Hey could I get a little help here I’m broke as hell and I don’t have a lot of money or hours and I’m behind on a lot of payments. I can’t claim unemployment, and im desperate. Please. I don’t want my car to be repossessed. Cashapp: $achiilllesVenmo: @achiilllesPayPal: https://www.paypal.me/achiillles
one of the few crossdressing ducks that didn’t make me break out in hives, on account of not having been forced to do it for emasculating reasons or anything, it’s just a practical solution to daisy having too many obligations since they look exactly, and i mean exactly the same
one of those obligations was manning a kissing booth for charity and donald punching a catcaller in the face escalates into guys just fucking lining up to get decked by a cute little duck
I can’t help but think that sickness was a risk Sonic had to be wary of pre-movie. Before he met Maddie and Tom, Sonic was living in a cave in the woods which, I’m sure, presented a few key issues. Including the fear of being caught.
I headcanon that when he’s sick, he’s not as fast. And just as there are risks to being him day to day, there are risks to being him when the aches and chills of a fever set in.
So he has to stay in the dark of the cave. Huddled and shivering. He’d do his best to keep safe. Push the bean bag and the comic book stacks into a makeshift fort.
One spring, a cold leaves his legs a little wobbly. He sat, glum and bored, behind a little nook in the cave walls, flipping through comic books because his arms wouldn’t move as fast as they usually would. He set up a few empty cans outside as traps. Just in case someone was sneaking around looking for the Blue Devil.
There was a summer where thunder and lightning flung downwards, and Sonic sat beneath it, under the dripping ground. His fur soaked through as water poured in through the cave mouth. Hungry. Tired. He’d gotten a flu, and his stomach was in knots, his head stuffed with cotton and bees. He wanted so badly to go down and sleep on his bean bag, but he’d brought everyone from the cave floor up to rock ledges, including himself, as the floor flooded and turned to mud. He’d spent two days sitting and sleeping and sick on the ledge until the rain finally stopped.
There was a winter where a fever raged. Hot. Burning. He was on fire. Sometimes when he blinked, he thought he saw Longclaw. But it was a shadow of clouds across the moon. Snow and frozen air blew through the cave, and he huddled under mildew and molded blankets, legs aching and useless. He had managed to follow his survival protocol and wedged himself beneath a little cave ledge, watching the snow collect on the cave floor. He was afraid. Afraid he’d be caught like this. Afraid the fever was lasting too long. Afraid each time he went to sleep he’d wake up worse than before.
It passed, eventually. All things did. But his recovery was lonely and silent and slow.
But at least he’s not captured, he reasons. Because there are risks to being sick. When he’s not fast. When he can’t fight. It’s a miracle to wake up in the same spot he fell asleep in. And he’s grateful for it.
And then Tom and Maddie happen.
There would be a winter near in the future where he’d wind up sick. It would strike early in the night. Maddie noticed it first when Sonic seemed quieter than usual. Slower. She’d lift him onto the kitchen counter and take his temperature before ushering him to the living room and grabbing a stack of blankets, calling out for Tom to run to the store for pedialite and broth.
It all gets a little blurry after that.
I wonder, too, if there would be moments then when Sonic would think he was back in the cave. He had survival instincts in place for it. Get hidden. Get away from the entrance. Where he’d forget where he was. Who he was with. Where this was as good as him being taken, and his first move is to try and get out. Stumbling towards the back door, not sure how he knows where it is, but searching it out nonetheless.
He’s caught within minutes.
“Hey…” says a voice above him. He blinks. Frowns. Well… he knew eventually someone would find his cave. Find him. Sickness was a risk. It always was. “What are you doing off the couch. Come on.” Hands were under his arms and he was lifted up. Walked somewhere else.
Well… if he was being caught, this wasn’t too bad. Whoever had him smelled like sea salt and lilac. Slim fingers brushed down his spine. He pressed his face into the crook of their neck.
“Aw, sweetheart. You’re really not feeling good, huh.”
Wherever he’s been caught, it’s also warm. There’s no snow or mud or wind. He squints at a light, but it’s not the sun through the cave entrance. It’s the television being turned on. “How about one of your favorites. I’ll get you something to drink.” Someone presses a warm kiss to his brow, checking his temperature. “Lie down. Do you need another blanket?”
He nods to his supposed captor, whose face is blurry.
The door opens at some point. Another captor is there. Checking his temperature with the back of their hand, grabbing a cold face cloth. “Hey there, bud. How about we stay down here with you tonight?”
He doesn’t know what that means. Why captors would need to stay near… Maybe they’re afraid he’ll regain his full speed and get away when their backs are turned… He gave his legs a little experimental kick, but they wouldn’t move. He was stuck there. Captured. Another round of chills made it hard to care.
He’d wake up at least a little more lucid later. Achey. Tired. Worn. Burning. He’d blink awake for a moment early in the morning. He was in a house. The winter storm was still raging outside, but he was in a house. And below him, on the floor, beneath blankets with their pillows, were two humans.
Tom and Maddie.
Not captured. Safe. Warm. Being taken care of.
Sonic turned his face into his pillow, willing himself not to cry, but did anyway. And when that eventually got tiring, too, he wiped his face, grabbed his pillow and blanket, slid off the couch, and wiggled his way between them on the floor. Tom’s arm draped over him instinctually. Maddie woke up for a moment; enough to notice him, touch his forehead, and brush away the dried tear tracks under his eyes. “Feeling any better?”
“A little,” he whispered. “Still achey. Dizzy.”
“Don’t worry,” she whispered back, wary not to wake her husband, “we’ve got you.”
Which they did.
Anyway.
That’s my headcanon about sick Sonic.
It definitely goes both ways.
He was raised by Longclaw to believe that the best thing he could do was hide. Hide when he’s scared. Hide when he’s running. Hide when he’s sick.
Adults don’t get as sick as little kids do when colds and fevers hit. But they still get sick. Maddie is constantly near kids and adults when they come into the vets office. Tom doesn’t have that luxury. A lot of his time is spent on calls, moving back and forth between stations. He’s not around germs like she is.
All it takes is one too many sneezes by a woman filling out paperwork in their office and Tom is out on a sick leave he rarely has a reason to take.
Sonic finds out about it when he comes down for breakfast and Tom wasn’t there. Just Maddie, moving quickly, packing his lunch for baseball camp, packing her own lunch for work.
“I’m going to drive you today, okay hon?”
“Where’s Tom?”
Tom usually drove him on the way for work. It was there thing. They’d play rock music and pick up donuts on the way to camp. And after they parked at the field and exchanged a high five, Sonic would jump out of the car and wave until it rounded onto Main Street.
“He’s not feeling too hot today, buddy.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He never gets sick. Apparently todays the day.” She shrugged, grabbing the keys. “He’ll be fine. And I’m coming back home early. Are you okay walking home today?”
He was. But that wasn’t the point. Tom was sick. Tom was sick. And Sonic, who’d grown up alone for more time than he’d spent with them, had certain protocols when it came to being sick.
He got home before her, running upstairs to where Tom was napping, TV remote on his lap, a little sweaty through his GREEN HILL’S BASEBALL PARENT t-shirt. “Don’t worry,” he told the snoring sheriff. “I’ve got you.”
When Maddie got home and went upstairs to check on her husband, she’d find him surrounded by hoards of pillows (stolen from every room in the house). “Honey,” he said, looking up from a comic book that Sonic had lent him, “help me. I’ve been trapped.”
“We’re hiding!” Said Sonic from under the covers, snuggled against Tom’s side. “It’s the best way to be sick!”
“Huh,” said Maddie. “Well. You heard him, Tom. Best way to be sick.”
I was gonna tack this onto @humanityinahandbag‘s post but I’m not good with computers so I’m just posting this on its own, but to be clear, this is a follow-up to her amazing wonderful-awful half-drabble right here because I recognize my complicity in this crime. However, when I offered to ruin her day, I was VERY CLEAR that when I lay my hand on something, everything turns out okay in the end.
@thebigpalooka decided to torture me with her sad idea, so I wrote it down in the form of half of a short story. This is what happens when two people enable one another with angst!
Just a very short, very rushed interpretation. I didn’t edit or anything. I just jotted this down in ten minutes and released it to the world. Enjoy the craziness!
-
The house was Silent.
It was an oddity now, that the house was silent. The four walls had become a place for a wildly improvised orchestra of shouts and jeers and laughs and coos and hollers and quiet, muffled admissions.
But it stands silent, except for the echo-
(you’re not)
(you’re not)
(you’re not)
- which stuck around stubbornly, churning through every room, bruising the walls.
Tom sat in the Silence, holding a cup of gone-cold coffee and letting the hurt reverberate around him.
“Tom…” Maddie met him in the kitchen, putting down the paperwork she’d been filling out for Monday morning, leaning over him and tucking her chin against the crook of his neck. “You’ve got to talk to him.”
“I need a minute.”
“This isn’t about you.” The comment cuts, but Maddie’s voice is velvet and chamomile, and the two clash in a way that he’s not sure how to handle, and he winces down at his coffee. Her hand smoothes down the back of his neck. “HoneyYou’re the adult - go talk to him.”
“You heard what he said.”
“Then we’re definitely not hearing the same things,” his wife said, winding her arms around his torso. The weight of her chest against his back was steady. “Because all I heard was a thirteen year old who sounds really, really lost.”
Tom sighed, twisting the mug around in his hands. “How’d you get so good at this?” he muttered. Her smile was an oasis, and she leaned over to kiss his jaw.
“You haven’t seen my bad days with him yet, that’s all. Buy a ticket when he decides to fight me on curfew.”
Tom laughed. It hurt, but he laughed, standing up from his chair and pushing the cold coffee away. “Why is this so hard?”
“Because,” said his wife, “it’s worth it. Easy be damned.”
