figured you didn’t have the stomach for such activities, so I went with the next best thing.”
“Hey, let’s be fair, you and I both know I’ve got my own history of busting into some old guy’s place and wrecking his stuff,” Sonic joked.
“I think you’ve got a point - you foiling the doctor’s schemes is just like me making off with stolen jewelry,” she added. This conversation was going in a fun direction.
“I’m saving the world, you’re saving yourself from not having jewelry, same difference,” he chuckled, eliciting a giggle from the bat that surprised herself more than anyone else.
“Excuse me, where did Sonic go? Because I can’t be speaking to the same hedgehog that dumped I don’t know how many rings into getting me a necklace instead of just letting me walk away with it for nothing,” claimed Rouge.
“Hey, no, that’s different,” big blue insisted, “I just happen to know the family that ran that gift shop. They’re great people, they treat their employees real well, and they deserve any rings I can afford to throw at ‘em… I just would’ve saved those rings for a video game, maybe half a dozen chili dogs, instead of spending them on a necklace, but! That’s me.”
So maybe he wasn’t as much of a stick-in-the-mud as she had assumed. She was still going to make him sit through a cheesy Romance flick, but he’d earned himself a little more credit from her, anyway.
“I guess I also go shopping here, from time to time,” Rouge admitted, allowing a little more information to be disclosed. “I like to look good so I can match my gorgeous gems, after all. Like this number I’ve got on,” she said, soliciting him to maybe notice the outfit that was supposed to get him to ogle her at least the normal amount, “it goes nicely with the necklace, don’t you think?”
“Oh totally!” Sonic exclaimed, “You really rock the combo, I gotta admit!” It was becoming increasingly obvious he really wasn’t going to act like a complete slimeball no matter how much she pushed him.
Which was fine. He would find other ways to disappoint her, she was certain.
“What do you get up to, when you’re not heroically saving children from burning buildings and untying helpless beauties from railroad tracks, anyway?”
“Hey, Knuckles has a name, y’know,” Sonic chuckled, which got an outright belly laugh out of Rouge, because calling Knuckles a beauty was as funny as it was true, “and I dunno. I don’t really stick around one place for awhile, so I don’t really get into a routine very often.
“I guess I tend to just… check out the arcades, where I can find them. Hang out at a library and see if any books by local authors catch my eye… Go to a McDonald’s, leave in a huff when I learn this one doesn’t serve chili dogs either, stuff like that.”
Conversation went on swimmingly enough after that—an awkward moment where the subject of ‘swimming’ came up aside. Sonic seemed rather open and that openness managed to coax Rouge into being a little less cagey than she might have planned on being, that day. Every now and then, there’d be a glimmer of something more in Sonic’s eyes, but it would vanish just as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving Rouge to wonder if it was ever there to begin with or if she had merely imagined it…
It may have been Sonic’s speedy disposition rubbing off on her, but they arrived at the theater much sooner than she had planned. It was to be the main event of the day, and she would have liked to have gone for at least an evening showing, but her other attempts to sour the hedgehog’s day were proving unfruitful. “It’s about time I pulled out the big guns,” she decided. And hey - who was she to complain about extra time to go hunting for jewels in the night?
Who was she indeed…
“Oh, hey, we’re here already! Wanna catch that movie now?” asked Sonic.
Against her hopes, Sonic had proven not only resilient in the face of her attempts to ruin his mood, but also… very pleasant company. So much so that she was beginning to have second thoughts about making him sit through a movie even she wasn’t interested in seeing, on the off-chance he would have an even worse time. It had gotten a lot harder to care about him waking her up too early, as the day went on.
“… Big blue,” Rouge started, uncertainty in her voice, “are you sure you’re fine with watching a cheesy romantic film with me?”
“It’s what we agreed to, isn’t it?” asked the hedgehog, matter-of-factly. “Don’t tell me you’re gettin’ cold feet on me,” he smirked.
“Absolutely not,” lied the bat. “I just… you know, maybe I’m not in the mood for it after all…” It was then she happened to glance up at the marquee, only to discover it boldly advertising that the critically-panned ‘Love Dawn’ was somehow still playing.
“Sonic wouldn’t speak to me again if I took him to that,” she thought… “But it would be so FUN to watch him speed right out of the theater faster than if there was a chili dog-eating contest happening outside,” her second thought chimed in. The devil on her shoulder was making a compelling case, and she had to decide then before the moment passed.
“… Forget what I said, let’s head inside,” Rouge stated, eliciting a shrug from Sonic as they walked in.
The place wasn’t a ghost town, but it wasn’t too packed either. What immediately jumped out at Rouge was the line of what could only be described as ‘dudebros’ chuckling amongst themselves as they waited for a clearly-uncomfortable teenage girl to finish purchasing her ticket for ‘Love Dawn.’ When she hastily retreated into the lobby, the main bro at the front asked for five more tickets for the same film.
“Is that the one we’re going to see?” Sonic asked.
“That’s the plan, big blue…” Rouge sighed, hoping they could find a row of seats very far from the bros. She wanted to introduce Sonic to the box-office bomb of the decade, not have their ears assaulted with the sound of hooting and hollering dudebrothers.
Without further ado, Rouge walked up to the ticket seller and said the words that would be engraved on the tombstone for the possibility of any friendship she could have had with the blue hedgehog,
“Two tickets for Love Dawn, please.”
To Be Continued
Author’s Notes: Annnnd that’s a brand new chapter! Fun fact, I started work on this chapter TWO years ago and only this month got around to finishing it! I’m the worst! x’D (Just kidding I’m really wonderful and I’m trying my best)
Suffice it to say, this chapter takes place in a world a little bit like ours, except we aren’t in a pandemic during it! So just so y’all know, Rouge and Sonic are NOT shirking social distancing guidelines, and they would encourage you to wear a mask and sanitize frequently if and when you go outside!
Comment on Bluesky!